same same...but different.

So another month has come and gone here in Thailand.  It continues to blow my mind that I’ve been living here for the past 2 months and that I still have another 10-11 months here.

Less than a week till Christmas and im actually really excited to celebrate with friends and start some serious travelling.  I’ve been trying to get into the Christmas spirit, despite the fact that its hot, by listening to Christmas songs on repeat.  A group of girls and I booked a nicer hostel to stay at for the xmas eve and xmas day; we also set up a secret santa thing so it’ll be nice to exchange gifts, hang out, and celebrate all together.

Since I’m going to be travelling so much starting next weekend, I thought I’d keep it low key this weekend and just head into Bangkok for the night.  Bradley, the kates, and I took a cab to the bts station and headed out from there.  The kates  had to go get dinner so we parted ways and Bradley and I figured we would just check into a hostel for all of us while they ate.  The past few times we’ve stayed at the same place in Bangkok, new roads, and its super nice/cheap/close to BTS station and we’ve kinda become frequent visitors there.  We’ve never had a hard time getting a bed there, but for some reason they were completely sold out Friday night!  We kinda just stood at the counter with a “what the eff?” look on our face….i mean we were just a little shocked since we stay here almost every other weekend and have never had an issue with not making a reservation… oh well mai pen rai…but now we had no idea where else to stay and of course we didn’t bring our trusty lonely planet guide so we were a little stuck.  After some confusion and wandering and getting rejected from another hostel cause they were full too, we finally found a little place to stay in for the night.  We kinda lucked out cause this place was right next to a BTS station too and was super close to siam square, where a bunch of the malls are, which we were planning on hitting up the next day. A few of the other teachers were also going into Bangkok that night so we all met up on khao san road and had a fun filled night out filled with beers and thai whiskey, and ended the night eating pad thai and spring rolls from a street vendor at 230 in the morning.  Overall a very fun night.

The next morning Bradley and I woke up early and headed out to do what I do best….shop.  We packed our bags and headed out to MBK, the huge mall, because we had heard that they had a baggage storing place…we wanted to leave our bags there cause the baggage place at the hostel we stayed out seemed a bit shady.  So we dropped off our bags, made a quick stop at starbucks to get our caffeine fix on, and hopped on the BTS headed towards the weekend market.  The weekend market has just about everything you could ever want/need and everything you would never need.  This place is just crazy massive and crowded!  Bradley and I split up and I spent the next 4 hours wandering around the market trying to find some good deals.  A few hours later Bradley left the market with considerably lighter wallets, but with bags filled with things that we “needed”.  We hopped back on the BTS to get back to siam and wandered for a bit around the malls there.  The malls were totally decked out in Christmas stuff and it was fun to be surrounded by all of that.  We ended our day with sandwiches at au bon pain and took a combination of the BTS and metro to get to the train station, to catch a bus home (I love public transportation in Bangkok). Bradley and I had only taken a bus to Bangkok from our place, never back, but it worked out well and now I feel more confident about taking the bus to and from the city!

Toady I ventured out on my own and caught the best to a big mall about 45 minutes away….a note about taking buses in thailand.  There aren’t really any bus stops, so to catch a bus, you just stand on the side of the road and wave it down and the bus, kinda slows down and you hop on board.  The buses don’t really stop for you so you gotta be ready to just hop on when it gets close.  The buses also don’t really have a schedule, they just show up and arrive when they do…this makes travelling on buses a very interesting experience.  So I hopped on a bus and made my way to the mall Bangke.  I was going to the mall in hopes of getting my eyebrows waxed and figured there would be plenty of places to go since this is a big mall.  Boy was I wrong.  I mean there are tons of salons and spas at the mall, but no place waxes eyebrows!  It was really frustrating, all of them said that they don’t put wax on faces or something like that…I didn’t really get it, but oh well…some of the other girls got theirs done on khao san road so while I’m there over break I’ll try and figure it out.  So the trip was a miss on that respect, but it was a plus that I made it on my own on the bus and figured it out!  Go me!

A full week of teaching this week, but a lot of it is going to be preparing for the show/festivities on Friday.  So lots of play practices and getting the school set up for the Christmas carnival.  Hard to believe that after Friday I wont be back to teaching till January 4^th.  I’m really looking forward to some time off to explore more of Thailand!  Chelsea and I don’t leave till dec 28^th for koh phi phi so we’re trying to figure out what to do with our few days in between.  We’re definitely going to try to hit up the sunflower fields and possibly the old capital, but I think we’re just going to try to wing it and see where the wind takes us!

love you all!

photobooth fun with students.

so before play practice i sometimes bring in my computer and me and some of the students have little photoshoots!  the kids can't stop laughing the entire time and they take some pretty adorable pictures...

i love islands.

