English Camp

I already have a feeling this blog is going to have tangents. Just...so you know.

That being said, I'm going to go on a brief, clarifying tangent. I want you to briefly look back on field trips you had in high school. Do you remember how often attendance was taken, how you were never allowed to be alone, and how you could never ever go in water aside from a shower, or have co-ed sleeping quarters? Yeah? Ok, think the opposite for Thai field trips. We took students to see a movie a few months ago, and they all lined up and then just scattered--some jumping on motorbikes, others walking, others taking the bus or a taxi, and others who probably just went home. It's just up to them to get there. Insanity. Now, this works. I'm not shit-talking Thai field trips. I'm merely pointing out the difference.

So, English Camp. Don't let the name fool you, there is very little English spoken on this 3-day excursion. We took our LVT (language major) students, levels 1-3, with higher vocation students there to be our helpers. Going into English camp, I was by NO means looking forward to it. I had heard just terrible things about it, and that the students were awful and that it was just going to be three days of no fun. I was pleased to find that I didn't feel that way. Would I ever want to do it again? No, probably not. But it was so much more fun than I had expected.

So we left Bangkok at "7" am (The "" are because in Thai time that really means like 9:30) and headed south. We went to a resort on the Ocean (that might not be true, it might have been the Golf of Thailand.) that was about six hours south of Bangkok. We stopped at a Temple on the way there, but I don't think I was appropriately dressed and I was starving, so I didn't really look around there too much. It was pretty though. Lots of mountains. We got to the resort and everyone grabbed their luggage and then we found our rooms. The teachers had a house, the older students had a house and the rest of the students were in the hotel part of the resort. Worked out pretty well, actually. So then we sat around. Mostly what English Camp consisted of was waiting. Always freaking waiting. So everyone got changed and we met back at the beach for games and silliness. We played tug-of-war. And a lot of it. I hate tug-of-war. But it was fun to watch the students. So then we all jumped in the water and played in the waves. That night there wasn't much planned except for some stupid games that had absolutely nothing to do with the English language. Then all the students got drunk. Hi-Laaaaaarious. That means hilarious. I thought I would hate drunk students, but boy was I wrong. First of all, they're all drunk so they're super nice and generous. Especially generous with their whiskey. So we kinda toured a bunch of different rooms, said hi to the students we like. The first years, who are only like 15 got super drunk and it was just....it was just really really funny.

The next day we went to a temple that was way up in the hills over looking the water. It was stunning. There was a little temple thing at the entrance, with a huge statue. It was awesome. Then if you walked for like ten miles and up fifty-one thousand stairs, there was a huuuuuuge temple. Once again, I wasn't appropriately dressed, so I couldn't go in, but I hung out outside, and it was gorgeous. That afternoon we had to play more stupid games, but this time the teachers ran the games so there was actual English being spoken. I got tired of my game by the end and just had students tell me a word in English, but it went well overall.

The second night was "fancy night." Students got all dressed up, which was fun and cute, and there was a talent show thing. Teachers sang, students sang, students danced, students dressed in drag...there was a lot going on. But it was silly. Then the teachers had to do a fashion show. And anyone who knows me can probably guess how I felt about that. If you don't, I'll tell you. Barf. Barf is how I feel about that kind of thing. So Nick dressed as Harry Potter and I was Hermione. So that was awesome. After our fashion show we [teachers] sat on the beach and were given pieces of yarn or string or something. The students then came up to us and kneeled and we tied the things around their wrists. It was just like a respect/good wishes/thanks type thing. It was really pretty, actually. There was also a seafood buffet that night and drinking and general merriment. The next day we sat around for about 13.6 hours and finally made it home. So, I guess that's just the gist of it. I'm not sure how this got so long. Sorry 'bout that. But here are some pictures:

[One of my favorite students, Mai. She's just wonderful]

]Teachers playing tug-of-war. Terrible]

[Clearly more concentrated on smiling for the picture than on the game.]

[The class these kids are in makes my head nearly explode. But these kids are okay.]

[Big ass statue]

[IEP, higher vocational, kids]

[View from the temple]

[Foreign Language Teachers! L to R: Nick, me, Nahoko (Japanese), Ploy, Liu (Chinese) Som, Jill, and Joel]

[Nick and Ploy]

[Teachers. Stairs. You know.]

