Hi all....

Just to let you know that I've finally managed to upload the rest of my photos into the last photo album, I was having quite a lot of trouble with it before. So now there are a lot of 'little terrors' for you to look at in there!

Everything here's great, although it really is getting too hot for comfort now. I'm looking forward to heading north in a month or so where it should be slightly cooler! But for now I'm content just lazing on the beach when I'm not in school.

I'll update this properly either later on today, or tommorow, as I know it's been a while but I have to be off to school in 10 mins!

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Finally I've got the time to update this blog properly. The past week or so has been rather eventful, to say the least. I forgot to say in the last post that I was brave and went for a Thai massage on the Sunday. I'd heard a lot about them, mostly that they're very painful, but I actually thought it was ok. I felt very supple and relaxed afterwards anyway. Since then though, I've been for an oil massage at this really nice place in Haad Rin and it was amazing. The place was so nice, they bathed you feet for you whilst you sat and decided what treatment you wanted to go for and gave you green tea to drink at the end. They did have a note in their brouchere outside that said something along the lines of 'We do not offer sexual services at this massage parlour', which was reassuring to know!

I've also not mentioned the wierd colour code thing that goes on in Thailand. Every day of the week has a different colour and quite often in school you'll see the teachers wearing the correct colour for the day. It's not compulsory or frowned upon if you don't but it does get noticed if you make the effort, especially if you wear yellow on Monday as yellow is the colour of royalty and it shows respect to the king if you wear it.

Last week we spent very little time teaching. We had Monday off due to it being a Thai holiday, Wednesday off because it was the Full Moon Party the night before and Thursday off because the kids had exams. Which just left 2 hours on the Tuesday (plus half an hour teaching the teacher english again). We had P.2 first, who were absolutely mental, and we tried and failed to teach them directions before they bribed us for gold star stickers by pinching things out of our bags and holding them to ransom. Eventually we gave them all balloons to try and play a colour game which stopped them stealing from us, but didn't calm them down at all. They were literally clibming up the walls (or the door frames at least). P.4 after that seemed like angels, but they're a really hard class to get going as a lot of them are really shy about speaking English in front of their peers. Today and yesterday though, I think we've managed to overcome that by just playing loads of games rather than trying to teach them any new vocab. The teacher to whom we were giving english lessons to wanted to go through some useful phrases for the Full Moon Party as, even though he hates the party itself, he always goes down there to talk to the farangs and try to improve his English. Teaching this week has been wierd since it's been such a long time! But we've been playing head, shoulders, knees and toes with most of the classes and they love it.

The Full Moon Party itself was pretty good, although perhaps not quite as enjoyable as it could have been, for a number of reasons. It all started well, we decided to get some plain white t-shirts and decorate them with day-glo paints and started the night with a few drinks on the balcony and next door at Coco Gardens. Then Subai, one of the ladies working for the volunteer company, came and picked us up . The beach was absolutely heaving, it felt like you were in a small sweaty club rather than a 1 km stretch of beach and apparently this is the busiest it's been for a while. I was having fun, but after my first drink I started getting really bad stomach cramps whenever I was standing up and they gradually got worse and worse. We also managed to loose half the group which really wouldn't have been a problem but it did increase some tensions in the group between a couple of people that had been brewing for a while. I was determined to make it until sunset, no matter how bad I was feeling and at around 5am we decided to go and get some grub at a place called Mr K's. It's very wierd having all the resturants and shops open the whole night. I really couldn't eat very much and by the time everybody had finished I felt like I needed to go home. So we went back to the bungalows and sat on the beach to watch the sunrise. One of the girls, Rosie, had decided that she wanted to leave this whole thing as she really wasn't getting on with some of the other girls and I was almost tempted to run away with her as it all seemed quite exciting. But I get on with everybody else here fine and I've been enjoying it far too much to leave already. In the end, I actually got into bed about 10am! As you can probably guess, much of Wednesday was speant sleeping and also trying to resolve the situation between some members of the group. In the end, Rosie decided that she was definately leaving and travelled back to Bangkok the Sunday just gone, although I think it was more for the fact that she wanted to see more of Asia before she flew home on the 10th March than because she actually wasn't enjoying it here.

On the Thursday we went to the food festival that was taking place in Thong Sala. It was really fun, there was a big stage and loads of stalls selling all kinds of different things (including bugs and insects, as you can see in the picture). We decided to brave it and try some of them. I had a few of these small cricket type things that really just tasted salty and crunchy, and we also bought some wierd grub/lavae type things but everybody who tried one before me spat them out, so I didn't got for that one. We did actually have some nice food at the festival as well, especially these prawns I got with a sweet chilli dip. Yum.

Saturday was Valentine's Day, which I was sad to be spending away from Ian. But I got to open a parcel that was sent from him, Roxy made us all sweet cards they she stuck to our doors and we had a beach bbq in the evening to look forward to where we were being joined by Alex and Jiripan, the 2 people who run POD from the UK. At the meal, Erng came and gave me some gorgeous flowers and apparently Ian had gotten in touch with her via the wonder that is facebook and arranged for me to be surprised with them (which I certainly was!). The bbq went really well, and there was loads of really yummy stuff to eat, but eventually we had to leave and decided to go for a few drinks somewhere else. We ended up at a ladybar that looked more like you would expect from an 80 year old's living room than from a sleazy bar in Thailand. It even had little knitted cosies to keep you drinks cool.

Rosie left on Sunday and, in he memory, we decided to go down to Haad Rin and eat some of the amazing carbonara at Mr K's that she introduced us to. There are also posters all round the resturant which people have drawn and they've been stuck up on the wall, so we decided to do one that was given pride of place at the resturant entrance. It was today that I also went for the lovely oil massage.

Monday was yet another half moon party, which I went to again. It was really fun, but I'm feeling the effects of it today. A hangover in intense heat is not pretty! Also today, one of the girls who was originally signed up to do the volunteering but who changed her mind and ended up getting paid work is Thailand instead is coming to visit us for the rest of this week. I feel quite bad that she's picked a day where everybody is hungover and feeling unsociable to arrive. I'm sure it'll be fine though. I'm also planning to head off to Koh Samui at the weekend to see what that's like (and maybe grab a McD's whilst I'm over there). I planning on exploring Koh Tao once we're finished here as well and possibly do a scuba diving course whilst I'm there. The plan after that is to head towards the west coast with a few of the people here before travelling back to Bangkok and exploring the North. I really want to stay for Songkran, which is Thai new year in mid-april that basically involves a massive waterfight between everybody in Thailand. But that would mean doing a visa run and I'm not sure about doing that.

Miss you all back home, has the snow all cleared up yet?

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