After teaching only 5 days out of the past 2 weeks, it feels weird going back to a full work week….but then again, its only 2 weeks of full teaching till Christmas and I get a little over a week off!

So where to begin with the past weeks adventures……lets begin with Thursday and the field trip to safari world!  Nursery and K1 were heading out on the trip so Bradley and I got to tag along.  We thought that they were bringing us along to help keep track of the kids and make sure they didn’t wander off or get eaten by a tiger, but surprisingly enough we didn’t have to do anything!  The parents actually came with us on the field trip!  So they watched after their kids, so Bradley and I just sat back and checked out the animals.  Safari world was about an hour drive away on our big charter buses.  The first thing we did was drive through the park—just like we were on a safari.  This place is basically like a zoo, except there are no cages…the animals get to run around freely amongst one another and the buses just drive on a paved road throughout the park.  It was pretty cool—they had TONS of animals and what I found so surprising was that they had a large number of each animal.  There were about 10 tigers, 4 rhinos, 6 bears, 4 lions…usually at zoos you only see one or two of each animal, but there were soo many here!   After our “safari” we went into the park to watch the animal shows.  This place has a show for just about every animal and the school wanted to make sure we saw alllll of them…so we went to the bird show, the orangutan show, the dolphin and beluga whale show, the sea lion show…you get the picture.  The shows were kinda cool but got real old after a while.  We spent the rest of the afternoon there and around 3:00 we finally headed back to the school!

On the way home I got an interesting call from one of the other girls who works at the primary/secondary school.  She said that some guy had come to the school and was trying to find me.  She said she didn’t know who he was or what was going on but that there was a lot of thai office workers/teachers trying to figure it all out.  Well it ends up that it was this guy pook that Bradley and I had met about 6 weeks ago on one of our walks around town.  One afternoon we were walking around and some guy called out to us and invited us to come hang out in his yard.  We met his family and they all seemed really nice and we didn’t really think anything of it.  We never saw him/heard from him again…until Thursday.  Sooooo to make a long story short, pook showed up at the school, during the middle of the day, trying to find me to give me a letter.  I obviously wasn’t there cause I was on a field trip, so he had one of the thai teachers translate a letter to me telling me how he wants to be friends and could be my tour guide around town or we could go on field trips to bangkok….i don’t think I’ll be taking pook up on his offer anytime soon…well needless to say, when I got back to the school and headed to the beer stand to drink up with some of the other teachers, they all thought it was a riot and had a good laugh about the whole thing for a good 10 minutes.

After a round of beers it was time to head back to the dorms to pack for our weekend away on koh samui!  Koh samui is an island in the southern part of Thailand.  A few of the teachers at the school had organized the trip so we jumped at the chance to go.  So at 8pm about 20 of us loaded into 2 of the school vans and we were off!  The drive was supposed to take about 8 or 9 hours so we were going to drive through the night so we could arrive at the ferry bright and early Friday morning so we’d have a full day to spend on the island.  So I popped a few OTC sleeping aids and passed out till we arrived at the ferry at 6am.  After a little wait to get on the ferry, the 2 hour ferry ride, and a 20 minute drive we were finally at our hotel…or should I say resort!  The place we stayed at was AMAZING.  When we signed up for the trip we had no idea where we would be staying and figured we’d be staying in some cheap, run down hostel for the weekend…boy were we wrong.  This place was gorgeous!  It had 3 pools, a waterfall, a spa, a restaurant/bar (with a happy hour!) and was right on the beach!  I was rooming with one of the katie’s for the weekend and when we opened the door to our room we just about had a heart attack.  It was sosososo nice!  Huge fluffy bed (which was welcomed with open arms since we’re sleeping on bricks in the dorm), a flat screen TV, plush robes and slippers, one of those showers with a rain faucet thing, and the most amazing bath that was on our balcolny.  Yeah that’s right, we had a tub on our balcolny.  We were in heaven.

