My month anniversary in Thailand

Today we worked out that tomorrow will be our 20th teaching day out here. We have 40 teaching days in total and this officially means (as of tomorrow) that I AM HALFWAY THROUGH! I don't know how to

Getting into this teaching thing

feel about this to be honest. On one hand I definitely am looking forward to going home and seeing everyone and having a meal which doesn't contain rice, but on the other I'm just starting to settle in here. It feels like we're just getting to know the students and it's weird that once we leave that'll probably be the last time I visit Thalang Technical College- I'd love to be able to come and visit again in a year and see how everyone's getting on. Before coming out here I was under the impression that two months was practically a lifetime and could not see how I was going to manage it but now, in the grand scheme of things two months is hardly any time at all especially when you're teaching!

Yesterday I decided to deviate from the textbook for my EP1 class because if I was bored of it, they most

EP1 were big fans of this slide (idk why)

certainly were. Instead I gave a presentation to them about English life and tried to contain as many photos from home as possible as everyone knows Thais LOVE photos (they especially loved the one of me and my housemates at university next year shouting "beautiful beautiful!!!" so clearly they were impressed by the people I am living with next year!) They seemed to enjoy it and although I'm not entirely convinced they understood a lot of the English, they got to see class photos of 11 year old me which is funny in any language.

Today started off slow. I was tired and hot and I got myself told
off as apparently the shirt I was wearing was too see through. I managed to get through four weeks of wearing said shirt without having any issues but that's beside the point- I also remembered being told at our training day back in April that the Thais won't tend to say anything about your dress code unless you've really offended them which obviously did not cheer me up in the slightest. My lesson in the morning was also really dull- I try really hard to motivate EP2 and get them out of their seats but they are having none of it and prefer to sit quietly working through the text book exercises which they happily get on with.

So jealous of EP2s uniforms

Unidentified yellow fish goo

The afternoon perked up as soon as free food was on the cards. The college I'm placed at is fairly modern and has a large conference room which it turns out local businesses rent out for conferences as such happened today. It meant that a bunch of the teachers had to cook a massive meal for them and the hospitality students would then serve them and be their hostesses. It also meant there was a lot of leftover food which the teachers were more than happy to offer us which was sweet. Not having lived with a Thai family and mainly being left to our own devices for dinner meant we had managed to escape a lot of the more questionable food out here. In fact, the weirdest it got for me today was a spicy fish paste thing which was bright yellow and wrapped in a banana leaf... I'm still not entirely sure what to make of it but apparently it's a Thai delicacy.

Elephant trousers aww yhhhhh

Also, it had come to my attention that I have been in Thailand a month now and didn't own a pair of elephant trousers. You know the kind of harem pants with elephants on that people on their gap yaaaar live in. So, walking round the market here (which on Thursday has a large clothes section) and noticing a pair I had to give in. I couldn't return to the UK without some. And all at 170 baht (£2.50) not too bad.