small town

delilah and i went for a walk earlier. we came up on a dog yapping its head off in a truck parked across the street. the owners were on our side.

lady: "ohhhh it's just a yellow lab! helloooooo puppy."
(delilah executes her part of Frigging Adorable Dog perfectly, wagging her tail right up to the lady.)
lady: "awwww. you know, there are three dogs in that truck, two of'em are just sleepin'."
(grandma comes down the driveway.)
lady (talking to delilah): "oh, and here comes grandma to say hello!"
grandma: "oh, and so soft! we've never seen you before. where do you live?"
me: "over on westchester. i just moved back home with mom and dad so they're at work all day. delilah doesn't get to go on walks like this usually."
lady: "ahhh. did you go to school around here?"
me: "yeah, cal high. i graduated in 2005."
lady (laughing): "ohhh i was in 1984!"
me: "ah, then you must know nechia miller!"
lady: "oh, yeah! nechia pohl back then."
me: "yeah, we live next to her."
lady: "well, tell her you met michelle. see you guys around."

what a boring conversation, nicki. i have no idea why you told me about such a day-to-day interaction.

because this is what i've been missing. this small town stuff where everybody knows each other, where people recognize new dogs in the area and talk to strangers with such happiness. and this is why i'm so glad to be home.

i dunno how long i'll keep writing for...it's kind of weird because my audience (aka my family and only people in america) is now living with me/not more than a phone call away, so i don't really feel the need to update here. but then again, here i am, a week back home, and still i felt the need to write. i dunno, i also really like the way when i have a blog, i look at things differently, like everything could be a story.

so we'll see.

final stop: california

i made it. i'm home. dad asked on the drive home if i'd blog any more. looks like it.

oh and again, as always, i apologize a thousand times over for not blogging enough. by the time paris came i was so tired of being a tourist that i stopped writing things down and i didn't take any pictures for the first few days. both of these make for no internet updates. BUT i do owe you fbook pictures (switzerland AND france! capitalizing conjuctions!), so keep a look out for those in the next couple days.

immediate verdict upon returning home: this feels so bizarrely normal. like a year hasn't even gone by. here are some things that are different:

• mom got a new purse
• there's a new coffee maker in the fridge
• mom and dad re-did the living room and study (this is actually a pretty big deal in the arnold home. we usually keep crap around forever.)
• there's a new mug hanging on the wall

that's all i noticed so far. maybe i'll have more notes tomorrow.

NUTMEG IS STILL ALIVE! this isn't that surprising because despite her age (10 big ones!), she's relatively healthy and i've seen her on skype a whole bunch of times. i was always just a little worried about her dying before i made it home. she and delilah both remembered me, btw.

america doesn't seem that shocking yet cuz maddy and i re-westernized in europe already. but still, we'll see. tomorrow i'm looking forward to driving for the first time in over a year. maybe you should keep an eye out for me.

we meet again, paris

i'm so sorry i haven't written you in forever. i've been busy and whenever i get on the comp, it's for an hour or less, and i've been prioritizing with gmail/fbook/excuses excuses excuses. bottom line is, i'm sorry. 

i'm back in paris for the unbelievable second time in my life. a city that i never thought i'd live in once and now here i'm back here, for the second time, and it bizarrely feels like home. maddy and i are with aj for the week and it's awesome. come here if you can--he has a gorgeous apartment. when we're riding the metro, i feel like i've never left (except that i dont' know the map by heart anymore...maybe by monday). tomorrow i'm gonna see my host family. afterward, i'm going to mass at notre dame with aj and maddy, then we're going to queen. the day after, we're going to disneyland paris, which is all dressed up in christmas right now.

i love this city.

notes on western society

i've been living in a developing country for a year. after a while, i stopped noticing and just got used to things. now that i've been thrust back in to a western society--first in to austria, now in to switzerland--i've been noticing some differences between full development and developing, east and west, dirty and clean.

time.
in thailand, "on time" is whenever something happens. the train is scheduled to leave at 8 pm, so if it leaves by 8:30 pm, that's pretty good. there's only one bell to both end one class and begin the next, so if the kids show up about ten minutes after said bell, they're on time. if an event starts at 6 pm, you can go ahead and show up around 7 pm and it's all good. if we're on a tour and everyone wants to stop and take pictures, which makes the bus late to the next destination, then fine, let the bus be late. it's not a big deal. time is just a suggestion in thailand/se asia.

not in europe. we went on the sound of music tour in salzburg (I KNOW!) and when the tour guide said the bus would be leaving at one, the bus left precisely at one. right now, i know exactly what time i'll be boarding my train on the 5th from lucerne to interlaken, interlaken to zweissman, and zweissman to montreux, down to the minute. i also know exactly when i'll be boarding the train from geneva to marseille and marseille to paris on the 8th. THAT'S ONE WEEK AWAY. do you know how foreign a concept this is to me, a person who became way more thai than she realized?

waiting for lights at crosswalks.
do you know how much time i waste waiting for the stupid little standing guy to turn in to a walking guy? why don't we all just use our brains and eyes, look both ways, and decide for ourselves if it's time to cross? why do we all stand like morons at a corner where there are clearly NO cars in any direction? just go.

coldness.
how hard is it to smile?

fitting in.
people speak to me in the native tongue first. i have to be the one who corrects them. nobody has asked to take a picture with me in a week. nobody stares openly because i'm white. i love this.

cleanliness.
when you pay for the bathrooms here, sometimes the woman who maintains them wipes the toilet seat between users. i've used hand soap every day. in india, i ate dinner off a sandy mat on a beach that was pretty damn close to being a trash can.

nobody likes you when you're 23

i'm gonna take a little break from the 'holy crap this new place is so neat!' crap that my blog has become as of late because 1) let's be honest, it's getting repetitive and dull and 2) i have something else to say.

i feel SO OLD right now. capital letters old.

maddy and i are couchsurfing with this girl martina right now. she's 21 (born may 17, 1989, just a week and a half before you, kate). last night, i could feel the age difference. for the first time ever, really, i felt like an old person. she was talking a lot about how she liked to go out until 5 or 6 in the morning (which i never actually, nor did the idea ever actually appeal to me, but a few years ago the idea was at least a possibility for me). she mostly just hung out with her friends all the time. her walls are covered with pictures of her friends.

this isn't to say that mature people don't have pictures up on the wall (i'm putting college pictures on my walls as soon as i get an apt) or that old people don't go out...it's just...my priorities are different now, i spose. i don't feel like going out because it just means spending a lot of money on drinks, having a bunch of potentially awk conversations, going from place to place trying to find the ''best'' party, paying for a taxi ride home, blah blah blah.

i'd rather stay home on the internet, go to bed early, then wake up early tomorrow to walk around town. this either makes me an old grandma or a major nerd.

so martina said last night that tonight (friday night), she'd be going out with some friends and would we wanna join? oh, sure, why not. she seemed nice enough. we were sort of hesitant today because she likes to go out until the sunrise and we're happy with a 10 pm bed time, we're poor and have a lot more travel ahead of us and lots of drinks are sort of out of budget, and we really like getting sleep. but whatever, ok, we'll go.

but then this prague couple showed up. for some reason, martina decided she could host all four of us--me, maddy, and prague couple--in her tiny room. before prague couple even showed up, we were wary.

then they came. they were all over each other in the way that only young, incredibly horny couples can be. they immediately made themselves comfortable on martina's bed and alternated between making out, talking only to each other, and chatting with us. then mostly touching each other.

czech girl is going to india pretty soon with her family, so we talked about that for a while. we talked about how even though we only went to mumbai, india's an intense place you really have to prepare yourself for. it's hot, people beg you for money all the time, it's hard to figure out, scams are abound, not everyone's trustworthy, etc. nonetheless, she's trying to convince czech boy that they should visit india together next summer.

they've been together for a month and a half. he's 20, she's 19. she's preparing to take what are equivalent to the SATs. you know how they met? free hugs.

''what's free hugs?''
''ohhhh, you haven't heard of it?''

they googled it and showed us a video. it's just that thing where people hold up a sign that says ''free hugs'' and they hug strangers. i thought this was just a college thing cuz people at ucsb used to do this, and i saw youngish people in hanoi doing it, too.

''so you guys just hugged and then you started dating?''
czech boy: ''well, i was horny.''

later czech boy tried to convince us we need to go to places like slovakia to see ''real'' europe. to see little villages, not all this big, rich western stuff. like he didn't even hear us talk about how we've been in thailand for a year.

yeah we're not going out with them tonight. i'd much rather put on my pjs, drink a beer, and go to bed early.

bundling up

we're in vienna, austria now. it's freezing, as predicted. but it's absolutely gorgeous. i'm not sure why, but i didn't realize it'd be autumn here. stupid comment, i know. but i didn't think about how all the leaves would be changing and coloring the sidewalk, or how the bright sun and the crisp air would make that feeling that's just so uniquely fall. i haven't had autumn in a long time. 

yesterday i wore a scarf, huge jacket, and boots. last night i put on socks, pants, and a long-sleeved shirt to go to bed. 

i love the cold.

