Don’t complain about the weather.  Don’t complain about the weather.  Don’t complain about the weather.  It’s boring!

Faaaaark it’s hot!

It was 42 degrees today here in Adelaide.  Luckily I slept through it and it was only 41 degrees when I woke up at 5pm.  Dropped down nicely to 31 degrees when I went out for my walk at 10.30pm.

Yes, it’s boring to talk about the weather.  But when you live in Australia and plan to move to Thailand it’s quite a relevant topic.  I didn’t own a jacket for the first 7 years of living in Australia, and I only had one after that because it was a present from a girlfriend.  I do appreciate some warmer clothes during the winter here these days though, these old bones are getting creakier. I have seen frost in Sydney once too – about 12 years ago.

Amy has suffered through the Thai winter where there is a regular annual news item about how could it is each year.  This year the lowest overnight temperature was around 8 degrees.  Looks like I might still need a jacket then.  For the two weeks that it lasts anyway.  Kind of the reverse to an English summer.

I’m promising myself not to ever complain about hot it is in Thailand.  Let’s see how long that lasts.

Amy has gone from bored-to-stressed in 24 hours, as she has been running around dealing with the people who will build our kitchen and walk-in wardrobe.  Figuring out who will build our bed base design and special wardrobe in the second bedroom.  Expanding the outdoor kitchen area and deciding to put the washing machine out there and renaming the laundry to Amy’s craft room.  Choosing the wall paints and figuring the guys building our fence deserve a bottle of rice whisky when they finish – to keep in their good books if we need any other help in the future.

Hopefully, the paint goes on in the next few days so Amy can see how everything will look and change anything before it’s too late if she decides.  It’s still so weird for me to be here just looking at photos and only being able to visualise living in a finished house, rather than be involved with its development so closely.  I hope I like it!

I emailed off my application for the CELTA course in Chiang Mai, starting in April, after Songkran.  They wrote back quickly and I’ll need to do an interview with them sometime soon.  I want to do a video interview but need to make sure the internet is stable enough.  I also need to be on top form and with only have a day and a half break between shift changes again this week I can pretty safely assume I won’t be up for it.  As well as this, I’ll be moving house on Tuesday evening and there won’t be any internet connectivity for a week or so.  I guess by then though I should have a long enough break to be alert enough to what I already know will be a difficult interview.

I’m just a little petrified about my ability to do this course – it’s been so long since I’ve been in a study situation where I’ve had to actually care about what I’ll be learning.  I was sent on so many useless courses in my old job that I never really paid much attention. I know my focus and concentration is not as good as it used to be too.

But hopefully, with a more meaningful result and benefit at the end of the course as the reward, I will be motivated enough to push on through and do my best.  I really want to learn to do something that has more meaning, to myself and to others.  I hope that I can be a good English teacher, and a great mentor to those I will end up teaching.

Once done I’ll start investigating opportunities to work in schools and also to do some private tuition, which I think will be what I might end up doing longer term, once I’ve done a couple of years to get a good grounding on the best way to do things.

I’m still nervous though.  If I can’t pass the course, what will I end up doing?  I do take comfort in the knowledge that other of friends have passed so if they can do it, so can I!