The next two days were filled with sleeping in our lovely beds, lounging around in our robes, taking numerous showers and baths, laying out by the infinity pool that over looked the ocean, hitting up the bar’s happy hour, kayaking (thanks to the free kayaks we could rent from the hotel), sight seeing the big Buddha, and eating too much food at the resort’s buffet breakfast (we stuffed our faces with pancakes, bacon, banana muffins, zucchini walnut muffins, fresh fruit, French toast, whole wheat bread…all things that we have not seen in 2 months).  The weekend was total relaxation and I loved every minute of it.

I was super sad to leave this paradise on Sunday morning knowing that I was leaving my super room to go back to the geckos in my room back at the school.  But oh well, it was an amazing weekend.

The ride back was a lot more difficult than the ride down here.  We were travelling during the middle of the day which made it harder to just sleep the entire way there, but fortunately I brought a few books with me.  The worst thing about the ride back was that the only food I had to eat the entire day was food that I bought at 7/11.  We only stopped for potty breaks and gas, so our only opportunities to get food were at convenience stores.  I felt so gross at the end of the day after eating crackers and chips all day.  I think I’ll be staying away from 7/11 for a little while.  A note about 7/11’s here in Thailand…they are nothing like the stores in the states.  They are actually clean and super nice in every other part of the world besides the states!  I noticed this when I was studying abroad in Sweden too…I go to 7/11 several times a week here in Thailand—it has just about everything you might need and is super convenient when you just need a few things and don’t want to make a trek all the way to the grocery store, tesco lotus.  I might need to buy stock in 7/11 when I go home.

I got to skype with the parentals for a while today which was much needed.  Its hard to remember that its Christmas time here in Thailand.  Besides the fact that Thailand is a Buddhist country, its hard to remember that its Christmas time when its so hot and because I’m still working.  It’s weird that this is my first year with out a real winter/Christmas break.  Every year I’ve had a solid 2/3 weeks off from school and work where I could just be at home for the holidays, but this year I’m working all the way up to Christmas eve.  It’s strange knowing that I’m not going to be with my family for Christmas and that this is my first time I haven’t been home for the holidays and I feel a little bad/sad about it.  One thing that makes me feel better about missing the holidays at home is that my parents are so supportive of me being here and although I’m sure they’d love to have me home for Christmas, they’re happy for me to be here and don’t mind (too much) sacrificing a Christmas without me so that I can experience this journey, so for that I am very thankful!

And I’m leaving you with another quote I’ve found/like…….love you all!

"the world is big and i want to have a good look at it before it gets dark."

—john muir

p.s. pictures to come soon once I have a better internet connection…

 monkey playing a guitar...

 i didnt really take any pictures of the animals...except for the fake ones... 

 view from our resort...infinity pool overlooking the ocean...what more can you ask for...

 bathtub on our balcolny...no big deal

 just your everyday temple on the side of the road

 big buddha

 kayaking!

 thailand sunsets are pretty amazing...

yum.

my first island...

This past weekend I finally made it to my first island!  It was a long weekend here in celebration of the King’s birthday so we had Monday off from school!  So Friday after school I headed to the eastern bus terminal in Bangkok and hopped on a bus to ban phe.  I met up with a few other girls from orientation.  We spent the night at a little place and woke up early Saturday morning to catch a ferry over to koh samet!  The island was beautiful!  We spent the day lounging in the sun, drinking fruit smoothies, eating pineapple, and trying to remember that its December and we’re on a tropical island.  That night we went to a restaurant on the beach called ploy.  They had a bunch of tables/pillows set up on the beach for people to eat at.  We sat right next to this big stage where a band played throughout dinner.  The band was amazing!  They played songs by sublime, lady antebellum, Jason mraz, and Eminem…tons of fun.  After the band played the fire show began!  A group of about 10 guys did a huge fire show where they twirled, tossed, spit, jumped and danced with fire.  It was suuuper impressive!  After their performance they set up a fire limbo thing for people to participate in, fire jump rope (which I of course took part in) and fire tug of war.  Fire was the theme of the night to say the least.  After playing with fire, we all headed back into the ploy which had transformed from a restaurant into a bar/club.  We spent the rest of the night dancing, drinking and playing with the body paint that they had provided us with.