(p.s. i probably won't be this happy about the sub-zero temps in a couple weeks, so when i start to complain about it then, don't be a douche and remind me about how elated i was.)

going out west

it's our last night in egypt. we're back in cairo, planning to leave in half an hour to catch our 2:55 am flight. by tomorrow morning, we'll be in vienna, austria.

this is the first time i'll be in western society since i left america. it'll be the first time i can blend in with the locals in over a year. i won't be a spectacle. people won't just stare because i'm white.

hallelujah!

but it's gonna be effing FREEZING. you guys, the high is 46 degrees. farenheit. THAT'S SO COLD.

i love alexandria.

normally i like to be more creative with my subject lines, but i can't think of a single other thing.

we've only been here for about five hours but alexandria's already shaping up to be my favorite city in egypt. the weather is gorgeous--think about five degrees warmer than sb. it's on the beach, and every time i'm in a beach city i'm more and more convinced that i need to live near an ocean forever. it's adorably quaint, but big at the same time. where luxor was hot and dusty, alex is breezy and has that ocean-air feeling. where cairo was busy and rushed, alex seems less populated and relaxed.

i know, i know, that's a lot to gather from five hours, nicki. why don't you tell me how you feel in two days?

ok, fine, i will. after i've had at least two more glasses of the best mango juice ever, fresh mediterranean seafood, and coffee overlooking the sea.

also, we have a tv in our adorable room in our french-style hotel (elevator with doors you have to close yourself, one of those locks that goes up and down the whole door), and friends was on earlier. it's amazing how much i like friends.

egypt

i wrote down a whole bunch of things i wanted to blog about in my journal last night, but in typical nicki fashion i forgot it in the room. ah, well, i'll have to go from memory.

we left mumbai around 7 am on oct 15, the one-month countdown to america. after a four-hour layover in KUWAIT (sadly uneventful, save for the few guys who lit up cigarettes inside), we landed in cairo. we were staying with david, a guy maddy found on couchsurfing who said we were welcome to crash at his place. he sent a driver for us, so we were greeted by a sign with maddy's name.

david's house rules. he's got a porch, living room with three couches, cable tv, a pool room, kitchen, two bathrooms, and three bedrooms--and we stayed fo FREE. he's great--he knows he's got a sweet pad in a city where two western girls might not feel so comfortable staying on their own, so he offers up his hospitality. he's tasmanian, which is a hilarious coincidence because two of our guy friends from thailand were from tassie, too. we've met something like 10% of the population now.

god, i don't know what i'm doing going on about these unimportant details. anyway, i'm just gonna move on to the excellent things now.

--SAW THE PYRAMIDS! they were just as extraordinary as i thought they would be. nothing will replace that "holy crap i'm actually here" moment when we first walked in.
--there's pita bread everywhere. huge trays full of dozens on pitas wander the streets on top of heads, hips, and shoulders. we get whole wheat pita bread with almost every meal. in fact, we've been eating tons of bread. for breakfast on the train (i'll get to that in a minute), we were served four bread products. four! that's unnecessary. my carb intake is wayyyyy too deliciously high right now.
--all of the food is delicious. my dish de jour is koshari, which is pasta, spaghetti, rice, onions, lentils, tomatos, and some sort of delicious spices mixed together. it tastes like comfort food. OH and baked goods! one day we followed our best friend lonely planet to this bakery in downtown cairo. we haven't been impressed by desserts in the last year and expectations were low, but MAN did we underestimate. at least 100 different types of cookies, cakes, pastries, nuts, and other sweets stared at us when we walked in. we ate the most delicious three-layer chocolate cookie concoction of our lives.
--the cairo metro is wonderful. i'm very passionate about public transportation in other countries, and this city did not disappoint. sure, it could have a couple more lines, but it's cheap (about 20 cents to go anywhere), fast, and there's a ladies car. ladies car is the best--everybody coos over cute babies, we beg each other to take the seats, and we all go out of our way to be generally polite.
--we spent an afternoon wandering islamic cairo, through the shops and the guys shouting "HERE! have a look!" there's so much good shopping here.
--cairenes are some of the friendliest people--with the huge exception of taxi drivers/people selling things. we got out of a cab after the pyramids (the guy was weird and wanted to charge us way too much) and were trying to hand the guy the fare we thought was enough. he was hassling us, and a stranger from afar saw the interaction. stranger came up and said, "excuse me, girls, is everything ok?" we explained what was happening, he talked to the cab driver in arabic, and said, "ok, that's it, have a good day, girls."

that's all just cairo stuff. we decided we'd travel down to luxor by train. it was really expensive ($60 one way! in thailand it's less than $20!), but whatever, we're only here once, so let's just do it.

THE TRAIN WAS MAGICAL AND WONDERFUL. we had our own cabin that came with towels, A/C, a table, a mirror, hangers, huge blankets, an outlet, and did i mention we had this all to ourselves!? we quickly made the space our home and started up the music and painted our nails. we even got dinner and breakfast on this magical train.

now we're in luxor. yesterday we saw luxor temple and night, and it was easily one of the most gorgeous things i've seen in my life. the heiroglyphics made my 6th grade brain thrilled. when we came in to town yesterday morning, it was ghostly; when we wandered around after the temple, it was like it came to life. this morning we went to the valley of the kings and walked inside three tombs, in awe at how in tact they still are after a zillion years. tomorrow we're waking up at 4 am to take a hot air balloon ride over luxor at sunrise, and then in the evening we're gonna sail on the nile for sunset.

i love this country.

mumbai's tendencies

today's our last day in the city, day number six. our flight leaves at 6:40 am tomorrow morning, meaning we'll be hopping in a taxi at 3:30 am.

buh bye, restful night's sleep. eh, i can't really muster up the anger, though; when we finish this leg of flying, we'll be in cairo among literally too much history for my brain to hold. OH BUT FIRST we have a layover in kuwait. lol.

anyway, i've noticed some things around here in the last six-ish days.

the indian head bobble
it's not a nod...it's not a shake...it's a side-to-side tipping of the head. they do it all the time.
"hey, can we get this taxi to colaba? on the meter?" response: head bobble..."okay." we get in the back of the taxi and he starts the meter
"four hundred rupees! that's way too expensive. can you do 200?" response: head bobble..."okay." and i buy said thing for 200 rupees.
"we're from america." response: head bobble..."good country."
i can't figure out what the head bobble means. i thought at first that it meant no, but it seems like maybe it means a moment of uncertainty followed by a yes. 

"what's your good name?"
people are always asking for our names and where we're from. i've had a couple indians sidle up next to me just to ask where i'm from, then walk away once they know. whenever people ask for our names, they always repeat them and go, "nicki. good name." or they'll ask for our "good name" right off the bat.
and by the way, when we respond we're from america, a handful of people have gone, "obama! good, good. bush, no good!"

beauty
indian women have taken street clothes to the next level. they have sarees of every color and they never look foolish in these neon bright colors or mismatched patterns; they can rock it like it's nobody's business. they have jewelery hanging off every limb, including the most ornate (and what must be painful) nose piercings ever. they're making me want to buy a saree and get my nose re-pierced. (i might give in to both of these things, but the latter will have to wait until america.)

i'm famous in india
you'd think we were, anyway. we've been in pictures with at least 50 indian people; this is not hyperbolic in any way. when we sat at the hanging gardens for an hour or so the other day, families would come up to us and just rotate through, snapping picture after picture. when we were at elephanta island, as soon as one group stopped us to take a picture with them, it was free rein for every other group to step in and take pictures with us, too. yesterday at haji ali, as we were sitting and quietly reading our books on some rocks off to the side, minding our own business, a family tapped our shoulders and asked us to be in their family portrait. you'd think we were a mumbai attraction.


i wasn't ready to leave don det, laos, and i wasn't ready to leave hanoi, but i think i'm ready to leave mumbai. i'm done being a spectacle here, i'm done with the pollution of the city, and i think i've seen enough for now. i've loved it and i think it's a wonderful city filled with characters (mostly charming and friendly, but you can't win'em all, eh?), but i'm ready to move on.

egypt, here i come.

MUMBAI.

i'll give it to you straight: i was scared of india. i've been talking to a lot of people about traveling and people talk about how exhausting india is. it's not a place you go and easily fall in love with, like thailand. india's full of rough people and it's hard to get around and the men constantly leer and you'll definitely get ripped off.

so why am i going here again? *sigh* but we'd bought the place tickets, gotten the visas, so we were going.

and now that i'm here...i think everyone was exaggerating. this city's been wonderful to us so far. sure, we've met some unscrupulous seller guys and sad, puppy-dog-eyed children have tugged on our arms and begged for money, but overall, this isn't the harsh country i thought it would be.

granted, we've only been in mumbai/bombay/i can't decide what to call it. it's a big international city and people act differently in cities like this; generally, everything should be up to international/western standards. so i'm doing india-lite version.

but really, we've met mostly wonderful people. there was kamul, who we met on the street and who wandered around town with us for a while, helped us get sim cards, and invited us to a party later (which we declined and he understood). our cab driver from the airport was really sweet, pointing out all the sights of the city and making sure we got into our hotel. there've been countless other interactions--you know, those brief moments you have with strangers, whether they're in a hotel/restaurant/park/whatever--that haven't been harsh or rude at all.

this isn't to say that the city is all calm and full of wonderful people, though. it's a bizarre, loud, DIRTY place. oh man, you guys, you should've seen my feet yesterday. we went to the washer place (where thousands of guys are literally just washing clothes in these concrete basins) and walked around, so my feet got wet and gross in there, then we went to chowpatty beach on the arabian sea (aka a trash can), and my feet got grosser there, so that by the time we got home to shower at the end of the day, my sandaled feet looked like they were wearing shoes.

people are selling the weirdest stuff here. peacock feathers seem to be popular with the vendors, as do incredibly oversized balloons. seriously, they're the size of a my-size barbie. yeah, i totally and completely wanna walk around this crowded city with a giant balloon.

ok maybe those things aren't THAT weird. with that intro (and in such a foreign place) you were prob expecting something like elephant heads or snake venom.

there are almost zero white people around here. i thought that since we were coming to such a huge place, we'd be mobbing around with white people all the time. instead, we've been pointing out white folks like they're some sort of novel attraction because we hardly ever see them.

there are, however, a zillion men. i've never seen so many men (and so few women) in my life. today maddy and i walked to this green space in the middle of the city, next to the university and high court, where a ton of people were playing cricket. it was maybe two, three football fields long, filled with hundreds of men playing cricket. we're pretty sure that we were the only women in the whole area, save for this one other white girl with her SO. i've never been so completely surrounded by so much testosterone.

last night we were offered the chance to go to some sort of grand event for presumably a bollywood thing. we would've gone except it was outside the city so we were supposed to go spend the night in this random place. no thank you.

now we're staying at the salvation army's red shield house. I KNOW. i feel so traveler-y. it's dirty and sort of run down, but maddy and i are loving it. we have our own room, our own bathroom, and free breakfast and lunch included in the room price. we eat in a canteen. it's just like school.

this afternoon we're gonna go up to the hanging gardens and jain temple. we're gonna take an old school cab. i swear they haven't updated their fleet since ford invented the car.

oh, and yesterday we took a ride on the train, too. the public transport in the city. when we first walked in to the station it was insane and we were like OH HELL NO THIS IS CRAZY AND SO MANY PEOPLE AND IN AN UNREADABLE LANGUAGE. but then we sat for a while, observed the ways of the people, and got more confident about it. we took a cab anyway (we were exactly sure where we were going), but on the way back hopped on the train. we were in a ladies-only car. it was awesome.

headed back upstairs to read and escape the sweaty afternoon heat. afternoon time is nap time.

p.s. kuala lumpur, malaysia, was pretty uneventful and not really worth mentioning.

i WAS gonna upload pictures...

then fbook wasn't working.

