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It has been a really good day today. Lots of laughs, lots of silliness and good people committed to being good educators.
After a swim in the sea I had breakfast and then joined with the other Joint Area Workers, or JAWs for short and headed off for a session of team building activities at Brookside Resort. I need to pause here to explain a few things before I go on.
I was extremely critical of the team-building day that I went on in my previous school and rightly so. It was a badly put together day, with badly planned activities that served no purpose and wasted a lot of taxpayers’ money. The lunch was ok though. Brookside Resort was nothing like the fictional Brookside of Liverpool and I did not find any suspicious looking patios with body shaped bumps in them nor did I see lesbians kissing for the first time on TV there.
So our small gang of JAWs people arrived at Brookside resort and was greeted by a bizarre spectacle. The purpose of this meeting / training by the way is both to share good practice and to plan a FORBISEA (Federation of British International Schools in South East Asia) Drama weekend for our KS3 students. Brookside Resort was, at first glance a mélange of Scandinavian wooden houses / small hotels painted baby pinks and blues with a Disney atmosphere and activity course. Famed for its team building the Thai leader of the morning took fellow JAWs people through a range of team building activities, in broken English, whereby we balanced nails on nails, walked along on A frames, collected coloured balls while blind-folded and raced along on horizontal railway sleeper things. Joining us were six students form the local international school who were there to give their viewpoint on the place as a potential setting for a regions wide gathering later in the academic year. Overall it was good fun and, devoid of pointless scenarios about infected areas and nuclear waste the activities took on a fascination of their own. There was also a bizarre gift shop attached to the place where I made sure that I bought my colleagues suitably useless and kitsch presents in the form of a Brookside key-ring and a slice of cake made out of nylon fabric, complete with plastic strawberry n the top. It will be just what they have been looking for for ages.
Teams suitably built and many laughs had the team then headed back to the International School that was hosting the event for an excellent lunch and the first workshop. The lunch included a brilliant pot of Thai tom-yam soup with shrimp and chicken with cashew nuts. Excellent. I like to think that the workshop that followed the lunch was equally excellent, but I ran it so I can’t really be sure.
We then spent some more time planning the February schools meet-up while enjoying refreshments eaten off institutional pink plastic plated around 30cm by 20cm that had equally pink cups on them for our coffees. I was sorely tempted to acquire a set to show off and to allow them to become the talking point of many a tea party back at home. I may yet do that….
Dinner this evening was at a seaside restaurant where, once again it was the thing to do to eat excellent food and natter away merrily. Before dinner I managed to hire a bike from the hotel for 100 baht to cycle off and explore the area. It was great to cycle slowly along by the beach and peer into the various houses and shops that were open for all to see and really felt like an authentic South East Asian experience. It is not the most beautiful part of Thailand but it is by the sea and warm and has great food. Overall as a family I think we are better suited in KL but as a place to visit it has been very good so far, although it does have much more exciting Tupperware.