loooooooooooon

IT'S SO DAMN HOT. the beginning of the week was cooler, tolerable. i thought the rains were bringing blessed cooler temperatures.

NOT TRUE. it's so freaking hot today. my 6 a.m. run was difficult cuz of the heat. do you hear that? it's too hot to run before 7 a.m. here.

i spent all day sweating in all of my classes and damning the fact that i had to be here. i love school, the kids rock, blah blah blah IT'S TOO HOT TO BE RATIONAL TODAY.

honestly, thailand, you were supposed to cool down by this point. i was supposed to be filling the blog with entries praising the lowered temperatures, the daily rains, the tolerable afternoons. instead, thailand, you're forcing me to bitch and complain about how much i'm sweating all the time. NOT COOL MAN.

i used caps way too much in this entry.

also, in a completely unrelated note, miew must be about six months pregnant at this point (def showing also). today she came in wearing what i'm pretty sure is pajamas. i'm gonna get pregnant just to wear pajamas at work.

you still want to tutor in the rain?

i'm supposed to be tutoring right now. three eighth graders come into the office on wednesday afternoons just before the bell rings and together we all hop on a song tau with a thousand other students (i'm a huge, tall, teacher-like sore thumb during these rides). then we go to one girl's townhouse, talk for two hours--yeah, it gets to be really long, but they're cool girls--and i go home.

today they came into the office as i was trying to print something for them. hold on, i motioned to them. then miew (you know, one of the other thai teachers) leaned over to me and goes, "nicki, are you sure you want to study today?" um, yes? why wouldn't i?

"because of the rain," miew said.
"oh, yeah, it's fine! mai pen rai. chop fon!" no big deal, kids. i like the rain. plus everything we do is indoors...your living room is inside a house...the songtau is covered...i don't really see the issue. the girls were incredulous but led me out of school to the songtau area anyway.

while we were waiting for the songtau, they were muttering to each other then one goes, "um, nicki, this week no studying." really? yes, really, they said.

we're really not doing tutoring after school today because it's raining outside. and it's not even raining anymore.

koh samet: round three

i love that island. i don't even care that we do the same exact things on koh samet every time. it's always exactly what i want: a beachy thai island with sprawling white sand, warm waters, delicious food that's not rice or noodles, and dancing opportunities. we should probably explore thailand more but sometimes, when we just want that cliché thaisland vacation, samet is it.

we hired a van to take nine of us (abby, maddy, ally, kristin, rob, tyler, christie, lauren, and me) down to samet on thursday after school. we got to the coastal ban phe around 8:30 pm and were on a speedboat by 9 pm. lauren and i hoped up on one of those raised benches that i'm pretty sure is for fishing and we all held on for dear life. a storm was rolling in which made the waters even more choppy than usual. honestly, i'd go to samet just for this speedboat ride. it feels so rocky you might fall off and die, but that's just part of the thrilling greatness.

after some shenanigans, we checked into tok's little huts on the eastern side of the island. we pretty much immediately went to jep's for some singhas and eats (mmmmm nachos) then crashed. hello, vacation.

everyone in america, i know you're getting pumped for the warm weather--the summer music's coming out, you're finishing school, it's getting hot (theoretically...rumor has it it's been cold lately?). but over here in thailand, we're gearing up for buckets of rain cuz it's monsoon season baby. on friday we could see some dark clouds rolling in and HELL YEAH here comes a storm. the thai people were like, "WATCH OUT you white people, here comes the rain!" so we ducked into tok's lobby area (which has no walls) and enjoyed drinks and food from the safety of the semi-indoors.

but that's no fun, so when it started pouring cats and dogs, we ditched the "stay dry" idea and went into the ocean. in the rain. in thailand. the waves were actually pretty fierce and maddy and i were both surprised that we got kind of handled by the ocean, which i was happily surprised by. it was one of those cliché moments that'll go down in history, and when all of us get together for thailand reunions we'll reminisce on it.

anyway, friday day progressed into friday night, as it usually does. some games and some buckets happened, then some dancing at naga happened, and then my purse was mysteriously gone, along with everything inside--wallet, phone, camera, room key, two decks of cards, dice, my disneyland resort personalized room key, my ucsb bball game ticket from when we played north carolina, about 1000 baht...*sigh* sadface. but mai pen rai. i lose my wallet (slash it gets stolen) like every year, so this is like old hat for me. luckily i'd already taken out my passport, work permit, and most of my money. i called the credit card companies the next day and replaced my phone. i loved that camera, but i spose fate says it's time for me to buy a new one.