THEN I FIXED IT. muahaha. take that, communism.

then i realize this janky computer doesn't have photo uploading software. while i could dl some on here (yeah, i can just dl software on a public comp, nbd), i'm tired and i have a super comfy bed upstairs and cable tv and i think there's an antm marathon on, so i'm taking all of this as i sign i should just give up.

but wait, i wanna tell you about sapa first. it was phenomenal. i took the overnight train from hanoi along with two other couples...one real sweet couple from england and this semi-weird, unmarried, old-but-acts-sorta-immature couple from australia. the woman was competitive and cheap, which means she ALWAYS asks how much you got stuff for and brags shamelessly when she got it for cheaper. not a fan. anyway, the train pulled in to lao cai in northern vietnam around 5 am.

everyone said (and by "everyone" i mean guidebooks and stuff) it'd be cold. it was so not cold. same temp as hanoi--warm, a little humid, nothing cool about it. liars.

but then we got in a van and drove an hour pretty much straight into a mountain range, and it got cold. YESSS this is what i was hoping for.

quick note about northern vietnam travel...from hanoi, there are two really popular short trips: sapa and halong bay. because i only had a week here and i wanted to explore hanoi for sure, i figured i only had time for one of these. sapa's mountainous and full of terraced rice fields, trees, and native villages; halong bay has big ol' limestone rocks jutting out of the ocean and boats you can sleep on. i've seen enough pretty stuff in the ocean, so i opted for the mountains.

as soon as i got out of the van and looked around at tiny sapa all buried away in the mountains, i knew i made the right choice. that day, at 9:30 am, i started out on a hike with a german girl and a local guide, lam, who was 18 and from a tribe a ways down the mountain.

btw, they advertise this as "trekking"...that's a misnomer. maybe it makes people happier if they call things like this a trek, but really, this was just a long walk in nature. the trail was well worn, there were always other people around, and we passed multiple cafes along the way.

actually, that kinda bugged me. on one hand, it was neat to walk through a few of the villages and see this simple way of life they lead, with these big fancy costumes that yes, they actually wear, and the way that rice permeates everything they do, and the simple homes they keep, and blah blah. but there were plenty of cafes serving us tourists cold beer, snacks, coke, anything we wanted so we'd be able to satisfy our high standard of living...meh. i just kind of feel bad when neat but personal, local ways of life become so geared toward tourists.

anyway, aside from that, i had a really awesome time on our walk. german girl margret and i had some great conversations, and lam started to really open up after a while (we hiked until 3 pm, after all...gives you some time for bonding). by the end she was bouncing up and down and inviting us to dinner at her house.

i went on one more walk through another village the next day, but it was maybe two miles, and we went so slow i think a baby could've beat us. the emphasis on that hike was def the tourism and shopping and crap.

i spent the rest of my time drinking too much strong vietnamese coffee, trying all of hte vietnamese beers, and generally reveling in the glory of cold weather. more than anything, this trip just made me excited for CHRISTMAS!

next stop: kuala lumpur, malaysia for one night (oct 7), where i'll once again meet up with my main bitch miss maddy armstrong. from there, on oct 8, we're off to MUMBAIIIII! expect a week of insanity.

enough of this city stuff

hanoi, you're a bustling beauty right now. you're filled with insanity and more people than you should hold. i'm loving it, but i need a break.

going up to sapa until the 6th. see you soon, you little ball of energy.

VIETNAMMMMMMM IN YOUR FACE!

excuse me for a minute but...HOLY SHIT. hanoi is nuts.

vietnam didn't welcome me with open arms. when i went to apply for my visa, i had to pay $25--specifically in USD. i only had $16 USD (maybe i brought this for show and tell? i dunno, that was 11 months ago version of nicki), but i figured lots of people would have this problem so the airport prob had an exchange place right next to the visa window.

NOT. two people ahead of me were short on cash, too. when they asked the visa guys what to do, they sort of shrugged like, "welp, guess you're SOL. no vietnam for you." lucky for them, two canadians with extra cash were standing nearby. when my name was called, i went up to the window and asked if i could use thai baht. sure, they said, for 1000 baht. that's a $5 rip off, but i didn't have a choice.

already, vietnam? really? you couldn't make this easy, could you?

i got my bag--one of the last three on the thingy--and proceeded to the exit. first, to get some vietnamese dong. this is money. it's a hilarious name for currency and it will never NOT be hilarious. anyway, i got over four million dong and told the exchange guy they had crazy money. he laughed. i walked away and this guy walked up to me offering me a taxi. yeah, i'm going to the old quarter, where friggin everyone goes, you can take me there? i dunno...but he was really nice, and because i've been living in thailand for a year i'm used to nice people being genuinely nice. so i said ok, let's go.

he and his pal took me upstairs. i waited outside a door by what looked like the exit ramp from the airport. the main guy went outside to get his friend. all of a sudden his pal grabbed my bag and was like "LET'S GO!" and rushed outside. main guy hopped in a taxi and a guard type figure started blowing his whistle and pointing angrily at us. main guy got out and the taxi drove off.

BAD SITUATION, NICKI. stupid. of course this is a scam. i told the guys i forgot, i wanted to get a sim card, i'm gonna go downstairs and get one. "they're twice the price here..." i heard them say as i dashed off. idiot nicki. this is NOT the southeast asia you know.

so i go downstairs to ask the information girl about  a taxi. she says i should prob call my hotel first to make a reservation cuz there's this big celebration going on and there might not be room. i'd read it's hanoi's 1000th birthday or something, but i didn't think it'd be a big deal allllll year long.

NOT. super nice information girl and i spent an hour trying to find a hotel with an open room. she must've called at least 10 different places for me. sweet, sweet girl. finally we found one that was semi-affordable (free breakfast/internet/tv though!) and in a good location and had a room.

by this time it was almost 6 pm. i'd arrived two hours ago. as i got into the cab with the driver who spoke basically zero english (and i absolutely zero vietnamese), i was starting to think hanoi was a mistake. this city is too fucking crazy, especially by myself, and it's already been hard and expensive and maybe i should just look for the next cheap flight out of here. i was stupid for coming here alone.

but then i got to the hotel. and it's a sweet room with cable tv. so i sat down for a minute, wrote in my diary, literally screamed a bit to let out some frustration and shock, and calmed down.

this is what traveling is. it's hard. it's being stuck in a situation you can't find an easy way out of. it's being wildly uncomfortable. it's not knowing what to do.

it's figuring it all out anyway.

i decided i couldn't take the wussy way out and stay in my hotel room all night. after all, i had to eat. so i went out of my room and turned left. i didn't see anything and the traffic was crazy and i was terrified of getting lost, so i turned around. whatever, i'll go hungry.

no, nicki, don't so that. i went the other way instead and came across this HUGE shopping street, peds only. hundreds and hundreds of shops, thousands of people. there were kids, babies, teenagers, grandparents, locals, tourists, sellers, buyers, EVERYONE. i smiled a gigantic grin. yes, this is insane, but you're not gonna die. i walked down the street about half a mile and i don't think i stopped smiling the whole time. i got a kebab (OH MY GOD it was good) and some ice cream. as i was walking back toward my hotel, fireworks started going off. everyone started screaming and running toward them.

instead of going straight back, i followed the crowd. there are literally thousands of people out right now, watching fireworks, shopping, eating, doing god knows what for this celebration. i stood at an intersection filled with cars, motorbikes, and tons of people (everyone was right--traffic in this city is something else) and just laughed at it all. a few people caught me and laughed with/at me.

hanoi, you're a tough one, but i think i'm gonna love you.

the lao lao experience

i decided i'm only gonna drink local alcohol from now until this trip's over. i've been drinking beerlao all week, which has been delicious and wonderful (and the only dark beer i've had since oct 2009), but i'd had yet to try lao lao. it's this bootleg rice whiskey made only in laos and everybody talks about how crazy it is.

so of course i had to try it. btw, no, i don't let traveling alone stop me from drinking. i think ordering one drink as a solo person lets off this "i'm such a strong and confident individual" vibe. slash maybe i'm just telling myself that because i like drinking and i don't want people to call me an alcoholic.

i sat down for a late lunch today and flipped to the drinks menu. there were four drinks called "lao cocktails," none of them with flavors but instead given colors. when the waitress came over, i asked her if the drinks had lao lao in them.

