When we arrived at Sena Place Hotel we were taken straight to hand in our documents and money and find out about our placements! Having made some good friends over the previous few days everyone was anxious about being placed near each other or together! I got my placement pack and seemed to be the only one placed in the south and with primary kids which is exactly what I'd asked for. Sadly everyone else who I'd been with seemed to have all been placed together in Surin. We were all to share rooms in the hotel with people who we would be living with at our placements, the girl who I was with was already in our room so off I went to discover my roomie for the next 5 months! Emily was to be my housemate and seemed really friendly and worked at Cath Kidston.. I could see we would get along fine! We all went for lunch and the rest of the day was spent meeting other people (most of whom we felt that we already knew through Facebook!)and chatting about who was placed with who and how far we would be from each other, followed by a mass gathering (about 60 of us) around the pool and lots of drinks and getting to know each other. The following day we had a welcome dinner which included a demonstration of some traditional Thai fighting by some Thai kids who had travelled over from a school about 2 hours away. The weapons were amazing and you could see how they could do some real damage, especially with the swords. This actually resulted in a near miss with my head leaving a chunk missing from the pillar which I was leaning on!

The rest of the week was filled with training and more information about teaching in Thailand in general, this included a Thai lesson and a Thai dancing lesson and demonstration! The guy who lead the rest of the TEFL training was the most enthusiastic guy I've ever met and despite everyone laughing at him at the start, by the end of our two days training his enthusiasm had rubbed off on us and we were feeling much more prepared to teach! After several more nights of Kho Sarn Road, drinking Chang, eating Scorpions and Grasshoppers, staying up till the sunrise and bouncing around in the pool (leading to a visit to a very posh and somewhat expensive Thai hospital for 4 stitches in my foot) it was time for the last night together and a trip to a few temples (for those of us who didn't over sleep and miss the bus). The morning of departure was filled with mixed emotions, excitement to actually be moving on to teach and the sadness of leaving some great friends and not quite knowing when we would see each other again. The majority of people left first thing in the morning for a 4-6 hour bus to their locations, leaving about 10-14 of us to hang around until the evening for our transfers. We weren't due to depart until 6:30pm and so spent the day recovering, packing and wondering what a sleeper train would involve.