second semester.

So after a whirlwind of traveling for 2 months it felt weird to come back to my little dorm in samut sakhon and to put away my backpack for a while.  I was literally back in my room for a night of sleep before I packed another much smaller backpack to head back into Bangkok to meet up with my parents!  I’ve gone a while without seeing my parents before, I went 5 months when I was living in Sweden, and I wouldn’t see them for a few months at a time while I was in Santa Barbara, but I was going on almost 7 months of not seeing them so I was so excited when I saw them!  I met them at their hotel and actually got there before them so I had to anxiously wait in the lobby watching the elevator waiting for them to come!  After an hour or so of waiting I saw them coming out of the elevator and ran to them!  It was great seeing them and I was excited to show them around Bangkok….and by showing them around BKK, I mean excited that they came with a tour group that was going to take them to all the sites while I could enjoy their A/C, television, and shower while I hung out in their hotel while they saw temples.  It worked out great.  I did put on my tour guide hat a few times for them and took them to some of my favorite restaurants and sites.  While they were here their tour took them to kanchanaburi and Ayutthaya, but since I have already been there I decided to head to koh samet to meet up with some friends while they were gone.  After a few days apart we met back up in Bangkok and I took my parents to a rooftop bar that I had been to with some of my girlfriends months and months ago.  The bar is known for its amazing views of Bangkok since its on top of a 64 story building, and we were not disappointed, the views were great!  Off in the distance we could see a lightening storm light up the sky! It was great, mom acted like she had never seen a lightening storm before and was amazed by it :)

The next morning we woke up early and headed to the airport for our flight to chiang mai.  We spent the next 3 days wandering around the city, checking out some of the markets, getting caught in sudden rain storms, and even took part in an amazing cooking class where we made some DELICIOUS food.  It was a great break from BKK and I think my parents really enjoyed it there.  On mother’s day we flew back to Bangkok and I had to say goodbye to my parents at the airport, they were catching a flight back to the states in a few hours and I had to get back to school to get ready to go to school the next day.  It was hard to say bye, but it was so great to see them and im so happy they made the journey out here to see me!

So what have I been doing now that I’m back in school and half way through my second semester of teaching?

Second semester has started and I’m back at teaching Pre-school.  I love my new students, some of them are really bright, and while others aren’t so bright (yet) they are adorable so I love it.  In addition to these students I’m also teaching one level of K1, which I love!  It’s a lot of the students I taught last semester so I’m glad I get to have them again!  I’m having an easier time coming up with lesson plans this semester and games to play with the students which makes things easier.  I’ve also taken up tutoring a few nights a week with one of my students’ mothers’ employees which has been nice to make a little extra money!  I’m having a hard time believing that this semester is already ½ way over!  I only have a little over 2 months left teaching and I know its just going to fly by!

In addition to that little thing called work I’ve also managed to get some traveling and fun in to… I’ve been back to koh samet 4 times, spent lots of weekends in Bangkok meeting up with friends, celebrating birthdays, and relaxing!  Some of the real highlights have been Allie’s birthday where a big group of us girls met up and went to a ladyboy cabaret show in Bangkok!  It was amazing, the girls were beautiful and they know how to put on a show!  Weekends in koh samet which is probably one of my favorite places in Thailand.  A short weekend in Phuket with the core4 aka liz, ciana, allie and i.  We had bought tickets on airasia back in February and we were able to get roundtrip tickets down to phuket for $30! Such a steal!  Allie’s Dad generously offered to put us up in the Westin Hotel in Phuket and we were spoiled the entire weekend!  We had our own private pool right outside of our room, which was in addition to the 3 infinity pools that the hotel has, super comfy beds that were filled with amazing pillows, a rain shower, and delicious food!  It was a great weekend filled with tanning, swimming, shopping, talks on the beach, and going out in patong…none of us were ready to leave Sunday afternoon!

 ready to go out with the girls for allie's birthday

 lady boy cabaret show

 on our flight to phuket!

 our own pool outside our room in phuket

 night out in patong

Annnnnd that finally brings us to the present!  This week is short one because Buddhist Lent begins on Friday, so we have tomorrow off and Monday so I’m heading down to koh chang this weekend with Katie for what should be a relaxing long weekend!  To honor Lent with the students the school took all of the students from both the kindergarten and from the primary/secondary school to the temple near us where we brought offerings for the monks.  Bradley and I were dressed up in the traditional thai outfits again and everyone wanted to take our pictures again.  It was fun and I love being able to be a part of the thai culture.

