A Commentary on ‘Ode to Emma’.

Dear Anon,

Loved the poem. Though there’s no need to be so self-deprecating: I’m sure your nose isn’t that big.

But I’m skipping ahead by a whole stanza. First line. “Emma Emma, where are thee?” To answer your question, Thailand. “Where in Thailand?” you might ask, and to save you wasting your literary talent in composing another poem simply to ask this I shall pre-emptively answer you. Hang Dong. Is that helpful?

Reasonably helpful if you want to Google-map me, I suppose. Still.

I’m at work; work being The School of Promise. It’s is a small primary school about fifteen minutes away from the Bird’s house by car and is run by a mixture of Thais and Americans, all Christians. Two days of the week are entirely in English, with the other three in Thai. It’s still very small, with only twenty-eight students in total: the class I’m being eased into teaching has only three. To those three small 1^st Graders (Year 2 in England) I am now Miss Emma.

To narrow it further, I’m in the music room. Which currently has no musical clutter of any sort and instead four English teachers and a whole load of Thai childrens books. I can practicly hear the next line of your currently-in-production piece of prose. “Emma Emma what is wrong? At work you should work and not write blogs.”

Obviously your piece would have better rhyming. I’m not great at rhyming.

I’m not working right now because for today I’ve finished. It’s nearly three o’clock, as of this sentence. I’ve observed and helped in two English lessons, one Science lesson and fun reading time. I’m being eased in to everything, and after almost a week of solely observations, introductions (To systems, students, fellow teachers) and tips on which meals in the canteen don’t agree with western stomachs I was asked to plan and lead a Math lesson. That’s done too, and now I’m making sure no-one abuses the books. Over this next week I’m going to change from observing to teaching by one lesson each successive English day, to make sure I’m not overwhelmed.

At the moment the rest of the English teachers are planning future lessons, which I’ll be doing as well in a week or so once I’m fully into the swing of things. We have to try and follow what the Thai teachers teach, with translated Thai text books. They have to constantly check that what’s in the text book actually makes sense, with the language barrier sometimes throwing a fast ball. The English teacher for Grades 5 and 6 (Years 6 and 7 in England) is planning Science, and we’re all trying to help and getting ourselves ridiculously confused over genetics. Double eyelids and cats lacking whiskers made an appearance. Don’t ask. Because we really don’t know.

Right, where were we in the poem? Dum de dum... “To blog in oft thou didst promise...” In oft? Didst? Have you got some Olde English to Modern English dictionary secreted away somewhere? If so I want a copy, just so I can make sure you’re using it correctly. And yes, I did promise. But we had a small holiday after the group left and we just started work again last week, so we’ve only just got anything worth posting about. Here’s hoping this blog satisfies you. Things will be picking up as we head into autumn though, so expect blogs aplenty over the next few months!

Emma.

An ode to Emma

Emma Emma where are thee
To blog in oft thou didst promise me
I watched and waited for thy prose
With patient wait and slight big nose

Alas no comment did appear
No plucky guff or Thailand cheer
I chivvy then to spur you on
Come on young lass and share you fun!

Anon.

We're back!

This is just a short and sweet message to say a massive thank you to everyone who has supported our three week trip to Thailand through reading the blog and praying for us.

However, the blog does not end here completely as Emma, who is staying out in Thailand for a year, will be using it once she starts her work in a couple of weeks...

Watch this space!

Delays, delays, delays.

This is, I'm aware, a blog that was meant to be up several days ago (Monday, date unknown. They tend to become rather redundant out here) but we've gotten ourselves a bit behind in terms of posting. You'll probably get today’s blog tomorrow. Bah. You'll cope.

Monday was spent in two groups. One went white water rafting (Limbs are all still attached, sanity still retained, fun was had by all) and the second smaller group went to Chiang Mai zoo. I was in the first group, so I'll have to rope in someone else to regale you with zoo stories.

Anyway, we didn’t actually split until stupidly-ridiculously-early o’clock, which is 9.30am in English. Then there was a painfully long trip to the rafting site, somewhere up in the mountains, where we weren't so much driving on roads as flat pieces of land that vehicles had to contend for with elephants and seemingly oblivious pedestrians. The ‘flat’ part is a lie as well, really. Nothing is flat once you get past the big towns. There were dips big enough and with enough mud in that I thought the van might be swallowed, and we’d have to clamber out through the windows and find someone to come pull it out. Probably an elephant.

You know you’ve gone a bit native when the sight of an elephant every ten minutes isn’t strange anymore.

Enough on elephants. I’m probably just making you all seethingly jealous, and I can do that perfectly well if I actually stick on topic. Because white water rafting was amazingly awesome. Just so you know.

So, we got there at, I don’t know, 11ish o’clock, waited around for ages (Not the most impressive part of the trip. Tired and bored does not a good combination make) and then got given a safety talk which we listened to carefully. Partly because English speaking Thais still often have an accent that makes them hard to understand, but mostly because of one of the other tourists there who found himself dragged into the demonstration part of the safety talk. According to other members of the team he looked remarkably like Bill Bailey. Kept them quite entertained for the whole thing.

The lunch provided wasn’t very memorable. We won’t talk about it.

Once the helmets and life jackets went on we all turned into children again. Head butting and chest bumping was rife. The paddle went way too far past my nose. And the boats themselves felt like giant sized dingys; the kind that you might use at the beach with your kids. There was about five per boat, with an instructor at the back steering and making sure we were all safe. Even when people fell out (Which did happen, we were a big bunch of amateurs after all) they were calm and collected, co-ordinating two or more boats to get people out. I was personally rescued by Matt Bird and Jake Fawkes, pulling me in by the shoulders of my life jacket. Amusingly (I find it amusing, if you don’t then be comforted by the fact that we all came back with no more than bruises. Mostly from other group members rather than any rapids) I fell out when our boat was back peddling to help get two others out of the waves. Two girls from Australia who we’d never met, though we did get the name of one; she was rescued along with me and sat in the boat with us for a bit. Her name began with a Z. No-one can remember any other letters.

Also, there may or may not have been crocodiles in the river. We’re not sure if our instructor was joking as he walloped the water with his paddle and hollered “Crocodile! Crocodile!” Pretty sure he wasn’t serious.

He laughed at us anyway.

Speaking of strange and terrifying animals, I’m going to grab one of the zoo people. Be right back.

When we went to the zoo it was great fun. We saw lots of animals like giraffes, koalas and pandas. The best bit was the aquarium, we saw lots of fish. We went into a tube and surrounding us were lots of fish.  To get round the zoo we went in a tram car, and also went on a monorail which is like a big bus in the sky. I had lots of fun with Alice and Amanda; this was one of my best days in Thailand.

Ellie Fawkes.

And Emma.

With editing by everyone.