"yeah, you don't like lao lao?"
"no, no, i do! i want it."
"oh, ok!"

i ordered the green one. two minutes later she brought me this kelly green drink with a lime squeezed in it. i took a sip and HOLY CRAP THAT'S STRONG. the first couple sips went down hard but i got used to it. my rice noodle soup came and i enjoyed my meal slowly. i could feel the lao lao right away, and it hit way harder than alcohol usually does. when i stood up, i REALLY felt it.

oh my god, i thought. i'm really, bizarrely intoxicated. i paid the woman and walked down the street, reveling in this new sort of feeling. i was hyper-aware of my body and i felt a little like i was floating or something. IT WAS INSANE, YOU GUYS. i've been drunk once or twice before so i know what it normally feels like but this was somehow different. man. i went back and took a shower then got some coffee to shake the feeling. now i'm all sober, no headache or anything. man.

i probably shouldn't write stuff like this on the internet. ohhhh well, my dreams of becoming president were dashed when fbook came out with photo sharing.

tomorrow i'm flying to hanoi (!!!), and i'll be there until the 7th. fbook is blocked there (communism!); no word on if blogger/twitter/gmail are, too. i may or may not be out of internet reach. please try to do your best without me.

a hammock and a promise to a book

i bought "the sorrow of war" before i left thailand. it's a northern vietnamese's personal story on the war in vietnam. it's incredibly heartbreaking and humanizing and shows the bloody, gruesome, these-things-tear-your-soul-apart side of war. it was banned in vietnam when it first came out. i promised the book i would finish it before i got to 'nam (friday, oct. 1).

i'm on don det right now. i was only gonna stay here for two nights, but i have a hammock on my balcony over (literally over) the mekong river and that promise i made to my still-unfinished book...so i'm staying for three. i love trips in southeast asia.

this is one of the most phenomenal places i've ever been. i wanna bring all over you here and show you the hot chocolate-colored waters, the rice paddies so green leprechauns would be jealous, the irrawaddy dolphins, the quiet, unassuming buffalo, the adorable piglets, the adorable chicks, the adorable ducklings, the adorable combo of curious ducks and chickens. the sunsets and sunrises here are unreal. for the last two days i've been biking across don det and don khon, another island just a few kilometers down the way and across a bridge.

someday, when i'm rich, i'm taking you all on a trip here. all you need are a few tshirts, a couple pairs of shorts, and a few promises to some books.

four different kinds of transportation

if you're my friend on fbook (and you have the privilege of seeing my statuses...muahaha) then this'll look familiar: a car, a van, a BTS ride, a taxi, a bus, four hours of waiting, another bus, and a tuk tuk ride later, I'M IN LAOS, BABY!

cars, metros, buses, and tuk tuks, oh my! i left suphan yesterday around 5:30 pm and after all of the switching transportation and border crossing shenanigans, i got to pakse around noon. checked into my room--plain but perfect--took a shower, and pretty much immediately went to lunch. chicken laap, sticky rice, and beer laos. i was sitting in this corner restaurant in this quiet little town and i couldn't figure out how life could get much better.

then i did: i could be doing this on an island in si phan don. so i'm going there tomorrow :-D it's just two and a half hours away, plus a ferry ride. nbd. but then i'll be tehre for three, potentially four days of waking up early (i like the mornings, ok?), drinking coffee, riding bikes through rice paddies, taking naps on hammocks, eating bread/rice/CARBS I LOVE CARBS, and drinking beer laos. the beer isn't even particularly delicious, but it's just something about it that makes it so great...maybe it's cuz there are advertisements everywhere, maybe it's cuz i'm in a communist country right now and this is the beer of the land...uh oh. maybe i shouldn't be mentioning that in a post from a laos computer. 55. oops.

this week

i'm thrilled to get to laos to have five days by myself in nature, rolling through coffee-bean-filled plateaus, seeing gorgeous waterfalls, peeping on some rare fresh water dolphins, reading "the sorrow of war," waking up early in the morning and just strolling around.

i'm way more upset than i expected to be to leave these kids. the unexpected gifts, the sincere sentiments from them, the personal song, the "when will you come back?"s are too much for little me.

i can't wait to get to hanoi. after that quiet nature time i'm gonna be pumped up to get in an INSANE city. shopping shopping shopping. (btw, shopping alone is one of my favorite hobbies.)

i can't believe i'll (probably) never see these kids again, and absolutely never again as a whole class...unless i come back feb 2012 to see them graduate. :)


explaining to my students why i'm leaving thailand has been difficult.

student: "ohh teacha, i miss you!" (side note: verb tenses are hard.)
me: "i'm gonna miss you too! i love you all. thailand's a beautiful place."
student: "when you come back to thailand?"
me: "umm...i dunno...not for a long time."
student: "aww! what do you do in america?"
me: "i don't have a job."

so you love us...you love thailand...you have a job here...why are you leaving again?

(note: because i miss my family and friends desperately. fear not, i'll see you all soon <3)

saying goodbye sucks

i have 5/5 for the last time tomorrow. my classes are like my children and i know i'm not supposed to pick favorites but...

5/5 is hands down my favorite. when i taught them last semester, i never had a co-teacher. they respected me and listened to me and treated me like i had something to say anyway, without being forced to. they've been really open and honest with me, and in return, i've been so with them. i've had some of my favorite conversations in the past year with these kids. they make me feel like i'm good at this not because i'm a foreigner, but because i'm nicki arnold.

oh god, that was easily one of the cheesiest things i've ever said. excuse me for being bizarrely emotional this week. it's a weird time in life.

post-class edit: i cried.

a bts waterfall

i went to bangkok yesterday for no important reason, really. it's my last weekend in thailand and i wanted to do some shopping to make sure i got everything. (evidently i didn't cuz i managed to buy some stuff.) lauren, christie, and i went to the chatuchak weekend market, which is essentially all of the stuff that has ever been for sale in thailand in ONE AMAZINGLY HUGE MARKET.

it was overcast and the skies were yelling at us with huge thunderous shakes. it was threatening rain. as we were leaving--they to their friend's apt, me to the bts--the clouds finally let the trap door open and baaaaaaammmmmmm monsoon season came on in full force. fat drops of rain fell and i looked like i took a shower in my clothes. you could kind of see through  my pants, which is wildly scandalous but what can ya do? i (and about a hundred other people) made it to the shelter of the bts. loads and loads of water fell off the trains. everyone was all giggly in the way that only sudden, intense rainfall can make a group of people.

i sat down next to the sweetest american couple on the train. they had midwest accents and we talked for about six stops. i love random conversations with strangers. this is one of the top 10 things i'm looking forward to in america/any country where i speak the same language as people.

my hair's a hot mess (it's all thin and i haven't had it cut since sarah trimmed it on koh chang in april) so i got it cut. the lady was really sweet, spoke excellent english, and didn't turn my hair into an asian hair style. she blow dried it and everything. i felt pretty and fancy for the first time in months.

i wandered the city for a while to soak in the insanity one last time and came home to join maddy, ally, ally's thai bf dton and, later, his brother dtam for some drinking and hilarious talking. yesterday ruled.

on how life rules

i get really worried sometimes. are my grades fair? am i gonna have too much stuff to carry around on this big trip? what if all the guesthouses in pakse are full? what if i don't have enough clothes for egypt? what if this bug bite turns into a huge infection? what if i run out of money? (i think about that last one probably every day.)

but really, why worry so much? i'm going on this PHENOMENAL trip around the world. yes, there are gonna be hard parts and yes, i'm gonna be poor after. but what does it matter? if there were no hard parts, it wouldn't be traveling (and especially not budget traveling). there'll be hard nights spent in crappy hostels, there'll be a moment where i realize i'm gonna be poorer than i want to be at home, there'll be times when i want nothing more than to be in a clean bed.

but when i'm not having those times, i'm gonna be eating delicious food (see further: vietnamese pho, indian curry, egyptian falafels, swiss chocolate, french bread). i'm gonna be staring out a train looking over the swiss alps. i'm gonna be having some perfect walk through paris and in a city where country music is so out of place, sugarland will come on randomly on my ipod and i'm gonna be SO INSANELY HAPPY at that moment that everything--the money, the hardships, the planning, the hours on buses/trains/planes--will be forgotten.

:-D

i was being a drama queen

this not having a computer business hasn't acutally been that big of a deal so far. that night when kate left sucked, but since then i've actually been pretty effective. i finshed all of my grading on the last paper assignment my kids'll ever have to do, which means I'M FRIGGIN DONE GRADING THAI PAPERS FOREVERRRRRRRRRRRR!

also, the lovely and generous kristin has offered up her computer this weekend. she and tyler are headed to bali (lucky sobs) sans computer, so i'll babysit it. woot :-D

finals have been excellent this week, btw. i'm doing oral finals (ha ha, jokes about oral), where we just sit in a small group and talk about things: marriage, children, heros, the future, fears, etc. something funny:

me: "what are you most afraid of?"
girl: "umm..elephant...ummm" (the girl and her two friends put their arms to their faces and mimic trunks.)
me: "elephant trunks? you're afraid of elephant trunks?!"
girl: "yeah."

also, a lot of kids wanna make a lot of money and travel to korea to get plastic surgery :-(

clean as a bird

btw, these blog titles are just examples of wendy's supreme knowledge of english sayings.

friend, i'm glad you've decided to join me for round two of the k&w trip wrap-up. i'm in an internet cafe now cuz kate took my computer last night...i didn't wanna lug it around to various countries. good news for my computer, bad news for my present sanity.

anyway, on with the story. we left koh tao without a hitch. the catamaran back to the mainland didn't break. i decided we'd take the train back because i generally like trains better than buses and i kinda wanted k&w to see all the kinds of transport in thailand (which i'm pretty sure we did). the train ride back was pretty sucky, though, cuz the train stopped a bunch and was rockier than usual and we were right next to a smoking car and the door kept opening. not a great sleep, but traveling isn't exactly the most glamourous thing anyway.

