Schools out for summer

My god a month since I last posted (I'm not dead, well at least I don't think so).

"Schools out for summer" (yay).

Man was that teaching gig hard bloody work, and strange! the characters who teach English in foreign climes are a weird ecclectic bunch to say the least (I must write some bad fiction using some of these guys). Yes the year is over (thank god) and no I haven't decided what to do next year yet, I am going to have a holiday and recover, I must say I don't particularly like teaching. (the actual classes are fine but the preparation and politics is god awful). I think it's just too many personalities and odds on someone is going to be having a bad day, it's not a bad means to an end kind of job (ie: it makes travelling easy) but not something I plan to make a career out of (much to my boss's chagrin he adores me and wants me to stay).

The partying is wild at the moment as so many people are moving on and goodbyes all around. So the bars of Bangkok are seeing a lot of us. I must say many of the bars here are completely uninspired, they figure if they turn the lights down low enough people will sit in any old environment as long as the alcohol is cheap enough, sadly they appear to be right as epitomised by the mats they just roll out along the filthy footpaths of Khao san rd after dark and are always packed with back packers drinking whisky and soda through straws out of communal buckets. As you can gather from my tone I tend to demand slightly more from my surrounds (hey a stool at least guys it's too damn close to the rats down there on the ground) I prefer a margarita even if it does come in a plastic cup and why they bother to encrust the edge with salt and then serve it with a straw strikes me as weird.

I went to the New zealand embassy the other day (wow did my accent ever sound like that?) they surprisingly (I thought) handed me Glen's two passports more or less without demanding id very strange, I kept thrusting my own passport at them but they really didn't seem that interested. The new New Zealand passports have a big nasty back page with a "chip" inside and are only valid for five years (my current passport is not due to expire till 2013 though I believe they won't let you into the states with an old style passport anymore. They still have that very distinct new passport smell though, it's almost but not quite as good as the new book smell.

I fly to Cambodia in a few days, I'm kind of worried about crossing the border with not one but three passports on me (of which only one is my own) I'm not sure that it is entirely legal to carry someone else's passport across international borders and I wonder if the new chips will make the thing beep and I will be spending my birthday in a prison cell in Sth east Asia. (that is just a joke really).

Other things I have done since last I wrote included Chinese new year (year of the pig) apparently extremely lucky for us goaty types, chinatown was packed and crazy as usual but I still managed to bump into one of the guys I work with (how weird is that), there are literally thousands of people in this city and I must know only about half a dozen and yet this is not the first time I have just randomly bumped into someone I know in a completely different part of the city.

Saw a very young girl (maybe 9 or 10) with a t.shirt with extremely inappropriate english language on it, I nearly told her parents that I thought the t.shirt was not a good idea it was a promotion for Rancid (a punk band) I'm sure the parents wouldn't want to know their daughters shirt told mother fuckers to fuck off (then again maybe they felt it was an appropriate warning). I was at Chatuchak market again today and decided to once again try some new weird looking drink, it looked invitingly like raspberry kool aid but tasted like sweet tears, weird.

I packed the house and am storing all my stuff at the house of one of my colleagues I can't believe I have collected so much stuff in a year, what on earth am I going to do with it all (not to mention all the resources I have accumulated for teaching (In just one year) just like my Mother I couldn't bare to throw them out, if I decide not to return to teaching I will just have to be brutal.

Basil and Kevin have been given away to good homes. So I guess it is the end of the Mickey mouse factory for me, (though initially cynical I now admit the idea of making your school look like disneyland to encourage kids to want to go to it is in deed a stroke of genius).

If I had been anything like a good correspondent I could write much more about the exciting adventures I've been up to but honestly I can't remember them now.

Anyway I am now ceasing to make sense, I will write from Cambodia.

Love Nikki Jayne.