22

22 is the number of mosquito bites I have…..just on my right leg. They’re on my legs, feet, bottom of my feet, arms, back….basically they’re just everywhere and driving me insane. The mosquitoes love me here and I wish they didn’t.

I still have just been observing classes at the school so far; the other English teachers here are suuuuper nice and very helpful. The kids are so cute and its hard to want to teach them English instead of just playing with them. I still haven’t found out what grades im going to be kids, but hopefully they let me know soon! I also still haven’t gotten a schedule for the semester (what days are holidays, when/if we get a Christmas or new years break) so I’m hoping we get one of those soon so I can kinda map out when/where I can travel to. I’m a little nervous that we haven’t really gotten any information about what is expected of us, when we’ll be teaching, if we’re supposed to turn in lesson plans, what materials we can use etc….and it’s Thursday and we’re supposed to start teaching on our own on Monday! Hmmm…..

Last night, the other 3 girls that are here through the program with me decided to see what else our little town has to offer. Since we still haven’t figured out the public bus system in our town, we hopped in a taxi and headed for the mall! The mall is about a 20 minute drive from our school, and I can already tell that I’m going to be frequenting this place often. The mall has 5 levels and is full of amazingness. It has a movie theater (that is showing harry potter 7 starting nov 19th in English!!!!!!!!!!!), a bowling alley, like 5 Dairy Queens, an A&W, Sizzler, coffee shop, and so so so much more. The girls and I are hoping to do some bowling some nights since its only 150 baht (about $5) for 3 games on weeknights! We were planning on going and seeing a movie since we had heard that wed nights were when they offered cheap tickets (only 80 baht to see a movie!) but the only movie they had that was playing in english was Cats and Dogs…..and that just didn’t seem too appealing to us. So we wandered the mall for a while and headed back to our dorms.

So one thing I forgot to mention about my dorm room is that it is FREEZING. The a/c in our room is broken and only has 2 settings: off or freezing. If we turn it off, it becomes unbearably hot, but if we turn it on we are cold! So we keep the a/c on and just layer up! I have to wear a sweatshirt (which I almost didn’t bring with me since all I hear is how hot Thailand is!) and sleep under 2 blankets. I guess it could be worse and our room not have any a/c at all which would be horrible, so I guess I’ll take this over no air at all.

if anyone would like to send me care packages while I’m here I would not mind at all :) my address here is:

Sunflower Trilingual School

Attn: Jenna Shelburne

39/10 Moo 4 Ekachai-Setthakit Road

Tambol Kogkrabua, Amphur Muang

Samutsakorn 74000

Love you all!

ok. and as an extra note since i wrote this entry yesterday.....i have found out that i am now teaching pre school.......so i'm teaching 2-3 year olds! this is going to be an interesting year, but im excited to see how it's going to go!

public transportation.

So I’m finally all settled at my new school on the outskirts of Bangkok. We rearranged the room so its not so bad anymore and its starting to feel a bit like home. We had a long weekend, we didn’t have anything to do till Tuesday when the owner of the school got back. All the other girls were planning on traveling somewhere so I figured I would too! So I called my friend Chelsea who is in northeastern Thailand and decided to visit her for the weekend! Another girl that I met at orientation, Jess, also lives in khon kaen and teaches with Chelsea so it was a bonus that I would be able to see both of them! Chelsea lives in a town called khon kaen, which is about a 6 hour bus ride from Bangkok. I decided to be brave and figure out how to get there on my own. So on Friday morning my roommate Bradley and I headed into Bangkok. She was meeting some friends in the city so we decided to go together and get a cab to our first stop. So our first task was to get a taxi to take us from our school to the sky train. That was a pretty easy process. Next was figuring out the skytrain. Again, this was pretty easy, its really similar to the tube in London and I’ve had experience with that so it was just a matter of figuring out which line to get on and where to get off and where to switch lines, etc. So Bradley left me at a stop in the middle of Bangkok, so I had to ride the train to the end of the line where it would put me closest to the northern bus station. Even though the skytrain puts you somewhere close to the bus station, its still quite a ways, so once I got off the skytrain I had to get a motorcycle taxi to take me to the bus station. Let me just tell you now……motorcycle taxis are my new love. I don’t think I’ll ever get over the feeling of riding on the back of a motorcycle in Bangkok during rush hour. Weaving in and our of cars…going sooooo much faster than we should be going….letting go of the drivers shoulders of the driver and just sitting freely on the back of the motorcycle is such a rush. I’m just in love with it and its just never going to get old to me. Sadly, the journey to the bus station ended waaaaay too soon and I was at the bus station. The northern line bus station is the largest of all the stations in Bangkok and it was confusing. None of the signs were in English and I had no idea where to go to get a ticket to khon kaen. Fortunately some random thai man came up to me and asked me where I was going (obviously by the look on my face he could tell I was completely lost) I told him my destination and he just grabbed my hand and said “follow me. I show you where to go”. So off we went. He led me from ticket window to ticket window helping me get a ticket for the next available bus. He led me straight to where I should wait for my bus and was suuuuper helpful…..of course he wanted a tip for all his help. I knew it was too good to be true that he was just being a kind person to help me out so much, so I handed him a 20baht bill (about 70 cents).

