remember how much i said i hated bangkok? i think i've just been doing it wrong.
alex, maddy, ally, sam, and i decided we wanted to see avatar this weekend, so we made plans to go this afternoon, just sort of whenever we woke up. we left yoo dee mee sook around 11:30 am and walked out to the main road to catch a song tau (suphan's form of public transportation. it's essentially a truck with two benches in the back...but the bed is covered...i dunno, hard to explain, not really important to the story). when we walked around the back of the song tau, we heard this huge "NIIICCCCCCCKKKKKKKIIIIIIII!!"
a handful of my craziest 9th graders were on the truck (including a girl who may or may not have a crush on me). hugs and high fives for everyone! god, we laughed a lot. i'm not doing the ride any justice, but it might just be one of those things that was only funny if you were there (sorry for even bringing it up, people who weren't there). just trust that it was the best song tau ride ever.
we hopped off the song tau and straight on to the minivan headed toward bangkok. an hour and a half later, around 1:30 pm, we were at victory monument, where we walked about 100 steps to the sky train station.
bangkok, i just want to commend you on the bts. it's fast, it's efficient, it's clean, it's easy to navigate, and it's got almost everything i want in a public transportation system. just make it go to the khao san/grand palace area, and then you've got it made.
anyway, about seven minutes after we got on the sky train, we got off at the siam stop for the siam paragon mall. this place is HUGE (five floors, plus a mezzazine, ground, and basement). it's pretty much like any big, fancy mall you'd see in america. think macy's, nordstroms, bloomingdales, etc. (except not those specific brands). the top floor is the hugest, nicest movie theater i've ever seen. we bought our tickets for the 2:30 pm showing of avatar in 3d and dashed down to the food floor for some grub. i hit up the bk lounge, which let me in even though i didn't have coups.
then we watched avatar and it was SO GOOD. oh man. that movie's an experience. i know i sound like everybody else in the world, but really really really, you should go see it.
tahsh joined up with us after the movie, and we had some time after the movie but before the last bus for suphan departed, so we wandered the mall. no, actually, tahsh and i spent an hour in a grocery store FILLED with imported goods--delicious cheeses, hummus, tortillas, reduced fat jiffy, and several other things i literally gasped at in the store. nat sent me some sbux coffee about two weeks ago, so i finally found a coffee press so i could enjoy. my first cup will be tomorrow morning. don't worry, i'll keep you updated.
we left the mall around 7 and after a ride on the sky train and a minivan drive, we were home in suphan by 9:30. it was glorious. i know you probably read through this and got bored to death with the stupid time updates i kept giving you, but if you've ever been to bangkok, you understand why these times are so critical to an awesome day. in a city where a one-mile cab ride can take 45 minutes, times like the ones we made today are superb.
anyway, now i'm gonna go to bed early mostly because i wanna wake up and have coffee.
NEXT MORNING UPDATE: this coffee rules. i still have to perfect my water-to-coffee-grounds ratio, but i'm more than happy that's one of my current tasks in life. i paired said cup of coffee with a fried egg, bread w/jam, and a handful of grapes. if that's not breakfast in america, i don't know what is.
30.1.10
29.1.10
as in scrublin?
a few of my 9th graders came up to me after class this morning.
"teacher, you know dublin high school?"
dublin high school? seriously? did those words just come out of your mouth?
"yeah. in california?"
"yes. you know?"
the ghetto known as scrublin? DUH i know it.
"YESSS! it's very close to my house! i run to there! it's so close to my home. why do you know it?"
the group of girls giggled and pointed to one specific girl.
"her kik!" (kik=not quite boyfriend, more than a friend; also a "little thing on the side," especially for married men)
the one girl shook her head no no no, everyone squealed, then the group of girls started to leave. i called the girl who knew dublin high school back.
"wait, wait. why do you know dublin high school?"
"my neighbor."
"ooohhh. yes, it's really close to where i live."
"ohhh, can i come to america with you?"
"yeahhh, sure! we'll go to dublin high school."
and with that, she was off.
dublin, california. whodathunk. so you san ramon friends, if you see a thai kid walking around, say sawatdee kaa/krup. (kaa=girls, krup=boys...whatever, the kid will be shocked if you even say "sawatdee")
"teacher, you know dublin high school?"
dublin high school? seriously? did those words just come out of your mouth?
"yeah. in california?"
"yes. you know?"
the ghetto known as scrublin? DUH i know it.
"YESSS! it's very close to my house! i run to there! it's so close to my home. why do you know it?"
the group of girls giggled and pointed to one specific girl.
"her kik!" (kik=not quite boyfriend, more than a friend; also a "little thing on the side," especially for married men)
the one girl shook her head no no no, everyone squealed, then the group of girls started to leave. i called the girl who knew dublin high school back.
"wait, wait. why do you know dublin high school?"
"my neighbor."
"ooohhh. yes, it's really close to where i live."
"ohhh, can i come to america with you?"
