A typical Saturday night in Bangkok

Well, it's the day after the day after the day after and I'm still recovering and remembering snippets of conversations I shouldn't have had, and loud impressions of Cartman I shouldn't have done ("You WILL respect my authoraton!!" "I'm not fat i'm festively plump" "beeeeeeefcake!!" all shouted rather loudly in the lobbey of a posh hotel, earning me the new nickname of beeeeeeefkate).

After the last lesson we headed straight to the Hard Rock cafe for 2 for 1 drinks (they have the coolest sign above the door - "No drugs or nuclear weapons allowed" and they actually check your bag!). We then moved onto a Thai bar where hannah ordered a blow job but got sperm, and i got a multiple screaming orgasm, which didn't quite live up to it's name. It was then back to the hotel to get changed, and onto a nighclub which was under a posh hotel. That was...interesting. Saudi Arabian music, and lots of Saudi Arabian people dancing saudi arabian dances. Such a surreal experience, especially when you're half cut! Here I proceeded to get snaps of everyone from the course in various impressions of animals ("John, give me a tiger... go! Hannah, give me a marmoset, I wanna see an angry marmoset, yeah, work that marmoset, look that other marmosets just taken your supply of... nuts... or something, show mean angry marmoset!)

But that was not as surreal as the next place, I can't remember what music it was but it was 4 times the price of a normal thai beer, there was a band playing but no one dancing, and when I took a photo of the band someone told me off, and a girl i was with told me it was because the band was comprised of international drug dealers... i am unaware how true this is but i believe it.

But it was the next part of the night where it got messy. A girl from the course reckoned she could drink more than me (oh what a laughable idea?!?!?) So i was like "hold on there missy, i ain't having that!". We argued for a while and then decided that the only way to settle this would be a drinking competition. And then someone else joined in and it got quite heated but the only way to check who could hold the most was to start the competition, bearing in mind we were all pretty far gone after the cocktails and beers from earlier i knew this wasn't going to be pretty! So it was 3 girls: England versus America versus India, last one drinking won, disqualification for falling over, not buying your round, and chucking.

So we moved on to the final club and sweet, sweet lord I've never seen such a dirty place (literally not metaphorically). I have taken a photo of the bath within the toilet (yes there was a bath in the toilet in the nighclub) as proof that it was actually worse than the worst toilet in Glasgow in Trainspotting.

We switched to vodka and orange at the club and that was when i knew was on homeground. We all got very drunk, danced a lot and had a very good time, it was actually really cooel music, R'n'B from what i remember - I definitely remember hearing Britney tho'. We finally left the club at some time in the morning, not sure when it was but it was definitely light outside, and I don't THINK I ate any fried cockroachs on the way home... no, I'm sure I didn't...

I'm now off to Koh Samet for a weekend of lazing and drinking and reading, and there may not be Mozilla Firefox there, which I need to update this blogger, so this may be the last transmission for a while people.

Keep in touch by e-mail tho

Katy
x

ps. just for your info we're nowhere near that earthquake and we're heading north east so don't worry... just incase you were... you know...

The scent of Bangkok

Oh yes, I see what's going on here!!! Check it out, all the blokes are only posting cos you think you'll get some saucy details about a sordid affair innit?!?!? (not you tollick, cheers for coming on, what's up with von? i'm sure she too would scoff at the idea of a magpie pecking a squirrel to death).
So you just want to know about the thai hooker? What about my lifetime ban from laos? does this not interest you?? Well, I'm sorry to disappoint and i actually feel very guilty into duping you into posting but nothing happened!! hee hee, i made it all up! i did get really pissed tho and travel home in the back on a taxi laid across 5 other of my fellow (very, very pissed)'teachers' with my feet hanging out the window and a bottle of beer in my hand... (only in thailand!) i'm actually very surprised and not a little pleased that my feet are still attached to my legs the way they drive over here.
And the closest i got to an 'enounter' with a prozzy was when i was drunkenly having a rather heated debate with some american bloke after i left the club (which is in the centre of pat pong, which is the seediest, sleaziest sex market... the club we went to was ok tho may i stress! just lots of people dancing and drinking... not a ping pong ball in sight thank the lord!). So anyway I was 'debating' with this american cos he's with this gorgeous girl he's 'bought' and i was telling him how disgusting and sad he was, and i was telling her how she could do better and asking her: "wouldn't you rather get a nice little office job, where you get weekends off and a pension?" she was just looking blankly at me and smiling... bless!
So yeah, no affair I'm afraid! got you posting tho!

Well, I've finished the course, last day today... all i can say is,

FUCK YEAH!!!

