The last night

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JAR!

So the time has finally come and after nine weeks living in Thailand this is the last night I will spend in Phuket! I cannot believe it- at the time it definitely felt like I was here for an extraordinarily long time but looking back it feels like I have been here no time at all. Weird. I don't actually fly back to the UK until Sunday night though. Tomorrow night will be spent on a 12 hour overnight bus journey back to Bangkok (yeah I know. Lucky me.), Friday night marks the farewell dinner for all the ETAs and the British Council and Saturday night I have free in Bangkok. However this is the last time in Phuket and tomorrow will be my last teaching day- after Thursday I no longer will be "Teacher Sarah" and instead will be "just Sarah" which doesn't have the same ring to it in my opinion.

Free cake is good cake!

Even though it's my last week here my timetable hasn't been particularly fun. I was literally 60 seconds into my first lesson of the day yesterday before a Thai teacher came in to take them all away again. Apparently the hospitality classes had some sort of practical examination in housekeeping so needed to leave my lesson to practise (as far as I could tell practising involved the kids running around the halls and doing their make up but who am I to judge?) which
meant my full day of planned last lesson activities to do with the kids quickly became a full day of sitting in the office which is sort of a shame. Considering my Friday classes were cancelled as well, this meant that I hadn't taught a lesson in about a week which was really frustrating- there's only so many times you can listen to Teacher Glenn sit in the office and mutter about his cat (bless him!).

However today marked my first teaching of an actual lesson- HOORAH! It even started off well with EP1 as it was Jar's birthday so the rest of the kids organised a surprise birthday cake with candles. What cuties. Made all the better when they handed me a cake "for you and Teacher Fro" (they can't quite say Flo's name despite us being here for 9 weeks) which definitely put me in a good mood. Seeing as it was our last

I am so so amused by this drawing of me

lesson, I asked them to all draw and write a message in English something for me to take home and I was impressed by how seriously this was taken. Seen, bless him, got right on the computer to get up google translate and wouldnt let me look at whatever he was writing/drawing the entire time. And a lot of the kids started drawing me and not gonna lie the finished products were very flattering (when you see the pictures you will get what I mean my day has literally been made by these drawings of me). It was a really nice activity and it was nearly a bit emotional reading all their adorable comments- especially Seen's whose English has improved so much and every time I see him he is just so so happy, like a puppy. My goal in life is to be as happy all the time as Seen is! Anyway, he wrote in my card
"Teacher Sara Seen like studying mathematics because the

Leaving cards are totes emosh

teacher Sara and easy to understand and the Seen likes learning about division. There is a chance Teacher Sara Thailand again" (ok his English isn't perfect but you get the jist) It was just so cute it nearly got to me- god knows how I'll cope tomorrow when  have to leave my classes entirely as I have been informed on several occasions that the kids will cry when we leave. And as someone who finds emotional situations terrifying things, I assume I will just cry with them so on the extremely unlikely chance one of my pupils is reading this- NO TEARS TOMORROW PLEASE!!

After school it was time to say goodbye to the bikes we had rented and it was an end of an era- those bikes have been our lifelines and saved us from a life of terrible public transport, teachers with no cars, mentors that we never see past school hours. Literally without those bikes it would have been a really tough 2 months so it was sad to see them go (less sad about the massive hill I had to bike up every day considering the last time I exercised was sitting GCSEs) None the less we knew we'd have to be picked up by a teacher anyway so were looking forward to being able to get dinner and not have to be back before dark for once. Unfortunately our mentor had other ideas and picked us up on the back of her scooter (once again, sorry mum) approximately 0.04 seconds after we dropped the bikes off. Although she did arrange for the school to pay us the money we spent on our bikes during our time here (about £80!!) and she did pay for our takeaway curry on the way home so we'll let her off!

Goodbye EP1!