Week 2 Down!

Wow, I can't believe it's already been a week since our last post! I thought the first week here would be the most stressful with having to find a house, get a bike, learn our way around, sit through a bunch of meetings etc. but this second week was even more of a whirlwind. I'm going to do my best to give a spark notes account of what we've been up to the last 7 days!

Monday was the first official day of school and thank goodness the students were only around until 10 am or so. In Kindergarten the parents stuck around as long as the kids were here and myself and my partner Thai teacher both talked to the parents about what to expect this year. I'm pretty sure about 4/25 were able to understand what I was saying so that made the nerves subside big time! Nick had just enough time with his homeroom class to introduce himself, meet the kids and then they were gone too, no parents involved in grade 6! I would have thought that the rest of the day would be relaxing but I forgot about how much work is involved with getting the classroom ready for the students in Kindergarten. If the room and hallways don't look fun then the students and parents won't be happy. So I spent my afternoon decorating bulletin boards, labelling drawers and notebooks, organizing my desk and buying school supplies. My Thai teacher (Khru Bhu) is amazing and already had the inside of the classroom pretty much ready to go :)

My Classroom!

Circle time!

Monday night we did our usual quick stop at Big C to get a bubble tea and some fruit then we stopped for dinner after buying our bike!! It felt so great to be able to get around on our own terms and Nick has been doing an awesome job learning how to not only drive the semi-automatic bike but also navigating the weird traffic rules and drive on the other side of the road! I'm getting my first lesson tomorrow...

Our new transportation

Now Tuesday was a real school day. We thought we were nervous for Monday but that was nothing compared to preparing ourselves to teach our own classes for the first time ever! We will both post a separate blog post explaining what our typical day at school looks like, in grade 6 and Kindergarten we have ridiculously different experiences down to our offices, lunch hour and teaching time. Regardless, we both survived and felt way more at ease :) Tuesday night was pickup frisbee at the school's main campus and the turn out was way better than expected, 16 people! There were only 2 girls, so myself and Mary were split up and the rest of the guys were divvied into two teams and we played two games to 7 points. The level of skills was awesome and way better than expected, Nick and I fit it great and I can't wait to play again next week! Not only did we meet some teachers from other schools but our boss JJ plays too. The only less positive note was how stinking hot it was so that will take a while to get used to...

Wednesday was a National holiday: Royal Ploughing Day, well deserved after our first two days of work. Contrary to what some people believe this is our only holiday for a while over here! Next semester we'll be bragging a bit more about our time off ;) A few of my friends in Kindergarten (teachers not students) invited Nick and I to join them at the waterfalls for the afternoon and how can you pass that up? We all met at Burger Bar (a restaurant owned by one of the farang teachers and her Thai husband) and we had gluten free pancakes!! We thought we had absolutely given those up while we were here but the teacher, Brooke, eats gluten free and orders some stuff in for the restaurant. Our only complaint was the lack of "quality" maple syrup which the other teachers found hilarious even though we were not joking around.

Speaking of which, if anyone would like to ship anything over here, we have been told to send it to the school's campus for which the address is:

Srithammarat Suksa School English Programme
c/o Nicholas Stewart/Kay Jonsson
110/14 Om Khai
Pakpoon Muang
Nakhon Si Thammarat
80000
Thailand

After breakfast a group of 10 teachers on 6 motor bikes headed off to the waterfalls. We looked like a biker gang. I kinda felt like I was in a gang. The drive was about 40 minutes long which was surprisingly comfortable on the back of the bike and the view once we got out of town was amazing! You could follow the mountains the entire way there. At the falls, the teachers who had been there for a while and knew their way around, brought us up a steep trail, away from the other tourists and locals, to a pool of water that was swimmable between two falls. The water was freezing and it felt amazing! There was a spot where you could climb up and sit at the top of a mini waterfall (7-8 feet) and then let it take you and slide into the water. We hung out up here for a least 2 hours (we brought a few drinks and snacks) and then climbed down and drove back home. On the way home we experienced our first ever Thai downpour while riding the bike, it was not fun. We are getting a drybag before the rainy season starts for sure! Again our coworkers directed us and brought us to a restaurant/bar called Full Moon and we had lunch (and escaped the rain!). This place was awesome. Bob Marley posters everywhere, big open huts to sit in with hammocks, mats on the floor and tables. There is also a little "stage" set up where there is often live music. We all had the massaman chicken curry which was delicious (who would have guessed there are some curries I like!).

The pool was under that waterfall

So hard to capture the size but there were at least 8 like this flowing down the mountain!

Thursday and Friday were more of the same. Full days of teaching, finally getting into the routine of waking up at 6am and putting on way to hot, formal clothing and being at school shortly after 7 (earlier for both of us on Fridays which we'll explain in another post).

Thursday night another new teacher (sarah) and I went to a yoga class in town! On the second floor of what I'm assuming is her house, a woman named Ling has her own yoga studio and it's really nice! She made us feel really welcome and we are both buying a ten class pass and going to try to go at least once a week. Although Ling's English is great, she teaches the classes in Thai so it definitely interesting to try and follow along while in weird posses and trying to look at what the other woman around you are doing. Other teachers have also been telling us about another yoga studio where they do "fly yoga" which to me looks like cirque du soleil. There's a silk "rope" hanging above each mat which gets used to help with the posses and stretches so I can't wait to try that out next week!

Friday night we had dinner with two other couples who are all new teachers this year and all 4 of them happen to be from Austin, Texas. (I have found myself saying "ya'll" way to much lately thanks to all the texans around here!). We went to a restaurant called Morgans which is apparently the closest you'll get to fine dinning in NST. It's all open concept and really neat, with huge menus and very obscure items. Snake head soup anyone? We found some pretty delicious food: white snapper curry and chicken, chive and coriander salad, and mojitos! It was definitely the most expensive meal we've had in NST but we felt okay treating ourselves after getting through this week! There was even a live band that came on when we were finishing up who were very island sounding and they even covered the Beatles, pretty cool :) Then home to bed since we were heading off to the beach in the morning!

Phew, that wasn't exactly a spark notes version, but that was our week!