"yeahhh, sure! we'll go to dublin high school."
and with that, she was off.
dublin, california. whodathunk. so you san ramon friends, if you see a thai kid walking around, say sawatdee kaa/krup. (kaa=girls, krup=boys...whatever, the kid will be shocked if you even say "sawatdee")
28.1.10
ants in the office
they're ferocious beasts at school. if we leave food out--sometimes even wrapped candy--the ants find their way to it within an hour. they form a strong line from the food on the table to god knows where and march march march. they must have the most incredible communication system. "hey, guys! they left some cake out on the table! let's gooooooo!" i swear, at least twice a week we have to clear off the table and toss out a good chunk of food cuz of these blasted little creatures.
this morning we came in and there's a line of ants going down the aisle way between the desks (our office has six rows, four desks in each row, with an aisle going down the middle). i think there were a million ants there this morning, filing from noon's desk in the first row to tahsh's desk in the last row. noon put something scrumptious in her trash can and they must've found it over night. tahsh had nothing aside from papers on her desk, but the ants were determined to find something--anything. the little guys were really determined an hour ago, marching in what looked like pairs all the way down the aisle. but now they're looking distracted--they're breaking into groups and investigating their own situations. people started stomping the floor, but other than looking at the ants and wishing they weren't there, we don't seem to have a good solution to the problem.
lol. now lois is dropping water on them. that's not a real solution, lois.
this morning we came in and there's a line of ants going down the aisle way between the desks (our office has six rows, four desks in each row, with an aisle going down the middle). i think there were a million ants there this morning, filing from noon's desk in the first row to tahsh's desk in the last row. noon put something scrumptious in her trash can and they must've found it over night. tahsh had nothing aside from papers on her desk, but the ants were determined to find something--anything. the little guys were really determined an hour ago, marching in what looked like pairs all the way down the aisle. but now they're looking distracted--they're breaking into groups and investigating their own situations. people started stomping the floor, but other than looking at the ants and wishing they weren't there, we don't seem to have a good solution to the problem.
lol. now lois is dropping water on them. that's not a real solution, lois.
25.1.10
you're sunburned
i'm gonna get into some samet stories but first i have to tell you what just happened to me.
at 12:40, the bell rang for 6th period. here they just have one bell to both end one period and start the next, so there's no passing period. this means class starts around 10 minutes after the bell rings, depending on the class (they're grouped by intelligence here, so the smarter classes generally like to start earlier, but the less smart/generally more naughty classes are still filing in 12 minutes after the bell). so it's five minutes after the bell, and i have no students in the classroom. ten minutes after the bell and still not a one. i start to get a little worried, but not too bad--it is the period just after lunch, so i'll give you some time to clean up lunch and pee and whatever.
but then it's 12:55 and not a SINGLE student out of a 40-person class has shown up. a similar thing was happening to tahsh, so we went back into the office and joked with the thai teachers about how late the kids were, but eventually her kids showed up. and mine never did. so i went back into the office to actually find out if anybody knew where these kids were. after some fussing and shuffling through lists, i heard the signature "ahhhhh" sounds out of two of the thai teachers.
"they cook last night. no come today." ohhhh. there's this big week-long festival (don chedi) and every night, some students go to the festival to cook/sell food to raise money for the school. they stay until midnight. this late night apparently warrants an entire day off of school. so i'm not teaching this period.
koh samet
i know i'm not supposed to say this, but i think samet's been my favorite island so far. it's just what i've been wanting in a thai island--porcelain white sand beaches, glistening blue water, just enough waves to make that signature ocean sound, perfect temperature water (the water's a really big deal to me, apparently). phi phi had plenty of things that were nice and were legitimately beautiful, but samet...ohhh, samet. it's a smaller island and, if you're up to it, seems completely walkable (though we took song taus a lot cuz the walk from our hostel was quite far from the main beaches on the east side). lexa, ally, maddy, ian, sam, and i shacked up at baan puu paan on the north side of the island on ao noi na, and it was just great. our rooms were right on the ocean, so we woke up to the little waves breaking on the shore and a lovely view of the gulf of thailand.
ohhhh and we could actually see stars! we hardly ever see stars in suphan (i have no idea why because we don't have clouds either...maybe something about humidity? i don't know, science is hard). it was no shocker that both friday and saturday night ended on the pier staring at the sky.
it rained on friday and a little bit on sunday, but lucky for us, saturday was completely clear and stunningly beautiful all day. we walked down to tubtim resort's beach on the east side and parked it for hours. we swam out to a floating dock, took about a thousand pictures with maddy's underwater digital camera (his name is toby and i think he's becoming one of my best friends), had some delicious food/drink, and had essentially the quintessential beach day.
you know how i know it was a classic beach day? i got this intense sunburn. it's not a smooth one all over my body; it's all blotchy and weird and only on certain spots of my back. yes, i put on sunscreen. yes, i reapplied my sunscreen. (stuff white people like: pointing out other white people's sunburns.) my newest theory, after looking at a picture of myself from the back, is that i sweated off my sunscreen, which is highly possible because i sat and read my book in the sun for about 45 minutes and perspired the whole entire time.
anyway, lots of us got our fair share of sun, but nbd. we went to the west side of the island to watch the sun go down (see fbook for about a million pictures of this), then went back to the hostel to shower up and regroup before the night.