Ok just a little side note right now….i’m out in the common room right now and its pouring rain and the most intense lightening/thunder storm is going on right now. The room is pretty much all windows and the room is illuminated every time the lightening flashes. Its just huge and crazy and scary and amazing.

Ok, so back to my adventure…..i got on the bus. So northeastern Thailand is having some of the worst flooding it has experienced in over 50 years….of course I didn’t find this out till after I was already on my way up that direction. So what was supposed to be a 6 hour bus ride turned into a 9 ½ hour bus ride. There were portions of the drive where the roads were just completely flooded. So I finally arrived in the city and had to call Chelsea to see where I should meet her. She was at a nearby restaurant with a group of English teachers from her school. So I hopped on the back of another motorcycle taxi and rode over to the restaurant to meet them.

The restaurant we went to had everything……and by everything I mean everything but thai food, which was a welcoming site after eating nothing but rice for almost 2 weeks. I ordered a garlic tomato pizza and let me tell you, I was in heaven. Don’t get me wrong, I love thai food, its great, but there are moments when all I really want is a huge burrito, a big pizza, or just an in n out burger. So this pizza hit the spot! After dinner we stayed in the downtown kohn kaen and went to a few of the bars and clubs there. It was fun to go out and see some of the nightlife. The only downside was that since I had met them straight off the bus, I still had my huge backpack with me! But the girls were super nice about it and we all took turns carrying it around to the different bars so it was fine! At the end of the night Chelsea, Jess and I took a tuk-tuk back to their apartment and passed out!

The next morning I woke up and got to check out what chelsea’s accommodations were like. I’m jealous. She has her own apartment which consists of a queen sized bed, a little table and chair, cable TV, a mini fridge, and her own bathroom. So envious….but sharing a room and a bathroom and not having a tv or fridge is just going to help me build character…right? Anyways…that day we decided to take full advantage of her cable tv and the one English channel that was on it. So we spent almost the entire day in bed watching law and order. It was amazing. When we finally did get out of bed….around 8pm, we went to the night market that was a few minutes down the road. I had the most amazing chicken and pineapple skewer and this sweet corn thing. It was like corn that was mixed with condensed milk and sugar. It was really good….very different to have corn made into a dessert, but I really liked it.

The next morning we woke up super early (aka 8am) so we could spend the whole day exploring khon kaen. We started the day at the Bung Kaen Nakhon lake. There was a decent sized market that surrounded part of the lake. You could follow a path around the entire lake so we started off the path just taking in our surroundings. About ½ around the lake we found this little woman who was renting out bikes. I didn’t think anything of it till I saw a bicycle built for 3!!!!! I was so stoked and had to ride it! So I forced jess and Chelsea to rent the bike with me (20 baht a person for an hour) and we were off to attempt to ride this rusty old beast. We tried and tried, but we just couldn’t get all 3 of us to successfully ride the bike. SO finally we had to settle for just 2 of us riding the bike at a time…one in the front seat, and one on the back seat leaving the middle seat open. Jess and I got pretty good at it and were flying down the path! It was a lot of fun, but it was soooo hot that after 5 minutes were dripping in sweat! So we returned the bike and headed for anywhere that had a/c……and so we ended up at the MALL! In khon kaen they have this HUGE mall! It was 5 stories tall and had tons of shops! So for the rest of the day we stayed in the nice, cool mall and just wandered around. To get home we used a new form of transportation…the songthawe. Its literally just a pick up truck that has two benches built into it that people sit and ride on. Its super cheap and a great way to get short distances for suuuper cheap (about 10baht).

