in the land of smiles.: 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!