hopefully the rest of the post won't be as repetitive as that last sentence. i broke stuff up into sections so you have some kind of clue as to when i'm changing subjects completely.
no, i don't get any time off.
a lot of people back home have been asking me what i'm doing for christmas and how many days i have off. the answer is zero. i have zero days off for christmas. i live in a buddhist country, and i get days off for things like the king's birthday, not the day when jesus christ was born.
BUT of course we're doing some celebrating. tash, maddy, and i are going to bangkok with the m4/m5/m6 students (those are sophomores, juniors, and seniors), mainly to give them a lesson on christmas on the bus ride there. maddy and i are planning to
we'll get back from bkk around 6 pm (hopefully, depending on traffic...), when we'll promptly go to the thai-farang dinner place across the street, where they're giving us a free (!) christmas dinner. paul, the guy who owns the place, is dutch, so he's making us all a dutch dinner for the special occasion. there've been rumors of mashed potatoes. we'll be with around 15 of us foreign teachers, plus the older farang guys who normally hang out at the thai-farang place. i'll have to put on bug spray and i'll be sitting outside and i'll probably be sweating a little bit. it'll be the weirdest christmas dinner ever. i can't wait.
after that, i'll come upstairs, skype with the fam on their christmas morning, then probably drink some wine and talk christmas with everyone here.
bangkok traffic makes me want to slit my own throat
this past friday, ciee put on a holiday dinner in bangkok for everyone in the program (or all those who teach close to bkk and wanted to come). teaching discussions would start at 4 pm (ha, yeah right, we don't give a crap about that), and dinner would be served at 6 pm. great, we thought. free dinner, and we don't have plans for the weekend anyway. so tash, maddy, and i hopped on a van from suphanburi at 4 pm. we figured we'd get to bangkok around 5:30, then we'd get in a taxi and get to the dinner just after 6 pm.
5:45 pm rolled around and we were still only on the edge of the city--stuck in some TERRIBLE traffic. it was the worst bangkok traffic i've ever been in. we moved one mile in probably 20 minutes. maddy and i talked about ways we wanted to kill ourselves. we talked about what we were doing exactly five years ago at that time. we talked about where we'd be exactly two weeks from that time (on a beach on koh phi phi for new years...mmm). we talked about how bored we were. we talked about why bangkok SUCKS BALLS cuz of the traffic alone.
finally, at like 6:30 pm, the van dropped us off and we rejoiced in stretching and standing up. we motioned to a taxi driver and showed him the name of the place we were supposed to have dinner (phil, the moron in charge of the teach in thailand program, was nice enough to write directions to the restaurant in thai so taxi drivers could find the place, which was in podunk nowhere, just like our orientation hotel). the taxi driver nodded, told us he'd put the meter on, and we got in. he started asking us about seafood, and we assumed he was just making conversation. "seafood? you like? tom yum?" yeah, sure, we like seafood. just take us to the restaurant on the map, man.
turns out the seafood question wasn't just conversational banter. he had NO IDEA where the restaurant was, so he took us to some random seafood market/restaurant. for no apparent reason. we're fairly certain he just stole his dad's taxi (he looked nothing like the guy on the license taped to the dashboard of the car) and thought it'd be funny to play a trick on these farang girls.
so at this point, it's 7-something, we're hungry, we need to pee, and we're at some random location in bangkok. SCREW YOU, PHIL. it's all phil's fault. he's the one who organized a dinner at 6 pm on a school day, and he's the one who put it at a restaurant so far outside the city center that even taxi drivers don't know where it is. (phil, if you're reading this, sorry. i shouldn't be so mean. it was very nice of you to organize and give us a free dinner. but seriously, you couldn't pick something near the grand palace on a saturday evening?)
we got on the skytrain, took it to the stop closest to this stupid, far away restaurant, and grabbed a cab to take us the rest of the way. he sounded like he confidently knew where he was going, but so did the last guy. without other options, we just got in the taxi and hoped he'd take us to the right place. or any place that served food and had a bathroom.
at 7:45 pm, the guy turns to tash (who's sitting in the front seat), and says he needs to get some gas. oh, yeah, fine, let's get gas. great. awesome. we pulled off at the gas station and the gas people made all of us get out of the car for god knows what reason. so there we were, standing in a gas station on the outskirts of bangkok, overnight bags and all, starving, and needing to pee real bad. low point. fill-up done, we got back in the car and he drove literally TWO MORE MINUTES and we were at the restaurant. finally. 8 pm. we peed (the bathroom was gorgeous, btw, and had coy fish in a tank...made things a little better) and ate the food that was a little cold by that point, because we were two hours late.
thai time. psh.
we spent a lot of time in traffic in the last 36 hours, actually. our van ride back to suphan took almost two hours. i think i've said about a thousand times that this drive should only take an hour and a half, at most. on the ride home, the driver decided to blast some stupid thai music, a guy who smelled like cheap women's perfume sat next to me, and my leg was touching his for the whole ride cuz the van was completely full.
ughhhhhhh. traffic is the sole reason i HATE bangkok.
bagels
i had one this morning at au bon pain. onion. it was delicious, so i had another. cinnamon raisin this time. had to have one boy and one girl flavor, of course. it's things like bagels that make me love bangkok.
also, last night, i went out with a bunch of people who i don't normally get to see/talk to and went dancing (ohhhh going out, how i've missed you!). it's things like that that make me love that stupid city, too.
love-hate relationships are hard to manage.
working legally
we got our work permits last week. look how cool they are.
oooh! a work permit! (i know, i know, it's backwards. damn photobooth.)
almost two months after i've been showing up to school every day, i'm cleared to work here. woohoo!
*i love when double-word sentences happen. they're not really pretty when they're written, but whatever. i ditched pretty writing like 20 years ago.
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