After the hour long journey in the car, I step onto the school grounds. Immediately ahead is part of the school, two stories, with one long front balcony overlooking the playing fields. Further ahead, is another similar building, the other half of the school,  in line with it. The school grounds are expansive and well looked after, with a rich scenery of trees, plants, and a cow. This school is not at all out of place in the beautiful surrounding countryside through which we’ve just driven. 

Still, I’ve not had any sleep, and I’m exhausted; but within seconds I’m bombarded from all sides… Kids are screaming and shouting out the windows and around me, “Teacher teacher, what’s your name?”, “Teacher, how old are you?”.

I walk to the front of the school and kids come flooding over, “Teacher Tom!!” , “Teacher Tom!!” !! “What’s your favourite colour?!” , “Where are you from Teacher Tom?!”.

It is really really amazing. I’ve never known such a thing. So much excitement, and genuine enthusiasm, all because of someone else arriving!! It is utterly overwhelming.

However, I’m still exhausted. I really really need sleep first before trying to take in this scene. So I’m then taken to see the house that I’ll be staying in… Right on the school grounds, it’s no distance to lessons in the morning.

I have been told previously that this house was built in a week. Sleeps four, kitchen and bathroom, all in a week. It is basic, but you wouldn’t want anything more; it adds to the fantastic immersion within this culture.

I don’t really sleep, but can at least get a shower. I go to meet the other volunteers who will be leaving the next day. They are a really fantastic group who have bonded so well and are also so welcoming.

Nearby, we’re told by someone, is a small lake where fish are caught for our dinner. We get on the back of their pick-up truck and drive somewhere close by. This ‘small lake’, is a nothing more than a puddle in the middle of some back garden. For some reason they seem to think there might be fish in this dirty water. None come out.

We head back into the centre of the village to get some lunch; a really fantastic dish of something, with a really great soup, in fact one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten, for 25p.

Returning to the school, and back outside, the children surround me again, and start telling me all sorts of things with so much excitement… I’m soon dragged off to the kitchen, where out the back I find one of the girls climbing up a tree, onto the roof in order to get a popiya off a tree… (I later asked about the health and safety of such things, to which I was told anything goes; do what you like). They sit me down and start peeling and clumsily cutting up this fruit with an enormous knife.  Several of us all sit down at the table to share in this freshly prepared fruit, something you would pay several pounds for in a Tesco. It’s disgusting. I’m hastily taught “I’m full” in Thai, by two of the other volunteers sharing in this culinary disaster. I’m taken by the children upstairs and shown into their classrooms. Around the balcony area the boys start saying, “Teacher Tom, four o’clock, football!”, and the girls say “Noooooo, Teacher Tom, four o’clock volleyball!!”. I eventually agree to the more persuasive group, volleyball.

Soon, somewhere within the daze of the day, I’m playing some sort of other sport, and then volleyball, and then another sport, handball.  The others are so eager to teach and help you, even after I fail to really contribute positively to the team I’m on. No annoyance from them at all.

After sports is general bonding with this kids, messing about and playing with them on the field. I chase them around, and ask them questions, and they chase me around and ask me questions. 

They soon leave, and I’m left feeling strangely energised. So I decide to go for a run. I go a short way along the road to where there are fields either side. I Wai (how you greet people in Thailand) some farmers in a field, and they shout to me “Here, here, Whisky!”. I join them briefly, a short way into the field. But declining the whisky on grounds of exercise, I instead get given some water. They cannot speak anymore English, but are excited by the fact that I have joined them.

As I continue to run further down the road, people continuously shout “Hello!”, hanging off the backs of bikes and lorries. It is yet another quite overwhelming experience.

I get back, as it is getting dark now, and the others volunteers tell me that we’re off to a party at one of the teachers houses. We get driven there in another teachers car, a place somewhere in the village…  Everyone is sat outside in front of the house, with a lot of food prepared; huge shrimps, cockles, some huge pan in the middle with a fire beneath, which is slowly cooking beef in the middle surrounded by some sort of soup, and some other dishes that I can’t recognise! Much whiskey is poured out, four bottles between seven people in fact. Many songs are played by hitting glasses, plates or anything else with chopsticks or anything else. A guitar and some other instrument is also being played (sort of). Either way, the atmosphere is fantastic! The host of the party, Jim, shows us into his houses. He then starts making emotional heart felt speeches in a drunken, broken English. A very odd, strangely beautiful combination.

Towards the end, I’m offered to try another dish. I ask what it is. No answer; just try. I pick up a mouthful with some chopsticks. It looks like some sort of vegetable thing. Just before it reaches my mouth I stop… it looks kind of hairy. Another volunteer next to me has just tried some, told me it’s horrible, and to have much less than what I’ve just picked up. I continue to stare at it. I can now see eyes… they’re baby shrimp… Looking very unappetising, I agree a smaller amount is a much better idea. I put them back into the packet… but one of them falls to rest in a slightly unnatural way… as if it were still… and then it jumps!! They were all still alive!!!

However, this disturbance merely added to the rich colour that this incredible day had enveloped me in. We soon return home in the back of a pick-up car, no longer tired, but invigorated!

Without a doubt, at the end of the day, which seemed to just go on and on and on, I can easily say that this has been one of the most incredible days of my life.