the world cup is stealing my sleep

this is probably a terrible time to blog because i'm tired and complainy, but i just feel like talking and not having to listen to anyone right now, which is rude, i know, but that's the joy of a blog, isn't it?

or maybe something a little less self-centered. 

the world cup really is taking my sleep, though. this second round of games have been on at 9 pm at 1:30 am. the us-ghana game was 1:30 am on saturday night (sunday morning...whatever). so on top of the loss--wahhhhhhh--i didn't get to sleep until nearly 5 am. 

oh, btw, we went to bangkok this weekend. rockin' times. sort of--you know how i feel about bangkok. friday definitely ruled. ten of us rolled into the city around 6 pm, checked into our hostel (lub*d, which has gotta be one of the nicer hostels i've ever stayed in), and bounced on over to dinner, and now i completely forget where we ate. nicki fail. OH WAIT we had italian. oh my god, how could i forget? we had wine. WINE, FRIENDS. 

we went out to shamrock on khao san, which is a bar with this awesome cover band and an excellent song choice. we rang in christie's 23rd year of being and commenced drinking. 

our 8-bed room was completely windowless, so we didn't wake up until late the next morning, still in a complete daze. half the group left and the other half of us ambled around the city, taking terrible taxi rides and being out of it. at least i was. i really should've just sat down in an sbux for a while...but such is life. 

anyway, i don't feel like rehashing the rest of the trip cuz it was regular and like i said, i'm tired and mostly incoherent. 

when i get back to the states, i need to get back into school. i think i'm gonna take some community college classes. my brain doesn't think of high and mighty synonyms anymore--i'm constantly dumbing things down so everyone can understand. my sentences are getting wordier, too, because i've been slowly ditching concise, big words for lnger but clearer sentences that fully explain something.  i hate speaking like this.

define: nerd

efei: "he is...how do you say it...full of knowledge?"
me: "nerd?"
efei: "YES yes!"

this is the definition i'm using for nerd from now on.

week six

june 23rd. by the end of the week i'll have been teaching for a month and a half already this semester. time, man. (also, all of my students have been learning about the verb tenses this semester, so now i'm hyper aware of the tenses and any time i write a verb, i mentally check off the tense. i'll have been teaching=future perfect continuous. this is an annoying and mostly useless brain habit.)

anyway, something happened this week. on monday, in 5/2 (last year's 4/2, supposedly the naughiest of all my classes), a boy tried to give me a paper that was due last week. "no, no points," i told him. if he wasn't here, that's too bad for him. no points. it's just one assignment, i tried to tell him. mai pen rai, no big deal. no points this time, but you can have points if you do the next assignment.

i sort of waved it off and went to the board to teach. a minute later, i see him grab his backpack and storm out of the classroom, yelling at my thai co-teacher. i sort of looked at my co-teacher like, "um, wtf mate?" turns out he was so mad about not getting points that he ripped up his paper, threw it on the floor, and left the classroom.

this was actually kind of upsetting because despite their reputation, i love this class. after i figured out how to deal with them--they're just the kind of kids who aren't meant to be students, so i just have to figure out things to do that aren't so school-ish--we've had a really good relationship. this boy is part of the group of guys who usually sit in the back and every week, they quiz me on american bands (blink 182 and green day are their favorites, but they also like crap like limp bizkit. i haven't told'em yet that loving limp bizkit makes them 90s lame). i thought this boy and i were friends of sorts, so it kind of sucked that he did that.

i ran into the boy in the hall yesterday, and as soon as he saw me he hung his head in shame. "sorry, teacha. sorryyyyy." it's ok, i told him. mai pen rai. he realized what he did was mean and apologized. over and done.

but the administrators thought otherwise. my thai co-teacher had told a disciplinarian, who thought the best solution would be for him to apologize formally. so today at 12:40 pm, the boy came in (along with an administrator and my thai co-teacher) with a ring of jasmine flowers and roses on a gold dish. he got on his knees and told me (in thai) that he was really sorry for what he did and he promised never to do it again. i had no idea what to do in this situation--i will never get over feeling awkward when students bow down to me--so i sort of grabbed the flowers awkwardly.

my thai co-teacher told me to say a few words, so i said it was ok, i forgive you, just know it made me sad because i know you're a good student, if you help me i'll help you, blah blah blah things to make you feel guilty and like i'm disappointed in you. he wai-ed me (the super deep kind...people in thailand, you know what this means), i thanked him, and it was done.

it really weirded me out. i hate formalities like that and i hate being treated like such a high and mighty person. i think he and i both knew this formal stuff was mostly to make the administration happy. so, whatever. it's over and done with. and now i have some nice smelling flowers.

life

[6/20/10 9:45:05 AM] Nicki Arnold: i wanna shower then you wanna head down to banya's?
[6/20/10 9:45:35 AM] Madeline Armstrong: yeah, i should be ready in a half hour
[6/20/10 9:45:51 AM] Nicki Arnold: ...what are you doing?
[6/20/10 9:46:02 AM] Madeline Armstrong: nothing
[6/20/10 9:46:04 AM] Madeline Armstrong: lol
[6/20/10 9:46:17 AM] Madeline Armstrong: just want to move slowly


suphan sundays.

