i'm so so so sorry for not writing for the last week. i've been in hotels where i had to pay to get internet, and i had other things to spend money and time on. but now i'm here, so that's all that matters.

the first week here was jam-packed of thrilling orientation activities like teacher training and thai society lessons and repetition. YEAHHHHH! sarcasm. the actual lessons were boring half the time because they didn't have that much to say to us, so they just filled up time by repeating what we'd already been told.

so the actual learning part of orientation was terrible, but no matter. i got to meet a crap ton of awesome people, and it seems like most people with the program are pretty cool. of course there are a few bad seeds, but you can't really expect an entire group of 91 people to be awesome all the time.

but oeg (overseas education group, the group in charge of the program) isn't made of pure evil. i know this because they planned this excellent trip for all of us to the grand palace in bangkok, which was absolutely phenomenal. you have to look at pictures. i can't really do it justice with words. (but here i go, trying anyway...) the entire thing has gold glittering all over it, curly doos at the end of the rooftops, and brilliant colors in between. the big to-do at the grand palace is visiting the emerald buddha, which is probably the most sacred of all buddhist items. funny story: the buddha is actually jade, but the abbot who found it thought it was emerald, word started spreading about an "emerald" buddha, and the name stuck.

so that was tuesday or wednesday or something (i don't know. i've completely lost track of what day it is), and for the rest of the week we did dumb orientation crap until we ventured to kanchanaburi for some elephant riding, bamboo rafting, and relaxing at a resort on the river kwai. indeed, we went to the actual bridge over the river kwai, then ate dinner at a floating restaurant almost below the bridge. this was all on the same day we hopped on the back of some elephants, took an incredibly relaxing raft ride, ate some delicious food, and spent the night drinking, dancing and swimming. the day was easily in the top 10 most perfect days of my life.

now i'm sitting in my apartment in suphanburi, getting ready for possibly my first lesson (yeesh) and writing what has become a semi-dull blog post. no real witticisms this time.

i have so much more to tell you, and i promise i'll have funnier/more fascinating posts later, once i can get on the internet more than once every five days. but right now, i've got the hiccups and i'm exhausted from a day of setting up new life. my rock-hard bed is looking rather inviting.

i made it. now i'm crashing.

oh my god. i’m so tired. it’s almost 8 pm on Tuesday night here, which makes it just about 6 am on Tuesday morning in California. I haven’t slept since Sunday night. OH MY GOD I’M SO TIRED. but maddy and i need to stay up until at least 9 pm here to cure the jet lag. well, I suppose we don’t HAVE to. nobody’s going to shoot us if we crawl under the sheets at 8:30. but we set this arbitrary time and since I’m an Arnold, I really stick to made-up rules no matter what. so 9 pm it is.

(I should note here that I’m typing this in word first, which should explain the capital letters, despite my earlier tirades on the subject.)

so. I owe you some stories about how I finally arrived here, but plane/airport stories are all kind of the same and dull. the flights went seamlessly smooth, and the transfers were (mostly) easy. we left at 1:20 am on Sunday night/Monday morning and stayed in darkness until Tuesday morning coming in to hong kong. for our entire 14-hour flight, we felt like it was near 4 am…like, we were tired enough that we could doze off, but if we occupied ourselves (aka ate something) we could stay awake. it’s a weird feeling.

but I know you, friends and family, and I know you’re curious why I put that sneaky “mostly” in parentheses up there. I’ll explain.

I’ve had a cold for the last week or so, but it hasn’t been bad. at this point, it’s only a stuffy nose, so the only disturbance to my life has been excessive nose blowing. not a big deal. but since the spread of swine flu, everyone’s been really freaking out about swine flu. I thought the US was bad; nay, dear friend. When you arrive in hong kong, you have to fill out a health inspection report type deal, where you put in your name, passport, etc., and you check if you have one/any of these various symptoms, like fever, runny nose, cough, sore throat, blah blah blah. lying crossed my mind, but only for a brief second; I knew my stupid runny nose wasn’t the freaking flu. so I check off the “stuffy nose” box on the piece of paper and head off toward the immigration tables, paper and passport in hand. once we get to the front of the line, I hand my stuff to the health inspection guy.

