A Very Gangnam Christmas

Greetings all!

I'm writing this blog knee deep in the Christmas candy my family sent me. As appreciative as I am for it, it is bad news bears when I'm around free candy at arms length. If any of you reading this know me or ever in your life came in contact with me, you would know that I LOVE SWEETS. I love them so much, my self control barometer breaks and the next I know there's candy wrappers everywhere, cake crumbs on my face eh...it's not pretty. But enough about my gluttony ways...this blog is about  my Christmas in Thailand! Fa-ra-ra-ra-ra! (that's how Thai people sing Fa-la-la-la because homies can't say their L's correctly but don't worry that's why I'm here!)

Christmas was quite interesting here. You see the thing about the Thai teachers here is that even though they are really nice, they aren't very informative when it comes to letting us 'farang' English teachers know what goes on at this school. Up until a few days before Christmas we had no idea what was going happen that day or what we were supposed to do. So we finally just asked and they were like, "Oh yeah you will have a table at the Christmas carnival and you can do whatever you want". Um...okay thanks for letting us know. So we ultimately decided to have a craft table where kids could make snowflakes and Christmas ornaments. So that was our first clue to what the day would bring...a carnival oh but it was so much more.

We arrive at school and are each given big bags of candy to throw/pass out to the students during the morning assembly. Next, we are escorted into the auditorium that is decorated like crazy for Christmas. Below are some photos I took that fateful Christmas day.

Christmas 2012 at Kanchanapisek Secondary School

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My M.4/2 students drew this...I'm concerned about their views of Santa

boy you better werrrk it

So many Santas

Omg it's Christmas y'all! 

kimono dressing table

Gangnam Style action shot

family photo:)

We are then seated by the stage and greeted by the principle who is dressed up like Santa Claus. Then BAM! Christmas performances galore!

***I tried to upload videos of the performances on this blog but my stupid computer wouldn't let me or stupid me couldn't figure it out. So if I can get it load on here then I will come back and try to put them on...sorry***

Silly me, I don't know why I thought Christmas would be a day I thought I would not have to hear 'Gangnam Style'. Look I get it, Gangnam Style is all the rage these days but hasn't it had enough of it's 15 minutes of fame yet? I mean are these people ever going to get sick of it?? Cause I sure am!

Christmas night our awesome coordinator, Watana, took us to a Christmas dinner where we had some delicious food...

Not my usual Waller Christmas Mexican dinner but a great substitute:)

Even though it didn't feel like Christmas, the spirit was alive and there. It was a great day but the best part would have to be my Skype date with my family:)

"He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree."
Roy L. Smith

"Cause We're the 3 Best Friends that Anybody Could Have!"

Hi! Ok so I'm really behind on blogging...about to write about happened 3 weeks ago so here it goes...

December 1st-3rd: Ko Samet (para-para-paradise)

Alright so on Saturday the 1st, Bridget, Eric, I and our school coordinator, Wattana, went to Wattana's friend's English camp to help out. The camp was located right outside of Bangkok. I don't feel like writing about it because so much other fun stuff went on this weekend so you can read about it in Bridget's blog english camp. (sidenote: Bridget updates her blog a lot more frequently than I do and sometimes I make appearances in it so feel free to read her blog as well...you're welcome Bridget)

We finished with English Camp around 3 or 4...I don't remember the exact time. Our coordinator, Wattana dropped us off at the bus stop so we could begin our journey to Ko Samet! This place is so beautiful, even my instagram pictures won't do it justice. Our bus ride was a couple hours and dropped us off near a dock where the ferrys and speed boats travel to the island of Ko Samet. We got there too late to take a cheap ride on the ferry but at that point we just wanted to get there and be able to wake up on the beach. So we forked over some extra cash and took a speed boat there. The speed boat was a short ride but it was dark by the time we got there. We made the boat take us to the cheapest beach because we is poor teachas. So we checked into this cheap hostel and by that time were ready to explore the beach and in desperate need of a drink. At night there were so many different bars along the beach. We hopped around a few of them and even encountered some fire twirlers...

par-teeeey

WTF?

Bridget is like so excited...

After walking around and exploring some of the beaches, we got really tired and hit the hay. I have to say I was not prepared for what the next day would bring...