SUPHAN TIMES
(ok, everyone, i'm bored with chronology. time for highlights only.)
kate and wendy joined me for 5/8, 5/9, and 6/2 on wednesday. the two m5 classes are brilliant and wonderful (5/9 is the honors class, 5/8 is the second highest level); 6/2, on the other hand, is...not. after some intense lesson planning (read: asking kate what games she liked in her spanish classes on the beach on tuesday) i settled for playing 20 questions, kate and wendy being the knowers, the students being the guessers.

5/9, as usual, had their own ideas. after two rounds, pla, the smartest and most outspoken girl in the class, decided that it was her turn to be the knower. she took the white board marker from me and stood at the white board in the typical teacher position; k&w and i made our own team. pla's thing was a building...something in london...not big ben, not the london eye. we totally had it. it was buckingham palace. "WE KNOW IT. CALL ON US." (btw, i think it's funny to be sort of mean and mock my students.) "buckingham palace?" we guessed. NOOOOOO! *hung heads in shame*

that was sort of a lame story. i should prob delete it, but it's a special memory in my head so imma go ahead and keep it.

so anyway, while 5/9 and 5/8 listen to me and understand me and are generally good students, 6/2 is full of kids who a) don't know english and b) have no desire to acquire english skills. so i spend a lot of time talking to myself. it's a hilarious contrast and i'm so glad k&w got to see the extremes. despite their laughably bad reputation, i still love 6/2 and we had a good time playing hangman.

k&w were exhausted so they went home a little early and took a nap. there's a cute picture on fbook. after my m5 convo class (we turned the lights off and talked about ghosts again), we...crap, i have no idea what we did that night. OH i remember. we got some rice and veggies to go and ate dinner and watched grown ups on the bed. the movie really sucked, btw. we only watched about half an hour before we fell asleep but seriously, don't waste your time.

on thursday morning we woke up early to see people making merit to the monks (giving'em stuff in the morning) and get fruit. we came back and had a huge fruit shmorgasboard on my bed: mangosteen, rambutan, banana (which kate used to hate but now apparently likes, but maybe only in thailand), mango, longan, plus some 7-11 snacks. nom nom nom.

after a tesco run, we went out to kanchanaburi on the public bus with about a thousand (ehhhh hyperbole) school kids.

KANCHANABURI TIMES
some bullets:

• pong phen guesthouse is the most awesome guesthouse in kburi. i know this is probably a false statement but we had such a good time there. we ate almost every meal there and one time when we ventured out it was a mistake. they had a pool shaped like a penis (555 foresight?). we had air con AND cable tv and managed to watch the same episodes of the office three times.
• kate was sick on saturday, so we were "forced" to stay home all day. wendy and i ventured out once to get a massage. we spent the rest of the day eating, drinking fruit smoothies, and reading in the sunshine by the pool. wendy and i stayed up late talking and i had a really good time.
• i stepped on a nail. i cleaned and bandaged it asap and i had my tetanus booster before i came. it hurt and bled a lot at first, but it's getting better every day and doesn't look infected or anything. good job healing, body.
• we saw the death railway bridge, the war cemetery, a chinese cemetery, the JEATH museum, and rode elephants. we bought tourist shirts to top it off.
• riding bikes through town was one of my highlights of the trip.
• i wanna go back immediately.

ok this internet cafe is closing so i better go. that's pretty much the end of my k&w story anyway, so good. but now they're playing a country radio station in here (streaming online?) and i'm freaking loving it. it's making me a really happy girl.

btw, kate and wendy are still currently in the air from japan to america. send good thoughts to their plane :-)

eat it and weep

KATE AND WENDY TRIP! as usual, i can't decide how to write this. go day by day so as not to forget everything, but risk boring the reader? group everything by subject--food, adventures, relaxation, mishaps--and maybe miss something hilarious?

i'm going with the daily approach.

day 1: sept 2--kate and wendy arrive
kate and wendy (from here on out to be referred to as k&w) arrived at 11:20 pm on thursday night. after tutoring The Man at 7 pm, i hopped on a van into bangkok. i got into the city, hopped on to the bts at victory monument, rode one stop to phaya thai, and walked to the airport rail link.

did you hear/read that? YOU CAN GET TO THE AIRPORT VIA PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION! i got all the way from suphan to bkk in under three hours and for less than 200 baht. only people who live here will fully appreciate this.

anyway, i kicked it at the airport for a while and went downstairs to wait for them at 11:10. i saw that their plane had already landed, which sent me into a minor frenzy--OHMYGODTHEYTOTALLYALREADYCAMEOUTANDIMISSEDTHEMANDTHEY'RELOSTINBANGKOKFOREVER--
which of course was unnecessary. they showed up after midnight. we hopped in a cab and made it to the stable lodge in bangkok, which does indeed have a western theme. the cab driver didn't know where he was going (typical bangkok), but once we finally found it the woman was still waiting at the front desk, just for us. love thailand.

day 2: sept 3: bangkok
maddy and i had to add pages to my passport and apply for an indian visa in bangkok, so i woke up early on friday morning to get those errands done. i left kate and wendy with my cell phone, lonely planet, and vague directions on what they could do. i didn't know when we'd be done with that passport stuff, but we ended up finishing way earlier than i thought, which meant i could spent most the day with kate and wendy.

after we said bye to maddy--she was off on a day of shopping for cold weather clothes, something we were woefully unprepared for-- the three of us went to the grand palace. i sat outside while k&w wandered the sparkly madness. a group of college girls came over to interview me in typical thai fashion. this seems to be a very popular assignment for english students in thailand: "find a foreigner and interview them!" it's what we did when i went to phuket for english camp, and i've seen it happen elsewhere in the country.

in fact, when we were in the train station just a few hours later, a group of students came up to us to ask if we had a minute for an interview. OH HELL YEAH we'll be your token foreigners.

after the grand palace, we sat down in an au bon pain for a while cooling off and chilling out. i think this is where i first realized k&w were really serious when they said they just wanted to hang out (least this is what kate said and i can only assume she spoke for both). we had a good time just sitting.

anyway, we eventually made our way back to the hotel to gather our stuff to get over to khao san road, where our overnight bus was set to leave from. i figured it'd be easiest to get in a taxi. it might take us a while (an hour from sukhumvit, i guessed) and be a little expensive, but whatever.

TWO HOURS. it took two hours. we were stuck in such bad traffic that our taxi driver fell asleep. i had to poke him to remind him to move.

whatever. we finally made it to stupid khaosan road and were so exhausted by a day in bangkok (what a terrible, unavoidable place to start a trip in thailand) that we just ate food and waited for the bus. kate thought she might throw up so i was worried for that.

day 3: sept 4: getting to koh tao
before the bus ride i had warned k&w that we'd probably stop in the middle of the night for seemingly no reason (peeing, eating, smoking, i guess...but those aren't really reasons, especially when there's a potty on the bus). so at 3 am, when the bus pulled in to a parking lot and the fluorescent lights blinked on, k&w weren't even surprised.

when i asked kate how she felt, she responded with an overly perky "GREAT! i love this bus ride!" she said it was rejuvenating. moving vehicles are kate's cure-all.

we got to the ferry place on chumporn around 5 am, right on time--two hours before the ferry was supposed to leave. i fell asleep on a chair. k&w did some other stuff while i was sleeping.

i had reassured them that this would be the hardest travel day. a big negative on koh tao is that it takes SO FRIGGIN LONG to get to. you could fly to koh samui, but it's expensive and you're still a long ferry ride away. you could fly to suratthani, but more buses/ferries...blah blah blah. it's hard to get to, but i figured k&w were tough travelers and could make it.

so after this already difficult journey, we walked on a long, not-so-sturdy pier to our ferry/catamaran. it was a solid ferry (even if the a/c was too cold), but nonetheless, it broke down--in the middle of the ocean. we could barely see land. we motored along at quarter speed. it seemed like our ferry was broken, but nobody was doing anything--not the foreigners, not the thai people running the boat, nobody. but we determined that yes the boat must be broken, because we all got off at the first of three stops to switch catamarans.

we were 10 minutes away from our stop on koh tao. we could see our beach from this broken catamaran spot. I JUST WANTED TO PUT MY STUFF DOWN SO BAD.

we got on a new boat and finally got to koh tao. by 11 am, we were checked in to our first bungalow. starved and just wanting the beach, we went to a restaurant overlooking the ocean and ordered lunch. our table was on the sand and about 40 feet up from the ocean. we all ordered sandwiches and fruit smoothies. then kate said something that was pretty true but also hilarious:

"i thought only people on the price is right got this kind of stuff."

i have no idea how we all got so lucky, but these few days in koh tao were definitely some of the most perfect days i could've conjured up in any dream. that sounds epically cheesy, but it's pretty true.

days 3-6: sept 4-sept 7: koh tao
the days on koh tao pretty much blend into each other (and, as usual, i'm getting tired of this chronological nonsense) so i'm just gonna group'em together. we spent the first two nights in this one bungalow that was kind of crappy. we swore we had fleas or bed bugs or something after the first night but when we asked the owner people about switching, this guy soe insisted they were just "tiny...tiny ants" that we picked up in the sand and brought to bed with us. so we tried showering and going to bed extra clean and all these other precautions, but there were still bugs so we moved to a bungalow down the road. big upgrade.

we laid around on the white sand, shopped, waited around for meal times to come, played card games, played in the ocean even when the monsoon rains came through, ate roti and 7-11 snacks, and got tons of sleep. we found our favorite eating place--chaba bar, right on the beach--and spent a lot of time sitting in their chairs, eating their breakfast and drinking their iced coffee. we listened to a lot of jack johnson. it was an awesome way to live. leaving sucked, but i think that's how you know you've found a phenomenal place.


i have more to tell you but it's 2 in the morning and even though i don't really feel like sleeping, i think maybe i should make an attempt at it. i've gotta give some finals tomorrow.

ghost stories

today in m5 conversation class, a handful of us were sitting on the floor.

