Elise's Visit!

My friend from home, Elise came to visit!  She got here on the 16 and stayed until the 24th.  Kate and I took the night bus from Phrae to Bangkok to meet her for a quick BKK weekend trip.  We got to our cute hostel around 4am and she was there waiting for us! We took some quick naps and then headed out into the chaos of Bangkok! First, we got some yummy breakfast at Au Bon Pain :-) YES! And then headed over to the Chatuchak Weekend Market, one of the biggest in the world.  We wandered around in a sweaty, hot daze and Elise bought lots for her fam, which was great! After we covered probably 1/16 of the market we decided we were tired enough to go get some pedicures! Kate, Elise and I shuffled back on the BTS (kinda like BART but cleaner) and pampered ourselves for a bit.
Since we all didnt get much sleep the night before, we decided to take in a movie at Siam Paragon, a really nice mall.  The last Twilight just came out so why not?! Don't judge us! It was awful but it is always fun to see movies in foreign countries! I think Thailand is my favorite place to see them because everyone stands for the King's song and they play a cute video of the King. It always gives me chills and it is pretty touching.

The next day Barack Obama was coming to Thailand so we were excited to run into him at the Grand Palace. The Grand Palace was pretty crowded because he was coming that day but we were determined to have Elise see it.  Kate and I had already seen it so we tried to give Elise the best tour we could and steer clear of crowds. Then we hopped on a bus and headed back to Phrae!

Elise was able to come to class with me that week and help me teach about Thanksgiving! It was so exciting for me to have her see me teach! On Tuesday, four teachers, four students and Mel, Kate, Elise and I got to head to Chiang Mai for the Northern Thailand speech competition! We were so excited to support our students and get out of class for two days! :-) We all piled into a bus and made the 4 hour journey Northwest. We got to our hotel and the teachers gave us a bonus from the Director for helping with the speeches.  It was so nice! They then drove us to the mall where we gorged on Pizza Company and then took in some Christmas decorations.  We called it an early night because we had to leave pretty early for the competition.  Nuey and Poom both did AMAZING! Their groups both had 45 competitors in it and they would take the top 3 to Bangkok. Nuey ended up getting 13th and Poom got 2nd!!! AH! So we will continue to train Poom for the Bangkok competition in February! 

After the competition we did some sightseeing and then it was back to Phrae! We had our makeshift Thanksgiving (see previous post) on Thursday and Elise was able to borrow my bike and ride around a bit. On Friday the 8 of the us and Elise headed up to Chiang Mai for the weekend! We went to the Night Bazaar and spent some money and then had a yummy dinner. The next day the girls went and got manicures and massages.  We went to the Saturday Market and wandered for awhile before heading to the airport to drop Elise off.  She was flying from Chiang Mai to BKK, then to Seoul, and finally SFO!