in the land of smiles.: 3 weeks.

its hard to believe that i only have 3 weeks left of teaching this semester. it seems like just yesterday i was struggling through my first day of classes on my own and wondering how i was going to teach a bunch of thai babies. fast forward 4 months and i know love teaching my little kids and i am excited to see them and try to teach them english and some really great dance moves. i've gotten better at coming up with new ways to teach them and new games and lesson plans. its been tough and there have been LOTS of bad days, but i think im finally getting the hang of this thing.

this past week was another short week (shocking i know...) it was the chinese new year so tuesday the kindergarten spent the morning celebrating and teaching the students about it. thursday was actually new years so school was closed! bradley and i took the bus into bangkok and decided to check out chinatown; the place was packed with people. we grabbed some lunch and spent the afternoon wandering the streets and checking everything out. the street was blocked off so cars couldnt drive down it, so of course we assumed that there must be a parade happening! there were tons of people who were posted up sitting on the street so we decided that the parade must be happening soon, so we grabbed some changs and plopped down for some front row seats on the street and patiently waited for the parade to start! while sitting on the street i met the cutest little thai kids. it was a little brother and sister who were about 6 and 10 years old. i hung out with them for a while and played some games with them that i had played with my afternoon class and they were adorable and so much fun! the little girl at one point took my camera from me and started taking pictures of her family (who were sitting right next to us), of her brother and of me! she was a lot of fun and made our time waiting pass by so much more quickly. well one hour went by....then another...till finally we saw police cars slowly coming down the street with a big car filled with people following it. we got suuuper excited and thought that HM the king was going to be driving through to start off the parade and we were going to get to see him! well the car passed by us and we thought we saw someone who looked kinda like the king so we got suuuuper excited. we later found out that it was not the king (bummer) buuut the princess of thailand was in the car so at least we saw some sort of thai royalty. annnnnd that was the extent of the parade. there was no cool chinese dragon things parading down the street, no performers, no music....nothing. we had sat on the road for almost 3 hours to get a brief glimpse of the princess. oh well.

we then figured that there would at least be some fire works so we headed up to a rooftop bar in chinatown and grabbed another chang and waited for the show to begin. we waited...and waited...but no fireworks! such a bummer. we were expecting a much bigger party to happen in china town, but we were out of luck. oh well. we got the day off from school so i guess it was a good day.

the weekend was spent just hanging out in bangkok, hitting up the weekend market and getting some amazing shoes and relaxing. katie's parents were in town visiting so we all got together and had drinks friday night which was a lot of fun! meeting her parents and talking with them got my super excited for my parents to get here....only 2 1/2 more months till i get to show them around! i'm really excited for the next few weeks....2 weeks till the girls and i take a trip to koh chang for a long weekend, then the next weekend alysha and kianna get here and our 2 months of traveling begin! aaaaanddd less than a month till the big 23 birthday! so much to look forward to! i have a feeling the next few months are going to go by suuuuuuper fast.....

love you all!