[This is Ching. He never speaks or does classwork. I just leaned he knew any English at all. And he spends his class time messing with his hair. But for some reason he's pretty much one of my favorite students. I've heard him say probably a total of 15 words.]

[This girl got best dressed. Whaaaaat?? The "dress" didn't even have any sort of back to it. You stay classy, CSB.]

[Hermione and Harry. Notice the branches. I mean wands]

[Thai midnight snack: grilled whole fish and cockles. yum. not. ]

Oh, did I mention that every single meal was fish or seafood? NOT COOL.

Ok, this is long as shit. I'm going on vacation in a couple weeks, maybe I'll write another after that. Ok bye.

I don't have a name for this season.

Bangkok is weather weird. The first few weeks after I got back from England it was goooorgeous here. However, right before I got back most of the city flooded and then it got VERY hot again--for example, Thanksgiving was well into the 90s. Anyway, with this heat came the mosquitos. They swarm everywhere, even inside. It's straight up disgusting. I've been getting eaten alive for a few weeks now, but nothing compared to what happened to me just a mere 24 hours ago. I have a friend who is moving, so we went to a little get together at his old place. We sat outside their place, which has a beautiful deck overlooking the river. We were just there for a few hours, but in two hours i got SIXTY-EIGHT, that's 68, mosquito bites on my feet alone. I mean, my legs got eaten too, but seriously. 68. So that's how my life is going.

In other news, we made a Thanksgiving feast, and it was delicious. I'll post pictures sometime.

You should watch this video, because this song is amazing. Okay. That's all.

Loi Krathong

I officially have a new favorite holiday. And that is Loi Krathong. "Loi" means "to float," and a Krathong is a little raft thing made of flowers and bread. Krathongs are made of bread so that when they are put in the water the fish will be able to eat them. I love that. Anyway, the holiday happens on the full moon of the Thai 12th month, which in the real world [jokes] is November. My very basic understanding of the holiday is this: the Krathong, which is made of banana leaves and decorated with flowers, is topped with candles and sticks of incense. The Krathongs are then released into a canal, river, or really any body of water. Before you release your Krathong, you make a wish for the new year, and once you put it in the water you essentially let go of anger, feelings of unrest, grudges, and really any negative energy. By doing this you are able to start fresh. Isn't that awesome?? It's beautiful. The whole week before the actual day is spent making Krathongs and shooting off fireworks. It was a very noisy week! But we did buy some sketchy fireworks on the side of the road, which was excellent. So that's what Loi Krathong is.

I went to the Rama VIII bridge which is actually not all that far from my house. I went with Nick, our friend Cleo, and some teachers from our school. We took taxis to the bridge. Or we at least tried. Traffic was some of the worst I've ever experienced. We ended up walking a lot of the way there. There were thousands of people trying to cram into a not very large space. There were people selling food, beer, fireworks, Krathongs, and pretty much anything else you can think of. The Rama bridge is by no means the only place to go, but it is probably the best. The Rama bridge is beautiful and there's a lot of space under it by the water. It took us about an hour to get through the crowd so we could release our Krathongs. I can't really explain much else about that, but it was just really amazing. After we put our Krathongs in the water and watched them float out to sea, we headed up to walk on the bridge. It took 20 minutes to walk up the stairs because of the amount of people. Wah. Anyway, there were people lighting these huuuuuge lanterns from the bridge. They floated up and the usually-polluted sky was full of these beautiful lanterns. It was seriously one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. Then there was a fireworks show. As it turns out, Thai people are super skittish about fireworks, and it is hilarious.

Well, I guess that's all about Loi Krathong. I just really loved it. Here are pictures:

[Lanterns, pre-liftoff]

[Lanterns in the sky, from the bridge]

[Fun boat]

[Liu, Nahoko, and Nick. CSB represent!]

[We're silly]

[It was well over 100 degrees. Boo]

[The amount of people we had to get through to get to the water]

[Silly Krathongs]

[Cleo and me with our Krathongs]

[Yay Loi Krathong!]

An American, living in Thailand, visits the UK

As always, this post is being written approximately a month later than it should have been. I'm terrible, I know.

