Beaches, Baywatch and Bedlam

It seems that I’m inexorably drawn towards danger. I’ve come to this conclusion because week 2 began with a bit of a scare. But before a little drama ensued, the weekend up until Sunday evening was delightful. As it was our first year wedding anniversary on the weekend prior to Week 2 of teaching, we decided to head to Khao Sok National Park, a 160 million year old jungle with huge limestone mountains shooting from many breathtaking lakes. Kayaking, trekking and taking in these amazing landscapes was a lovely way to celebrate a year of marriage and not many people can say they were still on honeymoon on their first year anniversary.

Honeymoon Suite

So to Sunday evening, we arrived in Kok Loi for the week of teaching ahead. As had become routine, all the volunteers decided to head to the beach. The beach that is so beautiful and void of over-development…the beach that is so glorious in its vastness and simplicity…the beach that peacefully provides the calming noise of the waves and the gentle refreshing breeze…with the sea that can be a cruel mistress!

As myself and Josh were generally being big kids jumping and diving against the big breaking waves, seeing who could swim the furthest towards shore with the wave as our engine and just generally reveling in the sea, little did we know what was to come. It’s all a bit of a blur but within a minute, Charlotte, who had come to join us, began screaming quite frantically.

“Help! I can’t breathe! I’m gonna die!”

My instant reaction was pure laughter. I thought Charlotte was just playing the fool and I genuinely began to laugh my head off at the appreciation of this funny and well-acted joke.

Whilst I found myself laughing uncontrollably at what I thought was an excellent piece of acting, a piece of acting that Hollywood greats would have been proud of, I found myself quite far out to sea, double the distance to 30 seconds previous. Without making too much of a drama out of it, I thought, ‘ok, let’s swim back to shore.’ As I began swimming, I realised I wasn’t making any progress and if anything, I was edging ever so slightly further out to sea. Once again, trusting in my ability as a reasonably strong swimmer, maintaining the essential importance to stay calm, I shot a quizzical glance around me. What was happening?

As Charlotte’s cries became muffled, and Josh, her knight in shining armour, was at her side, coaxing her to stay calm and to focus on breathing and staying afloat, I once again shot a glance back at the ever shrinking beach. Remembering all my swimming lessons as a child, I made my mission to swim as fast as an Olympic swimmer and gradually made progress back to shore. I then began to relax as I cruised up alongside Josh and Charlotte. Within a few seconds, while Charlotte was still screaming for dear life, we were back to shallow waters and Josh dryly announced to Charlotte that if you would stop your incessant screaming for one second, you’d realise that we can touch the bottom. From here, once again laughing as I had when this bizarre event began, we began walking back to the beach.

After talking to some locals about what could pass for a Baywatch opening scene (with me as the Hoff of course), we were told that we got caught in a riptide, which apparently run very low on the danger scale. They don’t pull you under water, they just pull you out to sea a little. All you have to do is swim parallel to the shore and you’ll swim out of its death-defining grasp and then you’re able to swim back to shore. As long as you stay afloat you’re pretty safe…apparently!

Anyway, Week 2 of teaching soon reared its happy head and it began with some lovely classes. The topics included transport; hospitals, illnesses and aliments (pretending to puke up was great fun); farm animals and a continuation of weather in Europe (trying to explain what ice and snow is to natives of a country where it’s wet or dry is quite amusing). The ‘wild monkeys’ that I was dreading turned out to be tame little kittens as the English Teacher insisted she sit in on the lesson. I certainly wasn’t going to protest! And boy did they behave!

It was a 3-day week at the school because for Thursday and Friday, we had been assigned to teach at English Camp. In this time however, we got wind of an English competition that two girls had been entered for as representatives of the school. So Susie and I signed up to tutor the two girls as the competition was the following Wednesday. No time to waste!

Susie's artwork coming into action

But the highlight of the week by far was English Camp. English Camp was a two day event where a local high school, who’s pupils have the unfortunate task of completing many examinations in a week’s time, need some intense English tuition to help them on their way. Fully clad in our striking blue English Camp T-shirts, we headed to the best classroom in the world, a glorious beach situated 10 minutes drive from Khao Lak.

A little intimidated at first by the fact that some of these boys towered above me at the tender age of 15, I realised that they were a really nice bunch of kids and I also realised if they wanted to misbehave, they’d soon get the cold, hard stare! It was actually a really enjoyable experience because the children’s level of English was that bit higher than the children we had been teaching in the school and you could do more advanced lessons with them.

Understand?

Spot of lunch from the best classroom in the world

Presentations

Once again, it was an incredibly enjoyable week and it felt sad that we only had one more week of teaching to go. However, we had the English competition to win!

Next Week – English competition with lots of monkeys at the school (yes real monkeys).