A whole lot of orange.

Last week, Me, Dave and 12 other volunteers joined the girls in Nakhon Sawan to do an English camp at one of the temples. It was very successful, and a lot of fun. There were about 120 novice monks, most of which were very good. Throughout the day, we did a lot of different games and activities, one of which was a scavenger hunt, and I was a Panda. I had to dress up and hide somewhere around the monastery and wait until I was found by a monk. It was really hot and I was sweating buckets, until finally I was approached by a monk, asking what size my shoes were. (Another item was a pair of size 36 shoes) After explaing to him that my feet were far too big, he realised that my strange black and white outfit resembled a panda, I was then escorted to the main hall where we were welcomed with a round of applause as the monk who managed to find me paraded me into the room.

Me and Dave ran one of 6 different rotations, ours was to do with food tasting. We had 5 different tastes, coffee for bitter, fruit mentos for sweet, chilli powder for spicy, lemon juice for sour and crisps for salty. We then had to blindfold 5 monks at a time and get them to taste different things. The monks had a lot of fun, and so did we. It was rather entertaining watching the unlucky ones who got spicy, however, one little monk ate a half teaspoon of chilli powder without complaint. There was a point when one boy was almost in tears after tasting the chilli powder. Dave managed to get chilli in his eye after a monk had coughed after his taste and blew it into his face.

Nakhon Sawan is a beautiful city and we were there for Chinese New Year. Following the parades was amazing, the streets were painted with colour, and as the nights drew in, the streets were lit up with floats and echoed with the sounds of fireworks. There was one pout where we were watching some floats pass buy and we hadn't realised that a long string of firecrackers had been lit behind us. t was terrifying when they started and we were being showered by bits of paper. We quickly ran off, but my ears were ringing for at least half an hour after.

It has been our last week of teaching this week and has been rather emotional, as we will be teaching different classes when we return from our holidays.  I have been saying goodbye to my favourite classes, and telling them to come and talk to me whenever they see me.

Today was rather scary though, I was sat in the office when I saw a large cloud of smoke coming from near our house, so I ran to our house to find that our neighbours house was surrounded in fire and the fields were ablaze. The fire was started by the farmers of the rice fields adjacent to our house. This get the field ready for a new crop when the we season begins in June. However, it has been very windy today, and because it has not rained for months, all of the grass and surrounding land is very dry. Dave was already putting out fires when I arrived. I joined in and we spent about an hour traipsing round the paddy fields with buckets and jugs putting out fires. After the majority had been dealt with, we returned home and I now have cuts and burns on my feet and legs, nothing serious.

It has all been rather exciting, and now we are not teaching until may, so we are going to kick it off with a bang, David is buying us a crate of beer for tonight and in the next couple of weeks, we are going to travel around isaan visiting volunteers in the North East, before my parents hopefully come and we all meet up on the island of Koh Tao


Summer is going to be good.

Love and kisses

Ben xxx