October Break!

Our last day of the semester was on Friday and now we have a month off! I am leaving in a couple hours on an overnight bus to Bangkok.  Then I will meet Ali at the airport on Monday night! We are going down to Koh Tao to get scuba certified and have a little beach time! Then back up to Bangkok for some exploring.  She leaves on the 10th, then my Mom and Aunt come on the 14th! We are heading down to Phuket, then Chiang Mai, Lampang for an elephant camp and then back to Phrae on the 23rd! First day of school on the 24th and my Mom and Aunt leave on the 27th :-( Somewhere in there, (18th) Kate gets here and meets us in Chiang Mai! It is going to be a crazy month! Can't wait! I don't know when I will be able to update next. Off to the bus station!

"Do you know what this is? This is cow shit!"

Mel is getting ready to go home and the word is slowly spreading around school that she is going to America. So, the requests are coming in! She was originally planning on just getting a few gifts for our favorite teachers and the director...but that is a dream long gone.  It all started when the Nooters asked her if she could her husband an Army "suit." (jacket, pants and hat) He loves army stuff and has a ton of it, I guess. Mel told Nooters to send her pictures of what he wanted and she would go to the Army Navy Surplus store and get them for him.  Later that day she burst out laughing when she got an email from Nooters with 35 attachments of pictures of Army uniforms! Oh goodness. We tried to convince her to buy it online and have it sent to Mel's house in Texas but Nooters wants to pay for it later and "doesn't have Mel's address!" (All logic is lost here sometimes)
Thhhennn the Lockers let Mel know that her husband would like a cowboy scarf from Texas. A what? A bandana. Oh you mean a bandana you can buy here in Thailand for 1/10 of the price?? Yes. Ok....Oh and her son wants a DKNY watch. This is just getting ridiculous!

So yesterday was Nooters birthday, so Lockers, Nooters, Mel and a woman we affectionately nicknamed the Librarian (because we have no idea what she does, but she is always lounging on the couches in the library) all went out to lunch.  At lunch the girls all gossiped about different teachers in Thai/English and the director and just laughed it up! It was so weird to see them let loose and it is always weird to see the Lockers smile.  They told Mel to buy the director something cowboy from Texas because he loves "everything cowboy and cowboy music." She said she would get him a belt buckle or something. And they just thought that was the funniest thing!

After lunch, we went to Swensen's in the Big C (Target) which has pictures of San Francisco everywhere and played a lot of music about SF. It was super weird.  They had different sundaes dedicated to SF classics, coit tower coffee, cable car sundae, etc. So weird. The Thai teachers had their weird sundaes with corn in them, (corn in EVERYTHING!) and we had yummy sundaes and then they said ok we are going shopping! Uhm ok? They took us to a thrift store-like place that had clothes from stores in America but were being resold. It was awesome! They had actual sizes and the clothes fit us, unlike the stick thin clothes they usually sell.

When we got back to school the Librarian called Mel over and had a Texas scarf on her computer.  She wanted two pashminas, one light brown and one that said Texas on it.  Why you would ever need a pashmina in Thailand is beyond me! Mel is trying to avoid all teachers from now until Tuesday in case she gets more requests.  She is going to be spending her whole time at home shopping for the Thai teachers and their family members!

Teacher Tiantong invited us to go on a sunset bike ride with her later that day through the rice paddies. We invited Nooters because her husband was in Laos for the week and we didn't want her to spend her birthday alone.  We met at the designated spot and Nooters rides up on a child's bike. I seriously wish everyone could meet her. She is just a hoot and a half! She says the funniest things and is always trying to learn English.  Whenever we say something and she isn't sure what it is she asks us about it and then says it under her breath three or four times and sometimes spells it to herself.  It is really funny to be driving with her and having her repeat half of what you are saying.
Anyways! We all bike off with Nooters trailing behind on her little child's bike that she says is her mother in law's...
We stop at some rice paddies with the sun setting to take a picture and she points to a pile of crap and says
"Do you know what that is? That is cow shit!" Mel and I burst out laughing!
Then she says "Is that what you say, cow shit?" "Sure or cow poop."
"Poop? Spell it please." "P-O-O-P."
"Poop, Cow poop or cow shit. P-O-O-P." "Yes, good."
A conversation I never thought I would ever have with my coordinator.  