Anyway, because I'm a teacher I have amazing amounts of time off work. It really makes me think I should have gone to school for education. Okay, not really, but still--it's a great amount of time spent not working. I had most of the month of October off, so I packed up and headed to England to visit my mom and Jonny for three weeks. They live in a beeeautiful town called Cheltenham. It's a little north/west of London (I think), and it's pretty much just amazing.

I visited England in 2008(I think) for 8 days. In those 8 days my friends and I packed in so much activity and sight seeing that it probably took me weeks to recover. This trip was a bit more relaxing--as I had three times the amount of time there.

I've only been living in Bangkok for 6 months, but it appears I have totally forgotten what normal weather feels like. When I got to England I was FREEZING! I got a bit used to it, but for the first part of the trip it was pretty brutal. We packed a lot of stuff into my time there, so I'm just going to re-cap the big things on here. Because I'm lazy.

1. Cheltenham Literature Festival. Hellllll yes!

This was really a combination of the fates aligning and heaven opening up to make me happy. The first week I was in Cheltenham the Literature Festival came rolling in. What could be better? Probably nothing. We had tickets for a few events, and we randomly happened upon others. A few days I didn't even attend any actual events, I just walked around the festival and spent all my money on books. We saw authors speak about Frankenstein, Fantastic literature, and also specific books. I saw an author named David Nicholls, and pretty much fell in love with his work. I got to meet some amazing authors, and the whole experience was just amazing. Being surrounded by tons of people who share my ridiculous love of books? ohhhhh yes. Amazing.

2. Walter Peyton Manning Robertson

So the week before I arrived in peaceful Cheltenham, a little bit of crazy moved in. This five-pound fur ball is named Walter. He's a Wire Fox Terrier, and is-- I'm just going to be blunt--totally crazy. I haven't been around a puppy in 15 years, so I think I forgot how nuts-o they really are. Walter is the top of the crazies. He is super smart, and enjoys to be naughty. Pretty much all of my clothing now has holes in it, and it was not out of the ordinary for him to attempt to de-pants me. What a guy. He was really funny though; I wish I had taken a video of him, because he hunts everything. So fantastic. So that's Walter. Here are some pictures because he's so damn cute.

3. Bath

The first time I was in England we didn't have time to go to Bath, and I was pretty bummed I didn't get to see it. This was quickly solved my second week in England. I think that I'm going to mysteriously get very, very rich and move to Bath. It's an amazing town. It sits way down in a valley and it's tiny and there are hills everywhere. Like a British San Francisco. Well, I've never been to San Francisco, so I'm making that up. But anyway, it was gorgeous. We walked around the town, ate yummy food, and then went into the baths. Holy amazing! I could have spent all day walking around the baths. There was so much history and so many stories, and ohhhhh my. I loved it. So that's Bath!

4. Sunday R0ast

There are approximately fifty-thousand reasons why I want to live in the UK. I now have one that has moved to the top of the list. That would be Sunday Roast. It's basically like Thanksgiving dinner every freaking weekend! One of the first weekends I was there we went to George and Marion's house. They are wonderful. They are friends of my parents and they are just fantastic people. We talked and ate and drank, and just had ourselves a grand ol' time. The food was amaaaaaazing. We had about five different vegetables, beef, turnips, Yorkshire pudding, potatoes (two kinds), and wine. Lots of wine, actually. Then there was dessert. Two desserts. Oh my. It was one of the best meals I've had in a long time, and the most fun I had had in months. We got Sunday Roast again at a little place that was either in Wales, or just close to it. It was charming. Also delicious. I should only blog about food. Yes. Yes yes. Anyway, this is where we had Sunday Roast the second time.

5. Castle Crawl 2010

Because England and Wales are like a billion years old, there are castles all over the country. Jonny had the wonderful idea to see how many castles we could visit in one day. I had never been to Wales, so we went to one in England and three in Wales. It was a pretty amazing day. We wandered around all these old ruins, and it was just breathtakingly beautiful. We took an audio tour of one of them, and just freely wandered around the rest. I took like five thousand pictures, but here are a couple.

6. Misc.

Well those are the major things we did. We also had lots of wonderful days walking around, shopping, eating, and enjoying the beautiful fall weather. There were beautiful parks and funny people and cool clothes and fun shops--all for the taking. Jonny's birthday was one of the last days I was there. We drank a lot of wine and ate some delicious food, and had a pretty great day.