"nicki, have you ever met a ghost?"
"have i ever seen a ghost? ohhhhh...well..."

you know me. i friggin LOVE ghost stuff. anytime there's a ghost-related show on tv, i watch. i've spent many a night seeking out haunted places around the bay area. the ghost of niles canyon story is one of my favorites. gravity hills are my thing. there's an especially creepy one off 580 as you're going toward stockton, off vasco road. you have to drive pretty far along this country road in the complete darkness before you get to this bend in the road. if you put your car in neutral at the beginning of the turn, it goes around the turn completely by itself.

rumor has it that a school bus full of children crashed off the side of the road at that exact turn many years ago. the accident killed all the school kids and the driver. ever since then, the kids have stayed around as ghosts, helping cars around the bend. they say if you put flour on the back bumper of your car, you can see little hand prints left behind.

i told the kids this story, which inspired their own. our school is supposedly haunted. someone died on the second floor of building 11 (the foreign language building, aka ours). there's also one over by building three, next to the basketball court. the boy in the group told us how one time, he was playing basketball and the ball rolled away. he went to get it and when he looked up, he saw a woman in white standing there...headless. he looked away for a second and when he looked back, she wasn't there anymore.

when maddy and i (oh, yeah, maddy was there, too...combined convo class today) suggested hey, maybe we should all go ghost hunting at night, the kids sort of freaked out and told us helllllllll no (in so many words).

the students went on to tell us about thai folklore that says no building is truly complete until someone dies during construction.

"wait...you mean that every time they make a building, someone dies?"
"yep."

DO YOU GUYS KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON RIGHT OUTSIDE MY WINDOW RIGHT NOW?

the adults always ruin everything

back in the day, i was an umpire. i loved it. i got to hang out in the sunshine (sometimes the pouring rain, sometimes the terrible wind, sometimes the bitter cold, but in my brain i like to think it was always pleasantly sunny), watch some kids play one of my favorite sports, and i got paid $20 an hour, which is a better wage than i ever expect to be paid in the future. i was understanding of the girls and they were understanding of me. i wasn't too hard on them, so they weren't too hard on me.

the worst thing, though--easily the most terrible part of the job, hands down--was the parents. "OH UMP HOW CAN YOU CALL THAT A STRIKE!" "WHAT?! FAIR?!" "THAT'S AN INFIELD FLY IF I'VE EVER SEEN ONE, UMP!"

i was 16-18 years old. these were grown adults. oddly, although they had the years and the potential for wisdom with them, they lost perspective on the game way more often than the girls. the parents got so invested and acted like everything was so serious. yeah, i had some overly invested girls, but for the most part, they knew what they were in for, they knew when they messed up, they knew when i messed up, and we never got in huge fights. a lot of the umpires for that league--me included--will say they did it entirely because the girls were great and entirely in spite of the sometimes horrid parents.


my students here in thailand are phenomenal. some of them have way more potential and drive than i ever have, and some of them are way smarter than me, a lot of them far more charismatic, and about three quarters of them are genuinely good people. (you can't win'em all and i think 75 percent is a pretty good chunk.) they are the reason i absolutely love teaching here.

let's see if you can connect the dots and see where i'm going right now.

two of my students got squirrels for pets

they're three and a half weeks old. they joined us for tutoring on wednesday night. they drink milk and sleep with the girls at night.

me plus an ADORABLE RODENT. yes, it's wearing a collar and a bell.

UPDATE: these squirrels died one week later.

notes on thailand

• hula hooping seems to be very popular right now. i'm waiting for skip it to make its thai debut.
• sweetened condensed milk is a regular and extremely popular condiment. you have an iced coffee? let's put some scm in it. you have a pancake (roti, which is really more crepe-like than pancake-like)? i bet it'd taste good with some scm. i see you have a mango there--what do you think about pouring some scm on it? 
• i still have 700+ students. this is normal.
  
• breakfast, lunch, and dinner can all be the same meal--some form of noodles and rice. there's no such thing as "breakfast food."
• robert pattinson is known as RPattz to my girls.
• slapstick comedy reigns supreme.
• the conversational equivalent of "hey, how are you?" is "hey, have you eaten yet?" the question literally translates to "have you had rice yet?"
• having a huge nose with a monstrous bridge is incredibly sexy. some of my students stare at my nose in awe and touch theirs with a bit of sadness. rumor has it thais don't like to wear sunglasses because they don't rest on their noses well.
  

it's the final countdownnnnnnnnnn

this post is probably best viewed while listening to europe's "the final countdown." you know, that's pretty ballsy for a rock band to name itself after a whole continent.

also, this won't be the final countdown. i'm being dramatic, but i think life's more fun that way.

days until...
...kate and wendy come: 12
...my final grades are due: 32
...i leave for laos and vietnam: 34
...maddy and i land in mumbai: 46
...we look at the pyramids: 54
...i once again see western society (in vienna): 64
...we walk on the swiss alps: 71
...aj rawls welcomes us to paris with open arms: 77
...i step back on american soil: 83

shaved legs, plucked armpits, and obama's policy in afghanistan

this year some of the m5s wanted to start doing conversational english classes, so during 9th period, maddy, abby and i switch off teaching one of the two groups. today i was "teaching" (hanging out with) a group of about 10 of the juniors. at first we were having light conversation about how their weekend was--always boring, they're always just sleeping and playing on the computer--then we started talking about motorbikes and the only boy in the group showed me his motorbike scar. i, of course, had to show mine back.

this was slightly embarrassing for me, though, because i haven't shaved my legs in a week. i was like, "ughhh, guys, sorry, it's kind of gross but i haven't shaved in a while." the girls talked in thai with each other for a minute then looked at me.

"you shave your legs?"
 "yeah, usually every other day, but not always."

thai women in general don't shave their legs, as far as i understand.

"you guys don't shave your legs, right?"
"nooo."
"do you want to?"
"nooooo."
"why not?"

they didn't want the rough hair that comes from shaving. they know that if they shave their hair off, it won't be soft and thin anymore. i told'em yeah, that's true, then let them touch my gross, rough legs. does it hurt? they wanted to know. no, because it's not like the razors are going into your skin...just right against it. but sometimes if you go too fast, it hurts.

all this girl talk has everyone really going. everyone's pulling up their pants to compare hairiness of legs, and i can tell some girls are embarrassed but nobody's so ashamed that they can't speak. the boy was totally cool with all of this.

"what about your armpits?" i asked. they all made plucking motions by their armpits, to which i gasped. "NO WAY. ow. does that hurt? how long does it take? how often do you do it?" yeah, it kind of hurts, it takes about 20 minutes, most of us do it once a week.

the conversation somehow drifted to obama and they asked me if i liked him. yeah, i said, but nobody's perfect. we started talking about the afghanistan war and then i was somehow explaining the obama administration's war policy and democratic peace theory in brief (which i hope hope hope i explained right). everyone listened silently. at one point in my explanation, there was a break and i paused. "no no no, keep going," the girl next to me urged. they were fascinated. i love these kids.

i gotta go now. i promised'em i'd shave my legs today so they could feel, which is sort of creepy, but everything is a learning opportunity.

i have no idea what i wanna do

it's funny...i spend a lot of time thinking about future nicki. she has so many possibilities.

when i come home in november, i mostly wanna just hang out at home for a while. thanksgiving comes up real fast after i get home, then i'll spend some time in december seeing everyone all up and down the coast, then i'll revel in the beauty that is christmas in california.

after that...hard to say. after i lived in paris, i swore i'd never live in a big city. it's too easy to get shuffled along with the rest and never make an impact on anyone/anything. but walking home in suphan tonight, i felt stifled and swore i'd never again live in a small town cuz there aren't enough things to do.

location figures pretty prominently into what job i get, but it's not like there's one place i wanna be. i think i'd like to be in the yay for a while, maybe get a job and an apartment for a little while. then again, if nothing works out for a while and i get really tired of san ramon, i wouldn't mind moving down to san clemente for a while, getting some wifi in the condo and job hunting down that way. the whole west coast actually looks pretty sweet right now.

if a sweet job worked itself out in sacramento, i wouldn't mind sacrificing my coastal passions for that. actually, sacramento's a neat city. and my nerdy heart would be thrilled for some excellent job in the capital, even if it is in a nearly bankrupt state.

also, if things were looking real bad in california and i just couldn't stand it anymore, i'd go live with amber in zuni for a while. i think it'd be cheap enough for me to just hang out there jobless for a while.

on top of everything, if obama called me and offered me a job in dc, i'd take it in a flash.

*sigh* future.

it sort of hurt, but now it feels pretty good

check it outtttt! i ended up going with the bamboo tattoo, not the machine tattoo. maddy got hers first (i'm sure she'll put a picture here soon) by this little guy appropriately named mr. noy ("little" in thai). after she was done, i asked him if he did machine tattoos (yes) and showed him my design, penned by a girl in one of my favorite 11th grade classes.