Happy Birthday Nooters!

Little Teacher Tiantong

This was just a fun day that is just a little taste of the silly things that happen all the time!
October break so soon! I can't wait! :-)

Night Safari!

Over the weekend we met Jane and Erica in Chiang Mai because it was our last weekend all together before they go home! So sad :-( It is also Erica's birthday soon so we decided to splurge and stay at a real hotel! It was SO nice. It probably wasn't that nice compared to America, by American standards it was a 2 star hotel but to us it was luxurious! It had a soft bed, towels, blankets, A/C, a nice pool, an actual lobby, a concierge, and a complimentary breakfast! It was so nice! We usually stay at guesthouses that are Asia's version of hostels.  They are $3-4 a night and you get a mattress and a shared bathroom, which is usually all we need.  It was nice to stay somewhere so nice, we didn't feel like we belonged there!

Erica had been wanting to do the Chiang Mai Night Safari since our first visit so we went on Saturday evening after a day of shopping and relaxing at the pool! It was pretty interesting! Before we boarded our tram we watched some people feeding these weird fish from South America, they were huge and would just be sitting there and look like they didn't do anything when all of a sudden they would jump out of the water at the bait and scare the bejeezus out of us! I would not want to find one of them in the wild...

There was a North side and a South side, one zone had the predators and the other the prey! I bought a basket of bananas and carrots to feed to the animals along the way and we were off!

In our tram!

There were many animals wandering around and then some animals in enclosures.  The deer, impala, buffalo sort of animals were roaming around and would walk up to the tram and snatch our carrots and bananas away from us. A wild boar came out of nowhere and almost chomped my hand off...I didn't give my carrots away as freely after that.  My favorite was feeding the giraffes! They walked right up to the tram and stuck their heads in and spit their tongues out at us. I put a banana on one and it rolled it right in.  Their tongues were super long and scratchy, loved it! I also loved the zebras, they were beautiful, but we couldn't really feed them, we were only able to throw the carrots to them because they chomp fingers off...great! The guide told us just last week some guy lost his fingers to a zebra, and this place still isn't shut down? So Thai. 

Helloooo giraffe!

We saw the usual suspects you see at a zoo, but it felt very much like jurassic park! We had to keep driving through sterilization baths and different gates to get to different zones.  It was nighttime, obviously, so we would be driving seemingly aimlessly and then they would shine spotlights on different enclosures.  It was pretty silly sometimes. At one point the guide told us that the kangaroos were not from Australia because they wouldn't give them any, but some people from Texas were more than willing to! 555

At the end of the tram tour there was an optional walk around a lake that was supposed to have more animal, it was dark and late at this point and we were pretty wary...There was no lighting to help you on your way, of course, and we were not sure what we were supposed to be looking for.  Luckily, our phones had flashlights on them and some people told us it was worth it to walk around so we kept trekking.  We saw a leopard and a bengal tiger and some lemurs on an island. It was really fun but so random! 

The scary but fun walking trail

This week at school we are preparing for Sports Day! This means we only have classes in the morning and in the afternoons the kids are running and practicing cheers.  There are different teams and everyone is very excited! Mel and I are on the green team, not that we know what that means...555 Nooters told me yesterday to "prepare my green suit." Uhmmmmm ok? Next Tuesday, there will be a parade and everyone will compete at our Phrae stadium. It should be a spectacle to behold! 

Winners!

We had our next big speech competition last Saturday! This one was at our school, Wat Metang, and had a ton of random competitions.  Crossword puzzles, spelling bee, (where you write the words down instead of saying them out loud) dance, band, question and answer, storytelling and on and on.  Mel and I came for part of the day to support Nuey and Poom.  They WON! Now they move on to the Northern championships in Chiang Mai! Yay! Our school won a lot of the other competitions also...it seemed a little like cheating since a lot of our teachers were judges but no one else seemed to mind so...whatever! 

