This week began as a week of teaching! On monday we taught our first two lessons as usual and then joined in with some thai dance in preperation for fridays event. We wore the long finernails and bashed some bamboo sticks together! In the evening there was a staff v hill tribe football match!! mae salak won!!

Tuesday we taught again and even taught our first sports lesson to the 6's where we played dodgeball very successfully!! actually taught the 2's for the first time...... (week 5) we successfully taught them numbers 1-12 however 13, 14, 15 proved a slight problem and 16 was shoved randomly after 12 even though we hadn't taught it to them!! We then had a surprise visit from the sub-district director who had come to speak english with us. In the evening we asked Aoy to teach us how to cook vegetables and egg and then we all ate together which we very nice, we also swapped names with Aoy and Nok..... which was very confusing!

On Wednesday (after teaching the 2's again) we had a nightmare lesson with the 3's!! We seen such hyper children and some rather intheresting dance moves involving the wall......!! In the evening we made valentines cards for all our teachers....... (with envelopes) and posted them through the doors and left them on the desks in the staff room with little hearts scattered on the table!

Thursday was valentines day... we were expecting to be very depressed however it turned out to be an incredible day!! We awoke to find a bunch of heart baloons and some tesco bananna cakes aswell as some interesting looking fish cake (with full on crab sticks on top which we are yet to try) tied to the outside of our door!! We were then given cards by Kru Ob and Kru Nok and chocolate by Waew and Aoy!! We were also given banannas by Kru Yute!! They all loved our cards and the director has even pinned his up in the staffroom!! After teaching our first lesson we had a valentines lunch were the Banong teachers came and we drank lots of spy!! We were then taken out for a little excursion in the afternoon where we baught fabric, went to Banong, invited some inportant people for fridays event, went to another school for tea and rice water punch, all squshed into the front of a tiny pick up!! The director gave us valentines gifts of spy and chocolate wrapped in a pink bow...... (even bought some for sophia and sarah which we dropped on the way home) was amazing!! They then took us out to dinner where we tried RAW PRAWNS which were actaully surprisingly nice!! we also had soup and some yummy sweat and sour fish!! on the way home susie made a classic comment as she saw some insense sticks and lights and anounced "oooh look its a party" when infact it was someones funeral...... Aoy found it very funny and even the director laughed so luckily it didn't matter!! On arriving back at Mae Salak we helped cut and stick some pictures for the boards in preperation for Friday!!

On Friday we got woken up very early around 6 by blaring music as everyone got ready!! Mae Salak was holding a cultural activities day for the students!! There was jewelry making, roof making, paper cutting, cooking, weaving, and dancing!! Fran helped paint all the childrens faces before there performances in traditional thai makeup!! After assembly the students all sat down and there were 4 or 5 performances done, the nursery was the cutest thing we've ever seen!! We then wondered around the stalls before making some Akha bracelets which we were allowed to keep!! We were also given bags by the women!! We managed to get out of doing karioke luckily!! As school was closed after half 1 we decided to go into Tha Ton to stay with vicky and issy before our trip to Chiang Doe. Fran had an amazing curry while susie had to eat rice because of her tummy but we then watched etonement which was very plesent!!