So we woke early the next morning and had breakfast on the beach. The tide was so high, the waves would come up to where we were sitting. After breakfast, we went and put on our bathing suits and laid out/took a few dips in the water for an hour or so. I can't remember the last time I laid out in the sun, it felt so nice. I mean lounging in a chair, having the waves come to meet your feet, drinking out of coconut...in my opinion it doesn't get much better than that.

We wanted to explore some of the island that day and see a couple of the other beaches to pick out a new hostel to stay in for the night. Bridget had read that a few of the beaches in the southern part of the island were really nice but also affordable. I thought okay, great we'll hike a little bit move from beach to beach and settle on one. Welp...it ended up being a legit jungle trekking experience. We moved from beach to beach each one looking more beautiful than the one before so what did we do?? We kept hiking duh! Now this would be fine except for the fact that a lot of the trails(if you want to call them that) that led to each beach were both forest covered and contained really steep rocks so we had to climb to get from each beach aaaand we were wearing sandals aaaand I had my (heavy) backpack on aaaaaaand it was hot aaaaaand I was starving at this point because we hadn’t had lunch aaaaaaaand now I'm gonna stop saying aaaaaaand. I was getting pretty tired to say the least. I honestly did not think we were ever going to find a beach to settle on. I felt like Katniss in Hunger Games, I was tired, hungry, injured (I scrapped my foot), this close to making a bow and arrow and hunting for some food. I believe I told Eric (who kept leading us further and further on this jungle trek) that if we didn't find a beach soon, I was gonna go Hannibal Lecter on his ass and eat him first.  We stopped a few times to swim in the different beach coves. The views of the island were unlike anything I've ever seen. I kept looking at Eric and Bridget and we were all like "Is this real life?" 

On one of the trails we found puppies to play with! 

Found this amazing swing in the water and had a "photo swinging montage"

I just like to instagram everything ok! Gah!

So we finally got to this awesome beach and it was like picking out a wedding dress...we just knew it was our beach. We looked at the overwhelmingly beautiful view, looked at each other and said "THIS IS IT" Michael Jackson style (R.I.P. MJ).  So we started to head to this beautiful paradise of a beach only to be stopped by a security guard right before. He said that the following beach was a private resort and that we couldn't set foot on there. Now at this point in my head, I was screaming: “NOOOOOO! GOD IS SO CRUEL!” and I’m pretty sure Bridget and Eric were thinking the same thing. I mean this was after 3+ hours of hiking from beach to beach which was fun but at this point all we wanted to do was find shelter and food. Did I mention I was hungry? Because I was! The security guard led us to the outside of the resort where we found that there was nothing but hills on hills on hills for us walk on to the next beach. Oh did I mention that there were a lot of hills we had to trek up? Because there were! 

This is a lovely picture of me (courtesy of Bridget) 
walking up the steepest hill I've ever encountered...
p.s. my shorts are wet from my bathing suit geez

Me = 

The next beach was fortunately not private but unfortunately out of our price range. We were lucky enough to find a truck that took us back to one of the beaches we traveled through earlier. We found a hotel hostel that we could afford and I could FINALLY PUT MY PACK DOWN! Seriously I was not prepared for the trekking excursion so next time when I'm packing for a trip I'll need to remember the phrase: "Less is more...". The beach we settled on, Ao Thian, was really pretty and it was nice that we were staying on a Sunday night because a)We ended up getting a discount on the room and b) Barely any tourists were there. We went to this restaurant where each tables were huts on a the pier. We literally sat for hours and just hung out, ate, and had a few drinks. Then, we went swimming later that night and had fun with Bridget's waterproof camera. Later we went back to our room, changed, and ended up at the hotel beach bar just chilling, talking, and played a few rounds of poker. The beds at the hotel were amazing or at least that's how it felt because I was exhausted! 

The next morning after waking up from a glooooorious sleep, we had an all American breakfast overlooking the beach. We went swimming for a hour or so before it was time to head back to the main beach to get picked up to go home. 

Breakfast...:)

Can I just say that I am extremely lucky that Bridget and Eric are super chill and never make me feel like a third wheel. 
Because otherwise this would happen...