I woke up early the next morning to head back to my little town. I took another sonthawe to the bus station, took the bus back to Bangkok (it only took 7 hours this time!), took a motorcycle bike to the sky train, and then a taxi back to my dorm! I know it may seem silly to say, but when I was finally back in my dorm room, I was really proud of myself. For anyone that knows me, I am HORRIBLE with directions and trying to find my way around new places. But I was able to do this all on my own! Well almost all on my own….i wasn’t sure what I was doing most of the time, so I would just walk up to people and ask if I was in the right place, or if I was on the right bus. I’m learning that its ok to ask for directions and its ok to look stupid and not know what you’re doing. People here are really happy to help you out and help you figure out where you need to go. So now, whenever I’m in doubt about where I’m going/what I should be doing I just stand with a confused look on my face…it’s the fastest way to get help here!

So now with my fun filled weekend behind me it was time to get down to business! This morning we met with the owner of the school. She wanted to meet and talk with us to figure out what grades she would want us to teach. So after a few minutes of talking with all of us she decided that Bradley (my roommate) and I would be teaching at the kindergarten school, while the other two girls would stay and teach at the primary/secondary school! The owner took Bradley and I to the kindergarten campus, which is about a 10 minute drive from the main campus. The school is so cute! Although they call it a kindergarten school, it is actually a pre-school/kindergarten school. The kids range from about 2 or 3 years old to 6 years old! So technically I guess I could be teaching pre-schoolers! I’ll find out tomorrow what age I’ll be teaching so I’m excited to find that out! For the rest of the week Bradley and I are going to be observing the other English teachers in the classroom and then next Monday we start teaching our own classes! I’m excited to finally start teaching and having something to do to fill my days!

So that’s all the excitement I’ve had so far this week!

Love you all!

out in khon kaen with the girls

jess and i with our sweet corn desserts.

a romantic bicycle ride for two.

a songthaew.

pictures

so here's a link you can go to if you want to see all the pictures i've taken and put up on facebook so far.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2583052&id=3626294&l=5bbfc0b927

elephants, bamboo, and sunflower.

So a lot has happened since the last blog. I went on an epic trip to kanchanburi. I rode on an elephant, went bamboo rafting, saw the bridge over the river kwai and had to say “see you later” to some amazing girls that I became close with while I was here.

So here’s a run down of how everything was:

Elephant trekking: amazing. We got to ride on the back of the elephant in this little wooden bench and we felt like we were going to topple out with every step. We even got to sit on the elephants neck and actually sit on him! I was riding on the neck of an elephant! Elephants are a lot hairier than I thought and it felt like I was going to fall off with each step buuut sooo much fun!

Bamboo rafting: not as much fun. It was still super pretty on the river, but nothing too exciting.

The girls I’ve met: so there’s Chelsea, from UCSB who I came here with, another Chelsea, who was my roommate at the hotel and from Wisconsin, Olivia from UCSC, Jess from…..,somewhere….and Liz from michigan. These are the girls I hung out with for the week and they’re all amazing. We’re hopefully planning on traveling together and probably get together to spend Christmas/new years together which would be a lot of fun!

Sunflower school: we arrived at the sunflower school at about 8pm Tuesday night. We we under the impression that we would each be getting our own rooms. We were surprised to find out that we would actually be sharing a room. Soo I was thrust into this tiny room with a girl I didn’t even know. The rooms are really bare and there were bugs on the floor. I was about to have a break down. I was really beginning to reconsider this whole moving to Thailand thing and I just froke out. I went to bed unsure of how my time here was going to go. I woke up this morning and remembered to breathe. I signed up for an adventure, for a life changing experience. I needed to stop freaking out and suck it up. I’m trying to have this new attitude of just going with the flow and being ok if things don’t turn out how I expect it to. So with that new attitude the day went a lot better. We met our English coordinator, peter, and he was really helpful and kinda gave us a run down of what to expect while we’re here and whats expected of us. After this meeting we all went out for beer at the store down the road. I think this is going to be an almost daily thing. A lot of the English teachers all get together everyday after school and go and get a beer and talk about the day. I think it’s a great way to get to know the other teachers and I fully intend to attend these “meetings”.

