Coo Coo

I am now beginning to ponder the disturbing correlation here. I got to Ecuador, there is an economic crisis, riots and a volcanic eruption, I go to the Czech Republic, Prague is flooded, I go to Korea, they impeach the presidet, am now in Thailand - military coup. Joy. I shall not be surprised if I am flagged next time I try and enter the country.
So it all started late Tuesday night. At midnight, I was tucking myself in when one of my mates calls and states that he was out and they closed the bar, sent them home and said we were under curfew as the military had taken over. After a bunch of expletives, I jumped to the window expecting to see chaos, tanks, murder and I saw zip. Nada. Bangkok was eerily quiet.
I turned the TV on to see a blue screen with familiar squiggly Thai writing crawling along the bottom, on other channels there were images of the King. The King visiting the poor, the King getting married, the King wiping his royal brow in the heat, the King canoeing in the jungle, you get the picture. Could you get any useful information anywhere? No. CNN and BBC were taken off the air. Even now, it is back on but they blank out anything about Thailand. How can it be that people everywhere else in the world are more informed than us?
Thankfully, they have not targeted the internet. But of course, not everyone has it at home. Bit of a confusing time really. The harsh heat and light of day offered no more information. The streets as deserted as they were at midnight the previous evening. But hey, we get the day off! Time to go to the supermarket and stock up, just as I did when the floods hit Prague, oh and have some friends over to party a little, hmmm just as I did in Prague. Getting good at this.
I am sure that as far as military coups go it is the most peaceful ever. Will see what happens.
Watch this space...

The magic 3

Bad things always happen in threes. It never rains but it pours, I am sure you are beginning to see where I am going with this.

Last week, was qutie frankly one of the most disastrous in a while. On Tuesday I took one of my classes into the computer. We have been working on their powerpoint presentations for a while and they all showed up with their flashdrives as requested to put the finishing touches on everything so that they can do their presentation next week. Get in there and the computers can't read the flashdrives, only a couple faff about for the whole time in there struggling to get anybody doing anything constructive. So frustrating and looked like a fool. Complete waste of time.
Wednesday morning, get to my favourite class and during the coffee break I got to pour hot water out of one of those electric boiler keeps-it-hot-all-the-time things and I push the button in and when I take my finger off it keeps going! I got boiling water all over the table, all over the floor. Nightmare. Thankfully my students took int heir stride, however yesterday I felt like a little school kid who isn't allowed to play with her toys anymore because she borke one already. When coffee break came they didn't let me go and make my own, virtually barred the exit and heavily insisted that they would make me coffee! I just mumbled, shuffled my feet and stared at the floor.
Following flooding a corridor with boiling water I bimbled into work to teach my Wednesday afternoon kids class. My last class of the week. Everything goes fine and 60 seconds before the end of class I am getting them to line up ready to leave and checking they have cleaned up all the sweet wrappers they think they have managed to conceal under the table and I suddenly hear cries of "teacher! Teacher!" and I turn around to see one of my kids has managed to puke all over herself and the classroom. She couldn't wait 60 seconds? Oh joy. Dragged her to the bathroom, cleaned her up. Warned the person teaching in there next that they might want find an alternate classroom. Other than all that my week was just fabulous...