First of all, I must apologise for not keeping up with this over the last few months. November - January has flown in - time seems to be disappearing out here. Being away from home over the festive period was, as you can imagine, quite difficult, but not as hard as I had expected. In preparation for the weeks before Christmas we planned several Christmas themed lessons involving making Christmas cards, singing carols and playing games. It was lovely to get back into the fun side of teaching for both us and the students after a week of Mid Term exams. Before we knew it was the week before Christmas, which was spent attempting to decorate our house and making it feel a little like home. From the 25th - 28th the school held it's annual sports day, which, to our relief meant we didn't have to teach on Christmas day. Instead we made traditional Thai food in the morning with our host and some students at the school, then spent the majority of the rest of the day in Ubon eating pizza and ice cream, followed by a night in bed - feeling sick from so much food - with Love Actually and Elf. Luckily Mr & Mrs Claus aka Hels and Ken still managed to reach rural Muang Samsip and I was still able to enjoy the excitement of opening presents. Big shout out to all the other lovely people who have sent me packages and letters over the festive season - it's amazing how much happiness I get out of receiving post!
With Christmas over, it was time to reunite with the other volunteers and head South for a crazy week in the beautiful Koh Samui. The journey was pretty horrific, to say the least, and involved many mishaps of being taking to the wrong bus station, trying to use our little Thai to get to the right bus station, five of us being shoved in one taxi each of us carrying a massive rucksack, giving up on the taxi, running around Bangkok on foot, to finally finding the bus station with one minute to spare - there was several moments of panic were we all thought we weren't going to make it on time. With that panic over, we jumped on the night bus and headed to catch the ferry. Having spent many years of my life travelling back and forth to school everyday on a ferry, I expected to experience zero problems feeling sea sick. Well, i was wrong. The journey was 2 hours - 2 hours of feeling and for 4 of us even being sick, as the Thai swells picked up to a standard not even I could deal with. Thankfully, the seas calmed towards the end and we were able to take in the beautiful landscape of green seas and the glistening of white sand beaches in the distance. The week was spent catching up with the other volunteers, lying on beaches and experiencing the mental nightlife the Islands have to offer. On Hogmanay we headed over to Koh Phangan to experience the famous countdown full moon party it had to offer. Hands down the best way to bring in the New Year. Words can't even describe how mental and intense the beach atmosphere was. If you ever find yourself in Thailand, get yourself to a full moon party!
After unwillingly lugging ourselves back to our projects, It's time to get back into the routine of teaching and lesson planning again. With the stress of applying to university over with, I finally find myself with some time to relax and settle back into life in rural Muang Samsip. The next few weeks will be filled with teaching, teaching, teaching and the excitement of researching places to go to during our 2 months travelling from March - May.
Vietnam, More Thailand and Cambodia here we come!!