The Lockers, Nooters, Teacher Tiantong (Mel's 3rd grade co-teacher), and Teacher Puey (My 6th grade co-teacher) took us out with four other students, Nuey and Poom included, to celebrate the winning! It was cute, we went to this place called Hot Pot at our little fake mall.  They laughed at everything we ate, talked in Thai for most of the dinner while we stared at them hoping to understand, and then told us we would get fat if we ate too much ice cream...gotta love it.

Lockers also told us that since there will be so many new American teachers coming next semester, the latest count is six, (KATE included yay!!!!!!!) that we will all be teaching one grade instead of three.  Mel will be teaching third and I will be teaching sixth.  I am a little nervous because my lessons will have to be way harder and more in depth because I will see 6/1 and 6/2 three times a week and 6/3-6/7 two times a week.  But they are also really fun because they understand more and can joke around and play. So, pros and cons to everything I guess! Next semester is definitely going to be totally 

different! 

Mel leaves in two weeks to go back to Texas for her cousin's wedding, and I am planning for three visitors and for Kate to move here! :-) It seems like everything is just flying by...

Speech winners!

So on Tuesday, I am sitting at my desk just minding my own business when a man comes in and starts talking to the Lockers. Then she goes over to 6/3 and calls a boy out and talks to him for a second. He goes and gets five more boys.  She starts YELLING at the five boys like I have never seen before.  She is a seriously intimidating woman but it is more with the glare and in the eyes.  I am trying to decode the Thai and figure out what is going on when she grabs some scissors and starts cutting random sections of hair on the five boys heads making it look like they got a very choppy haircut.  Then she takes a ruler and starts smacking them. They wai her and the man and all go back to class.  The man leaves and I am like uhmmm what just happened??! She starts laughing like this happens everyday and explains that the first boy got beat up by the five boys last week and then again today and was afraid to tell her (go figure) and so called his dad. (the man) The dad came and told her and she punished them by smacking them. Yeah ok and the cutting of the hair? Oh the cleaning committee is coming tomorrow and Pratom 6 is supposed to have short crew cuts so they prepare for high school so she made their hair look ugly so they will get it cut...oh sure that all definitely makes sense.

The Lockers cutting naughty boys hair...

Visiting Jane and Erica!

First of all here is a pic of my new policeman friends!

So last weekend Mel and I visited Jane and Erica in their village, since they are leaving soon.  They live in Tha Wang Pha (TWP), a village in the Nan district about 3 hours away from us.  They have been telling us stories about TWP for months now so we had to check it out for ourselves.  It was also a huge dragon boat racing weekend and there was a festival and everything! Perfect weekend!

We went to the bus station on Friday, got out tickets, and boarded the janky bus. It is not like we are used to extreme luxury or something, we are living in a third world country, but this bus was already an adventure! There weren't enough seats so this nice lady had us sit up front by the driver on this board that had been put down... Then the tire went flat and we had to stop for awhile and change it. 

When we finally made it to TWP, Jane and Erica picked us up on motorbikes and took us to the festival.  We tried some new market food and played some fun games! Then it was back to their apartments! They sleep under mosquito nets, Jane's bathroom door doesn't shut and tons of bugs come in so they have to tie it shut, the screens all have tape on them, and they have around 4 fans stationed around the room to cool off.  It was going to be quite an experience! 

The next day we headed over to the dragon boat racing! It was so cool! Some of Jane and Erica's students were racing and there was also a team from TWP so we had some people to root for.

Two of Jane and Erica's friends from a neighboring town of Pua came and met us at the festival and then took us on a tour of Pua! The drive on the motorbike between TWP and Pua was beautiful! 

We had a fun little house party and then drove home in the lightning and thunder and rain...woops! They come on outta nowhere! The next day we hung out for a bit and then caught a bus to Nan and then another bus to Phrae! Home Sweet Home! Except I got suuuper duper sick :-(

I have had to miss school this week, ugh.  Another teacher at school last week was sick and he coughed on me...the teachers have all been so nice and concerned and brought me some food yesterday.  I am ready to get back to life and not be sick!

But...there are only a couple more weeks left in the semester so the countdown begins! 

Ali comes in 3 1/2 weeks!

Mom and Sarah come in 5 weeks!

Kate comes in 6 weeks!

Elise comes in 10 weeks!

Crazy how fast this is all flying by...