Workin' (absolutely nowhere near) 9 till 5

I've read a few blogs of ETAs who've contracted the deadly "Thai tummy" since the beginning of the program, but as I finished my 5th week of teaching and headed into my sixth week I thought that I, against all odds, would make it through my 9 weeks relatively illness free. The end was in sight! I could make it...

Inevitably the answer was "no I couldn't make it" and Sunday night was spent in hospital being given a cocktail of drugs to treat mild food poisoning. Brilliant. What hurts all the more is I was absolutely convinced that it would be the Thai food which would get me here and would barely touch street food (which anybody who's been to Thailand knows this is the best kind of food) in the beginning. So it's nice to know it was probably a shoddy attempt at an English breakfast which made me miss two days of teaching and wallow in my own self pity.

Mothers awards

One good thing did come out of this though- Monday afternoon my favourite (don't tell the others) class all came down to our apartment to check how we were and tell us to get well soon. In hindsight, this was very sweet and their concern did mean a lot as they were all clutching their scripts to the play they had just been rehearsing. At the time however, I found it all very overwhelming that there were around 10 17 year olds who I teach sticking their head through the window of where I live to see me in my sweaty, sorrowful state. Lovely. But cute, none the less. All in all though, it means I haven't had much to blog about in the past few days unless people wanted a second by second description of how I lay in bed watching the inbetweeners all day...

Good news is this morning I made it into school to teach my first and only day of the week. Teacher Morn is to be married on Friday and the entire school is closing as all of the teachers (and half of the students it seems) are invited to come along. As her hometown is around a 5 hour drive away this means that tomorrow will be spent travelling along with the rest of the teachers to Nakhon Si Thammarat meaning no teaching tomorrow either. Or next Monday and Tuesday for the long weekend. It's a tough life in Thailand...

More emosh than Titanic

However, it turned out that there was no teaching for me today either as the school celebrated mother's day today.

Mother's day in Thailand apparently is a much bigger deal than mother's day in the UK- no cheap chocolates and petrol station flowers in sight. We started procedures by the director of the school reading out a passage of some description and singing the mother's day song in Thailand (well I looked around confused but you're meant to sing) and then all of the teachers and students signed their name on a list at the front. After this, 13 students who had performed well throughout the year had their mothers presented with a certificate. The students then all had to hand their mother a flower garland. Of course, all the mums started crying and then the pupils started crying and it was quite moving to witness (also a little bit strange considering I come from England, the most emotionally suppressed nation in the world). 

After this ceremony, and the 249348603 photos which followed, some of the architect students performed a play for the school which judging from the students reactions must've been the funniest thing ever. It was very

This school loves drama..

good, all be it confusing- I was expecting a play about mothers but in the last scene what looked like a body bag was brought on to some emotional music so I'm still not entirely convinced about what it was about...

So that's me done teaching until next Wednesday with only really 2 and a half teaching weeks left- where has the time gone?! (Although if you had presented me with a ticket to England at 6.45am when my shower wouldn't work I would have taken it on the spot no questions asked!)