Back home. Graham starts teaching tomorrow. I stopped in at The Language today and Jason told me that the elementary school where I will be working has bought English books for its students, which will make my job a lot easier.
Ko Tao was great. We had fabulous Italian food, thanks to Daniele and Cristina, who are excellent hosts. There were a few Tex-Mex places that aren't as good as those at home, but still pretty good and it's been a while since I've had SW food.
I've finished my scuba diving open water course. Scuba diving is great. We went out again today with Daniele, our friend who owns the Italian restaurant. Graham was having problems with how much weight he was carrying on his weight belt, vs. how much air he had in his vest and went up too quickly. However, he disobeyed one of the most important rules in diving and held his breath, which can be very bad, as gases expand as you ascend, so Daniele punched him in the stomach. That's my plan for all future diving emergencies -- punch the person in the stomach. Or the face.
Otherwise, things have been going fantastically well. My dive instructor couldn't believe that I hadn't been diving before, and since I was comfortable, let me go deeper than normal for someone without certification. We also got to go to a site for more advanced divers, where we saw a shark and a 400-500 y.o. giant grouper.
Snorkelling the day before yesterday, we saw several sharks, a school of yellowtail barracuda, a great barracuda, and a hawksbill turtle.
Tomorrow night we leave for Ko Tao. My first time scuba diving!
On Tuesday morning, about 100 insurgents were killed in the south of Thailand, just a few hours before I headed through on a train. Messed up. There are three majority muslim provinces in the very south that have been mounting a resistance in an effort to secede. The police were tipped off before the attack, though and ended up killing most of the insurgents, who were attacking police stations and checkpoints in an effort to get more guns.
We moved into the new house last night. It's a four-bedroom, three-floor place. We have our own balcony, lots of closet space, and a/c in the room. Downstairs there is a TV and a DVD player is coming soon. In the corner of the living room is a built-in bar. Party-rific! Except for the really big cockroaches. I could do without those.
Off to do something possibly productive.
Going to Malaysia this weekend. One of the other teachers at my school, Bob, told me about another place in Malaysia where you can get a visa much faster than at Penang.
It's been kind of a roller coaster ride at school. There were a couple of job offers that I was looking at initially-- outside schools that contracted through our school for English teachers. One was at the local high school and would have involved 20-24 hours a week, teaching 14-15 y.o.'s, 44 at a time, five days a week for four hours a day. The other one, that I had originally opted to take, was at a poor elementary school outside of town: 4-11 y.o.'s, 25-35 students in a class, 8 different classes, twice a week each, 2 hours a week for each class. A bit of a challenge, but more variety.
Then, yesterday, Jason sat in on my kindergarten class and apparently liked what he saw, b/c during the second break he said that he would like me to take a new position that they had been offered at a private kindergarten, where I would have one class of 20 four-y.o.'s that I would share with a Thai teacher; paid vacations, a higher bonus, and generally a smoother schedule. This morning, he came in and rescinded the offer, apologizing for jumping the gun, but the fellow who had come down from Bangkok yesterday for an interview apprently had spent the last couple of years teaching kindergarten and was perfectly suited for this job. I understand his decision, but that doesn't make me any happier. After enrolling in a several-hundred dollar TEFL course to put me in line with the regulations at The Language, b/c when he hired me, he hadn't noticed on my resume that I didn't have a certificate, and turning down several other more convenient positions, I feel that I've invested something in the school, and I'm not necessarily averse to the whole quid pro quo thing.
Just finished my first day of teaching! Things went relatively well. Reminded me that it's just teaching and I've done it a million (divided by some really big number of) times. My morning class is little'uns - 4-6, and the afternoon is about 9 to 11. Little kids are more entertaining in general and the afternoon ones aren't yet comfortable enough with me to ask me where I'm from, but things seem to be coming along rather well in general. Tomorrow Jason will be observing my classes, which is alway a bit nerves inducing, but then on Wednesday he's going to teach them and I'm going to observe him. Score!
We're moving into the Language (my school) house at the end of the month. It has a built-in bar, TV/DVD, full kitchen, etc. Since I'm the only new teacher here, I called the front bedroom which has air conditioning (the only one), a balcony, and connects to the hall bathroom. Peace, one of Graham's colleagues suggested putting something in front of the bathroom door and telling everyone it is a storage closet. Not a bad idea.
In two weeks, it's another vacation and we will go to Ko Tao to learn to scuba dive. He's been before, I haven't. We should be able to find good Italian food, since Daniele and Cristina's restaurant is supposed to be open by now.
The good news of the day is that a piece by some guy, that Graham arranged was bought by a guy who then hired Onyx Brass to play it at his wedding and it looks like Graham's arrangement might get into a music catalogue and might become part of Onyx Brass's repertoire. That means lots of dough and bonbons and soaps for me! Along with the whole "No more pencils..." thing.
Unfortunately, Sunderland, the football/soccer (plebeians) team isn't doing so well. So, no more talk of that. The FA Cup final is coming up sometime soon, though. Fortunately, the Thais are big whatever fans and it's not that difficult to find a really big screen with the game on.
We just got back from our Songkran vacation. We went to Kao Sok national park and Ao Phang-Nga national marine park. We had a great time at Kao Sok -- we even saw a cobra. We went to Ao Phang-Nga to see cave paintings, but apparently the gods of "We Hate Jenny" got there first and we only saw one painting for about 30 seconds. This, after making more than crystal clear that we had only come to the park to see cave paintings. I think the problem is that no one can actually conceive of people wanting to see cave paintings.
At Kao Sok, we celebrated Songkran, which meant lots of water thrown on us and others. We also saw THE LARGEST FLOWER IN THE WORLD!!! I remembered learning about it in Botany -- funny when things you learned in school pop up later in life. Except for cave paintings. Graham was feeling sick that day, so they gave him cocaine and pineapple.
At the beach on the Andaman coast of Thailand. It's totally "Death in the Andamans", minus the death. And the Andamans, b/c we're in Thailand and the Andamans belong to India. Graham and I went snorkeling today and saw lots of great stuff: Parrotfish, Pipefish, lots of different kinds of coral, sea urchins, sea anemone, Clownfish, about three different kinds of fish that I tried to convince Graham were Angelfish. Not that I know what an Angelfish really looks like. The most exciting part of the day was when we were suprised by a seasnake. Graham pointed it out and gestured to move back. Which I did. Very quickly. It seemed to be coming toward us, but was apparently just going up to get air. Later, Graham said that he didn't know what kind of snake it was, but as it might have been dangerous, he had suggested that we move back. I, expert of all things under the ocean, told him that all seasnakes are poisonous; 40% fatality rate; no antivenin. Fortunately, their mouths are very small, which makes it unlikely that they will bite. We took a break after that one.
For dinner, we ate barracuda, oysters, and red snapper. We also watched Man U beat Arsenal and two of their important players get yellow cards, which means that they will be out of the next game in the FA finals, in which they will most likely play Sunderland, Graham's team, and possibly lose to them, which would be the biggest upset in UK football in a long time.