The next morning we woke up early and headed for the beach.  We spent the entire day at the beach relaxing and soaking in the sunshine.  We went to another restaurant on the beach for dinner and then headed to a bar called silversand...we didnt realize it till about an hour into the night that we were at a gay bar…oh well! we spent the rest of the evening there and it was a BLAST!  The guys were super nice and we had a ton of fun dancing and talking with them.   At about midnight the bartenders handed out candles to everyone and played the thai version of happy birthday to the king.  So everyone stood up and lit their candles and gave a huge cheers to the king.  We spent the rest of the night dancing and making new thai friends.

We woke up relatively early Monday morning, packed our bags, and headed off the island.  It was a great weekend and it was really nice to see all the girls and to have a weekend of just relaxing and soaking in the sun.

At school the other English teachers and I have been preparing some of the K3 kids for a skit they’re going to perform at the Christmas show the school is holding on Christmas eve.  The kids are going to perform Rudolph the red nose reindeer!  It’s been fun trying to teach the kids about Christmas and different stories and songs.  And finally someone has recognized my amazing dancing talent and appointed me the choreographer for the Rudolph song the students are going to sing after the play.  Don’t worry, I’ll record it so you can all be amazed at what great dancers I’m going to turn these little thai kids into!

This week is suuuper short….teach Tuesday and Wednesday…field trip to safari world on Thursday and then leave Thursday night for koh samui!

Hope everyone is staying warm back home in the cold, as for me I’m trying to get rid of my sunburn so I can thoroughly enjoy the sun again this weekend on my next island!

Love you all!

 the monks that came to the school for father's day

 dinner on the beach with the girls in koh samet

 fire show!

 liz and i doing fire limbo

 me and allie jumping rope with fire

 lighting the candles and wishing the king a very happy birthday

 long live the king

 early morning goodbye to the beach

getting lost

So the other day I was supposed to have my first tutoring session; Bradley had gone the week before, and had a little trouble getting to the place  via bus/taxi so I was a little nervous.  I was supposed to be at the place at 4:30…Bradley had told me that it had taken her about an hour to get there last time and the bus from the kindergarten had gotten back late that day so I wasn’t able to leave till a little after 4.  So I decided to bypass the whole bus thing and just take a motorcycle taxi there.  Armed with a map that a lady in the office had given us and the directions Bradley had given me, I sent off down the street to flag down a motor guy.  I used a lot of hand motions and kept saying the location over and over to the driver and I thought he understood me…boy was I wrong.  As we were zooming down the streets the driver turned around and asked to see my map again…so as he continued to drive through the busy after school traffic, he was also staring at my map trying to figure out were to take me; needless to say, I felt very safe.  After about 20 minutes of aimlessly driving around town, I got a call from Bradley telling me that my tutoring session had been cancelled because the girl was sick!  Just my luck!  I figured instead of just telling the driver to take me to school I would just have him take me to the place so I would know for next time where to go and then I’d find someone else to drive me back to the school.  So after another 10 minutes the guy finally dropped me off at this huge supermarket called Carrefour—nowhere near where I wanted to be.  Buy mai pen rai, I figured I’d just go shopping!  The taxi guy totally ripped me off and charged me 140baht, but since I had no idea how much it should be and couldn’t really argue, I begrudgingly paid.

The supermarket was really big and had tons of stuff…it was kinda like the thai equivalent of walmart.  I wandered around the store and bought some essentials….crunchy peanut butter and granola bars.  They both were ridiculously expensive, but I had been paid earlier that day and decided I deserved them.  As I was wandering through the store, a thai guy comes up to me and asks me what time it is in his very broken English.  He then proceeded to talk to me for the next 15 minutes asking me where I was from/what I’m doing here/where I’m living/do I want to go out on a date with him.  He then proceeded to tell me that he loved me and asked if I was married.  This was my cue that it was probably time to check out and head back home.

Heading home was an even bigger adventure.  Since I had no idea where I was in relation to my school I figured the easiest way to get back would be to take a taxi.  When I told the first driver where I wanted to go he laughed at me and said NO and sped off!  Great ,I thought, im never getting home.  After trying for another 15 minutes I finally found a taxi that would take me back to the school and so I was off after a very long journey.  I still have no idea where the place is that I’m supposed to tutor at, but I guess I’ll find out next week.

Today I got a surprise package in the mail from one of my friends that had some of the things that I’ve been desperately missing from the states!  It included: tortilla chips, salsa, bean dip, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and a 4 LOKO!   I’m going to have to save the 4 loko for a special occasion since they’re now banned in the US and this might be the last one I ever have!  As you can imagine, this was a pretty great surprise and it made my day!