and oh, boy, did we need some regrouping before this night. we didn't know it at the time, but we did.
we went to naga bar on lizzy's recommendation. lizzy is the owner of baan puu paan, and she's scottish and absolutely wild. she's loud and loves to shout anything to you, appropriate or otherwise. when we saw her around 7 pm on saturday night at the hostel, she was already wasted and repeating herself.
you can imagine what state she was in when we saw her at the bar three hours later. she had a bottle of vodka and all the guys at the bar--including george, who had to be at least 90 years old--were loving her. professionalism is not wholly required in thailand. did i say i love this country?
the next day went pretty smoothly and after a quick speed boat trip from samet to ban phe (OH MY GOD i love boating), a long van ride to bangkok, and an unsafely fast van ride to suphan, we were home in our apartments by 9:30 pm. i'm ready to do it again.
p.s. a french guy ended up tagging along with us, and hearing him speak french made me miss the language. it's so much prettier than thai.
at 12:40, the bell rang for 6th period. here they just have one bell to both end one period and start the next, so there's no passing period. this means class starts around 10 minutes after the bell rings, depending on the class (they're grouped by intelligence here, so the smarter classes generally like to start earlier, but the less smart/generally more naughty classes are still filing in 12 minutes after the bell). so it's five minutes after the bell, and i have no students in the classroom. ten minutes after the bell and still not a one. i start to get a little worried, but not too bad--it is the period just after lunch, so i'll give you some time to clean up lunch and pee and whatever.
but then it's 12:55 and not a SINGLE student out of a 40-person class has shown up. a similar thing was happening to tahsh, so we went back into the office and joked with the thai teachers about how late the kids were, but eventually her kids showed up. and mine never did. so i went back into the office to actually find out if anybody knew where these kids were. after some fussing and shuffling through lists, i heard the signature "ahhhhh" sounds out of two of the thai teachers.
"they cook last night. no come today." ohhhh. there's this big week-long festival (don chedi) and every night, some students go to the festival to cook/sell food to raise money for the school. they stay until midnight. this late night apparently warrants an entire day off of school. so i'm not teaching this period.
koh samet
i know i'm not supposed to say this, but i think samet's been my favorite island so far. it's just what i've been wanting in a thai island--porcelain white sand beaches, glistening blue water, just enough waves to make that signature ocean sound, perfect temperature water (the water's a really big deal to me, apparently). phi phi had plenty of things that were nice and were legitimately beautiful, but samet...ohhh, samet. it's a smaller island and, if you're up to it, seems completely walkable (though we took song taus a lot cuz the walk from our hostel was quite far from the main beaches on the east side). lexa, ally, maddy, ian, sam, and i shacked up at baan puu paan on the north side of the island on ao noi na, and it was just great. our rooms were right on the ocean, so we woke up to the little waves breaking on the shore and a lovely view of the gulf of thailand.
ohhhh and we could actually see stars! we hardly ever see stars in suphan (i have no idea why because we don't have clouds either...maybe something about humidity? i don't know, science is hard). it was no shocker that both friday and saturday night ended on the pier staring at the sky.
it rained on friday and a little bit on sunday, but lucky for us, saturday was completely clear and stunningly beautiful all day. we walked down to tubtim resort's beach on the east side and parked it for hours. we swam out to a floating dock, took about a thousand pictures with maddy's underwater digital camera (his name is toby and i think he's becoming one of my best friends), had some delicious food/drink, and had essentially the quintessential beach day.
you know how i know it was a classic beach day? i got this intense sunburn. it's not a smooth one all over my body; it's all blotchy and weird and only on certain spots of my back. yes, i put on sunscreen. yes, i reapplied my sunscreen. (stuff white people like: pointing out other white people's sunburns.) my newest theory, after looking at a picture of myself from the back, is that i sweated off my sunscreen, which is highly possible because i sat and read my book in the sun for about 45 minutes and perspired the whole entire time.
anyway, lots of us got our fair share of sun, but nbd. we went to the west side of the island to watch the sun go down (see fbook for about a million pictures of this), then went back to the hostel to shower up and regroup before the night.
and oh, boy, did we need some regrouping before this night. we didn't know it at the time, but we did.
we went to naga bar on lizzy's recommendation. lizzy is the owner of baan puu paan, and she's scottish and absolutely wild. she's loud and loves to shout anything to you, appropriate or otherwise. when we saw her around 7 pm on saturday night at the hostel, she was already wasted and repeating herself.
you can imagine what state she was in when we saw her at the bar three hours later. she had a bottle of vodka and all the guys at the bar--including george, who had to be at least 90 years old--were loving her. professionalism is not wholly required in thailand. did i say i love this country?
the next day went pretty smoothly and after a quick speed boat trip from samet to ban phe (OH MY GOD i love boating), a long van ride to bangkok, and an unsafely fast van ride to suphan, we were home in our apartments by 9:30 pm. i'm ready to do it again.
p.s. a french guy ended up tagging along with us, and hearing him speak french made me miss the language. it's so much prettier than thai.
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