but i do feel emptier without my dice. on saturday night someone asked if i had cards and i had to do a little prayer for their passing.

we met a bunch of new ciee people just starting to teach in thailand and also saw about a thousand people from our october orientation. it was weird and great.

it's sorta weird to write about this weekend because i feel like it was so...regular. there was nothing hilarious or extraordinarily beautiful or unusual or particularly notable that i can tell you about. it's bizarre that i'm at a point in my life where i go to an island and think nothing of it. things in thailand in general are getting so...normal for me. i feel so settled in.

it's pretty comforting.

happy white rabbits day!

i've only got five more of these white rabbits days to wish you from abroad. gotta make sure to get'em all in.

i have some exciting news and some stories for you, but i've been too lazy/tired since we got back from samet to write to you. i'm a terrible person, i know. i'll try to write to you tomorrow.

something to look forward to in the next post: why my money is now in a plastic bag.

hula hoop

two tiny students who must've been 7th graders lugged three huge hula hoops into the office this morning. i have no idea why (as per usual in this country). a couple hours later, i walked down the hall to the office and saw three of the teachers (suriya, preeda, and kanchana, who are also i think the three oldest women in the office, but i'm bad at judging asian ages so i could be wrong) hula hooping at the end of the hall. suriya was working it--hands on her head, spinning those hips like she could go for days. you go, 60-something-year-old grandma.

the whole office was intrigued by the hula hoops.

"nicki, can you do it?"
"of course."

so they handed me the hula hoop and i showed'em how it's done cuz i'm a hula hooping BALLER.* "nicki, teach us!" i tried to teach'em how, but i don't think anyone learned. kanchana was terrible--no shakes in those hips. rob came over later and played with the hula hoops. hula hoops in the office=upgrade.

we have tomorrow off--thailand celebrates memorial day, too!**--so a bunch of us are headed to koh samet for the weekend.

also, i only had one class today cuz the 12th graders are doing some buddhist camp thing.


*actually, i'm not that good. i just have the ability to keep it going for a long time. (that's what he said.)
**jokes. it's a buddhist holiday..."visakha bucha day," my calendar tells me.

but seriously, it's really important that you pronounce that L

on tuesdays, i tutor these two seven-year-old girls, nodi and tawan. (maddy takes'em on thursdays.) they're pretty good at english. they already know all the basic colors, a crap ton of adjectives, some basic sentences, a bunch of nouns...i'm not explaining this well. anyway, just take my word for it.

so today i decided i'd tell them about things around the house--refrigerator, living room, table, chair...you know that chapter in your foreign language book. i would show them a flashcard with the thing on it and tell them to name it.

we were all getting really into the activity and they'd shout the name of the thing all excitedly if they already knew it. i got to a picture of a clock, which of course they already knew. 

"COCK!" they both shouted. 

lol. of course i laughed. "no, clllllllllock. cllllllllllock." 

after we reviewed the vocab, i shuffled up the cards and we played go fish, which they already know and pwn at. but of course, this question came up:

"nicki, do you have any cock?"

new roommates!

guess what you guys. i got some more FISH! i know everyone loved the last fish so much semester. i did, too, but he died because i left him alone for three weeks. china was calling.

i immediately missed having a little fishy around when i moved back to suphan, so today rob and i went to the fish place and i picked up two new goldfish. i decided against the beta fish this semester cuz i wanted something shinier and more active and...gosh, i dunno, i just got into the store and the goldfish looked real perfect. i've already experienced a fish fight and i'm ready for something new.

i had only thought about getting one fish, but then rob mentioned something about getting multiple fish. ooh, i hadn't even considered that option! i grabbed a tank the same size as the one i already own and asked the guy if i could put two of these medium-sized goldfish in the tank together.

"die!" he said. you can! after some incredulous looks and questions from me, i finally believed him and decided on getting two of those goldfish with biggish bellies and pretty double fins. an orange one and a white one. the guy came over with a bucket of water and that fish net to get the little guys out. instead of going through the shenanigans of him trying to get the fish, trying to pick out the exact one i want, blah blah blah, he just handed me the net. YES THAILAND.

fish and a bag of rocks in hand, i asked him how much. forty baht, he said. the rocks were 20 baht, which meant the fish together were 20 baht. sixty seven cents for two fish. YES THAILAND. but then he pointed to a tank and an oxygen thingy. ummm...do i need one of these? he mimed fish death. yes, i do need one of those, so he hooked it up.

brought everything home, put water back in the tank, got it all set up, and welcomed my two new roommates to their new home.

the cage is def too small, btw. i dunno what fish store guy was talking about. friends need a bigger home.