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Published: January 4th 2013
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I have just came back from literally the best trip ever.. we never got to go anywhere like this back when I was at school, that’s for sure!!
We were going on an English camp for 3 days – English camps are meant to be fun ways of getting the students to speak English; there are usually 6 or 7 teachers who form rotations, they set up a game or activity and the students get into groups and go around all of the different stations.
However our English camp was slightly different and a whole lot more fun…
We left after school on the Monday night, at 6pm we all boarded VIP double decker coaches, equipped with big televisions and karaoke (they love any excuse for karaoke over here). The journey was a long one, especially with 35 11 year olds who wanted to sing karaoke at the top of their voices all night long but we finally arrived in Rayong, south Thailand at 6am. Firstly we headed up to a beautiful waterfall where we could all paddle in and take photos, the kids loved it and had fun swimming and splashing around; then we had
breakfast (rice and chicken.. for breakfast? Standard in Thailand!!) and got back onto the coach. We then went to a sea world kind of place and watched a dolphin show, I felt like I was really on holiday in Florida or Mexico or something, it was great. Then back on the coach again and the kids were taken around a mango tree farm but luckily we managed to skip the 2km walk in the heat and chilled out in the shade again. After a lunch of even more rice we finally arrived at our accommodation for the night, beach bungalows with our own private beach.
We were only 4 hours behind schedule but I have come to realise that this is totally normal in Thailand, nothing is ever on time and everything takes so long, we are always running behind! With everyone checked in and sent off to shower we all met back at 3pm to start our actual English camp activities but we only managed to play Christmas Chinese whispers with one group of students before we were all told we could go to the beach. Some of these kids had never seen the sea before and many
of them couldn’t swim but they had so much fun, they absolutely loved messing around in the sea with rubber rings and having water fights, we even hired a banana boat and the lads were loving it!
After the sun went down we all went to get showered and ready and headed for lunch on the beach and to watch the sunset, it was beautiful – apart from the seafood! That night the kids all had a English singing competition and all the teachers were made to sing karaoke – me and my friend Gabrielle ended up getting two of my 2/6 lads up to sing a duet of titanic with them, complete with recreating the famous scene, it was hilarious! After the show a few of us teachers headed out for a beer and when we came back helped the kids with rehearsing for their show the next day.
The next day we were up bright and early again for one last look at the beach and a breakfast of even more rice and then headed off on our next adventure. We went to a marine navy base but us foreign teachers weren’t allowed on the ship
for security reasons. After we went for lunch and then to a big famous garden where we watched an elephant show and saw some tigers.
We arrived at our next hotel at about 6pm; it was really nice and the rooms were lovely, we even had a swim up swimming pool to our balcony, perfect! We went for a swim and then went for dinner and the students put on a show; each class either did dancing, singing or playing guitar, it was really good! After one of the teachers dressed up as santa and handed out lots of sweets and everyone sung Christmas songs, it was really nice.
Up bright and early again the next day and we had actual toast for breakfast instead of rice, I have never been excited to see toast in my whole life! We headed off back on the coaches and went to an aquarium to see all the fish and sharks, it was just like a big sea life centre. Then we headed to an open zoo and got a safari bus around to see all the animals before we could get off and explore, we got to feed
some giraffes and watch an animal show which was really good – apart from the birds!!
After lunch we headed back onto the coach and settled down for the long journey home.. we were due to get back to the school at midnight but of course we were running on Thai time. We arrived back at the school at 4.30am and home for 5am.. we were due into work at 8am which meant getting up at 6.30 and there was no way that was going to happen! After a few more hours sleep we headed into work at lunch time for our afternoon lessons but as expected they were a total wipe out! The kids had all only had 1-2 hours sleep and were absolutely shattered, sleeping in the classrooms and I was too tired to teach and they were too tired to learn so we all just sat down chatting, eating sweets and going through any revision help they needed for their tests.
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