Meeting our first Tarantula and the start of the weekend!!!

Our Running track at night

It finally arrived, our first week of school done and we all let out a unanimous sigh of relief and decided we needed to relax, let our hair down and enjoy a drink or several. We said we would be good and went jogging by the lake first.
We got there around 8 and it was already dark for an hour as the sun goes down early here and the town comes alive. We were happy to see that we had the lake to our selves lit up by lamps around the edge for most parts but some of the track covered in darkness and some strange noises coming from the over growth surrounding it. We finished our laps and decided to throw in some push ups, as we finished we looked down to the same spot we had been working out and seen a big hairy spider as thick and as big as my hand.

Cobalt Blue Tarantula

We all jumped about 3 feet in the air and then cursed ourselves as we didn't have a camera with us and got out of there pretty sharpish. After looking up spiders of Thailand we discovered we had met our first Cobalt Blue Tarantula (not poisonous, but packs a nasty bite)
And that's when we realised why we had been having such quiet runs in the evenings as the Thais' are not stupid and are aware that all these nastys are nocturnal and only come out at night. After telling a few Thais about our rendezvous with the 8 legged beast of the lake they said: "Ohh just spider, no snake." So we will now be running in daylight only. Lesson learned....

Hootive - Graffiti master

That night we went down to our local bar, Supans House and had a few drinks with the owner Rainny, her sisters boyfriend Hootive, who studies fine art and sells graffiti paintings which are amazing and a few of the falangs (Thai for foreigner) that live above the bar. One of them Dylan an American guy who has been living in Japan for the past 9 years and is over here for research. He is also a big fan of movies, so as the drinks started to flow we debated all our favourites for hours.

Thairish dancing 

Halfway through the night Rainny told us she new some Irish and proceeded to shout "Ah here leave it out" in her best Irish accent which had us cracking up. In return once I had the confidence of a few rums, I announced I could teach her Irish dancing, making most of it up on the spot but they believed me anyway.
We had a few beers and realised it would be cheaper to buy a bottle of Thai Rum and just pay for the mixers (bottles of local spirits only cost about 8-10 €) and we only spend about 2 euro on mixers for the whole night for the two of us.. saving money already :-)

The next day we nursed our hangovers and decided to attempt a high intensity work out to sweat out any remaining rum in our systems before heading out for dinner.

We came across a place which did a Thai BBQ buffet. It consisted of paying €3.50 for all you can eat but the only draw back or bonus which ever way you want to look at it is, you cook it all yourself at your table using a hot pot and chopsticks.

The Wolf-Pack

It took a while to get the hang of it but worked out pretty good, as we worked our way through the variety of mystery meats ranging from steak pieces, chicken, pork, shrimp, squid and a few more we didn't recognise but we assumed they were possibly stomach lining, liver, heart pieces and unusual marshmallow fish pieces. Classic Thailand!! Aaron had more guts when it came to trying the mystery meats then we had. Which is ironic, as we believe some of the meat might have been guts... ;-)

After having so much to eat and struggling with the meat sweats we retired to bed, excited about the weekend and visiting the night market tomorrow...

Starting the TEFL Course 1st week of School

So it finally arrived, our first day at the TEFL course (bricking it a bit ;-). 

It’s been while since we were both in school, probably a decade now, so hoped the brain could still function at taking in information that wasn't related to what boozer I’m going to on the weekend and what teams to pick for my accumulator (gambling is illegal in Thailand, which is another good thing as I (Stephen) was useless at it :-)

Our training consists of a 6 week course Monday to Thursday (3 day weekend baby) and each Thursday from the second week on-wards we would be straight into the classroom, teaching 3-4 kids they round up from around the area.

1st day of school

Day one we woke up early, knocked into our American neighbor and class mate and set off on the red rocket 5 minutes down the road to where we would be taking the class. 

We went in early to get breakfast in the complex and of course had to take the first day of school picture, like the ones that engulfed Facebook back at the start of September.

The complex was huge and had 30 food stands with all types of food and juice bars to pick from.

My breakfast usually consists of chicken, rice and a fried egg, whereas Kristine is a lot more adventurous an has tried nearly everything they have to offer at this stage.

Teacher Boris

We got to class early and met our new mentor for the next 6 weeks (Teacher Boris). In Thailand the kids refer to you by first name so we will soon be teacher Stephen and teacher Kristine... We can’t wait.

We filled out the required forms and where given a rundown of the course and then went straight into grammar and the 12 tenses...WHAT! 12 tenses!!... Past present and future and each one having 4 tenses within... At this stage I realized how little I knew about my first language and got very nervous about the thoughts of teaching but as the day progress it all started to come back to me, Kristine was the star pupil on the first day, as she had done this more recently and that night helped me understand and memorize everything I needed, she was awesome. 

I think the last time I had to learn this stuff was when I was 6 or 7 years old and the fact I struggle to remember what happened last week, I knew this would be a challenge. 

The first week we went over everything we need to know about conjugating sentences and the difficulties we would face teaching Thai kids, as the Thai language doesn't have tenses, articles and prepositions.

So if they talk about going to the market it’s usually summarised as:

- I go  market yesterday

- I go market today

- I go market tomorrow

It was the same with plurals if they want more than one of something they put the number at the end i.e.: "bowl rice two, please" instead of: "I would like two bowls of rice please." and it will be our job to teach them the correct sentence structure. We continued the week in this manner and did some presentations and practice sessions while studying at night and were glad when 4 pm hit on Thursday and it was the weekend and we could relax. 

And then the drinking could begin...... :-)

Aaron, Kenny, Kristine and Stephen