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

teecha jenna.

Ok so I’ve just had my first two classes as “teecha” (that’s how they pronounce it)…and I can already tell that this is going to be difficult. The kids don’t know any English and right now all they do is cry. I made a lesson plan and I thought I had plenty of things to do, but after 10 minutes I had run out of things to do! The students just stared at me and I had no idea what in the world I was going to do. Thankfully, Jameson, another teacher here at the kindergarten, was watching me for my first class and was there to help me out. He’s been teaching here for 2 years and had some games that the kids could play. I was done teaching by 11:00am…so for the rest of the afternoon I spent the morning looking for tips online for teaching ESL to pre-schoolers. There was some good stuff out there, but I think what it’s really going to come down to is just trial and error. I have another class that I teach in the afternoon. I teach k-1 from 2:30-3:30…this class is a little bit tougher because I have to hold their attention span for an hour! That might not seem like a lot, but it is! Trying to keep these little kids entertained is exhausting! So day 1 was difficult, but it can only get better.

**this first part was actually written yesterday, but I didn’t have time to post it, so I’m just including it in this post!

Let’s rewind and fill you in on all the excitement that was Bangkok this weekend. On Friday afternoon, the 3 other girls and myself went out to the store/bar that is right outside the gates of the school. We met some of the other English teachers there and we just sat around for a few hours having beers and talking about Thailand/America/Canada/life in general. All of the other teachers that I’ve met here so far are so nice and i’ve really enjoyed getting to know all of them. Well I guess we didn’t realize how long we had been there/how many beers we had drank, but it was pretty late by the time we left the store. The girls and I were starving so we thought we’d splurge and have pizza delivered! We spent waaaaaaaay too much money on the pizza, but it was so good! We were so tired that we were all passed out by 10:30 pm which is a little pathetic, but oh well.

Saturday we woke up early and the girls and I took a taxi into Bangkok. We took the taxi from right outside our school to right in front of our hostel for only 180bant (about $6!) such a good deal. I met up with my roommate from orientation, Chelsea, and we went off to the weekend market to meet up with some of our other friends.

Now this is no ordinary market….this is the chatuchak weekend market. This place is huge. Theres toooons of people there and anything you could imagine is for sale there. From shirts, to plants, bowls, plates, rugs, silk, hedgehogs, puppies, birds, food, EVERYTHING. We met up with some of the other girls and just oogled at all the things we could buy. A few of us ended up buying chang tank tops (chang is the natty light/keystore light of beer here) which I think only us farangs (foreigners) would ever imagine buying.

**side note** farang—this is the term thais use for foreigners…mainly white foreigners. Everywhere I go I can hear thais yelling “faaarang faaarang”. It happens all over. We stick out like sore thumbs—especially me with my blonde hair.**side not over

I could spend hours upon hours at that market (I probably will since I found out that I take hire a van to take me there from outside of our school for only 60 baht ($2!!!!), but the other girls were tired and wanted to explore Bangkok some more. So we piled into taxis and headed over to wat pho aka the reclining buddha. I had heard a lot about this, but wasn’t really sure what to expect besides another statue of a Buddha. But let me tell you….this place is impressive. I’ll let the pictures do the talking. Also I’ve reinstated a theme that I took up with my friend sarah when we were in Sweden….posing like the statues. I always feel so awkward just standing in front of things and smiling…this makes for more entertaining pictures! So I’ve brought this tradition with me to Thailand and I like it.

After the temple we wandered around a bit trying to find a water taxi to take us back to our hostel, but the river is suuuuper flooded right now and we couldn’t find a water taxi to take us, so we settled for a regular taxi. We got back to the hostel and we all showered and got dressed up and ready to go to…..the moon bar! We went to this super fancy bar that is located on the roof of a 60 story hotel in Bangkok. We had heard about this place in our lonely planet guidebooks (which all of us pretty much carry with us at all times) and decided to check it out.

The views of Bangkok from this place did not disappoint. The skyline was amazing and well worth the 400baht ($12) drinks. Of course me being a klutz, as soon as the waiter handed me a dish filled with wasabi pea things and other snacky items, I dropped it all over the floor. Schwoooooops.

After some amazing drinks, we headed out in search of food, but not before stopping by 7/11 to pick up some leos (a pretty decent cheap beer) for the road/dinner. (Thailand is kinda like vegas…you can walk down the street drinking alcohol). We went to a little street vendor on the side of the road and had some noodles and chicken and curry. We went from living the high life at a rooftop bar drinking pricy drinks, to drinking beers and eating on the side of the road.

After dinner we went to this place called coyotes. It was this Mexican food/bar place that just so happened to serve free margaritas for ladies on Saturday nights! DOWN! So we headed over to this place and it was all decorated out for Halloween! I had almost forgot all about Halloween, which is odd since I went to a college where our Halloween celebration is pretty much infamous. So we ordered a round of free margaritas, and a round of some extremely expensive chips and guacamole! YUM!

But the margaritas weren’t that good, so we decided to go to another 7/11 to get some more leos and to do some more wandering. To make a long story short, we spent the rest of the night wandering, getting lost, cramming 9 people on to 1 tuk-tuk, riding on the very back of a tuk-tuk (a close second favorite mode of transportation, right behind motorcycle taxis) and got taken to some very random places by strange tuk-tuk drivers. All in all, a very successful Saturday night.

The next morning we said our goodbyes and we all headed back to our respective towns. I’m always sad to say goodbye to everyone; i’ve gotten to be pretty good friends with some of the other girls and I wish we could all be in the same town, but oh well, I like where I am and it just makes it even more exciting when we get to meet up in new/fun locations!

Fast forward to today, my second day of teaching at the kindergarten school. Today went a lot better than yesterday and I’m beginning to feel a little more comfortable in front of the class.

Bradley, my roommate, and I are trying to find things to do to entertain us at night. We don’t have TV and the internet doesn’t always work in the evening so we’ve been trying to find things to entertain us, besides counting mosquito bites and the number of geckos on the wall. Thank goodness I packed a deck of cards with me! We’ve taken up playing cards at night and that has been our form of entertainment! So exciting.

Well I have to go teach my last class for the day! Love you all!

the girls and i at wat pho

just practicing our yoga poses

reclining buddha

skyline of bangkok from 60 flights ups

moon bar

riding on the back of the tuk-tuk