HIG: (looks over paper, points to stuffy nose box) “is this a problem for you?”
me: (in typical, worry-free nicki fashion) “Oh, yeah.”
HIG: (leans over to fellow HIG, says some stuff in probably mandarin) “okay, we’re going to have to take you down to have some simple tests.”

what’s funny here is I didn’t even really stress. as the guy lead me away from the immigration station, I called out to maddy that I would meet her back there soon and followed quickly behind the guy. he handed me a mask (lol yes, I know) and took me to this little medical area downstairs, where the sweetest asian woman took my temperature (in my ears) and told me I didn’t have a fever, so I was safe to travel. (so dad, be reassured: you didn’t pass me swine flu. the hong kong airport has confirmed it.)

hrm. I probably wanted to share other wildly interesting stories, but I can’t think right now. I’ve never wanted to sleep so much in my life. (that’s probably not true. one time I was up all night writing a paper for my presidency class and around 5 am I couldn’t believe how much time I’d spent on a STUPID PAPER. then I found $5.)

I’ll share more stories with you when I’m not aching to watch my eyelids so badly.

what will i forget?

isn't this always a fun game to play when you're packing?

i always remember to pack dumb things like christmas mouse ears, three pairs of flip flops, and pez dispensers (note: these things are all actually coming with me). but knowing me, i'll forget something major like my camera battery or wallet. silly nicki.

anyway, my flight leaves at 1:20 am out of sfo, so maddy and i are aiming to get to the airport around 10:30 pm. then we fly 14 hours to hong kong, kick it there for 2 hours, and then hop on another plane for a two and a half hour trip to bangkok. we'll arrive in bkk at 10:35 am local time, meet up with a group of people from the teach in thailand program, then hopefully go to a hotel where we'll be able to shower because i'm gonna be DIRTY. traveling dirty is a special kind of gross...full of grease and so caked on. YUMMY.

very exciting vaccination update

as it turns out, rabies shots only take 28 days. dose 1 happens, then a week after that dose 2 happens, and three weeks after dose 1 comes dose 3. i had thought it was three weeks after dose 2. silly nicki. i just needed to read closer.

i finished taking my oral typhoid vaccine last night, so you can go ahead and try to give me typhoid now if you want, but you won't be successful. SUCKER.

we sent kate off to spain this morning (well, actually, her flight doesn't leave for about an hour...technicalities). it got me really excited for thailand. airports are the best.

One Month

I don't think I like capital letters. I know I wrote that whole paragraph in the last post about how lowercase letters made me look immature, but I just don't like the way it reads with capital letters. It's further from how I actually speak. Too formal.

and now i'm rid of them! wonderful. apologies to anyone who liked the capital letters better.

man, i bet you're wishing i'd hurry up and talk about something more interesting than capitalization now, huh? let's go into a discussion of my prep for thailand.

--> i've started my massive packing list, but the more i think about it, the less i'm convinced i need to pack. things will be cheaper over there and just as high quality (so i'm told). clothes make more sense to buy over there because i'm not entirely sure what's appropriate. aside from my ipod and computer, it seems like all the electronics i need will be over there. hmm. knowing me, i'll still find plenty of things to toss in that suitcase.

--> i'm going into kaiser on monday for some vaccinations. finally. i don't think i'm going to be able to finish the rabies vaccine in time (WHICH IS NOT MY FAULT BECAUSE I CALLED KAISER BACK IN JULY TO ASK ABOUT THIS SHIT. I AM ANGRY), but i guess that just means i have to avoid dogs and rabid stuff. what if i just wanted to play with rabid squirrels, kaiser, and now i can't do it? angry.

--> the thai language is still so beyond me. nicki fail.


hmmm...maybe talking about capitalization WAS more interesting.

I Hate the First Post

It's always real awkward.

Anyway, welcome to me: post-college edition. I'm mostly starting this up because I want to blog while I'm in Thailand teaching English from Oct. 2009 to Aug. 2010-ish (depending on how deeply I fall in love with Asia). But I'm already getting antsy at home and I'm eager to write again (I haven't done it for about two weeks now!), so I figured now would be a good a time as any to get this bad boy started.

The biggest difference between this blog and ones I've done previously is that I'll be using capital letters this time, which I rarely did before. I have this aversion to hitting the shift key and another button at the same time, so I've avoided capital letters for a long time. But all lowercase letters makes my blog look like it's written by a 13-year-old girl and not like the forward-thinking blog of a mastermind, like I'd hoped.

So come on in, friends, to this capital-letter-filled blog. Grab a drink and stay a while.