The next Oscar winners

Training the film stars of tomorrow

In the end it turns out I shouldn't have put of writing that play for the kids because about 0.6 seconds after I finished my last blog post my mentor Pink came into the office and informed me that I had about an hour to come up with a play about a Prince and a Princess with like 8 characters for the kids. And it was meant to be funny. Right... Considering I haven't written anything since the past days of GCSE and I'm about as funny
as a ham sandwich I thought this might be a potential problem. So after a bit of browsing the internet and improvising I bashed together something about a princess who wears too much makeup and then she get a makeover then the prince falls in love with her etc etc (I am aware that this isn't a particularly strong message and feminists everywhere are mad but whatever).

Award winning scripts

Pink insisted that the EP 2 class try out a scene where they play all of the characters so we can cast them. And, as much as they had no idea what was going on (well me neither in all honesty) they all gave it a good go. Believe me, there is nothing funnier than watching a 17 year old boy be forced to play a part of a princess and put on make up. And I have to hand it to these kids, they were properly going for the acting role I was very proud. So although I'm not entirely sure why I've even been made to write a play, there is one in existence at least and, although I'm
not going to be winning any awards soon, the kids don't seem to mind how terrible it is (at least not to my face).

Jojo giving it a bash

The language barrier has proved pretty tricky in the past few weeks and sometimes it is very useful to have a Thai teacher there. But sometimes, especially my maths classes, I find it frustrating to have Pink in the classroom with me. She had a few weeks where she didn't show up to the lessons with me so I had to use my initiative and take control. Which actually proved quite effective and as it's maths the kids had a vague understanding about what was going on regardless of what I was saying. However, if she's in the classroom with me I feel like sometimes it may as well be like I'm not there as she spends the entire time translating word for word what I'm saying. This sort of defeats the entire reason I'm there in the first place. It also means that the students are less likely to pay me attention when they know they can get the answer straight in Thai. My feelings about this were not helped today when all the kids in the

My poor Hospitality class not loving maths

EP 1 class started talking about me and laughing- I did not need to speak Thai to figure this out. So when I casually asked Pink what they were saying she wouldn't tell me. How rude! Although, in hindsight, it's probably for the best that I never found out what they were saying. That's the benefits of not speaking the language of the kids you teach- your self esteem doesn't disappear when they slag you off and you can just pretend everyone likes you. Winner!

While I'm having an amazing time out here today has felt a bit like I'm currently missing out on so much back home. Especially my friends I never get to see at uni and haven't spent a prolonged period of time with in about a year. Life here is so different and while I'm loving every minute of it I'm a little bit jealous I don't get to do normal summer things with my friends like barbecues and film days and little things. On the whole it's not too bad though and I guess it's
only another month before I fly home again. Ironically, I have a feeling that when the time comes to it I won't want to leave at all!

(Also massive congratulations to Will for graduating today. I know you stalk my blog so well done!)