"It's the weekend. I don't know you. You do not exist."

Whadddupp!!! Ok so I try saying that to my students when they walk in my class and they just look at me funny and laugh so I stopped saying it even though it’s the first thing that comes to mind when a student says “Morning Teacher!”

The past 3 weekends have been very different, one was in Ayutthaya, the next was spent in good ole' Suphanburi, and this past weekend was Bangkok. 

November 3-4 Ayutthaya

First weekend in November, a group of us left early Saturday morning and hopped on a van to Ayutthaya which was once the ancient capitol city of  Thailand. Now there are a bunch of ruins left over from however many years ago and whatever, I'm not gonna go over the whole history of the place so Wikipedia it if you want.

So we get there after an hour and half van ride and just started walking around. Surprise, surprise, it was hot and we were sweating like hookers in church. I wore a white t-shirt....big mistake. There were so many ruins to visit and that we did! I have so many pictures of the different Wats (aka monastery temples) that I could not even tell you which ones are which. Saturday night after finally finding a hostel to stay at, we took a river cruise tour of the temples surrounding the river. The sun was setting and I got some really cool pictures of all the different ruins, temples, churches, etc, etc, etc. (yes I just referenced 'The King and I') So here are a few pictures of Saturday day/night around Ayutthaya. 

The next day we woke up relatively early and...yup visited more ruins! I have to be honest and say that once you've seen one Wat, you've kind of seen them all. . The best part of the day was the fact that we traveled by bicycles! I forgot how much I loved riding a bike. I don't know how long it's been since I rode one, but I loved it! It definitely helped with the heat beating down on us to be able to ride and feel a breeze. When we were riding to this one Wat, my friend Amanda started playing music on her phone and I felt just like the girls from the movie 'Now and Then', singing along to the songs, riding my bike (movie scene), not a care in the world! After exploring most of the city, we ventured back to Suphanburi for a much needed nap and I needed to finish planning my lessons for the week. Below are a few more pictures from Sunday biking excursion. 

November 9-11 Suphanburi

So the whole week leading up to this weekend, I was not feeling well at all. I could feel myself coming down with something and then on Friday, I was legit SICK! Literally everything ached, sore throat, runny nose, dizzy, fever, etc, etc, etc. Needless to say I did not make it to school that day.

Me on Friday = 

 I stayed home and basically slept all day and my friend Bridget was kind enough to go to the pharmacy for me to get me some medicine. Funny note on the medicine: when she went to the pharmacy, she got me some Tylenol and tried to explain to the store clerk what was wrong with me and the lady just handed her a random pack of  Amoxicillin. Apparently all those hard core antibiotics are over the counter here...Crazy.

I felt a lot better on Saturday, which meant I could attend and judge the local schools' Spelling Bee Contest! Basically our teachers here asked us if we could help out with these English competitions that the locals schools have. So we said sure why not. Never in my life did I think I would utter the words, "I can't this weekend, I'm judging a spelling bee contest", but that's exactly what I said. At the competition, we were asked to recite the words and sentences written on this piece of paper that they gave us to a classroom full of only the elite spellers. They then had to write the word that we recited down. Now saying each word and sentence out loud is a very tactical task. First you have to say the word and count in your head to 10 Mississippis then say the sentence and then repeat. Now considering I had just recently risen from my death bed, this task was not as simple as it seemed. I'm pretty sure I lost count of a couple Mississippis while waiting to say each word while sneezing and coughing at the same time. However, I did the best I could to say each word and sentence to the best of my abilities even though I probably came off sounding like nasalfied steve urkel. In the end, there was a winner and I congratulated her said my goodbyes to the other teachers and went home and got my butt back into bed. BEST SPELLING BEE EVERRRRR....

November 17-18 Bangkok
So this past weekend, I was in Bangkok Saturday and Sunday and basically did every American thing imaginable from the food to the overall activities. I’m not proud of it because culturally I gained nothing but this is the first time I'm missing Thanksgiving with my family back home and I just wanted to feel like an American for a day or two and do some American things. So….my all-American weekend consisted of 2 movies (Breaking Dawn part 2 and Skyfall 007) at the theater in Siam Square, shopping at the huge Siam Paragon mall , mint chocolate chip ice-cream, Starbucks, and McDonalds. Like I said, I’m not proud but I’m gonna be here for at least the next 10 months and every now and then I’m going to need to get my American fix. Sue me!

I barely took any pictures because I spent most of my
time at the movies but here is a pic of  khao san road aka 'farang central'

That's all for now...peace!

"It is better to travel well than to arrive" -Buddha