Feels great knowing i won't have any stress like that ever again... well i don't plan to anyway. I just did the old obligatory photo shoot with all the students but i'm sorry macaroni, as you know i am mildly retarded and i'm afraid i lost my camera-to-computer lead before i came out here so no can show no photo's - bangkok ain't a pretty place anyway, it's real, real dirty in every way... you'll be walking down the street and a waft of this minging smell which offends every sense in your nostril will drift past you and make you reatch! Kind of how i imagine fried dog, cats piss and mouldy cabbages would smell if you heated them all up and then set fire to them and then mixed in some rancid cheese.
Anywhoo, we were swapping e-mail addresses with all the students and it was well funny, three would come up at once with like pens and a book, felt like a movie star signing autographs i did!! So yes in celebration of the fact I am now a real life teacher, am off to get very drunk now, which will maybe lead to a sordid incident or an arrest which i can tell you all about tomorrow.

keep on postin'
x

Finished!

Ok everyone, why you no post? you no love me?
I've changed the setting on the blogger because Dib pointed out that maybe people wanna post anonymously or something, so now you can say OWT without having to sign up for a blog of yer own (didn't realise you had to do that... sorry!)

So yeah, until someone posts i shall say nothing of my encounter with a local, how shall we put this delicately? "lady of the night" ... last weekend in a sang thip whiskey induced alcohol daze, neither shall i breath a word of my untimely lifetime banishment from Laos after a run in with the police because of their (in my opinion overly-stringent) laws regarding what they term "worrying" squirrels (I call it something else).

But i will say i've finished the course and it feels damned good!! i think i've passed cos they told us at the start they'd give us some hints if we were getting near the end and were gonna fail, after all failing this course (after the amount I paid to do it) would be a major, major fuck up! When I asked one of the trainers if I was gonna fail the other day he asked me whether bears shit in the woods.. which i thought was a bit of a random question to ask ... what do i know of the toiletry habits of bears? and then I found a note on my locker saying " buck up your ideas you thickie, you're in for a fail", i presume it was meant for the locker next to mine, and then, i swear, when another one of them passed me in the corridor the other day, she coughed and it sounded like she said "cough, yer gonna fail, cough, cough", but i could have been imagining it, i'm sure it's nowt to worry about.

mmmmmm, cockroach and cheese anyone?

Hey everyone,

Macaroni! how's it going? don't s'pose there's much chance for surfing in the big smoke aye, just keep dreaming of those byron waves! thank-you for the link, i may try 'squirrel baiting' mysef when i get home... i could catch one and train it to do my bidding! Ginny - that is the coolest news i've heard in a long time, it'd be fantastic to catch up again!

Well, nearly there now. Only one more lesson to go and that's it! I was worried about not lasting the whole 55 mins for my lesson on Thursday but somehow I managed it, and actually ran over time... and didn't finish the activity... and pissed off my trainer (who said he wanted to 'strangle' me when he saw how i was prolonging the warming activity because i was scared of running short)... and even managed to piss off one of the students! She was having a go at me: she's a bolshy thai woman of about 40, she was like " you no give us enough time, this not planned good, not long enough for exercise... we not up to this, this too hard, you expec too much" really loudly so the trainer who was marking me could hear as could all my other trainees observing me, it was so funny, i was like whispering out the side of my mouth, " ok there luv, throw me a frickin' bone here, i'm not a real bloody teacher yet am i?!?! I'm doing my best for the love of god! what do ya want... blood???"

I'm sooo glad I'm nearly finished and I can go into the world and teach in my own personal way: "hey everyone, how was your weekend?.. well anyway enough about you, here's what i did, i was drinking in the bar, then i was drunk, and i will never drink again. Now which of those is the past simple, which is the past continuous, and which the simple future? go! you over there, get me a coke, you, open the window, it's hot, and where's my fan boy with the palm tree leaf? i'm sweating over here".

I'm trying new things while I'm here, I ate squid t'other day and bartered for the first time and got 2 flip flops for the price of one. I've also been veggie since september but that's out the window now. I've eaten chicken "unintentionally" twice now (hee hee, i knew it was there and pretended it wasn't!! mmmmm, sweet sweet chicken!). Anywhoo, best go now, I forgot to eat before i taught so am staaaarving... it actually does wonders for your waistline this daily agonising stress and terror of making a tit out of yourself infront of 20 people.

Oh - my - god but I saw the most minging thing ever the other day... FRIED COCKROACHES for sale on the street!! How gross is that? you may aswell fry shit and sell it. I'm absolutely petrified that i'm gonna get really pissed one night, get the munchies and stop at one of these street vendors for cockroach and cheese, with a dash of mayonnaise, BLEURGGGHHH, and that is a completely plausible fear cos u know how pissed i get!

