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Published: February 24th 2008
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On friday we got up really early to go and visit a local school. We were then split into 2's and had to go and teach the kids for 2 hours. Oliver said to us 'just sing songs and play games, it'll be fine' but I have never done anything like this and also when there is a language barrier it kind of makes things even harder...I was with Hannah and we had the youngest ones who were so adorable. There were 9 of them and they all stood up and bowed and said 'hello teacher' when we entered the classroom. We started doing numbers one to ten and then up to twenty but we wrote the word on the board and they had to match it up with the number. We then played number bingo which they seemed to love, and then got them to draw a face on their page and draw arrows to indicate the mouth, nose etc in the english words. This then led on nicely to a few renditions of 'heads, shoulders, knees and toes' We then got out the globe to show them where Thailand was and where England was...they were fascinated. After this our
time was up, and they all wrote on little love heart shaped pieces of paper 'thank you' which was really sweet. As we were making our way to collect our shoes (yes - even bare footed in a classroom) and leave all the older kids started running up to us with their books wanting us to sign them, which we promptly did and then a queue formed...it was what I can only imagine a celebrity to be like. Even after we had finished this and they had gone back to their classrooms and we went to collect our shoes, some of the kids were hanging out of the windows for more autographs!!! so sweet...
That evening, Oliver asked us if we wanted to go to a party over the river so we all met him in the dining area and started walking along the road when we realised we were not walking up to the bridge this time; we were getting on a raft type thing and the locals were pulling the raft accross the river with a rope!! this caused much hysterics as you can imagine in the dark! We arrived at someones house, that 'someone' turned out
to be the owners of the makeshift bar accross from the Eco House...this house was lovely so they obviously make a packet out of us. Anyway there was a show on with some singers and Thai women dancing fairly provacatively around them!! We all decided we were gonna make a night of it and drank quite a lot throughout the course of the evening...then someone decided to get up on stage and before we knew it Karaoke had kicked off and there were various people getting up and down off the stage trying their best to sing like they were sober.
Yesterday we went to visit the elephants which we were all very excited about. We went to a town called Ayutthaya and visited an Elephant pavillion. It was nice and we were in awe to begin with until we realised that actually the place was a little cruel and they used these metal sticks to beat them over the head (hence their decorative hat type things to hide the marks) and made them dance and stand on little tables performing tricks. Some of us chose to stand back from it all while others rode them and took in
the 'show' We then headed off to lunch and yet more rice and vegetables, followed by pineapple and watermelon yay!!! In the afternoon we went to some of the ruins and temples of ancient Ayutthaya which was interesting and we had to walk 3 times around the top part of the temple (another ritual).
Then we wnet to a LOVELY elephant place where they appeared to have more freedom and there were the cutest baby elephants wondering around and we got to play with them and watch them for some time...definitely a highlight of the trip so far!!
Oliver then had to literally tear us away from that place, I had to jump on the back of the truck as it was leaving!! we were headed to dinner, oh joy!! the food was the same, rice and varying vegetable dishes and melon and pineapple for dessert!! HOWEVER, the setting more than made up for it. A cruise on the river at sunset!!! we had the boat to ourselves.. it was so magical I'd forgotten what I was eating and tucked into it. lots of pictures were taken and it was really relaxing just soaking up the atmosphere....after we
had eaten and relaxed for a bit, Oliver got on the Karaoke and before we knew it we were all up there singing away (even without the influence of alcohol) A fantastic couple of days....many happy memories.
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claire
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Wow mate, the school must have been amazing and the little elephants... nearly brought a tear to my eye!! Soooo jealous now. Claire xx