There are 2 other people that were here with CIEE last semester and are getting ready to leave on Saturday to travel and head back to the states. They were suuuuuper informative! They gave us sooo much valuable advice and took us on a little tour of our area. They showed us the good places to eat, where to buy things and gave us some details about the people at our school. I’m really sad they’re leaving but so glad they were here to help us out.

I start school nov. 1 so the girls and I that work here are thinking of taking a little trip to an island before we start teaching so im excited!

That’s about all the exciting stuff to share now!

Love you all!

the girls. chelsea, jess, me, liz, olivia, and chelsea

me on an elephant

me and a baby elephant

royal palace and orientation.

Sooo here’s a new update on what has been going on the past few days!

On Friday, October 15, CIEE loaded the whole group on to buses and we set out for Wat Phra Kaew and the Grand Palace. Wat Phra Kaew, also known as the Temple of the Emerald Buddah, is the name for the place that contains the former residence of the Thai monarch, the Grand Palace. We were split up into groups and were taken on guided tours. Our Thai tour guide, Kay, was hilarious and shared tons of information about the grounds, Thailand, and life in general. The buildings were beautiful! The main attraction there is the Emerald Buddah which was an amazing site. After our tour with Kay, we had lunch at a restaurant along the river and then were brought back to the hotel for more teacher training.

That night the coordinators from all of our schools came and met us at our hotel so we could meet them and ask some questions before we actually moved there for the rest of the year. The Sunflower school sent one of their school administrators, I can’t remember her name now…she was really nice, but she’s not the English coordinator so she couldn’t answer a lot of our questions. She did however inform me and two other girls would be teaching at the primary school and that the other girl would be teaching at the kindergarten school. We would be living in the teacher dorms but we would have our own room and bathroom….and our rooms have wifi! That was suuuuch a relief to hear. There is a common area in the lobby that has a small kitchen so I will be able to cook meals which will be nice. There are other westerners that teach at the school; there are some teachers from Australia, Canada, and England that are already there and have been teaching there for a while. The English coordinator is a guy named Peter and he’s from America—I’m a little relieved about that because now I know at least there will be no language barrier with him and will be easier to get all my questions answered!

CIEE had set up a welcome dinner for us and the coordinators after our meeting. Although the dinner wasn’t too amazing, some kids from one of the schools in Bangkok performed traditional welcome dances throughout the dinner. The girls who danced were amazing and their outfits were so colorful and intricate; it was really amazing to watch them and watch their dancing.

After a full day of thai language learning and teacher training, the girls and I decided to venture into central Bangkok and check out some of the sites. The 6 of us took a cab to khao san road, which is known as being a big touristy/market area. It was so nice to get out of the hotel and get into the middle of the city and check out another part of Bangkok. Khao san road was filled with people, vendors, street food, and sooo much more. The girls and I walked around looking at all of the stuff people were selling. We could have spent hours there shopping, there was just sooo much stuff. We went to this random restaurant for dinner and had some amaaaazing pad thai. After dinner we wandered the streets some more and checked out a few of the bars that lined the street. At this one bar we went to, if you purchase a drink you get to get a foot massage….but not just any foot massage! In the back of the bar there is this water pool looking thing. It’s kinda like a giant tub. In the tub are hundreds of little fish. You’re supposed to put your feet into the tub and the fish are swarm your feet and eat off all the dead skin and clean your feet. We couldn’t pass up the opportunity to do this so the girls and I bought our drinks and headed for our foot massage. It was the weirdest feeling ever! It was a mix between ticklish and uncomfortable, but it was a fun experience. We explored some more that night then decided to call it a night and head back to the hotel.

The past few days have just been filled with teacher training and more thai lessons and learning what to expect in the next few months. Yesterday we had a workshop on traveling and the coordinators listed some amazing looking places to travel to. I cant wait to start traveling and seeing all of Thailand; there are soooo many places I want to go so I’m excied to get out there and start adventuring!

Today we leave the hotel and head to kanchanburi and are staying the night there. Today we’re going to visit the bridge on the river kwai, and tomorrow we’re going elephant trekking and bamboo rafting! I’m really excited to experience all of it! Tomorrow night we come back to Bangkok and get picked up by our school coordinators and head to our permanent locations! I’m really excited to see what my school/accommodations are like! Although this week has gone by really slowly because we’ve been stuck inside doing training all week, I feel like my year here is going to go by suuuuper fast so I’m excited to get out there and start experiencing it before my year here is up!

