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!