Lights out!

Close your eyes…(now open them again or you can't read this..),imagine this…you are in a foreign country, you stay in a building with only people of the same gender, you get a room with 4 beds, 4 desks, 2 fans (only of 1 of them actually works), a shower with nothing but cold water, a toilet with ants and cockroaches crawling all over, a mattress which could serve as the foundation of a football stadium, a porch with iron bars and industrial lights. Where are you? Prison? Guess again! You are at the Rajamangala University in Isan!

And do you know what the worst part is? We are stuck here for 30 days with nothing to do whatsoever.  Oh sure, we were given a timetable, 9 days of teaching… and most of those days we only have to teach in the morning or afternoon. I can hear you thinking: “Oh, so you have a lot of free time to explore the campus and relax a bit, right?!” Wrong... Dead wrong…

Since April is part of the Summer Holiday in Thailand, most of the students are at home, leaving the shops and footstalls deserted. Meaning we have to go out and look for a restaurant thrice a day. We were given a bike (a mountain bike with a basket in the front, quite hilarious) that is custom made for Thai people…meaning after three days of riding this monstrosity, my knees are ruined. Luckily we were able to find a bus to take us to a supermarket where we bought (and I’m not kidding) a plastic ball to play some sports and ping pong rackets. We felt like three little kids in a candy store.

 I know this sounds like a lot of complaining, but picture this: the only thing you look forward to when going to your room at night is checking your e-mails, watch a movie on your laptop and then peacefully falling asleep with the fan blowing cool wind in your face. This is possible for most of the evenings, but earlier this week, the weather gods decided to test us and made the electricity fall out due to heavy rain showers and lightning. I can tell you this, lying in your bed when it is 33 degrees with no cold, running water or a fan is not fun at all.

More about the teachers, lessons, and our future plans is coming your way in the next entry.