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.