 And on a final note…….my ticket home has been purchased!  I will officially be back in California on October 31^st 2011!  I have mixed feelings about it all, but I know when the time comes I’ll be happy to be home and ready to eat lots of cheese and Mexican food :) oh and see my family too!

Love you all!

cambodia: angkor whaaaat.

So after a long bus ride back to Bangkok we arrived at MoChit bus station, which fortunately for us was exactly where we needed to be to catch a bus to the thai/Cambodian border!  So he went to buy tickets and got on the first bus available!  The bus to the border was easy, but once we got to the border we had to hire a tuk-tuk to take us to where we got our visas.  At first he took us to this little shop and we immediately realized it was a scam so we told the driver, NO, take us to the border!  He again took us to a different shop closer to the border that at first we though was legit, but we later found out it wasn’t and we had paid more than we needed to.  Oh well, mai pen rai.  We crossed the border and got a free shuttle to the tourist bus station where we paid way more than we should have for the 2 ½ hour ride to Siem Reap.  The 4 of us took a car/taxi there instead of taking the bus, which would have taken longer.  We had been traveling for a while and just wanted to get there so we opted for the faster mode of transportation.  We had the driver drop us off at a hotel called the Garden Village where we ended up staying for the next 3 nights.  They had to put a mattress on the floor for Chelsea to sleep on, but we all fit into one room!  We were exhausted after our long night/day of traveling so we all just grabbed some dinner, got our mani/pedi on, and called it a night!

The next morning we woke up early, excited to check out one of the wonders of the world…ANGKOR WAT.  We got a 3 day pass so that we could spread out our temple time and not try to cram it all into one day.  So we spent 3-4 hours each day checking out the massive Angkor area.  We hired a tuk-tuk driver each day to drive us around and show us the different temples.  We could have rented bikes and rode around by ourselves, but it was sososososo hot that we decided getting driven around was a much better plan.  We didn’t go to every single temple, but we saw A LOT.  We saw the temple where some of the movie Tomb Raider was filmed, we saw huge temples with massive trees growing in and around the ruins, we saw some temples that were almost completely torn down and in pieces, and we saw some that were still pretty well intact.  On our last morning we woke up early and hired a tuk-tuk at 4:30am to take us to our last temple on the tour….Angkor Wat.  We had saved the best for last and were going early in hopes of catching an amazing sunrise over the temple.  Unfortunately it was cloudy that morning and we didn’t get to see an amazing sunrise, but Angkor Wat was still unbelievable.  It was crazy walking around there and thinking about where I was and how much history had gone one in that place.  We wandered around the enormous grounds and took tons of pictures.  The one disappointing part was that a large portion of one of the towers was covered in scaffolding, but oh well, we just tried to not get that part in our pictures.  It was amazing to see one of the wonders of the world and I hope I can see a lot more of them during my travels.

While the temples were AMAZING, the hard part of being there was all the little Cambodian kids that come up to you and ask you to buy things from them.  They would literally swarm us as soon as we got out of a temple and just ask us over and over to buy bracelets, water, postcards, or whatever else they had.  I felt bad and wanted to help all of them out, but then its hard because you can’t help them all, and how do you chose who to buy from?  It was hard.  There were these little girls whole looked like they couldn’t be older than 5 who could ask if we wanted to buy 10 postcards in at least 3 different languages.  She just kept repeating it over and over, I’m sure that’s the only phrase she knows, but it was crazy how they have been trained to do it.

