in the land of smiles.: 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!