Permission Granted

It's been a bit of a crazy time lately and there's hardly been time to catch my breath. So many farewell lunches, dinners and drinks but then, it's always like that at the end of March. So now, the vast majority of foreign teachers have not only left the school but the country as well. I wonder what next years by that I mean the next school year which starts in May teachers will be like?  I think Mr John becomes the third longest serving foreign teacher at the school now. That just seems pretty weird considering he's only in his third year.

Speaking of which, yesterday was spent at Immigration. Thank goodness it wasn't like the experience I had a couple of years ago I still have nightmares about that one. To be fair, it was pretty trouble free and the school administrator was with us which is always incredibly helpful as it negates the language barrier. We were both exhausted by the time we were finished and I'm not really sure why because we were there less than two hours.


Of course, it's not over yet. Now that we have next years visa, we have to go back today to get our re-entry permits. Yes, even though we are allowed to stay here for another year, any time we leave the country we have to hand over 1000 baht each to enable us to temporarily leave and come back again. Our trip to the UK straddles the end and start date for our current and new visas so we've had to wait to have both before getting the permit.

We are almost beyond excited at heading back to the UK for our first visit in three years. Mr John has been compiling a list of meals that he's planning on working his way through during our visit. Now don't panic, he's put aside his gym membership money already for our return. To ease ourselves into the holiday, we've booked a hotel near the airport and we'll be making our way there on Sunday. Should be lovely hanging around the pool and we don't have to check out until 4pm on Monday. We're staying at Best Western Amaranth hotel, so I'll let you know how we get on. It's about 10 kilometres from the airport but has it's own shuttle service.

In the meantime, I'm washing like there's no tomorrow and you could eat your dinner off our apartment floor you know how it is. Not that there'll be any cooking for the last couple of days ... Muslim Food here we come!

Happy Birthday to my big older brother Mike!!!