All in all this was a pretty awesome weekend! I had so much fun and came back to Suphanburi fully relaxed, rejuvenated and ready to start the next week. So when I was in the middle of teaching a really bad class and the kids would not shut up...I would just close my eyes, take a deep breath and picture the beautiful views I had the pleasure of witnessing this past weekend and pretend I was back there. Feet in the sand, hand holding a coconut, scanning the scene for a picture to put on instagram...:)

"Life is a beach and I'm just playing in the sand"

p.s. Christmas here was interesting...more thoughts on it in my next blog which probably won't be until after new years

Loi Krathong....Down by the River

ERRRROOO! I'm writing this as I sit in the teacher's lounge. I'm done with all my classes for the day and now I'm just waiting for school to end. Only one more hour til the end of the day.........HOLLA!

So if you've ever heard or read or seen anything about Thailand, you would know that Thai people love celebrating some shiz! Like...a lot. The whole month of December is full of holiday celebrations. Last Wednesday was the king's birthday and that meant no school! I got to sleep in which was awesome, but sleeping in for me here is no later than 10 am. It's really disappointing because in high school and college I could sleep much later but now I guess I'm a "grownup". Gross.

Anyway, a couple Wednesdays ago ( November 28th) was Loi Krathong! We had school that day but it was still a fun time. If you don't know what Loi Krathong is allow me to explain via wiki and my own personal description. It is a festival celebrated annually throughout Thailand on the full moon night of the twelfth lunar month, the tide in the rivers is highest and the moon at its brightest. 'Loi' means 'to float,' while 'kratong' refers to the lotus-shaped object which can float on the water. So every year, all the Thai gather at a river with their krathongs in hand, light a candle on it, silently make a wish, and release their krathongs in the water. People also release 'khom loy' (floating lanterns) into the night sky to celebrate. If you ever see people do this at weddings these days, they totally stole this from the Thai culture. Below are some pics you might recognize of the celebration.

Releasing the krathongs in the river

Chang Mai festival of lights

That night, one of the secretaries at our school, Jenny, offered to take us to the Loi Krathong carnival in Suphanburi. At the festival, there were all these elaborate krathongs on display that were so fancy and creative. Here are a few pictures I took of them. 

Bridget and I and the krathong artists

These are just ridiculous...

There was also a pageant for Thai children to participate in aka "Toddlers and Tiaras...Thai style". Their makeup was insane and their costumes were so colorful.   

This pic does not do justice to the amount of make up I saw on these kiddos...

Thailand's "Honey Boo Boo" child

Below are pictures of Me and my krathong, making my wish and releasing it into the river. Fingers crossed that my wish comes true;)

1) Jenny and I 

2) My Beautiful Krathong
3) Bridget and I and our Krathongs

1) Lighting my krathong
2) In line to release and make a wish
3) I'm pissed that people keep cutting in front of me...not cool
4) Releasing my krathong in the river...

We ended up meeting up with a lot of the other English teachers and they had two lanterns that their students had given them. They were nice enough to let us partake in the flying lantern release.

After the festival, Bridget, Eric and I headed over to some of the local street fairs and got our grub on. We didn't really eat dinner before the festival so we were hungry. 

p.s. The beer here sucks...I'd give anything for an amber ale at this point.

Loi Krathong is a great holiday celebration here and I had so much fun participating in the festivities. Can't wait to celebrate some more holidays with all my peeps here in Thailand!

“Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we'll die” -Dave Matthews 

Good lord I can't believe I just put that fratastic Dave Matthews quote on this...oh well in this case it's true! Until next time...

I am Thankful For...

I'm posting this on Thanksgiving to list just a couple things that I am currently thankful for:

1) Water (especially here in ThaiHOTland)

2) USD to Baht currency exchange

  I went from this...

To this...

3) My apartment AC (nuff said)

4) My fellow school English teachers, couple Bridget and Eric who are super cool for never making me feel like this....

5) Instagram for making my photography skills look better than they actually are.

6) Coconut smoothies, coconut ice-cream, coconut milk, coconut juice, coconut shavings, coconut, coconut, COCONUT!



7) Cloudy days (aka not heat stricken weather)

8) Tiger Balm for healing my massive itchy bug bites.