It was a wonderful vacation, and I wish I could go back like....tomorrow.

Okay, that's all for now.

One Semester. Done and Done.

I probably should have written this like a month ago. But, we all know how I feel about blogging.

Anyway, I am officially finished with my first semester of teaching! Half-way there (if this is indeed the only teaching I do). I think I have a lot to reflect on of the past 5? 6? [whatev] months. I think about my first day a lot, and how scared I was and how thoroughly unprepared I felt. And, to some degree this hasn't totally gone. I start teaching again in just a few short days and I feel unprepared, yet again. However, I learned a lot in my first few months in Bangkok. A lot of times I walked into a class completely unprepared, with a half-ass plan of a game and a worksheet, and other times I walked in with every moment of the two hour class planned--only to fail miserably. I learned what works and what doesn't. It's been a long time since I was in high school, and my American high school was really nothing like CSB. However, I do remember what it was like being 16 years old, and how not fun learning was. So, I'd like to think that I learned to cut a little bit of slack, without being too much of a pushover. It was different every day, and while most days I really wanted to pull my hair out, there were a lot of classes where I really, genuinely loved teaching.

After talking to other friends in Bangkok, who are also teachers, I feel that I have really learned what I did right and things I can do differently. Hopefully I can use some of these ideas and act like more of a teacher. Looking back on the semester I maaaaaybe had a few too many free days because the thought of teaching was so daunting. But for the few students who paid attention, I feel like I did teach them something. I truly think their English is better because of my classes. Even if that's not true I think I'll continue thinking it.

So, I guess I don't have much else to say about it. I'm glad I'm teaching. They're teaching me as much, if not more, than I'm teaching them. I hope next semester I become more confident. I hope that I can get past the noise. I hope I can be more fun. I hope that more students listen. I hope that there is a little less make up next semester. And I hope that I don't want to jump off the roof every day.

Ok, I guess that's all about that.

Whoa.

Today I saw a kid get his ass kicked by a disciplinary guy with a stick. Note to self: buy a stick.

The Best Idea I've Ever Had.

So, I was thinking about what to do with my classes, and I decided I would teach them about syllables. Then, as I was thinking about that, I had the GENIUS idea to teach them how to write a Haiku (a 3-line, 13-syllable poem, with lines alternating between 5, 7, and 5 syllables each). As it turns out, I did this only for my amusement. I was not disappointed. My students can barely string a sentence together, so I knew that trying to get them to write poetry would just be magic. Ohhhhhh, it was. Anyway, I don't have much else to say about it, they will really speak for themselves. If there are words in [these], that's just my way of correcting things that were spelled very, very wrong.

Okay, here we go:

This is genuine

Import from America

Are you nauseated?

Thai land and people

I like Girl Frieng [Friend] beautiful

I dinner boy fring [friend]

(This next one goes out to Sarah Fasen...)

I would have a show

For when I'm a billionaire

Sarah so stupid

I tired of waiting

Angelina love Brad Pitt

I'll be playing ball

I have one mobile [as in phone]

My mobile is beautiful

and I like mobile

I have dog and cat

my dog is so very fat

my cat is so cute

How I'm I!

My name is Jelly

I like to took [talk] tellphone [telephone]

I'm smile so cute

Britny [Brittany] is teacher

teache is very beauty

chilred [children] lovey she

(and now, for the grand finale....)

Market has seller

seller selling children

children expensive

Okay, that's all. Seriously the best idea I have ever had. Ever.

Ancient City

Last week we were off school for most of the week for the Queen's Birthday. They take Mother's Day prettttttty seriously around here. So, because we were off, we decided to go to the Ancient City (it might be called Ancient Siam...I'm not sure). Anyway, we met Kat, who used to teach at CSB (where I teach), and we headed out of the city. Once we got there, we rented bikes for the day. I think it is technically a museum, but it is HUGE. There were just temples and statues and ruins everywhere. It was amazing. We just got to ride our bikes around wherever we wanted, and go into certain temples, and pass by others. There was even a small floating market in the middle of the place. It was seven thousand degrees that day, so while the bikes were awesome, it was disgustingly gross and sweaty. After we had been there for a few hours, and had seen a lot of the place (but there were whole areas we never even got to), we decided to call it a day. We were walking around, and we saw these steps. So, we decided to climb them. Every time we reached the top of one set of stairs there was another. On each level there were different ruin-type things. So we climbed and climbed and climbed, and we reached the top. It was gorgeous. Well, my typing this doesn't really do it justice, so I'm just going to post a bunch of pictures. So this is a visual blog.