"oh, i can do that in bamboo."
"really? no way. i don't believe you."

i quizzed him endlessly on bamboo tattoos (would he be able to do all the detail? the shading? how would it fade over time? with this last question, i proceeded to look at/question all the tattoos on half his body, and the whole group of us pointed to pictures of flower tattoos around the room to ask if they were bamboo or machine.) noy was ultra confident in the bamboo. it wouldn't fade--if it did, he would fly to california and re-do it for me. he could easily do the shading and detail--in fact, it might even be easier because you can go slower with bamboo, so you can get all the nitty gritty nookes  and crannies.

i slept on it and decided YES bamboo tattoo, that's it. we all went in on saturday (tattooing is a social affair) and the place was popping. two adorable children were mobbing around, everyone was hanging out in the tiny tattoo place, pets were running around outside--in short, it was loud and semi-crazy and an excellent distraction for a person getting a tattoo. he put the outline on my body and i laid down and noy got to work.

re: the pain--hurty. you know those hooks they use for fishing? the ones shaped sort of like arrows that go in really easily but are really hard to pull out? that's sort of what it felt like, except on a really small scale. i got used to it after a while, but it's bizarre how hyper aware i was of that one little spot on my body. i could tell exactly when he was on a rib--ow ow ow--and when he moved more toward my fatty boob--pain, not so bad.

as he had promised on friday, it only took half an hour of poking and then i was done. the neat thing about bamboo tattoos is that they affect the skin differently (hence the reason i think they fade differently) and you don't get any bleeding/scarring that you get with a machine tattoo. just a couple hours after, i could go swimming and kick it in the sun and basically do everything i could ever want, no bandage on the tat or anything.

i'm so incredibly happy with the tat. tattoo virginity: lost with no regrets.

mother's day

"She [Anna Jarvis, founder of Mother's Day] was specific about the location of the apostrophe; it was to be a singular possessive, for each family to honour their mother, not a plural possessive commemorating all mothers in the world."

i appreciate people like anna jarvis, not for this "celebrating mothers" crap (although i am down with that), but because she not only thought about possessive apostrophe placement but also formed a strong opinion on it. i miss grammar nerds.

tomorrow's mother's day in thailand, hence my mother's day-related post in the middle of august. right now the students are in a big assembly and a bunch of them brought their moms. it looks like a semi-fancy affair. ooh la la.

love and miss you, momma :)

average weather forecast

for koh chang/trat, tomorrow through sunday:

high: 32 degrees celsius (89.6 F)
low: 24 degrees celsius (75.2 F)
chance of T-storms thursday and friday: between 30% and 50%
chance of rain showers saturday and sunday: between 20% and 30%

tropical island, here we come?

i'm such a fat kid

i've really taken a liking to just sitting on my bed lately. actually, sitting is a generous term--i'm really lying down with my head strategically propped up against a pillow so i can play on the computer. i've also really taken a liking to eating a lot because food rules.

those two new habits lead to this picture of me right now:

that's melted chocolate on my neck. it's still there. fat kid.

the upsides and downsides to actually being involved

last week, i sat down in a meeting with my four co-teachers to discuss what they wanted from me for the future--what sorts of lessons they want, what they want the kids to learn, how they'd like it taught, what sort of expectations they have for different classes, etc. one of the teachers had made an outline of what they thought would be good things for me to teach: reading/listening passages and general knowledge trivia games, mostly.

it was awesome. i've wanted a meeting like this since october. i have NO IDEA what i'm doing here, in this whole "teaching" business. i've been mostly relying on my wit and good looks to teach the kids english, and it's only been half working. so to have this outline of things to teach, to be on the same page as all of my coteachers, to now be doing something that i KNOW they want me to do is thrilling.

but this now means that i'm staring at a list of 20+ vocabulary words and trying to make 5-10 of them into an interesting dialogue. come on, brain. let's work together on this.

the closer the day gets...

...the colder my feet get. i'm worried about the tattoo, you guys.

a big group hug

sports day (which is actually a week and a half of sports playing and about two months of preparation) is officially over. if i know high school kids, at least half of'em are out finding beer/wine coolers/cheap thai whiskey to imbibe this evening. well deserved, kids.

at the end of the two days of solid competition, there was a huge awards ceremony to give out trophies to all the winners--the football champs (boys/girls, m1-3/m4-5), the volleyball champs, the netball champs, the basketball champs, the overall sports champs, and the dance champs. an unusual silence fell over the crowd when they announced the winners for that one.

right as they announced the dance champs, the monsoon season came in with full force. pouring rain, all over all the kids who were sitting all over a dirty, soon-to-be-extremely-muddy field. at first everyone ducked for cover. but then a couple boys came out into the rain on the field. they were joined by a few other boys, who all motioned for everyone to come out on the field. soon enough, everyone was back on the field, in the pouring rain.

they started singing and holding hands, grinch-style. and magically, the rain stopped. the song went on for a few minutes, all these kids from all these different teams, holding hands and belting out the words. as soon as the song ended, the rain came back. FREAKY MAGICAL SPORTS DAY COINCIDENCE? i think not.

the whole thing gave me chills. that they could have all these weeks of being on separate teams, competing against each other, losing to each other only minutes before, and now they were all singing and dancing in the rain together. no bitterness, no grudges, no complaining about how unfair the judging was.

these kids are amazing.

SPORTS DAY.

before i launch into my gushing over the gloriousness of sports day, i wanted to tell you i just had my first day tutoring The Man. it was great. he's studying to get a degree of some sort in vocational education even though he already has his phd in industrial engineering (i think...maybe it's his masters) and has already studying methods of industrial education in a bunch of other countries. in order to get this degree, he has to pass an english test. this is where maddy and i come in (she sees him tuesdays, me on thursday). his english isn't very good, but i think his biggest problem is his fear of saying things wrong. us grown ups have such a problem being wrong. this is why kids pwn at learning languages (plus some other stuff, but i think this ability to be wrong and ask questions is one of the biggest things kids have going for them).

ok ok sports day time. this day is phenomenal. it's like homecoming plus lip sync plus dancing plus speed. the kids have been working on this pretty much since the beginning of school. during 9th period--from 3:10 to 4, when nobody has class but nobody can leave school--they've been grouping according to their colors, either yellow, red, pink, green, blue, or pink. i'm pretty sure the school assigned these colors. they've been banging on drums, clapping their hands and chanting for no discernible reason.

today, we found out why. (go watch the video at the end. i know i'm demanding and i should really embed the video right here in the middle, but i didn't so you can just scroll and check it out a little ways down.)

each team has its own chant and a set of girls dance in the middle of the field in front of the whole school to their team's chant. their make up was INSANE. these girls are 16 years old--18 at best! most of these made up girls are my students and i spent half the morning trying to figure out who was whom. my favorite lady boy was dressed in his lady get up today. he was gorgeous, of course.

one of the biggest downsides to only seeing my kids once a week for an hour is that i never get to know them. it was awesome seeing'em outside the classroom today, absolutely rockin' it. a bunch of my boys who can't speak english for crap are excellent atheletes. go figure, eh?

seriously, watch the video. sorry for the butt shots.

on working in thailand

i don't do much of it.

this morning the former prime minister (not that one...this other one who's from suphan and friggin loves this place) came to school to give some kids some scholarships and speak and stuff. we were supposed to teach periods 4, 5, and 6 afterward, but after the prime minister guy left the school director was just like, "heyyyy you guys, don't worry about class today!" WOOOOO.

tomorrow and friday are sports day, which in terms of importance to high school students is like homecoming. of course we don't have class.

this means that I'M DONE FOR THE WEEK, BABY!

tattoo virginity

my body's still a clean canvas right now, but for a long time now i've been thinking about getting a tattoo. i wanna get one for every place i've lived: san ramon, isla vista, paris, thailand (to be continued). thailand's up first just because i'm here now, and i dunno when i'll be back so i better get it while the gettin's good.

i had no idea what to get when i first came here. something buddhism related might be pretty, but i'm not buddhist whatsoever so that's not really significant to me. the thai language isn't really that important to me (i know, i know, judge as you will), so getting something in thai script would be silly. also, i'm not a big fan of word tattoos on my body.

but when i saw how incredibly talented my students are at drawing, it dawned on me--why not have a student design the tattoo?

today i asked some kids in my favorite class if they could draw flowers. they said no but called up The Artist of the class. and this is what i got:

perfect

i slept for about a zillion hours today

woke up late, laid in bed for a long time, walked about 30 feet, laid down again and took a nap. then i woke up and laid around some more.

it's been a really big day, you guys.

the porch is now for humans

good news, dedicated readers! remember how much i f$(*%king hated those pigeons? how they kept having stupid babies and dumb little pigeons babies kept filling up my porch with feathers and poop and nest shit?

THEY'RE NOT HERE ANYMORE! (something unmentionable happened.)

the girls downstairs promised me a net as soon as there were no birds, so the day they flew away i made sure to alert the ladies so i could get my net. i came home from the weekend with the regans and the net was up! what a joyful day.

sort of. because there was still a lot of bird shit on my porch and that's gross.

so i had my room/bathroom/porch cleaned today (i even gave the cleaning lady a tip cuz i knew how friggin gross that bird crap was) and now the porch is fully ready for human usage.

now i'm sitting in my comfy blue chair on the porch, doors to my room wide open, an ice cold beer sitting next to me, and feeling the breeze cruise through my hair. it's moments like this that make me wonder what else i need in life.

there's lightning, too. did i mention that

laos stories

too hard to write about everything that happened last weekend in any sort of neat fashion. i'm just gonna give you some tidbits.

the prado


maddy and i got in to vientiane, laos, right on time around 10 am. we needed to buy a ticket to vang vieng, our ultimate tubing destination still more than 100 km away, so we asked a couple people and ended up buying tickets for the 2 pm bus (60,000 kip, which is about $7) from the front desk of a semi-fancy hotel. the guy told us the bus would pick us up from the lobby at 1:30 pm and we were welcome to leave our stuff there while we explored.