When we weren’t checking out temples and ruins, the girls and I spent our time wandering around to different markets, getting tons of $5 massages, getting massages from blind people, eating delicious ice cream from this place called blue pumpkin, drinking Angkor beer, and staying out of the heat as much as possible.  After our morning at Angkor Wat, we came back to our hotel, packed our bags and boarded a bus for our next stop…phnom phem.

It took about 6 hours to get to phnom phen, but it was fairly uneventful bus ride.  The only bad thing was that kianna got really sick on the bus, but fortunately she was able to get 2 seats to herself so she could have at least a little room to spread out and sleep on the ride.  As soon as we stepped off the bus we had at LEAST 6 tuk-tuk drivers running towards us yelling at us and offering us rides.  So overwhelming!  There was this one Cambodian guy who spoke perfect English with a slight Australian accent who seemed to know what he was talking about so we decided to ride with him and have him help us find a place to stay.  He took us to this hotel he knew of that was centrally located and was a decent price.  We stayed at a place called LongLin House.  The room only had 3 beds, but they were slightly bigger than your average twin beds, so we just pushed all 3 beds together and made one big bed for all 4 of us to share.  Kianna wasn’t feeling well and we were all pretty tired so we just got some dinner and crashed for the night.

We woke up the next morning and called the tuk-tuk driver who had driven us the night before to take us around the city.  None of us really knew anything about Cambodia, besides it being the home of Angkor Wat, and had no clue about the history of the Cambodians.  Our tour around phhom phen really opened our eyes to the terrible things that have happened in Cambodia.  Our first stop was at the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek, an extermination camp where 17,000 people died between 1975-1978.  The hardest thing to believe about this place was that all of this happened only 35 years ago…  There is a big memorial stupa, which contains 8,000 skulls that were dug up from the massive graves at the fields.  The place was really overwhelming.  After wandering around the grounds and checking out the museum we headed out in our tuk-tuk to the Tuol Sleng genocide museum.  This was once a high school that got turned into a prison by Pol Pot’s forces in 1975.  It was known as S-21 and became the largest center of detention and torture in the country.  Between 1975-1978 more than 17,000 people were held here and were take to the killing fields.  The khmer rouge kept intense records of each prisoner so there are photographs everywhere of the prisoners which was hard to see.  After our intense morning at these places our tuk-tuk driver dropped us back off at our hotel.  Chelsea and Kianna weren’t feeling too well so they stayed at the hotel and rested while Alysha and I went out in search of lunch.  We ended up eating at this little Mexican place and then treated our selves to some amazing fro yo before heading back to the hotel.  We spent the rest of the night relaxing and at dinner alongside the river while the rain POURED outside.

We spent our next few days wandering around phnom phen, checking out the Russian market, eating lots of food, trying unsuccessfully to go to the Royal Palace and the Silver Pagoda (they were closed the first time we went, and the 2^nd time they said we weren’t dressed properly because we had flip flops on and had tied our sarongs around our waists to be long skirts…), and shopping.  Our last day in Cambodia was Easter and since our bus wasn’t leaving till late that night we decided to treat ourselves to a nice Easter linner.  We had been scoping out places to go all week, but we finally decided that was right across from the river called Pacharan.  It was a Spanish restaurant so we got a delicious pitcher of sangria, a skillet full of seafood paella, and a few different tapas that we all shared.  It was delicious and a perfect last meal to end our journey together.  After dinner we headed back to our hotel, showered and changed into our bus clothes and headed on our way back to Bangkok!

When we got back to Bangkok we all were heading our separate ways….i was heading back to school to drop off my stuff before my parents arrived in BKK the next day, Kianna was heading back to the states, and Chelsea and Alysha were heading out the next day to Bali!  It was an amazing 2 months traveling with these girls and I’m so so so happy they made the journey out here.

SO it only took me 3 months but I finally caught up my 2 months of travelling!  It took a while but its done!  Now I just need to catch up on the new school semester, my weekends of travel, and my life since I’ve been back…..hopefully that won’t take as long!

Love you all!