so we left sunday morning at 6 am. i'm a doofus and thought we were leaving at 7 am, so i woke up to maddy's hard rap rap rap on the door. god, i hate when i do crap like that. i got to the bus like 15 minutes late, but it didn't end up mattering cuz the trip leader was half an hour late. despite the early hour, the girls were still FRIGGIN EXCITED to be going on the trip, so they did what any thai teenagers do when they're pumped--karaoke with the volume all the way up. yes, at 6 :30 in the morning.
that wasn't a good morning. actually, we woke up unnecessarily early every morning, but not because the leaders needed us to. the girls would just rise at like 5:45 am and start talking, even though they were just chatting madly away seven hours earlier at 10:30 pm. what are you even talking about? nothing significant changed in your life in the last seven hours.
the trip reminded me a lot of the trip i took in 8th grade to washington d.c., and actually probably like most overnight field trips. there were tons of things to do, some boring, some awesome, so we woke up early and were go-go-going all day. everybody got increasingly tired with each day, so when we went to a seashell museum on day four (which is, indeed, as boring as it sounds), pretty much everyone was super bored.
oh, also, we were tired cuz we slept on linoleum for four nights. we slept on the floors of various schools. it's like other schools opened up their campus to us, so we brought sleeping bags, rolled out straw mats and just parked it on the floor of a room in the school. no mattress pads, nothing shielding my body from the hard, hard ground. my rock-hard suphan bed looked damn good when we came home last night.
ahhhh, bedtime!
i got really tired of being carted around on this trip. maybe it's just cuz i'm tired of being a prop in general. we farangs didn't have much responsibility--like usual--so we kind of just went along with the group like sheep. bah. this is a stupid thing to complain about, i know. let's get on with the story.
so the big english event for the kids was to interview some random white people on the beach. on the third day of the trip, the students broke into little groups and we people who speak english helped the kids form interview questions for the foreigners. the questions were pretty basic--where are you from, where have you been in thailand, where's your favorite place, what's your favorite food, do you know about thai dancing, what do you think about thailand in general, etc.--so when we were warming up that morning, my group was really rockin the interview. they're able to chat with me, develop conversation, ask questions that aren't on the sheet and just come from their head, etc.
but when we got to the beach, MAN were they nervous. so we pulled up to patong beach, which is the biggest tourist beach on phuket, around 10 am. the students ate some stuff then each group had to interview at least three foreigners. i walked around with my group, letting them lead the way. they first interviewed this really friendly, older australian couple. even though the aussies were really sweet and understanding, the girls still completely stiffened up. they totally didn't listen to whatever the man said and just read the next question on their paper when he finished talking. but, no matter--everyone was smiling during the interview, so it was a success. in fact, after they finished talking to the couple and we walked away, a couple of'em did a little cheer of excitement. lol. cute.
these poor girls, though...so one of the questions was "what's your favorite thai food?" for them, it's the easiest question in the world and it's almost like they can't imagine anybody not knowing what their favorite thai food is. but they asked the strangers, and the strangers sort of stuttered like "uhh...i dunno, that one with shrimp." one guy actually said he didn't like thai food at all, which really threw them for a loop.
i have a video of one of the interviews, so you'll have to go look at it on fbook soon.
anyway, the trip overall was pretty uneventful, so i don't really have a thrilling blog for you. long, like vacation entries usually are, but not exactly thrilling. hey, but that's pretty much how the trip was! lolz, jokes. it really was cool getting to know the girls though.
OH MY GOD, i forgot to tell you. (well, i told some of you already, but not all of you.) i played super asian poker with actual asian kids! they call it slave (sa-laaaaaaave), you might call it president/asshole/13. it was awesome. we got a couple little jokes from the weekend (chicken walk! relaxxxx), and i'm emailing with one of the girls now, and we did all get a little closer. it'll be fun to see these girls (and boy) around school next semester. they're not bad kids.
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