It was a little surreal. This was the final week of teaching at WangSala and how better to end it but by teaching... Christmas.
'Its the most wonderful time of the year...'
Just a few Christmas songs were downloaded to make it feel a little more like Christmas. So the week was full of wordsearches, crosswords, fill in the gaps, colouring and listening to me sing when santa got stuck up the chiminey and rudolph the red nose reindeer... Poor children (I did get a round of applause at the end though)! I even had a chance to refresh myself with the Nativity story but the m3 were so not excited to read it as I was!
The whole week is now a little bit of a blur now to be honest (sorry, this blog post is like two weeks delayed) but I'm now left with an amazing amount of gifts, memories and 3kg of more weight I have to walk around with (and I'm not talking about the luggage in my bag). As you've all read the food I've been tasting (well engulfing) has been so delicious and the last week so did not disappoint. We were given different lunches everyday and even had a special lunch on the Friday with all the teachers. It felt like a proper family around a big table grabbing pieces of chicken, veg, rice and fruit. So unlike teachers but more like aunts, uncles and brothers and sisters. Myself and Roseanne were even treated to one last dinner at PaTungs house one evening to eat traditional Thai finger food including raw pieces of banana, mango, garlic, cooked sausage and chilli sause wrapped in a lettace leaf!
Horrendous last week at school with the wifi though... All we kept saying was 'at least this is the last week, this is the last week' and at least we had some throughout! We had to lock ourselves inside PacSai's office in the evening to use the wifi and on the last night we treated ourselves to a little bit of a leaving party and listened to Steps, S Club 7 and Blue (proper belting out the hits)!
Saying goodbye on Saturday morning was hard (not just the early morning wake up) but to the janitor and PacSai. Both have been amazingly kind, smiley and caring and have treated us just like their own. I'm not going to lie but I did shed a few tears (not surprisingly) as the school had become a home and the students, teachers and even the parents had become my extended family.
Koh Samet:
Try to bare with me here as I'm still struggling to understand if Koh Samet is spelt as Koh Samat or Samed as on the island it was a combination of the both. So I will also be varying my use of both (just to be arkward). So it weren't your normal kind ferry but instead it was a small dingy boat which stopped in the middle of the sea. We then had to transfer onto a wooden plank 'boat' with our luggage in tow then walk through the shallow tides to the shore. If I wasn't carrying my luggage I would have awwed but so wasn't an aww moment. All I wanted was a hot shower and to dump my stuff!
The island was beautiful no doubt and amazingly secluded. It wasn't full of your normal tourists and it had a family feel to it too. The villa's we were allocated were so spacious and comfortable with big double beds and an impressively large shower area. It was definitely a massive change from the hard beds we'd slept on for seven weeks.
We all spent our time on the beach soaking up the sun and enjoying the clear blue water... a proper island beach holiday we had all looked forward to.
Island hopping and just hopping:
A day out on a speed boat to the surrounding islands was like a perfect day out. It was also the first time I went snorkeling and found it really strange breathing through my mouth and having my nose blocked up. But it was totally worth see seeing all the fishes and coral under the water. It weren't so great for my now travelling partner who machete cut her foot on the reef. As she swam out the water shouting 'i cut myself', none of us really thought it was serious. But it was. She had nearly lost her little toe and there was so much blood constantly pouring out of it. No one,actually knew what to do so I attempted to help. With my bottle of water, nappy bag and tissue at hand I leaned her bleeding foot against my leg and cleaned it (sounds heroic but in the bloody clinic I nearly fainted whilst she had her stitches). So I wrapped her foot up then some lovely people told us to sudacream on it. So on it went and then off it went as the boat drivers said I needed to apply iodine! Charlotte wasn't the only one down, Olivia had also cut the bottom of her foot and was in pain.
This wasn't the end of our tragic journey, Ed had swam into the ocean and crawled out screaming in pain because he had stepped on a sea urchin which had comradely gone through his heal. All that was sticking out was four sharp spikes. Painful!
We did carry on island hopping but we were all highly cautious
As none of us wanted to be the next man down so the stopovers at the other three islands were literally pitstops! Once back on shore I went to the clinic with Charlotte, Olivia and Ed watched them get stiched up! It was an unforgettable day out for sure with non refundable souviners!
Christmas:
Different as it was Christmas was the most wonderful time of the year. We had an epic chill day at the beach catching up with family and friends from the wifi place on the beach and then a LoveTEFL family feast in the evening. What a way to end the internship!
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| LoveTEFL team on our way to Koh Samet |
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| The villa people unloading our stuff from the little boat |
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| Koh Samed |
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| Koh Samet |
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| Koh Samet in the evening... a little blurry |
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| Little island hopping... the island which destroyed Charlotte's foot |
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| Fire person... dinner and show |
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| We decided to watch the sunrise one morning! Decided to take my camera but it had died |
