Once again, so much has been going on since I last wrote that I'm sure I'll miss out a lot o stuff I wanted to write because I have forgotten it! But I shall try my best to remember everything.

Last Sunday night (25th Jan) was the black moon party (there is pretty much 2 parties a week for some kind of moon here) and, after debating all day about whether to go or not, we bought some day-glow paint and got dressed up. It had been raining all day, so everywhere was a bit soggy and so we decided to go next door for a couple of drinks before we went. Unfortunately this meant it was 1 am by the time we actuall got to the party and we'd given ourselves a curfew of 2am in order to be able to get up and teach the next day. So, after sitting and watching the fire performers for about an hour and after a bit of a dance (and some meat on a stick!), we decided to head back to our beds. Two of the girls did stay out quite a bit longer though... and nearly missed our taxi ride into school.

The good news we've just been given is that we can have the day after the Full Moon Party (the biggest, most famous and original moon party on the beach) off from school! Yay!

What else have I been up to this week? ... We've been going to aerobics classes on the pier at Thong Sala. It's really good actually, it's only a donation of 10 baht (about 20p) to join in, it's really fun, and you get to watch the sun setting behind the mountains and the sea as your doing it. You get pretty hot though, but you feel amazing afterwards! And the 2 ladies that lead the class are crazy, and get you doing all kinds of silly dance moves. It is also quite near the night market, where you can get really cheap food for dinner. I had squid on a stick last time we went. It was literally a whole squid, barbequed on a stick. Yum. (For all those people who thought I would waste away for not liking spicy food, you're are very wrong. There is far too much on offer that is 1) not spicy 2) very sugary/fatty and 3) tastes amazing!).

Thursday everning, we decided to try our hand at Karaoke again, but this time we sought some advice on where we could go to get english songs. Subai, our guide on the island, said she would take us to a place called Boat Ahoy, where you could get your own private room with a big sofa and minibar. It was a pretty good night, and we spent over 4 hours karaoke-ing!

Friday, we were taken to a temple high up in the mountains, which had an amazing view point where you could pretty much see half the island. Afterwards, we went to another temple where you could get a sauna (surpirisngly refreshing in the heat, as long as you went for the cold showers in between the sauna sessions). It was pretty nice, although I did see the biggest spider so far there (still, I've seen bigger in the UK). Aftwerwards, we got dropped off it Haad Rin and decided we would spend the rest of the day and evening there, eating lots of food, drinking buckets and shopping. We watched 'Burn after reading' in one bar, and the subtitles they were showing were hiliarious! It was not what was being said at all and we decided it must have been done by a computer, as no human, however poor their english, would be able to get it so wrong. Then we went to another bar to watch 'Dirty Dancing', as one of the girls had not seen it, before heading off to the beach to do some dancing of our own. It was about 4 in the morning by the time we got back...

Saturday, we got to do a Thai cookery class back in Haad Rin. It was really good, and we made Pad Thai (Thai fried noodles) with prawns, Green Curry with chicken and Spicy Prawn Soup (the best thing about it being I could choose not to make mine spicy!). I'm a bit gutted I forgot my camera though, as mine looked pretty good, even if I do say so myself. After that, I went home and slept for a very long time!

Yesterday, I was awoken pretty early in the morning by one of the girls suggesting that we make the most of all the rest we'd had and head off to a place called bottle beach. You can only get there by longboat, which stop running once it gets dark, so you have to get there fairly early in order to make the most of your day there. So we got a taxi to Chalok Lam (a little fishing village to the north of the island) and ate breakfast at a really nice (very white) bar, overlooking the sea. Bottle beach itself was a really beautiful, and the sea crystal clear. Even when you were neck deep, you could still see your feet perfectly at the bottom, along with the odd fishy. We went for a little walk along the dirt road into the jungle, before deciding that flip flops were probably best suited to the beach and headed back again. I had a really relaxed day, until I got home and realised how badly I had burnt my back! It's really sore, and one of those embarassing burns, where you can see exactly where the sun lotion was, and where I missed!

Teaching this week has been hit and miss. The beginning of the week seemed quite draining, but I think teaching the younger classes at the start of the week had something to do with that! I've decided singing songs with them is the way forward since, even though they have no real idea what they're singing, they love it anyway. Especially if the song has actions to it! The end of the week went a bit better, and one of the classes gave us so many presents, including pictures they'd drawn for us and friendship bracelts and bag charms they'd made. I let our p.3 class lose with my camera (as you can see from the pictures!) and they loved it. On Thursday, we didn't have to teach our p.6 class as they were preparing for some kind of camp they were having at the school. We tried helping them put their tents up, but we were pretty bad at it and in the end we mostly ended up just eating all the food they were cooking us, before heading across the road for some home made ice cream. Today, the oldest class, p.6 had an english camp at another school on the island to go to, so we all went there, thinking we were just going to help out, but we pretty much ended up running all the activities! The two ladies who've been looking after us (Subai and Erng) were pretty annoyed that the teachers were slacking off and it had all been left up to us that they said we could go home after lunch. We're going back tommorow, but again, just for the morning.

So, in conclusion, I've been bitten to pieces by mozzies, have a red raw back and spent the morning being put under an enormous amount of pressure to entertain and educate a large group of 12 year olds. But I'm absolutely loving it still!

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Also, just wanted to add a few observations about Thailand and the island specically that I think are quite interesting and I don't want to forget:

- the electricity is pumped around the island through thick cables that look like they've just been hung around in some kind of ramshackle way. They also humm really loudly at night. It is slightly worrying!

- Everybody drives round on motorbikes and scooters. Even the children. I have seen one woman holding her 4 kids on the bike as she drives along (so many just have their tiny babies in one arm and steer with the other, it makes you cringe!). When it's 3:30pm, and the high schools finish, you can see scores of scooters with 3 or 4 13 year olds hanging off the back, and Subai told us she'd been driving a motorbike since she was 11!

- The Thais are obsessed with clean floors. To the point that, if you're in a club, somebody will be employed to constantly go around and mop the floor and every 15 mins or so, somebody would get you to move your feet out of the way so they could clean. Also, everytime we ask the kids to move their desks or chairs so we can play a game, one kid jumps up to grab the broom.

- There are so many geckos on the island, and we have seen proof that it is true that when a gecko looses its tail, the tail carries on squirming for sometime afterwards!

Anyway, I think that's enough for now! I'll try not to leave it so long before my next update...