On another note, its December 1^st which means we’re in the final stretch till Christmas!

Love you all!

 this is the waterfall at the mall that we went to for thanksgiving

 the contents of my care package!

lazy sundays

So it’s 5 pm on Sunday and I’m still in my pajamas….its been one of those super lazy Sundays and its been just what I needed!  I’ve done nothing but caught up with tv shows online and skyped with friends and I haven’t moved from my bed!  This week was pretty standard—this week the kids were supposed to learn about different forms of communication.  This week we also started practicing with the kids their performance for father’s day.  In Thailand, Father’s day is also the King’s birthday…the king is considered the father of all the thais, so they automatically make his bday father’s day also.  This upcoming Friday we’re going to have a father’s day performance and the kids have to sing a song and some of them have to give a little speech, which should be interesting.   To prepare them for father’s day I’ve also been teaching the students how to say “I love you”…this has been my favorite lesson because after class when I’m about to leave all the little kids say “bye bye teacher, I love you!” and it melts my heart, but then I remember that they don’t really understand what they’re saying and I just laugh.

Thursday was thanksgiving and the other girls and I were feeling a little bit homesick and sad we weren’t going to be able to be with our families having a usual turkey dinner.  But we weren’t going to spend the evening just sitting in the dorms, so we took a taxi to a new mall….when the taxi pulled up to the mall we were shocked!  The mall was HUGE, even bigger than the other mall we had been going to!  There’s a rock climbing wall on the outside of it, a waterfall that runs from the top story down to the ground level inside (the waterfall also has fake elephants, hippos and other creatures in it), there’s a million different restaurants (including starbucks!), a bowling alley and movie theatre.  We were shocked that we have been here for a month and had never been there!  So we wandered the mall for a bit and tried to decided where to have our thanksgiving feast.  We settled on sizzler!  I have been to sizzler more in this past month than I have been in the last 15 years, it’s a little ridiculous.  We feasted and ate waaaay more than we needed to, but its thanksgiving so oh well!  Friday was spent at our usual beer shack enjoying too many leos.

Saturday morning Bradley and I woke up early to catch the bus into Bangkok.  I haven’t taken a city bus here in Thailand and wanted to try it out!  Usually we take a cab into Bangkok, but I wanted to be adventurous (and economical) and attempt to take the bus.  So we hopped onto the number 7 bus and were on our way to the city!  It took a little less than 2 hours to get into the city but it only cost 19 baht (about 60 cents!)  It usually costs about 200baht to get into the city so this was a waaaaay cheaper way to get into the city.  The bus dropped us off at the train station, which is also super convenient for traveling purposes!  Bradley and I then hopped on a water taxi to take us up to khao san road.  I needed to check out some of the travel agencies there to see about purchasing tickets for a bus to koh phi phi for new years.  I have heard some bad things about buying tickets from travel agencies, but because its during the holidays I knew that there was really no other way to do it.  So I shopped around at several different places trying to see who had good deals and which places gave off good vibes and finally settled on a place!  The tickets weren’t too expensive and the guy who worked there was suuuper helpful and was able to answer all my questions regarding the buses and what to expect so hopefully it all goes smoothly!

Next we headed over to the Siam area and hung out at the malls there, hitting up some book stores and then plopping down at starbucks to drink some toffee nut frappucinos and read.  Some of my friends were coming into Bangkok Saturday and we all had plans to meet up so they came and joined us at starbucks and we spent a while catching up on what has been going on at our schools/towns.  We then headed over to the imax theatre and bought tickets to see harry potter (yes I loved the movie so much I went to go see it again).  The movie was just as good the second time around!  It was getting late by that point so Bradley and I said our goodbyes and headed back to the school

On schedule for this week is the father’s day performance and then on Friday I’m meeting up with some girls to go to koh samet for the long weekend!  Oh and some other good news, the girls and I here at the school were informed that there is a teacher’s trip in 2 weeks that we get to go on to koh samui!!! I’m super excited that we’re going to get to check out another island and hopefully we’ll get to know some of the other teachers a little better!

Love you all!!

quote i really like...

so i found this quote that i reallllly like and thought i'd share with you.  hope you like it! and happy almost turkey day!

 

“may your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. may your mountains rise into and above the clouds.” -edward abbey

 

 

loy krathong

hiiiiiiiiiiiii everyone!

