Sunday - Rosie took us for a drive in their pick up around the valley where we are living. It was lovely! The temples are different up here as they have Brmease influence. We stopped off at some places and Rosie told us a bit about the temples, the royal family (who are all so well spoken of and respected) and a couple of the schools they have done projects with. We had some lunch at the resort and then she bought us to our school. We have a little house in one of the corners. Its very basic but lovely! We then went to good old Tesco to buy some supplies and then unpacked our house. In the evening we tried to learn some Thai phrases:

khun-chue-a-rai = what is your name?
yin-dee-ti-dai-roo-jak = nice to meet you

Monday - today was our first day at school. We woke up and showered which was refreshing as we soon found our we have no hot water. We walked over to the school and all the kids just stared at us as they were too scared or shy to talk to us "falangs" (foreigners)! We met up with Krun Won (the teacher looking after us) and she introduced us to the the other teachers. Aree is the Pricipal and Gone is their english teacher. We had a quick tour around the school - its rather small, theres about 180 kids + kindergarden. Some of them walk 5km to school everyday! At 8am every morning they play the national anthem as they raise the flag and then say a buddhist prayer, likewise at the end of the school day they all line up to lower the flag. They got us both up in front of the whole school and made us say a few words, however they hadnt explained this until we were stood there with a microphone! We then got our timetable:
Mon: 8:45-9:40 (P3); 9:45-10:40 (P2); 14:00-14:55 (P1); 15:00-15:45 (P5)
Tues: 9:45-10:40 (P1); 10:45-11:45 (P3); 13:00-13:55 (P2)
Wed: 8:45-9:40 (P1); 9:45-10:40 (P2);14:0-14:55 (P3); 15:00-15:45 (p4)
Thurs: 9:45-10:40 (P3); 10:45-11:45 (P1); 14:00-14:55 (P2)
Fri: 9:45-10:40 (P1); 10:45-11:45 (P3); 14:00-14:55 (P2)
We were then just throw into the P2 class without a clue what we were doing so we played a couple of games with them and did some of their workbooks. They seemed to enjoy it but they didn't always understand us! When we come into the classroom to take a lesson they all stand up and say "good morning/afternoon teacher" and then sit down; and at the end they stand and say "thank you teacher". We then got given units for P1, P2 and P3 so we started planning tomorrows lessons. We had lunch with all the teachers which was nice. we got to speak to them a bit more. Two of them can't really speak much english so are quite quiet around us. The kids are really good and help out loads around the school, like with cleaning and all that. Its lovely to see! We carried on planning and went for a walk to see what was going on. The P1 and P6s were doing some gardening. The P1 teacher is a bit odd and tends to walk around a lot. In that respect its so different here! The teachers and kids just come and go as they please...standard Thailand! In the afternoon we taught P5 (theyve asked us to just do conversation with P4+P5) Parts went well but when they got unsure they got really shy. which is fair enough - think we'll need to plan those lessons a bit more! On mondays all the teachers wear Government uniform - they all look dead smart! So this morning Won tried to find us skirts from the local shop which was hilarious but unsuccessful so they settled on us wearing trousers. We had a good laugh but are shattered. Looking forward to tomorrow when were a bit more prepared!

Tuesday - Today were taugh P1, P3 and then P2. It went really well and we both really enjoyed it. The kids are starting to talk to us more so its getting easier. We did objects round the classroom with P1, My routine with P3 and My family with P2. Some things went really well and others I think we will need to work a bit harder on and find other ways of explaining it. It can be really hard as we don't know Thai - it would be like us trying to learn French/German with a teacher that couldn't speak english! At lunchtime the P2 teacher left school though, so we were left with the class for the 3 hours of afternoon lessons and had only planned an hour. Luckily, as our last activity was drawing and they are so particular with their drawings we ran a little over an hour. Then we took them into the library, which has only been built this year as a project of a school and the Maekok River. They absolutely loved it! Some of them read books on their own and other gave us books to read with them. So we taught them different animals, etc. that were in the books. It was really good fun! We didn't really know what to do after that so we got some balls and played on the field with them all! All in all it was rather successful!