Life's a beach

Today means that I have been in Phuket an entire week now and I made it out of a solid week of teaching alive! I have never been more proud of myself. Whether the next 7-8 weeks are that smooth who knows but I made a week at least!

Chalang temple is pretty fancy

Friday was tough. I was feeling a bit run down and I couldn't really be bothered to teach for 4 hours. My first class was teaching simultaneous equations for maths which is a tricky enough concept despite the fact that none of the kids understood a word I was saying. I tried to teach them basic words for "times" and "divide" ect in English but my teacher who I was helping insisted on just translating into Thai anyway. This

Practically famous

meant none of the kids really bothered to learn the English words which was very frustrating as I couldn't help them with the exercise as they didn't understand my explanations. My second class of the day was even worse. I was scheduled to teach 11 3rd years who returned to the school as the third year hospitality students here have a placement year in a hotel, however the teacher I was meant to be with never showed up. This proved a problem as no student could even understand the word "hello" let alone my instructions for the lesson. I also had no whiteboard pen so I couldn't write on the board and they didn't own any exercise books so I couldn't set them anything to copy down. In the end, after an extremely long and difficult explanation, we began to play "hot seat" and they eventually picked it up and even seemed to be enjoying it by the end! Yet I can feel that Fridays are going to end up being m
y worst and most horrible day. It's lucky I don't have one for a while with next weekend being a long weekend and all!

More of the temple

One of the many photos of the day

Today was much better! After waking up at 8.15am (somewhat of a lie in considering that's the time lessons usually start) one of the teachers Mr Smith drove me Flo and one of his friends to the south of Phuket so we could experience Phuket town and watch Mr Smith play football at the other technical college on the island (good news his team won!) It was also very amusing when a group of kids at the school asked to be in a photo with us- I guess they aren't used to seeing extremely white people wondering through their Saturday league football match.

I was just expecting shopping and maybe the beach today so wore a floaty skirt which came midway to my thigh. However we made a stop at Chalang temple during our day. It was absolutely beautiful but I felt so disrespectful when I was stopped from entering into the temple due to the fact I had my knees uncovered. Originally I was going to have to wait for everyone outside but then they gave me a sort of make shift sarong to cover up. Although I still felt so ignorant- but I genuinely had no idea we were going to a temple!

Love it here

As well as this, we went exploring around the cliffs near Patong beach. I still can't get over how lucky I have been to have ended up being placed in Phuket. The island is so stunning and the sea looked fabulous. Mr Smith and his friend really seemed to enjoy taking photos of us both stood next to the sea. Although I'm convinced they figured out pretty quickly that I was the least attractive person ever in photographs and soon stopped asking for me to be in them and instead they wanted lots with Flo stood next to the rocks. Haha bless them. Thai's love a selfie!

The beauty that is banana pancakes

We finally ended the day having banana pancakes and coffee by the side of the road which are fast becoming my favourite things about Thailand. You can stop off at any road side restaurant and get coffee and pancakes with condensed milk.. sounds so wrong tastes so right. It's been one of the best days since I've been here and I'm glad that we've finally had the chance to get out and do some exploring!