I'm almost at the end of my first week at my school. It's going so fast, I can't believe I only have two weeks left here! It's definitely "holiday volunteering" as I call it as there are six volunteers here at the moment (to 27 kids) and we don't do that much teaching, plus at lunchtime they try and send us to this big mall thing for lunch (why would we want to spend $4 on pizza when we can get three portions of chicken and rice down the road for $1?). Still, it's a good taster and a gentle environment to get used to teaching. I think I definitely want to do more of it, but I need lots more practice!

I am still spending the mornings on the computer in the office. >_< They haven't made me do any more spreadsheets though (I think I scared them the first day when the guy from the volunteer company misinterpreted my glowering at him behind the balance book. "Don't be shy" he said. He understood the second glower). I am now correcting the English in documents like their policy and such. This is almost as challenging as teaching children English as they use the wrong words completely, and don't get me started on the sentence construction. It's entertaining as first I have to understand what they're trying to say, then I have to think of the English version, and then explain this to them and convince them I am right. Sometimes it's easier to leave it in incorrect English, because they are the ones who have to read it, and they understand their version better than mine. It took me 10 minutes to deduce "do not leave the centre without the necessary information from the manager" meant "tell the manager before you leave". Explaining the meaning of "substance abuse counselling" was also entertaining. After a lengthy discussion with the head teacher and me repeating "heroin, cocaine, marijuana" all he said we "we play football". Turns out I was pronouncing it wrong. It's actually "drags", as he corrected me when we finally got onto the same page.

I spend a couple of hours doing this in the morning, then we have a two hour lunchbreak (it takes that long to walk very slowly in the heat to find food, preferably without flies) and then two classes in the afternoon. The kids go to public school in the morning which is why we do random jobs then. Students from the university come for a two hour lesson in the afternoon. This is really challenging because their English is already really good and they just need the small points honing. Which means they know if you are off the mark or confused yourself. The first day was adjectives and adverbs and I could not remember for the life of me what an adverb was for the first five minutes. Once I get going my English background comes in really useful, though sometimes the students still remember more than me - "modal auxiliary verb" piped up one when I pointed to "can". I was just looking for "verb"! Then we take the CCOLT (the orphanage) kids for another two hours. My class is intermediate and they're between about 11 and 17.

I was a bit annoyed the first day because we had to just sit in the back watching the existing teachers take the class. Yesterday they didn't turn up because they were ill, so we had to go in and just teach without expecting to or planning or anything. Obviously bad for the girls who were ill (who are also English, and so posh it's hilarious, very nice though) but good for me as I actually got to do some teaching which is the whole point. It is really scary and nerve-racking, and I seem to succeed in confusing the kids more often than not, but I'd rather be doing this than a lot of things and hopefully I'll improve. Plus I haven't taken a lesson where I've planned something yet, and it's my first time, so I'm not doing terribly. I haven't lost anyone yet. And they did finally get nouns, verbs and adjectives yesterday with the help of Winnie-the-Pooh (Christopher Robin very unhelpfully produced a gun and accidentally shot Pooh on the last page which was not terribly helpful and prompted a spur of the moment "guns are bad" speech from me). Today I just gave up and we played Bingo. I'm not a very good teacher as I don't like them to be bored or confused and I just say "ok, we'll play a game". I guess I have to make the games educational. I'm also reading them Alice in Wonderland, mainly because I like it!

Tomorrow (Friday) is a party day, because the existing volunteers are leaving, so no lessons for anybody and they get food and games all afternoon. Then next week I'm a proper teacher! Eek! Oh, and on Sunday we're having a school trip, how exciting. We're taking the kids to the Royal Palace, then for burgers, and then to the stadium where they play football every weekend. We haven't told them yet, but hopefully we can organise it. The logistics will prove interesting as the school has a tuk-tuk but it only fits half the kids in at a time so we'll need to make two trips everytime we move somewhere.

Ths kids are really sweet and so different to English kids as they are polite and really want to learn. Louise, one of the other volunteers, brought them some skipping ropes, and they got so excited. We gave them the ropes at breaktime and there was no second half of the lesson. They're really clever as they got the whole tying them together to make a long rope and jumping in the middle thing on their own. And they take it in turns without being asked. As they have next-to-nothing they're used to sharing everything so they make sure the little kids have a go. And even me! "Teacher, teacher", they say, pointing at the rope. I can still skip but I have completely forgotten how to do run-ins and keep getting tangled in the rope, much to the delight of the kids. Some of them are so cute. There's one little girl who is so tiny but has this mass of wavy black hair, and spends the entire time she is skipping giggling infectiously with delight. I quite want to take her home.

Other than teaching I haven't had time to do too much. I did go for a "seeing hands" massage last night, where the people who do it are blind. It was really painful! Though I've never been for a massage before and I suppose that is the point, but I did squeak/yelp a few times. I felt better afterwards, I guess, but not that much different, so I'm not sure if it was worth the pain. It was a good experience though.

Saturday I'm going to the prison and the Killing Fields (a very romantic outing as it's Valentine's day). And planning for next week. I'm going to give them a test....and then play Bingo!