This past week Thailand celebrated loy krathong.  So much happened this weekend that I’ll just go over the highlights:

·      Thursday harry potter came out!!!!  I was able to see the new harry potter movie in English before everyone in the states!  I saw it Thursday evening, which would have been Wednesday night in the states, so I got to see it a full day ahead of all my friends who went to the midnight showing in the states.  Just another reason Thailand is amazing.

·      Friday the kindergarten school celebrated loy krathong with a big festival.  All the kids were dressed up in traditional thai outfits and Bradley and I were dressed up as well!  The days activities included a beauty pageant (it was like a weird thai version of toddlers and tiaras), Bradley and I being asked to pose for a million pictures with all of our students, setting off water lanterns in the pool at the school, and no classes!

·      Friday night the girls and I had our typical Friday night at the beer stand.

·      Saturday morning/afternoon the girls and I headed into Bangkok.  We stayed at the same hostel that we did a few weeks ago.  Its in the silom area of Bangkok and it’s really easy to get to a lot of different areas from this location.  We met a guy from England who is working in Taiwan who came to Thailand on a visa run.  We kinda latched on to our group and became a hilarious addition.  That afternoon there was a massive downpour so we just hung out at the hostel and chatted it up with the other people staying there and lounged around at a starbucks near by.  I’m not a big starbucks person back in the states, but being at starbucks here was such a nice feeling.  I had a peppermint mocha and a banana chocolate chip muffin and I was in heaven.  My coffee was served in a holiday cup, there was Christmas music playing softly in the background and for a while I completely forgot that I was in Thailand.  I could have been at any starbucks back in the states and it was exactly what I needed. We met another guy named wander who is from the Netherlands.  Later that night after the rain stopped the girls plus our new additions wandered around a night market and grabbed some dinner.

o   Side story….so we went to this little thai restaurant for dinner, we all ordered our dishes but for some reason mine and one of the guys never got our food.  We waited for a while and then asked one of the guys working there if our food was coming; he said it would be out in just a minute.  Everyone had finished eating and still we hadn’t gotten our food.  Again we asked one of the guys where our food was and he again said it would just be another minute.  We knew this was lie and that our food was never coming.  The british guy that we were with wanted to say something to the cook/waiter/person working there who was standing around, but the girls and I begged him not to.  Mai pen rai.  Mai pen rai is the motto for Thailand…it means something along the lines of “whatever/nevermind/it’s ok.  It’s kinda their way of life…a big thing in Thailand is to “never lose face”…it means to never lose your cool and pretty much never show when you’re upset, just let things happen and just go with the flow.  This has become our way of life now; back in the states I would have never hesitated to get upset at a restaurant and demanded to talk to someone if my food just never showed up, but here I just smile and say mai pen rai and go on with my day.

·      Sunday morning I went to starbucks again :) and did a Sudoku while drinking my toffee nut coffee drink (yum).  Then the girls and I took a water taxi out to khao san road and did a bit of shopping.  I bought a shirt for less than my coffee at starbucks cost.  We ate some street food which was cheap and delicious (my two favorite things) and headed to a café to lounge and relax for a bit before heading over to the rama viii bridge for the loy krathong festivities.

·      The girls and I bought two water lanterns to set off in the river.  We each wrote letters to the goddess of the river, telling her our worries and anger that we wanted her to take with her into the river.  We watched some of the performances that were taking place and then went to the river to release our lanterns.  In northern Thailand they have a tradition where they set off these big lanterns into the sky and let them float away.  There is an amazing picture of it on a lonely planet guidebook and we had been dying to do it ever since we saw the picture.  We had seen lanterns flying in the sky around us so we knew that there must be a place for us to buy one to set off, so we started searching around for somewhere to buy it.  We finally found a little lady who was selling them so we bought one from her and went over to a bridge to light it up and set it off.  So we lit up our lantern and made our wishes and let it float off into the sky.  It was beautiful.  The whole sky was lit up with these lanterns and it was just a beautiful night.  As we took a taxi back to our school that night we were able to see the fireworks that were being shot off over the river.  A great way to end the weekend.