Love you all!

at the royal palace with chelsea and jess

with one of the thai guards at the royal palace

sawatdee ka!

Ok, so since i dont have internet everyday i've been writing just on my computer and i'll upload posts when i have internet access. i wrote this a few days ago when i first got here! i'll try to update a little bit more current information later this week!

Thursday, 14 October, 2010

So I made it to Bangkok in one piece! Tuesdays was an extremely long day…Chelsea and I left LAX at 1:40am on Tuesday. The flight to hong kong was 14 ½ hours long and of course neither of us were able to sleep very much. The flight had a lot of good movies and the food was pretty decent so the 14 hours in the air weren’t too bad. I was of course stuck in the middle seat of the middle aisle between Chelsea and some other old man who just slept and the entire time. We pretty much skipped Tuesday entirely because once we arrived in hong kong it was 7:30am on Wednesday…it was weird to think that we had just time travelled and skipped an entire day while flying half way across the world! We didn’t have much time in between our flights so we had to rush to make it to our plane to take us to Bangkok…we had to go through security again in hong kong so that took a lot longer than expected. The flight to Bangkok was short and easy, only 2 hours, which seemed like a breeze compared to the flight we had just endured. When we arrived in Bangkok we had to go through immigration and get our pictures taken which we weren’t too thrilled about…we weren’t exactly looking out finest after travelling for so long... we got our luggage and went to the designated meeting place CIEE had told us to be at. When we got there 5 other girls were standing there so we went up and introduced ourselves. One of the girls, Olivia, said she had already been waiting a ½ hour and she had seen no one from CIEE or OEG…so we decided to wait a little longer thinking they might have just picked up a group from the airport and were on their way back….but we waited and waited and no one showed up. Finally another girl came up to our group and asked if we were with CIEE and told us that the group was meeting in a different location! Soooooo long story short, CIEE had told us the wrong meeting point. oh well. There was about 12 of us in the group who were getting picked up from the airport. I checked out how much luggage everyone else brought and I have to say I brought a lot less than a lot of people. A good portion on the group is only staying for 5 months and they brought like 2 huge pieces of luggage and just tons of stuff they all thought Chelsea and I were crazy for only have one suitcase for an entire year! Anyways, we got in 3 different vans and headed out to our hotel.

The louis tavern hotel, where we’re staying, was about an hour drive from the airport. When we got to the hotel and checked in we found out who are roommates were for the orientation. I’m rooming with another girl named Chelsea. She’s from Wisconsin and is teaching in suphan buri. There was about 6 of us girls that had all arrived at the same time and we decided to explore the area around our hotel a little bit. We were all exhausted from the long day(s) of travelling, but we had just got to Thailand and wanted to check it out a little bit. We walked up the main road in the area, soi 64, there’s not much here…just some little shops and lots of street vendors selling food. We ended up going to this restaurant and tried to order some food from the menu…..that was a disaster. We thought we were getting pad thai…. We ended up getting chicken wings. So we left the restaurant confused and still starving. We walked up the road a little more and saw a street vendor selling some yummy looking noodle dishes. So we pointed and smiled and she filled up little bags with the noodles. We went back to our hotel lobby and ate them happy to have some more substance in us. Afterwards we went to a little internet café to use their internet. At the hotel we could pay to use the internet for 200 baht an hour, which seemed a little excessive….even though that’s only like $6 for an hour…but someone had told us that at the internet café we could have 25 minutes for only 5 baht! Such a better deal. So we headed there to check our e-mail and let our parents know we were still alive! By then it was 7:00pm and we were all ready to crash. I know it seems silly but all of us were dead asleep by 7:30pm that night.

The next morning we woke up and headed downstairs for our breakfast at the hotels restaurant. It was a buffet style and there were lots of choices for us….some looked familiar some definently did not! They had normal American dishes like croissants, omelets, and fruit, but then they also had lots of rice dishes to choose from. I decided to have a little of both and had a croissant and fried rice. It was delicious. Next it was time to go to our first meeting of the orientation. There are about 80 of us here to teach English with CIEE. We’re from all over the US and we’re all going to be spread out all over Thailand. One funny thing I noticed is that 80% of the participants are females. There are about 7 guys here and 4 of them are here teaching with their girlfriends. I thought this was rather odd!