Okay, I guess that's it.

Sidenote--does anyone read this?

Amphawa and Fireflies

So I am really no good at blogging.

I should have written one about our holiday to Hau Hin. I'll sum it up for you:

1. We stayed at a place called the Fat Cat Guest House

2. It was cloudy and we got gnarly sunburns

3. Nick ate good seafood

4. I stepped on an urchin and the bastard stung me six times

[I should write all my blogs that way.....]

Anyway, last week, I think, Nick and I went to the Amphawa floating market with our friends Matt, Kae, and Taw. They are my favorite Bangkok people. We always have a ton of fun.

The market is about an hour and a half outside of Bangkok, but, lucky for us Taw has a car, so she drove us. Before we got to the market, we went to this super old temple. It was kinda in the middle of nowhere, and it was awesome. The temple was literally in a tree. It was amazing! We walked around there for awhile, and saw these statues of super old Thai soldiers preparing for battle. So, naturally we had some good, inappropriate fun with them. Here are some pictures of that: Also, I just realized I have no idea what the temple was called. But I'm okay with that.

[Outside of the temple]

[Inside of the temple]

[Weird fighting statues]

After we walked around there, we left for the floating market. I don't know if you guys know what a floating market is, so I'll explain it. I sure didn't know what it was before I went to one. First of all, it was huge. AND SO CROWDED. There were so many people there. The market was on a river (at least I think it was a river. That may be incorrect), and there were boats on the water that had fresh seafood that was cooked on the spot for everyone at the market but me. Because that stuff is gross. Pretty much anything you could ever want is at the market. There were clothes, and toys, and bags, and food. OH, THE FOOD. All we did from the time we got there until the time we left was eat. [I'm going to go off on a huge tangent for a minute...I really like having Thai friends because I really like going out to eat with them. At any point of a day there are people eating all over the city, and I love that. So when we go out to eat, we order like ten thousand different, amaaaazing things and all share. I've had some of the best food I have ever eaten in my life. And had it not been for my Thai friends I wouldn't have had it because for the most part menus are not in English. Okay, that's my tangent. Food is awesome] So at the market we ate. And we ate a lot. We had little sweet bread things, meats on sticks, seafood, dumplings, fruit, noodles, and so many other things that I absolutely cannot remember. So for most of the day we walked around and tried on funny hats and ate food. It was so fun. It was one of the best days I've had in Bangkok. Here are some random pictures from walking around:

Taw and I were feeling especially adventurous, so we decided to get fish massages. I've seen these all over Bangkok, and have been totally creeped out by them. I do not like fish. But, I was feeling gutsy. So all you do is stick your feet in a tank full of these little fish, and they just attach themselves to your feet and legs. They're very cleansing, and suck out all the bad toxins, energy, and eat dead crap. Now, feet and fish are two of my least favorite things in the world, so at the beginning there was A LOT of screaming and screeching on my end. After about five minutes I got used to it, so that was good. Pretty much it felt like a mixture of vibration and slight electrocution the whole time. I can't say that I enjoyed it, but it was....interesting.

So after walking around and eating more food, we waited for it to get dark and we got ready to see the fireflies! Amphawa is famous for being near one of the largest natural habitats for fireflies. So we got on a really long boat, and they took us for a ride on the water. So for an hour we just got to look for fireflies in the trees. It was gorgeous. I didn't take any pictures of the fireflies, because that would be dumb, but I did take some from the boat. So...here they are.

So, that was our day! I wish I would have written this right after we went, because there's probably a lot I'm forgetting. So I apologize if this is super lame. I'll try and be better. But it was amazing. Definitely a day I won't forget.

Today we went to Ancient Siam. I'll try and blog about that soon.

ps, I can now say "shut up" and "you are lazy" in Thai. I feel like I've learned all I can.

pps/pss, Hi Lauren. Thank you for being such a dedicated blog reader :)