Well, keep posting!

katy
x

Squirrel Death Hold

Hey guys, I can't believe how many of you have posted!! thank-you so much, I couldn't have done this without you... I 'd also like to thank my mother and father who made all this possible ... and I'd like to thank God, without whom computers would not be in existence and no one could post on my site, and also Mr Casey in year 5 who introduced me to the internet (he told Jimmy Henderson to type anything, anything at all into this new 'network super highway internet' and it would come up with a page on it "the possibilitie are boundless Jimmy my lad" he said "Anything you need to know, this is your source just type it in". So Jimmy typed in 'carrot').

So, I've survived the second week without having a nervous breakdown, though I did almost cry twice which is very unlike me! I'm officially half way there which feels good although I have to do a 55 minute lesson next Thursday. And now they've stopped giving us help!! it's awfull, all i know is i'm teaching the present simple on Tuesday and that's it, I have to write the plan myself!! aaaarrrggghhh!! am dreading it completely. I've now moved from intermediate (who were bloody excellent and had better grammar and vocabulary knowledge than me... they knew what a 'nuclear family' was when one of the trainees was trying to elicit it! I don't even know what a bloody nuclear family is!!) to the elementary class... oh - my - god. I can't belieeeve the difference!! Mary asked one of the weaker students to simply write either 'yes' or 'no' next to words which had an article (a / an/ the). She explained to the class, then him individually but he still looked at her vacantly. She explained again and said 'does this one have an article?' and he said no, so she said 'so what do you write down?' and he said 'no' so she guided his hand to the page, and said 'write that down then' he finally click on and looked like he understood and wrote "ON" next to the word!! I was in hysterics!! bless 'im!! please understand I'm not taking the piss, his english is a million times better than my thai and i know i'd look retarded in an elementary thai lesson, but good lord it provides great amusement!!

Well, best go plan me lesson. Ta Dib for sending me the pictures of the snow in england, it warmed me cockles it did, thinking of y'all freezing yer arses off! hee hee! Jod, I'm pleased for ya and tell pete congratulations on the job, keep me posted! Jules, I am mostly missing watching corrie on Sunday's.. or any day for that matter!! what's happening with Den's death? is anyone in prison yet? I am also seriously missing having my comfy duvet, you only sleep in a sheet here cos it's so hot (sorry, but come on i gotta rub it in a little bit!). Rich, I think someone's been having you on mate... there's no WAY any mortal magpie could take a squirrel on. Everyone knows squirrels have claws and big, sharp pointy teeth and big strong arms that they could wrap around a mere magpie's neck to strangle it in a notoriously deadly "squirrel death hold". I believe that the squirrels probably circulated this story to get everyone's guard down in an attempt to lull everyone into a false sense of security ready for the big takeover... I'm just glad I'm not in sheffield... or england at this point in history mate. Your naivety knows no bounds! talking of which I'm afraid the stories about hannah being called 'one of much grammar' are completely unfounded and I made that up! She's a thickie like me compared to everyone else on the course!

Anywhoo, take care of yourselves... and eachother.
katy
x

aaaaarrrggghhhh

So I'm here, I'm hot and I'm stressed. I've already taught twice now, am just on lunchbreak and am only not studying and planning my lesson cos someone has the book I need, otherwise I'm afraid this blog would never get done!!
Took us 26 hours to get here, we're staying in a hotel 5 minutes from the language school which is perfect. The people on the course are the coolest tho', they're from ALL over: 2 from Tibet, some Americans (Hawaii none the less!), some New Zealanders, some English, and a South African I think!
It is the most stressful thing I've ever done! have already taught a 15 minutes section of a lesson (first day) 35 minutes (3rd day) 40 minutes (yesterday) and another 40 minutes on Monday. I cocked up the first 2 BIG BIG time!! was under by 10 mins on the 40 minute one, so I was like "um, any questions... about anything?... anything at all?....( blank looks from 14 Thai's).... um, ok then, I guess you can all go home... or something...", never been so embarressed!! Then yesterday I completely went over time, explained the task wrong so that 2 students were left doing nothing so I had to join in and play the game with them and couldn't observe anyone else!! OH-MY GOD, never has anyone wanted the ground to eat them whole more!! So, yeah, really, really looking forward to Monday, and ontop of that I have a 1000 word essay due in 6pm Monday.
My head hurts.
On the upside I'm getting on well with the students! they are soooo easy to teach cos they've all paid a fee to be on the course and are really keen to speak English, altho' they are a little quiet. They have a Thai nickname for Hannah, it's 'Koh Pin Yan' (one of much grammar) They also have one for me.... 'Fatty Mc Sweaty' . Seriously, it's sooo hot over here, and they are all tiny! I feel like a massif heffalump waddling down the street, sweating all over the place, next to all these gorgeous little Thai women.
So, am gonna go wrestle my book back in a minute, so make sure you post here please!
see ya
x