A Thai-dal Wave of Craziness

My final weekend of this semester was spent at English camp. It was something I had been excited about for quite some time due to my experience working at camps before. Honestly I didn't know what to expect and as per usual, turned out to be completely NOT what I expected haha.

We left for camp at 4am from assumption and made the first stop to Siam Park City, a theme/water park just on the outskirts of Bangkok. Initially, I thought that we would be doing some sort of activity there but it just turned out that we could spend half the day there for free! It was a really sweet deal! Weirdly the park was pretty quiet so we managed to do all the big rides and didn't have to wait longer than 20 minutes in a queue. It was a pretty cool feeling that I was able to bond with the teachers more and get to know more of the students. Naturally, I bonded more with the gay students and it is so admirable that they are so comfortable in their sexuality and identity. We went of quite a few rides together with other teachers and overall it was a great way to spend my Saturday.

Theme Park Selfie!

We took another hour-long bus ride (although it seemed much longer) to the place where we would be staying; Assumptions big sister school, St Gabriel's. Now, this is where the craziness starts to kick in. First of all, we were shown our rooms. In traditional camp style, I was half expecting to share a room with the students, but with it being a school trip I thought they must have stuck all the teachers together in one room. Well, it kind of worked out half and half really...I ended up having to share a room with about 5 other teachers and about 50 teenage boys. (Like staying at Village on steroids haha). I was dreading having to stay in one room...the smell...

That evening finally saw camp get into full swing. Not even 5 minutes in, I was bombarded by about 10 students with various make up items who decided to decorate my face. That's when the craziness began...songs, dancing, WAAAAY too much pelvic thrusting and a whole lot of laughs. It felt a lot like I was back at Sealth and I just lapped it all up. It was a crazy experience. That night, like I mentioned, most of the teachers had to sleep in with the students in perhaps the COLDEST room I had encountered since being in Thailand...I mean, 9 fans in one room! I know it took away the smell of 'teenage boy' from the room but I had to wear three layers of clothes just to keep myself reasonably warm haha. When morning came, we concluded camp with the only thing remotely associated with an ENGLISH camp...English games. My station consisted of using a beachball with 25 questions on in which the students would pass to each other, read the question aloud, and then answer it in a full english sentence; an activity that got mixed responses. Its fascinating to see just how differing the levels of English are not just between years. but individual students in each class.

Dolly and I attacked with make-up

Well, what a great weekend that was. Now just focusing on the Christmas party on Tuesday and then gallivanting across South East Asia come Wednesday!!