PATravel: Caught up at last.... Chaiyaphum and School Life

Was riding back from school today and nearly rode over 1.5m long snake slithering across the rode!!! The wildlife in Thailand certainly is never far away. Even as I type this, little black flies are trying to eat me alive. Went for a stunning run last night around the nearby lakes while the sun was setting. They have big skies here, similar to Africa. The colours are stunning and the clouds are ginormous!

A hitchhiker on our bike helmets one morning.

At last I have caught up to the here and now with this blog thing. Still trying to get the hang of it, but fortunately Pete is on hand to fix my blupses. We have settled in very nicely to our little school routine during the week and Pete has even started playing badminton in the evenings. (Although scoring is about the only thing they can communicate about at the moment. Hehe!) Early mornings are still rough though and I cant believe we used to get up for school everyday 18 years running at 6am!! Needless to say we sleep veeeeery well at night. Our school, Anubarn Chaiyaphum, is massive with over 2000 children from grade 1-6. They have assembly every morning where they sing the national anthem and raise the Thai flag. Uniforms are very popular and even the teachers wear prescribed outfits on certain days. Wednesdays is scouts day and there is a teacher who looks just like Yogi Bear in his wide brimmed hat and khaki shorts. Makes us giggle every time we see him! The anthem is very catchy though and raising the flag is a lovely tradition (except when the poor kids doing it get themselves so tangled in knots they don't get the flag to the top of the pole in time!).

Our classes have about 40-45 children each which is mostly fun, often loud, and sometimes very trying. They have streaming over here, so depending on the class number you can kind of gauge whether you've got the smart kids or not. (Although even the clever cookies are not always the best behaved!!) The teachers have mostly been lovely and all have tried to have broken English conversations with us. A LOT gets lost in translation, but then its a case of "mai pen lai" (Thai version of Hakuna Matata...No worries, no stress, chill out, it's fine....take your pick of meaning. They all fit.) Pete and I have both been given nicknames. Mine is teacher Malit, which means Jasmine, and Pete has become known as teacher Lock. It started out as teacher Rock, but the L and R sounds in Thai are completely interchangeable so now shouts of "TEACHER LOCK, HELLOO!!" ring out across the playground.