So, Friday we went to si saket for this school competition. We corrected some of the essays. In most parts, the English made absolutely no sense at all and we couldn't even tell what they were even trying to say. But somehow, we did at least most of it. However, the essays were only maybe one page long and were supposed to be 1000 words long so our host ended up staying up most of the night writing more. I felt really bad for her.

Anyway. We arrived in si saket after a 3 hour drive in a mini bus with some of the other teachers. We spent the night in the nurses room in the school. It was very surreal. It was properly blowing a gale outside, the kinds of winds that would do Scotland proud, so it was a very cold night. There were a wall type thing that parted the beds from the centre of the room. In each side were little hospital beds and matts on floor. We got two beds but they were possibly the hardest beds I have ever slept on. Then in the middle, more and more people arrived until people started setting up tents inside, in the middle of the nurses room. There really wasn't a lot of space. But then we went through the speeches with the students before going off to bed. it was so cold and we only had one blanket each. I ended up wearing two t-shirts, a cardigan a jumper and two pjama bottoms and socks and I was still cold! But that's not much of a surprise.

The next morning, all the teachers woke up at 5 in the morning, I assume to carry on fixing the essays but I refused to get up so didn't wake up till almost nine. It was still windy and cold in the morning. We pretty much sat around all morning doing nothing until lunch. Our host was one of the judges so she was quite busy. But after lunch we went to the shopping mall down the road. It's a nice shopping mall, I suppose the equivalent of jenners. But they had a burger king on the bottom floor so even though they had just had lunch, our host and her friends got a burger king and ice cream. Typical thais.

Then after a lot more sitting around we left to go back at 5pm. It was a good couple of days.

Sunday was at least a little more exciting and we went with some of the students to the place where the monks live. All the local villagers were giving them presents and food. As we came up to the rear of people walking down the road, we could see huge speakers going along on wheels. Then a lot of villagers slowly dancing/hoping from foot to foot down the road until eventually we reached the temple. Then we dropped off the gifts and saw a wonderful view from the top. Then we went somewhere and the students fried us some chips which is always nice. Then after, we went to Chedi on top of a hill. It was really quite miraculous I'll admit. There was just so much gold, everywhere. And you could go right up to the top and it was a beautiful view. It was great. But on the way down, one of the slightly camp boys decided he couldn't walk down the stairs because his legs hurt too much. So one of the other boys had to give him a piggy back ride. It was so funny. At the bottom, they crashed and fell. Then, eventually we went home and had hot chocolate out our hosts house to warm us up. Altogether, quite a good weekend.

We had our first day back at the primary school today. Looks like were not going to be teaching for another 2 weeks at least. They are preparing for a speech competition so we spent the whole day getting students to repeat after us and playing solitaire on the computers. I think that what we are going to have to do every day until its over. I want to start teaching! Although we got to pick what age groups we wanted to teach so I have the equivalent of p1, p2, and p3 so yey! Though we will switch next term.