From the Land of Smiles...

the end of the school year

Hey everybody,

Today was my last day of school! Hopefully the last day in my exchange, but at the very least, the last day for 3 months...

This whole week was sooo weird. I mean, I don't really like school; it gets me up early in the mornings, i have to wear a horrible uniform, and i'm bored out of my mind everyday. But, what I didn't realize is just how much I do like the one class that I do have everyday. It was so weird to go to those classes for the last time and realize that i'm not coming back.

In my art class on tuesday I finished my last painting and adjan took a picture of me with it. In my music class on Wednesday we learned a new little song and then tested on it. I did really well. The first time we went around the class and everyone tried but only about 4 of us could play it and i was one of them. It was exciting. It took quite a few more tries before everyone could finally play it. Then at the end of class we took pictures of all of us. And adjan took a picture of me playing the kim, so you can see what its like when i post the pictures.

On Thursday I went to classes with my Nook in the morning as usual. During the english class I asked the teacher to take some photos. It was alot of fun, we took alot of pictures. I didn't realize that she would want to be in them though, so she went next door and asked a student from Peter's (the new really good looking teacher from canada) class to take some. It was so funny. I've never seen people get as excited for pictures as thai people. That afternoon I had my thai dance class. I had missed the final performance the week before (I didn't realize) so I was kind of sad about that, but they had taped it, so we watched the dvd. I asked if I could borrow it and make a copy but there was confusion and i never got to. Oh, and then we took more pictures. I have a ton of pictures from that too.

Today was my very last day. I had to go up in front of the entire school and say a goodbye speech. It was very short, basically I said thank you for being so kind and friendly. I really enjoyed it at this school. and I've made alot of friend here and am going to miss you all very much. Then I said it in thai. I think it went pretty well. Peep helped me write it out last night. I knew almost all of the words, but i just didn't know the proper grammer.

Then first and second period I had cooking class. It was the final cooking test, so each group had to cook something different. My group had pork with some sort of red sauce and noodles. It was the same thing that we made 2 weeks ago. I didn't really help out all that much (it was really simple anyways) but I walked around and took alot of pictures. One of the good things about cooking class is that you make one plate for the teacher to grade and the rest you get to eat yourself. The table next to us made hoy todd (fried mussels with eggs and flour and bean sprouts) which i love, so I got to have some of that. And at the end one of the groups had alot of veggies left, so they fried them and we all ate those too. Today I brought one of my uniform shirts and a few permanent markers and got them all to sign it. It looks really great. I also brought a bag of pins and my cards and they all took them too. They were really excited. Then we took some class pictures.

This afternoon I went to class with Nook again and got almost everyone to sign my shirt. I also gave out pins again. It was good, except after the bell rang they still had a test, and basically it was just whenever they finish they can go home, so I left because I wasn't sure when they'd be done. It was weird to leave that way. Oh, I also went and said goodbye to the english teachers that I could find. I didn't see a bunch of them today, which made me a bit sad, but I'll probably see them around rayong. I did leave a bunch of cards though, so they'll all have my email address and stuff.

After I left I walked around the school a bit. The whole atmosphere was different. It was cloudy, which was weird, and classes were coming out slowly, so it wasn't noisy and crowded as usual. It was really strange, especially for my last day. I'm not sure I can even explain the feeling that I had walking around the school for the last time.

Now I definetly feel relieved though, and I'm really looking forward to sleeping in next week! Yay!

-Lauren

posted by Lauren @ 3:18 AM