The Chiang Mai Experience

Ok, so for the past 3 weeks I have been in Chiang Mai with Clem and the other 16 volunteers learning Thai at AUA learning centre.

Learning Thai has been such a good experience and it was really fun as well. We had to be at AUA for 10am in the mornings Monday to Friday and didn't finish till 3pm with 1 hour lunch break in-between. In total, over the three weeks, we all did 60 hours of Thai language learning! We all managed to learn quite a lot of stuff as well which will help for when I start teaching and the students don't know any English.
We were all split into two groups and the teacher we had in group A was called Joy. (This was her nickname as it was much easier to say than her Thai name :p) Her lessons were really fun as she incorporated a lot of different games and at times we were in two different teams which made us get quite competitive with each other! We played games like charades, hot potato and such! Fun times :) I have never been that good at languages but I did all right while I was there so its all good I just have to remember it all when i'm in Si Saket! It all sounds like fun and games huh? Well that's true until the final day in where we had to do a final exam :( It included three different sections and we had 2 hours to do them all. Thankfully it wasn't too hard but I did have to guess some questions as everything was in Thai! Afterwards we were all taken to the Chiang Mai culture centre to learn about the Chiang Mai history which was quite fun as our tour guide was a lady-boy! :p Our fun times were short lived though as when we got back, we were given our tests back and a certificate with our mark on! Thankfully I managed to get 33 out of 40 so I didn't really have anything to worry about :) One worry off my chest, just the fact that I have soon got to start teaching in a Technical College where the students don't want to learn and such. Joy told us that Technical Colleges were the worst places to teach as the students don't want to learn, they wont turn up and they might even pull tricks on us!! What a way to fill us with confidence! Oh well i'm sure we will be fine... :s

Well thats basically all what happened AUA wise in Chiang Mai so now I will give an brief description of what happened at the weekends. On the first Friday, it was one of the volunteers 18th birthday. Well that just means that we should go and celebrate :) We found a pretty awesome bar called THC but we all called it the roof-top-bar as it was on a roof! You could out over loads of the city as long as it wasn't raining :p The only problem it had was that you had to up quite a few stairs to get up to it so it can get a bit risky when you have had a bit of the old alcohol! ;) In the first weekend our host family came up to Chiang Mai as their eldest daughter goes to university in Chiang Rai. We went with them on Saturday to a small village and stayed their overnight. It was really nice and peaceful there, the only problem was that in the evening, we had a power cut so had to spend all evening in the pitch black as there were no street lamps of any kind. Thank goodness for torches and the light of the phone! Luckily, it was back on in the morning so we could all do the stuff we needed. We then went shopping and Clem and myself got pictures painted on the back of our phones :) I got a purple elephant which I have now named Geoffry :p I also got a small 5 Baht keyring which is a small ginger doll so we now joke that it's like the 'little me' from Coroline!
In the second weekend all 18 of us went elephant trekking in the jungle! It was an amazing experience even though it was so stupidly hot! We went into waterfalls and trekked quite a way to get to the little village where we were staying. Were we stayed was a nice place the only problem was that we went to sleep kind of early as we were tired but one of the guides had gotten a bit tipsy and kept on coming in saying 'Are you sleeping?' and 'You are not sleeping' and it got quite freaky especially when he came under the mosquito net and tried to grab our legs :p Luckily he eventually went away and we were able to sleep in peace. On the second day we split into 2 groups and while one group went on the elephants, the others went to another waterfall. It was so much fun especially on the elephants although when we were going down hill we had to be careful not to slip off the seats which was quite and effort! Afterwards we went rubber rafting and bamboo rafting. The rubber rafting was hilarious as in our boat was Clem, Frances and myself and we had such a laugh when we capsized and kept on getting stuck. One the most memorable moments was when a massive spider jumped in the boat so I jumped out and then had to run after the boat as the current was taking it away from me! It was quite a sight :p The other funny moment was when we where getting out and I slipped on a rock and the current started to take me away downstream and people had to come and grab me so I wouldn't float away! The bamboo rafting was more relaxed as we had a Thai person doing the steering and such. Clem and myself spent most of the time dancing and trying not to fall in as the raft was only about 7 pieces of bamboo roped together. Luckily we didn't fall in and made it to the other end relatively dry :p Unfortunately, in the last weekend we had to go back to Si Saket so on the final few days we all went to go out and celebrate all of our final days in Chiang Mai and the fact that we wouldn't be seeing each other again for a while until we all travel to meet them.

So, there is the update of the goings on in Chiang Mai. The next instalment will be entitled The Start of Teaching. :)