A week of English Competitions and Blood Tests

So this week as a whole was fairly uneventful which was just fine with me. It feels like I haven't stopped moving since we landed in October, so it was nice to have a week to just hang out in old Bang Phli!

The week at school went as normal with the kids still finding ways to stretch a unit on multiplying decimals that should take 2 days into one that has lasted 2 weeks (I'm having a test next week whether or not they are ready!) Thursday was the day of the English Competition which was held at our school and featured 7 different English language competitions in which kids from around the area competed. We've known about this day since at least when we first got to school, but they somehow managed to find a way to prepare everything for it the DAY before! Dr. Absorn called us into her office Wednesday and was like "okay we have to make up the tests for the multi skills competition and you two have to find reading passages and you need to type this out and you need to think of spelling words etc etc. Oh, BY THIS AFTERNOON!'' We all just shrugged our shoulders and did as we were told knowing full well this is was yet another episode of Thai 'planning ahead.'

The day came and the kids who were competing were all pretty excited. Unfortunately I didn't get to judge the skit competition, but instead had Multi-Skill. This consisted of a written/multiple choice test, a picture dictation section (we read directions and the kids had to draw what we said) and a one-on-one interview. It turned out to be awesome as it took most of the day so I didn't have to teach any of my classes! WOOOOO I walked in to the room as the kids were taking their tests and one of the Thai teachers handed me one; I thought it was to look at, but she was actually asking me to take the test so they could have an answer sheet haha. So, hopefully my answers were right, because my answers determined how the kids did :) Shocker they didn't have the answers beforehand. Some of the grammar and reading analysis questions were actually kinda hard--most kids got like 20/60. Ploy, one of my 6th graders, won the whole multiskill competition! No, it wasn't because I rigged it, but because she is actually really really good at English.

4:30 came around and we were packing up to go home after a good day, but that all came to a crashing halt when Teacher Oil and Sandra (a filipino teacher) came in to our office and told us we had to get our physicals and blood tests for our work visas. We said okay and they then told us the van would pick us up at 5:30p--so in 1 hour. Thank you so much for letting us know so far in advance! So we all trekked home and waited for the wan which was 25 min late and once we were in the van, Josie asked if we everyone needed our passports. The wan pulled to the side of the road where we sat for 15 min while Teacher Oil called Teacher Ann who called a different teacher to find out that yes, indeed we did need our passports. Screech, the wan turned around and we got everyone's documents and 200b (oh yea we had to pay for the bloodwork too). We were all a little tense going to the hospital as we didn't really know why we had to get blood drawn and were a sort of concerned maybe they were taking us to have our organs harvested...I digress.

We pulled up and to our joy, found the hospital to be extremely nice/clean with a well dressed, english speaking staff. The physical consisted of checking our breathing and asking if we had any number of crazy diseases and then having our blood drawn ('so sorry, rittle pain reetle pain' said the nurse as she poked my (v)wein) Found out the blood test was to determine if we had Syphilis or the HIV...well, surprise surprise I don't have either! So bizarre the things they need and/or find really important and then the other things that they just don't care about.

Friday rolled around and the best part of the day had to be 4 of us leaving school early with Teacher Oil to go fix our wireless router. After careful inspection and a couple phone calls she determined that it was old and had stopped working. Hmmmm--I sat down with the router's manual and 5 minutes later we had a wireless signal. Yup, after 4 weeks of waiting all we needed was the instruction manual (insert huge 'sigh') Look on the brightside: WE HAVE INTERNET!!! That night we just sat upstairs on the porch and played card games and hung out. Pee-Pen introduced me to a new dish, Pat-See-Eew, which is my new favorite (like pat thai with big noodles) and of course I got my Kai Dow too (fried egg).

Saturday I got up early and went to school (I know Saturday right?), but we get paid extra baht to come in and read aloud to 3 different age groups twice a semester (next week a different American teacher will do it). It was actually really fun to just read to them and not have to worry about a lesson. They got really into it too which made it fun. After that Ryan and I got lunch at a new place we've been trying (to mix it up a bit) and then met up with Emily and Josie to get a cab to head to Central Bangna (a HUGE mall). We just kind of wandered around, enjoying the a/c and a familiar environment. We also may or may not have eaten at McDonald's--so good. we spent the day there and saw the movie, 2012, which turned out to be way better than we expected (esp cuz it was in English with Thai subtitles). After 30 min of previews an image of the king was put up on the screen and the entire audience stood up; confused, we did too. A 3-4 minute mini-movie played showing the King and his greatness and how under him the Thai people could do great things. It was pretty cool, but also so different than anything that we would do at home. It ended with Long Live The King, then the movie about the world ending began.

Sunday was a quiet day doing laundry (I didn't think I could dislike it any more until I had to do it by hand--the slow painful agony) and going to the pool. Yes, THE POOL! So great to hang outside and be able to cool off if we got too hot. The pool itself was pretty darn warm, but it still felt awesome. Josie and I watched some Nip/Tuck (we're almost done with Season 1) and hit the sack early. It was so great to spend time in our neighborhood this weekend. It's cool as some of the locals are recognizing us, some even knowing our names--and better yet, our smoothie orders!