Coming up in the next month: the king’s birthday (which means no school!) so a few of the girls and I are going to head down to koh samet and spend the weekend relaxing on an island!  Tentative plans for Christmas in Bangkok, a few day trips to see some sites, and then heading down to koh phi phi for new years!  I’m really excited for all the things that are coming up, but also a little sad because thanksgiving is this Thursday and this will be my first year without a thanksgiving dinner.  Even when I studied abroad in Sweden I still managed to have a turkey dinner with all the fixings (thanks in part to sarah’s amazing mom!), but this year that’s not going to happen.  I’m a little bummed, but I just have to remember that I have a lot to be thankful for this year and one year without a turkey and pumpkin pie isn’t going to kill me!  Hope everyone back home is doing well and is getting ready for the holidays!

love you all!

super excited to see harry potter!

the pool at the kindergarten with all the water lanterns in it for loy krathong

me and oops!

khao san road

our water lantern with our letters to the water goddess

getting ready to let our lantern float into the sky

hope all our wishes come true!

week 3

so this is my third week of teaching.  it's going pretty well, nothing too exciting has happened this week...yet!  buuut on friday the school is celebrating the loi krathong festival.  this is a celebration to the goddess of water and everyone sets off little water lanterns.  so this week i have been teaching about this festival (which i know nothing about) so classes have been a little interesting...the other girls and i from the school are going to go into bangkok this weekend to check out the festivities there.

last weekend was pretty low key.  it was another typical friday night at the beer shack and saturday morning the girls and i trekked it into bangkok to go to the zoo!  i love zoos.  i've been to zoos in just about every country i've visited so of course i had to go to one in thailand.  the zoo is really nice and they have some great animals....the only weird thing about the zoo is that i didn't feel very safe there; it didn't seem like the enclosures for the animals were that sturdy or that secure....i felt like at any moment one of the huge chimpanzees could just walk over and hop the fence, so while this made for a kinda cool "we're so close to the animals" feeling, it also made me a little nervous!

after the zoo we went and checked out MBK which is an ENORMOUS mall in central bangkok.  i mean this place is huge!  we walked around and checked out all the different stores and then we stumbled upon the most amazing place ever...au bon pain.  i have been missing sandwiches and this place was just what i needed. i had a chicken sandwich on whole wheat bread, i was so so happy.  after stuffing ourselves, we hopped in a taxi and headed back to the school.

sunday was spent cleaning, relaxing and wandering around our little town.  it was a low key weekend, but it was just what i needed.

in other exciting news, chelsea and i booked our hotel for new years eve in koh phi phi!!!! i am beyond excited for this and i can't wait to be on an island relaxing in the sun and soaking in the blue waters.

love you all!

missing home

so i left exactly one month ago.  some days it seems like i've been here for waaaay longer than a month, but then at other times it seems like time is flying by.

today my first class didn't go exactly as i had hoped.  i had a lot of stuff i needed the kids to get through, but assembly went long so my 30 minute class turned into a 10 minute class...needless to say i got barely anything done.  frustrating.

today is one of those days where i just keep thinking about all the things that i'm missing back home...friends, family...cheese, mexican food, whole wheat bread, in n out.  even though i miss all these things, im really happy to be here and so happy i decided to do this.  i love all the new adventures, i love the new people, the food, and just being in a new place.

so instead of going on and on about the things that i miss, im going to list the things that make me happy about being in thailand:

1.  counting how many people can fit onto a motor bike.  thais like to fit their entire family (dog included) onto one motorbike.  it's ridiculous.  so far the most people i've seen on one bike is 5. and a dog. its pretty impressive/highly dangerous/entertaining to watch.

2.  the town drunk.  at the bar/shop where we get beers some days after school, there is this little old lady who we've been told is the town drunk.  she's always verrrrrry happy to see us and hugs us and tells us how beautiful we are.  it makes me feel better that on days when i'm feeling pretty haggard, the town drunk still thinks im pretty.

3.   fruit.  so much fresh fruit here.  my favorite is pineapple.  i could eat it all day.  i can't wait for it to be mango season.

4.  riding on the back of a motorcycle taxi. i know i've said it before, but this will always be my favorite form of transportation.

5.  oops.  oops is the name of one of my students.  he's the cutest thing and the only thing he ever says to me is "bye bye teecha"....even if i have just entered the classroom to start a lesson, oops always greets me with "bye bye teecha".  the other day oops pooped his pants in class. oh oops.

love you all and miss you!

"For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future"

-Jeremiah 29:11

missing my family

missing these weird girls

photo shoots and beaches.

