Term 1 is almost over and our boarders are ready to leave the clusters and head out for some much need rest and recuperation. Whether they are in grade 4 or 12 each and every one of them has been busy in school and afterwards with their Exploria, sports activities and prep, which is held Monday to Thursday evenings.

From Friday evenings, and throughout the weekends, the boarding activities programme takes over. This structured programme applies depending on each boarders grade. The aim of this is to find something that appeals across all grades and ages and so a combination of activities are offered to suit all tastes. Activities include Sports, Fun and Games, Study Club, Cross-stitch and more.

So what have our boarders been up to this term?

Inevitably our monthly shopping mall trips are our busiest outings by far. Almost every boarder loves to venture out to stock up on their food stores, snacks and personal shopping supplies, get a haircut, meet up with their day student friends or watch a movie.

Students can also attend weekly Friday evening trips to various restaurants including Japanese, Italian and Korean cuisine – Korean fried chicken is a particular favourite!

This term they have enjoyed afternoons out to coffee shops and playgrounds, the 3D Art Museum, the Siam Insect Zoo, paintballing, swimming and the Saturday Walking Street to just name a few of their activities. Our IEP students have also participated in World Clean Up Day, joining over 13 million people from 144 countries in picking up rubbish and mismanaged waste. Volunteers worked hard to make a difference to the local community by cleaning up around the Prem campus.

Many students have taken the opportunity to use the newly acquired oven to bake cakes, cookies and brownies for the Community Market and Boarding Bites initiative. It’s great to see students from all grade levels working together to make some delicious creations!

[Junior Boarders also enjoyed a movie and pizza night in Cluster 10 to celebrate the end of term]

Some of our boarders also choose to just hang out in their apartments, listen to music and watch Netflix. It is so nice to see that they have organised their rooms to be a home away from home with lanterns, posters, accessories and photos of friends and family.

So what will be in store for our boarders when they return next term (apart from the mandatory monthly trips to the shopping mall)?

As the weather will be drier, we have planned trips to waterparks, an afternoon by Huay Tung Tao lake, a visit to the Queen Sirikit Botanical gardens, celebrations for Loy Krathong and many other trips out too numerous to mention.

Our boarding team are always on the lookout for new activities and events taking place in and around Chiang Mai to add to our weekend programme. We always encourage our boarders to make suggestions for activities that they may wish to get involved in and we have recently implemented Suggestion Boxes in each other Clusters for the students to share their ideas!

We know that many of our Grade 12 students are preparing their college applications and we wish them the best of luck. On behalf of all our boarding team we wish everyone a safe journey and a peaceful and relaxing break. We have already know that if they are travelling home they will enjoy spending time with you but nevertheless we look forward to seeing all of our boarders back here by Wednesday 24th October, refreshed, re-energised and ready to start Term 2.