p.s. yes, another layout change.
p.p.s. I'M HANGING OUT WITH A.J. RAWLS IN PARIS IN NOVEMBER. for at least a week. in one of the most phenomenal cities in the world. this fact alone gets me through some of my toughest days.

mlia

seriously though. i know you think that because i'm off in thailand now, i must be doing something crazy all the time. i probably always have fascinating stories or thrilling culture clashes.

but mostly, i go to work, i get excited about watching tv, and i spend a lot of time thinking about what i'm going to eat later. i'm still just as boring as i was in america.

li rong just told me the chinese version of the creation of the earth and of man. keep in mind this is a second-language convo for her, so i might not have everything right. apparently, there was this god guy who was born and grew up inside the atmosphere ("airs," she called it), which used to be really tiny. when the god guy got older, he stood up and was HUGE. he expanded the atmosphere and the light stuff floated up to become the sky, and the heavy stuff sank down to become the earth. hence, the creation of the world.

then this lady god came along to create humans. she took the soil from the ground and shaped it into humans. these handmade people would become the famous rulers and academics and stuff. to create the common people, she took a whip and whipped muddy water. the droplets that flung off became regular people like you and me. so in china, we've been whipped from the beginning.

november 15

that's when maddy and i will be setting our feet back on glorious american soil once more. last night we bought our tickets to san francisco...

...from paris.

this means a few things.

1. we're officially flying home the other way around the world. we're doing a trip around the world with a year of teaching in the middle of it.

2. getting back to america is real. we screamed last night when we bought the tickets. i've been a mix of joy and utter sadness since i hit the "continue booking" button. on one hand, HELL YEAH i miss america sofuckingbad and i can't wait to get back to see everyone, to have full conversations with strangers, to speed up the pace i talk at, to get a new job, to find a new apartment, to eat mexican food, to have fast internet, blahblahblah. but on the other hand, i have a really awesome job here (scratch that...i actually HAVE a job), my students have turned out to be WAY more awesome than i could've expected, i get to travel whenever i want in arguably one of the most beautiful places in the world, i'm friends with some pretty neat people around here...you know, thailand's pretty neat. sometimes i think i'm stupid for leaving such a sweet set up.

3. we're old enough to make transcontinental flight decisions on our own. when we flew to paris, ucsb/aup told us when and where to fly (and even booked us the flights). when we flew to thailand, ciee pretty much gave us step-by-step directions for how to get here. this time, maddy and i decided everything.

i hope to god this doesn't mean i'm an adult.

p.s. in a semi-related note, i read this article about how adulthood starts later. it's all i've been thinking about this week.
p.p.s. kyle said he doesn't like this new layout, so i'm prob gonna change it pretty soon. sorry, i know change sucks.

WORLD CUP BABY

i'm into it this year. maddy said to me one day, "i think i'm gonna try to get into the world cup this year." i was like EFF YES this is a great idea, so we started researching the cup and spread the idea. now everybody around here has a team (i'm america--can't betray the usa, duh), we're in an fbook group, and i have a feeling watching games down the street at mr. wit's bar will become a habit. the second game is on at 9 pm here, which is perfect cuz 9 pm is also game watching o'clock.

i know, i know. i'm being such a poser just getting into soccer now when it's cool and trendy and stuff. i don't give a crap.

yuk, i have a bug bite right on my neck. the mosquitos are out with a vengeance this time of year.

oh, to change the subject completely, maddy and i went to bangkok yesterday. i needed to buy a new camera (that whole lost purse in samet thing) and wanted to go to panthip to do it. i've also been on the hunt for a mah jong board for a while now, and efei was like, "um why don't you go to chinatown?" duhhhh nicki. so maddy and i left suphan around noon with a set bangkok itinerary. this is the only way to do bangkok. we're PROS at this city now. if you need some shit done in bangkok, you come to us.

so we got into panthip, avoided the douches selling pirated dvds, and went straight to the canon booth. i picked out the camera, paid the guy (who took my cash from me and disappeared for an uncomfortably long time before he returned with my camera), and we were OUT. on the walk back to the bts we walked past micky d's and saw that they had world cup glasses and we were like HOLY CRAP WE MUST OWN THOSE IMMEDIATELY. so we bought them.

we hopped back on the bts and made our way over to chinatown, stumbling through the streets and eventually making it on to yaowarat street, the heart of the town of chinese. i have no idea why we've never been here cuz chinatown rules. it wasn't loud and crazy and headache-inducing like the other parts of bangkok. oh, no, don't get me wrong--it was crowded and the stores were in a senseless jumble and the streets were still crammed with food carts. but it was somehow quieter. hard to explain.

(also, my brain is jumbled cuz i may or may not have had a few beers with the argentina-nicaragua game last night.)

anyway, we bought some chinese snacks (aroi maaaaaaaaaak), had some spring rolls, and sat down at a street stall and had noodle soup, watching the traffic go by and enjoying dinner with strangers. street food is one of the number one things i'll miss about asia.

we got home last night around 8:40 pm and headed right out to wit's for the argentina game. oh, and re: usa vs england game, a tie is ok. we'll take what we can get.

oh also, i changed my template cuz blogger's got all these cute new ones and when i signed on it was like "HEY user, wanna have one of these?" and i was like "yes."