9)  My water jar heater that heats the water for my instant coffee in the morning.



10) And last but not least, my friends and family...I love and miss you dearly.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

P.S. I went a little GIF crazy but I don't even care! 

"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

School: On Tuesdays We Wear Pink!

Sawatdee Kha!

Well I've been in Thailand almost a month and every day I seem to be experiencing something new. Teaching is both wonderful  in a "I'm making a difference in their lives" kind of way and not so wonderful in a "I wish had a taser gun right now" kind of way. Don't get me wrong, the kids are cute and I really like teaching but sometimes they drive me so crazy, I want to pull my hair out I want to pull their hair out:) 

I teach 18 classes a week at Kanchanapisek Secondary School. Each class has around 45 to 50 students and 55 minutes long however they never start or end on time. I'm confused as to why we even have bells. I teach M1 which are 12/13 year olds and M4 which are 15/16s year olds. Although all the kids look way younger than they actually are. The 12/13s look like they should be strapped to a stroller and the 15/16s are equivalent to American middle schoolers. All in all I see about 900 kids a week. So as much as I want to I hope these kids aren't expecting me to remember their name/life story cause chances are it ain't gonna happen! Below is a pic of my fellow teacher Bridget and I before school one day. 

Back to school...back to school...

Some interesting things I learned in my first 2 weeks of teaching English...

1) Thai student names

• Here in Thailand the students are given nicknames so we "farang" foreign teachers who would otherwise have no shot in hell correctly pronouncing their real Thai names because they are straight up ridiculous. I have this theory that people here get a bag of letters and throw them on the ground and whatever that spells out is somebody's name. These nicknames aren't your average nicknames either but I personally think they're awesome. Here are a few my favorite/common nicknames I come across in class: 

1. Ice
2. Pear
3. Inkjet (my fav)
4. Nice
5. Porn
6. Earth
7. Boss
8. M
9. Om
10. Nut
11. Oops
12. Best
13. Mild
14. Tar
15. Donut

2. It is not frowned upon to nap in the teacher lounge. 

• The first week I was surprised to see how many teachers nap at their desk when they're not teaching and I frickin love it! Don't worry I didn't sleep at all my first week at my desk because I wanted to make a good impression and show the other teachers that I'm not some lazy American but now that I'm almost 3 weeks in they all know me well enough to know that I am a lazy American and who doesn't love a 10 min siesta during a hard's day work!? Below is picture I took of my fellow teacher Wanadee eating another teacher's fruit while she enjoys her afternoon nap.

3. "On Tuesdays we wear pink!" 

They really do! (Mean Girls movie reference ha)

4. They weren't lying when they said this was the "Land of Smiles" 

• All the students, teachers, janitors will always smile at you and say hello/sawatdee kha. My cheeks were sore the first week from smiling so much.

5. Thai students love to flatter you...

• The students are always telling me and my fellow American English teachers how beautiful and handsome we are even when we know they are lying because last I checked a sweaty, red in the face, marker smeared on their face isn't considered to be all that pretty but whatever. They suck up more than your average kiss up student. At first when I would hear: "Teacher, teacher beautiful!" I would just roll my eyes, smile and be all "Oh stop it you!" but now I'm like "Stop lying to me! Get to class!" 

Also mad props to this kid, he gets an "A" for Ass Kissing 

6.  Never underestimate the power of Bieber

• I discovered in my second week how much these kids love to listen to music. I realize now that pretty much the only way I can get my kids to work quietly is if I bribed them with music. I tell them I will play music if they shut the you know what up! And eureka! It totally works. My class playlist includes the classic hits of today's best teen bop pop. And if it keeps them quiet, I'm totally down to rock out to the ever artistic One Direction, Justin Bieber, and Gangnam Style.

All in all, I'm really enjoying learning how to be a teacher by...being a teacher. The kids never cease to make me smile because well they basically laugh at everything I say and it's contagious. There are good days and there are bad days, but it's new and it's exciting and I'm enjoying the ride.That's all for now! My next post will be about my fun weekend in Ayutthaya...so stay tuned for more teaching and traveling in Thailand adventures with yours truly! 

“Think left and think right and think low and think high 

Oh! the Thinks you can think up if only you try!” –dr. seuss