Phuket to Bangkok

Sunset at the pool at Nai Harn Villa


Sorry we've been bad about keeping everyone updated. We were taking in as much of Phuket as we could and arrived in Bangkok after an overnight bus ride yesterday.

We've gotten pretty accustomed to traveling around by moped. Dylan's mastered it even on the four lane roads, me on the other hand not so much, I ran into a curb in our villa driveway trying to avoid a water truck while using the gas and brake at the same time, whoops. I'll have to figure it out for Chaiyaphum though. One day we got a biker gang together including 9 mopeds and 15 people. We went all around Phuket it was a lot of fun even though it was raining if not pouring most of the time. Our last night in Phuket a big group of us drove into Phuket Town for the Vegetarian Fest. It's a big festival to rid of bad spirits and everyone dresses in all white and only eats vegetarian food for about 10 days. People who believe the bad spirits are in them put needles and swords through their skin, they can't feel the pain because it's hurting the bad spirits not themselves; but we didn't get to see any of that because it doesn't happen until around the 22nd.

Our last week in Phuket we went into classes in a couple orphanages and a juvenile detention center for a test run to make sure we're prepared to teach. It was a busy week but teaching was fun the kids were cute. My favorite group was a school for boys who are talented at soccer. The students who live there are either orphans or their families do not have enough money to provide for them. Their English was really high and they were really well behaved.

We just arrived in Bangkok, which is pretty much what I expected a big dirty city, but it's fun to see. We had orientation all day today and found out more about our school. We're in the city of Chaiyaphum working at a high school. I'll be teaching 12-14 year olds and Dylan has one younger class but the rest are 15-18. There are 1500 students at the school, so we'll each have 750 students and 23 classes. We see each class once a week for 50 minutes and travel from classroom to classroom rather than having the students come to us, but that's pretty typical. Sounds like most of our students will have very little english, but in towns further outside of Bangkok that's typical. It'll be an adventure, that's for sure, but we're both excited to get into the classroom.