so we went off, had some coffee and read some books, then came back to the hotel right at 1:30. no bus. nbd, this is southeast asia, "on time" is at least 15 minutes late. then it was 1:45...2 pm...no bus. maddy got up to ask the guy who sold us tickets where the bus was, and he reassured us it was coming. maybe 15 minutes later, the hotel guy lead us to a song tau outside and introduced us to another guy, who motioned to us to put our stuff in the truck. he drove us about a block away, stopped, and got out.

this was not the bus station. this was just some corner in town. it was now edging on 2:30 pm and whatever bus we were supposed to be on has probably left by now. we were just sitting there, essentially helpless and feeling kind of screwed. then a THIRD guy drives up in a fancy toyota prado, talks to the song tau driver guy, then looks at us and goes, "vang vieng?"

yeah, that's where we wanna go...the song tau driver guy took our bus tickets from us and escorted us into this fancy car. then it was just the two of us girls and this driver guy who spoke ZERO english. and i swear to god he didn't understand thai at all even though lao is super incredibly similar to thai. we were sure we were gonna get kidnapped. we only paid for bus tickets and now, for no reason, we're being driven away in this fancy car. our thai phones didn't work in laos and i was feeling really helpless. my heart was beating in that nervous, i-don't-know-what-the-fuck to do way. we stopped to get gas and maddy and i hopped out to as a gas station attendant person if we could borrow a phone. no dice. we were getting pretty far outside town now. it looked like we were going toward vang vieng on the map...but their crazy kidnapping sex trade lair could be on that road. we were fucked. this is how you die.

so we asked the driver if we could borrow his phone, and he said yes, which was a great sign but not 100% relieving. we tried calling the hotel but both the regular and fax number were out of service--MORE BAD NEWS. well, if this is it, then this is it. we turned on our ipods, i opened my lonely planet to the page with the laos emergency number, and we tried to not think.

about two hours into the drive, maddy asked the guy to stop to pee. "five minute," he said (ok, i lied when i said zero english). he stopped at this shack in podunk nowhere...where our friend megan happens to be standing! HOLY SHIT OTHER WHITE PEOPLE WHAT A JOY! so megan knew where we were and would be able to report us missing. i was 50% relieved and able to relax a little bit more for hte rest of the journey.

we ended up making it to vang vieng safely and we had worried for no reason at all. we're still not sure why we got this fancy, personal vehicle, but maybe that's just something we leave unanswered.

tubing


vang vieng is famous for its tubing. you rent a tube and a truck drives you about 20 minutes up the river, where you hop off into the open arms of at least four different bars. we played beer pong and swung off a 10-foot-high platform into the river before leaping in with our tubes. cuz we're in the middle of monsoon season now, the river was flowing pretty fast and was actually kind of dangerous. but lots of other people were still tubing so it must be ok (drink the kool aidddddd).

we stopped at a couple bars along the journey and met some hilarious folks (donal, sinead, dreads, guy with ugly glasses, a fellow nicky). huge limestone mountains jutted up around us, covered in tropical trees and generally looking phenomenally gorgeous. the four of us girls (me, maddy, megan, and bethany) couldn't help but laugh and wonder aloud what the hell we'd done in our lives to land ourselves in such a place.

we had a great time, but it was mostly due to timing. behind us on the river, a lao guy had jumped off a platform into the river and never came back up. we heard the next day that he'd died, which is not that uncommon on the river. (but i wasn't gonna tell you any of that earlier because you never would've let me go.)

ok ok i have to go teach now, but i'll try to get you more stories/pictures later. ah crap, i also gotta finish the regan pictures...geez, nicki, so internet busy lately.

leaving my heart in laos

i just woke up from a little cat nap in a hammock with huge limestone mountains leering over me. i've been eating so much bread--real, quality french bread--that i think i'll probably turn into a loaf myself pretty soon. i had dark beer last night. yesterday i played beer pong, swung into a river, and tubed down said river, stopping for drinks along the way. i'm sleeping in the top loft of what is literally a huge group bungalow and showering in the leaves. i'm gonna go eat food and watch friends (the show, not real people) now.

vang vieng is amazing.

lpdr

this is coming straight at you from LAOS, babyyyyy. maddy and i are sitting in an internet cafe in vientiane right now, wasting time until the bus comes to take us up to vang vieng. the bus leaves at 2 pm and supposedly takes 2-3 hours; maddy guesses we'll actually get there at 5:45 pm, i say 6:47 pm.

vientiane is the quietest captial city i've ever been in. tiny and adorable and relaxed. hardly like a capital city at all, really.

vang vieng, btw, is home of the famed southeast asian tubing experience. rent a tube for about $3, float down a river for an indeterminable amount of hours. how much time you take depends on how many bars lure you in along the way and how many times you stop to fling about on rope swings. oh sure, it's a little dangerous, but i did my growing up alcohol-wise right next to an ocean, so i think i know how to handle myself. we bought a waterproof disposible camera so you guys all get some photographic proof of the experience.

"it's up to you"

kanchana: "nicki, a man wants to tutor with you. an older man. [some indecipherable words about a phd and an interview.] what night are you free?"

(nai, miew, and kanchana all bust up because this will be me, tutoring a man. sex jokes abound.)

nicki: "hmm...thursday night."

kanchana: "ok, one hour? one hour and a half? it's up to you."

miew: "how about one hour for studying and one hour for something else?"

(555)

nicki: "how about one hour?"

kanchana: "ohhh, one hour, it's not long enough! how about one hour and a half?"

regan trip: part song

anyway, to pick up where i left off (sort of)...

on monday night, amber and mary flew down to phuket (ultimately phi phi bound) and i went back to bangkok so i could get back to suphan and teach tuesday/wednesday. ("well, nicki, that sounds stupid. why didn't you just take the whole week off?" in retrospect, maybe i should've...but i wanna make sure i have enough days off for when kate and wendy come. anyway, onward.) everything went beautifully for the regans over these next couple days. they got to phi phi just as planned, stayed in a little bungalow, went on a spectacular snorkeling trip around the phi phi islands, and kicked it on the beach. aside from a little jellyfish debacle, everything pretty much went as planned.

the same wasn't really true for me. i got back to bangkok around midnight on monday night. i debated taking a taxi all the way home to suphan but it was gonna be WAY too expensive, so i just went to khao san and crashed in a cheap hostel. i slept for like three hours and woke up at 4:40 am to get on the van to suphan. it was still pitch black on my walk from hostel to van and there were some creepy people out and i don't like khao san much to begin with, much less at night by myself...meh, creepy bad start to tuesday. but i got on the van and back to suphan in time to teach the kiddies on tuesday.

tuesday and wednesday are my fave days of the week class-wise this year, so i was actually pretty pumped to teach. after i finished on wednesday, i hopped back on a van to bangkok so i could take a bus down to phuket.

i went with the bus option cuz it was probably 1/3 the cost of a plane ticket, if not cheaper. THIS WAS A BAD CHOICE AND I SHOULD'VE SPLURGED. the travel agency that sold me the ticket said the bus would leave bangkok at 6 pm and arrive in phuket at 10 am. we didn't end up leaving until 6:45 pm, so i figured we'd be an hour, hour and a half late in phuket.

at noon we stopped. i asked someone where we were. "two hours away," she said. TWO FRIGGIN HOURS. it ended up being closer to two and a half. meanwhile, amber and mary are just kickin it at this pier all day cuz i told'em i'd meet'em there around 11 am. amber had my phone so i had no way to communicate how pathetically long this stupid local bus was taking.

when i finally met up with them at like 8 pm (read: actually just before 4 pm) i hooty hooted. of course. let part 2 begin. i wanted to go back to koh yao noi, which was where mom and dad and i went and we loved it--it was all quiet and local and had beautiful forests and it sounded like an excellent break from life. but we were at the wrong pier and it was getting to be too late in the day for ferries, so we couldn't get there. "check out this other absolutely beautiful resort on koh yao yai, though," the travel agent lady on the pier said. (btw, yeah, those are two different islands with very similar names. noi=little. yai=big. if you saw'em on a map you'd understand.)

she showed us the brochure for koh yao yai village. it'd be a little expensive, but i was tired and we all just wanted to go so we were like, "yeah, ok, we're on vacation so let's go." we went to another pier and had some time to kill, so we grabbed a beer and waited until the speed boat came. when we got to koh yao yai, a song tau was already waiting to drive us to the most BEAUTIFUL place i've ever seen. i know i say this way too much, but you have to see it. i'll put up pictures when i have a better internet connection tomorrow. just suffice it to say there was a gigantic infinity pool with a swim-up bar looking over the ocean.

on saturday we went back to phuket for the night cuz we had plans for elephant riding on sunday morning on the island. we got a cab from teh pier to our hostel, which would have been a quick journey if the cabbie had known where he was going and we didn't spend half an hour driving around the same area of town looking for this place...lolz. dinner saturday night was unexpectedly excellent. what i thought would be a mediocre meal turned out to be a fabulous evening with islandy drinks and the thai wait staff playing games with us (jackpot!).

i'm getting tired of writing. dammit, i need to do this more. you guys, don't let me take such long breaks from writing.

ok, ok, the rest of the trip in short form. on sunday morning we went up to the elephant place and since i'd already done this elephant riding thingy, i let amber and mary do the journey. amber loved it but mary was apprehensive. we journeyed back to bangkok later that day and took a cab right out to suphan. they stayed in the apartment building right next door (oooo, the new fancy one) and came to two classes with me on monday--my smartest class (6/9) and my supposed naughtiest class (5/2). the kids clapped for them and guessed their ages wildly wrong. on monday night, we just ate dinner and hung out at farangs across the street and on tuesday, they peaced out for bangkok to explore the grand palace.

in that time we were kickin it for a long time at hte restaurant, the three of us just talking, i realized how much i really really love hanging out with amber. when we saw each other for the first time, we screamed and did one of those huge squeezy hugs. i miss that bitch and i'm so so so so glad they came. BON. DEE.