Just a short update to accompany my next lot of photos... Spent Saturday with the family at Chokchai farm - the biggest dairy farm in SE Asia. Love that I've found an attraction with my favourite animal, but plenty more time to check out temples and the like. On the way to the farm we stopped off at a lovely restaurant and had the most scrumptious lunch and tried some weird Thai dessert which tasted a lot like liquorice. Also had nice fresh pomegranate juice, w...

I'm nearly at the end of my second week of teaching, so it's probably about time I let you know what it's actually like... I'm feeling quite settled here, added a few more bits and pieces to my apartment, curtains for example. School's been pretty good, though more tiring than I expected. Art's lots of fun, although today I somehow got black paint all down my leg, suppose I should be grateful we have to wear skirts and not trousers. Computing is just about beara...

I've been given a book to read on social etiquette, published by the Ministry of Culture in 2004. Admittedly, some of it's actually useful, but some of it I feel I won't need, like how to act if I have an audience with the King, or at a ceremony for the initiation of monks. Here are some of my favourite pieces of advice (unfortunately you can't see the hilarious accompanying illustrations): If attending or giving a seminar paper: -'If one is assigned to deli...

My last few days with the family were lovely. I spent Friday afternoon cooking Thai soup with the grandmother, apparently she really likes me even though I don't speak hardly any Thai and all she knows in English are the odd few words. It was really funny as she thought if she spoke really slowly I'd understand. I spent a lot of time nodding and smiling. But we had such a nice time, in spite of the language barrier, if anything it made it all the more authentic. ...

Happy Halloween !! It's been such a hectic few days of packing, unpacking, and now I'm packing again. I moved in with my host family on Tuesday evening. Mom-jeab is a surgeon, her husband is a doctor (his name is too hard to say so I can call him doctor), they have a daughter called Jib who's 16, another called Jang who's 11, and Jun is their little boy who's just turned 4. That first night they took me out to dinner and I had Phad Thai (noodles in an omelette ...