So I finished my first week of teaching, and it was hard. It got better with each day…but that was mostly because as the week continued, more of my classes got cancelled. On Thursday and Friday all we did was take photos. Lots and lots of photos. In the room outside of the foreign teacher’s area, they had set up backdrops so the students could take pictures. Now this isn’t your average photo day at school, cause I remember those and taking those pictures only took about 10 minutes. No, sunflower school does it a little differently. First, there were several backdrops that the kids could sit at. Which included: an African safari…complete with giraffes in the background and the students got to hold binoculars. They could take their photo while holding huge stuffed animals, while standing next to a saxophone, or they could be boring and just sit in front of a plain backdrop and take photos. This was highly amusing to watch (especially when the kids chose the safari background). Then the photographers came into the teacher’s room and had us come and pose for pictures as well! So hopefully soon I’ll be able to post a picture of me in the African safari with my binoculars.

They also had classroom photos…these made me a little upset. They had Bradley and I pose with students (none of my own students, but kids from other classes/grades) and pretend to be reading to them, or teaching them about fruits. It was all very staged and I felt like the token blonde teacher that they wanted in their pictures to show parents that they have real foreigners teaching their kids English. Oh well. Mai pen rai.

Friday after school the other girls and I went down to the bar/shop with some of the other English teachers. So a little info on the other English teachers at sunflower: Pete, who is the English coordinator at the school (he’s been at sunflower for about 6 years…he’s originally from the Midwest), Bill (been here for I think 2ish years, from the Midwest as well), Brad (from Canada), and Jimmy (he’s from some place in Africa I believe). They’re all in their 30s and 40s (except for pete who’s in like his 60s I think…). Anyways most Fridays (and most weekdays too) we all go down there and grab beers after school and talk about the kids, traveling, life, all that fun stuff.

Saturday morning, we woke up early and the girls and I decided we wanted to try to go to a beach. We had asked Brad the night before if there was any place close by that we could go for the day and he suggested we check out cha-am. Cha-am is a little beach town about 2 hours south west of our town. So with vague directions about how to get there we set off. It only took 2 taxis and a minivan ride and about 2 hours to reach Cha-am! Super easy! Once we got there we found a cheap hotel (only 150baht…or $5) that we could stay the night in. We immediately dropped off our stuff and headed for the beach!

We hadn’t been walking on the beach for more than 5 minutes when all of a sudden we see some familiar faces in front of us! Liz, Olivia, and their friend Ciana were in Cha-am for the weekend too! So we laid on the beach for a few hours and enjoyed just being in the sun and the ocean. As the sun began to sink a little lower, we decided to head to the other girls hotel because they had a POOL! So we crashed in their pool for a while, probably annoying the other people trying to relax at the pool, but oh well. After a while we decided to retreat to our own hotel and get cleaned up before meeting back up for dinner.

After washing up at our hotel, we headed to our “go-to place” in Thailand…..7/11….and grabbed some leos. We found some chairs on the beach and had leo time on the beach…it was perfect. Some nice thai guys that were sitting a few seats over came and gave us a few candles so we wouldn’t be sitting in complete darkness. Olivia and I decided to go on a food run for everyone and so we brought back some street vendor food for the group and had a delightful picnic dinner on the beach. We spent the next few hours there just hanging out, eating and drinking our leos. It was perfect.

The next morning we woke up early and headed back out to the beach to enjoy some sun time before we had to all head back to our schools. Soon it was time for us to all head out and get back to our schools. The other girls hotel had told them where to catch a minivan back to their town, so we decided to follow them and hope that they had a van to samut sakhon as well. So we hopped in the van and headed back to school. Now….this is when things got a little odd. So we saw the sign for samut sakhon, and so we pointed the sign out to the driver and he smiled and nodded….and then proceeded to pull over to the side of the highway and motion for us to get out….on the side of the highway….while cars were rushing by. Ummmm huh? We’re just supposed to get out? I guess so. So we hopped out and stood on the side of the road watching our van drive away. So we ran across the road and hopped over rails and made it to a side street where we hailed a cab. But this wasn’t just any cab. This was a cab driven by a thai version of morgan freeman….who only played classical music, and only drove about 25 mph on the freeway. So after about a million years we finally made it back to our home sweet home.

Up for this week: teaching transportation to my little pre-schoolers. Trying to plan for new years and hopefully planning another trip to an island for the beginning of December.

Love you all!

having fun in the pool with my underwater camera

olivia and i enjoying beer and food on the beach

perfect way to spend the night.

our van driving away after dropping us off on the side of the highway