Phillip, the coordinator for our group gave us an overview of the orientation and just told us what to expect this week. Tomorrow we’re going to the Royal Palace which should be exciting and tomorrow we’re also meeting our school coordinators so I’ll be able to get a lot of my questions answered about what grade I’m teaching, when my breaks will be, how many hours a week I’ll be working etc. After Phillip gave us an overview of the week we broke up into two groups and we each went to different workshops. My first workshop was on Teaching Skills. Paul, our teacher, went over some of the expectations the schools are going to have for us, common pronunciation problems that thai kids often have, first day lesson plans and a lot more. He was really informative and gave some great tips. Our next session was on learning Thai. Our teacher, right now I can’t remember her name, taught us common words/phrases that we are going to need to know while were here and stressed the importance of really trying to learn the language and use it when we’re out in our cities. It’s really hard! Thai has:

44 consonants

22 vowels

5 tones

YIKES! Its going to be a challenge but I really want to learn thai and be able to use it while im out so I’m going to need a lot of practice.

At the end of the day some guy came to our group with cell phones! So I now have a thai cell phone number, so exciting.

Tonight, some of the girls and I went out for dinner. We went to this little place right off of the main road in town. We had a really hard time trying to tell the waitress what we wanted…just lots of pointing and nodding and puzzled faces on both our faces and hers. Whenever we order something we never know if they understood us or if we made any sense so it’s always surprising to see what we end up getting. Tonight we asked for 4 plates of chicken curry and 3 plates of rice…..we ended up with 7 plates of rice and these two bowls of like chicken soup/broth. It was really yummy, just not at all what we were expecting! After dinner we walked around a little bit and then called it a night. I’m writing this blog right now hoping to stay up till 9:30pm….wild I know. My body still hasn’t adjusted to this whole time difference thing and I’m still a little off. Tomorrow we’re going to the Grand Palace! I’m excited to start seeing some of the sites and really taking in Thailand. We’re also meeting our school coordinators tomorrow so I’m hoping to get some of my questions answered about what I’ll actually be doing at the Sunflower Trilingual School…..like what age will I be teaching, when are my holidays, how many hours a week will I be working, and will I have internet in my dorm room! (I think I already know the answer to the last question….i don’t think I will :( but oh well I’ll figure it out!)

Hopefully i can get some wifi soon so I can load up my picture so you guys can see what I’ve been up to the past few days!

LOVE YOU!

chelsea and i at LAX

some of the girls and i at dinner

in our room figuring out our new thai phones

less than a week till i leave!

so i'm moving to thailand in less than a week and i couldn't be more excited! i'm still not sure the exact details about what i'm going to be doing (well besides teaching) but here is the basic details of what i'm expecting:

• i leave on october 12th at 1:20am from LAX and arrive in bangkok the following day
• i will be in bangkok for a week for an orientation with CIEE (the group that i am doing this whole thing through)
• i'll be teaching at the sunflower trilingual school which is located in samut sakhon (about an hour outside of bangkok)
• it is a private school and has grades k-12--there are only about 400 students that attend the school and class sizes are around 20 students per class
• i will be living in the school dormitory; i get my own room and bathroom and the room has a/c!!
• i have 2 months off for my "summer break" from march to may and two of my amazing friends are going to come visit me and travel with me for the entire 2 months

the sunflower trilingual school

what i'm not sure about:

• the language...i have no idea what thai even sounds like so learning it should be interesting. im really hoping to learn a lot of thai while im over there and perhaps even find someone to get thai lessons from in exchange for me giving them english lessons
• im not sure if there are any others from the CIEE group that are going to be teaching at the same school as me. this makes me slightly nervous, but im sure it will be fine!
• how im going to pack all of my stuff. packing my life into 2 suitcases is very difficult and overwhelming. i want to take all of my stuff with me and im having serious issues trying to figure out what i dont need to bring with me. its going to be a long week trying to consolidate my life into 2 bags.

its starting to really hit me that i'm going to be leaving america for an entire year, and even though that seems like a crazy concept i'm really excited to begin this journey!