the animals in my life

(side note before i start this post: i just wrote a post about a sort of scandalous situation at school...but about an hour after i posted, i realized it reflected really badly on the school and since it's on the internet, it might get around and it might not be good for me and blah blah blah, so i decided to take it down. but i still have the post, so if you're curious, i'll send it to you.)

the eggs hatched. i can't believe i forgot to tell you. i'm a terrible person. georgia's eggs hatched about two weeks ago, and they're pretty much the ugliest birds i've ever seen. i was under the impression that all baby animals are cute, but that's incredibly false.

so i've gotten to watch them grow into more beautiful pigeons. (true fact: if reincarnation is what happens after death, i hope i'm a pigeon. i used to want to be a seagull, but pigeons are better. they kick it all over awesome monuments and in stunning nature, and that's what i wanna do.)  georgia has stopped sitting on them so much, so i've had a chance to check them out a little more and, more importantly, figure out what their names should be. i'm thinking, since they were born at the end of november, they should be something with the holiday season...oh, i just got a great idea. holly and daye. spelled all annoying like that. that's so cute. perfect.

ALSO, blog friends, i don't think i told you, but i got a fish about a month ago. it rocks. it doesn't have a name or a gender (reminds me of a 'human i used to know). i just call it fish. it once lived for five days without food. it can make it through days in a too-dirty tank because i sometimes get too busy to clean it. if this fish can survive having an arnold as its owner, it's a baller. it's my roommate, along with my best friend Internet. just the three of us, shoved in that tiny space, with holly and daye chillin' outside. we're all growing quite close.

p.s. blog shout out to john, who sent me a surprise package and made my day :-D

monkeys in my hair

sa-nguan ying is paad sib!

ever since we met the thai teachers waaaaaay back at orientation, they've been talking about how the school is turning 80. what a big deal it is, they kept gushing. so last night was finally the big night--the dinner party for sa-nguan ying's 80th birthday.

we got to school just after 6:30 pm (because it started at 6 pm) and were welcomed by huge fluorescent lights, huge trees made of lights, a gigantic stage, four giant screens throughout what's usually a soccer field and outdoor gymnasium.

it looked NOTHING like a high school.

noon, another thai teacher in our office, was sitting at our table when we got there. she pointed out that we had water, soda, and whiskey for drinking. a bottle of whiskey for every table. you only turn 80 once. we were served a bunch of dishes and dug in to them collectively. everyone at the 8-person table dug in with their chopsticks. double dipping wasn't of a great concern to everyone.

then, at some point in the night, we heard the distinct, squealing *shoooo* of a firework. we looked up and, indeed, there were fireworks right there--literally OVER OUR HEADS. firework crap was falling in my face and on my food. our whole table (filled with mostly girls under the age of 30) spent half of the show screaming and ducking, half laughing and awing at the show. after it was done, we tried to explain to our foreign friends why this was so weird to americans. we need at LEAST 100m between viewers and the fireworks themselves. in thailand, nbd. safety? what?

anyway, drinking commenced and you can take the story wherever you want from there.


lopburi monkeys

this morning, we woke up realllllllll early to go to lopburi for the monkey festival. we were told there would be hundreds of monkeys running all over this ancient wat, eating human food and opening cans of coke. the monkeys would walk right up to you and steal your stuff if you weren't careful.

not a lie. i think i understand the people who nay say the "monkey as a pet" idea now.

we walked up to the monkeys chillin on the wat and, not really knowing what i was in for and thinking all monkeys must be as friendly as curious george, i touched one. awwww.

then it made a hissy face at me and smacked my forehead. touché, monkey.

after that, i realized maybe monkeys weren't so cuddly, so i sort of let them do their thing. i took TONS of pictures, most of which look the same (but the monkeys never get less cute! damn their meanness). a few of us were just hanging out on one side of the wat; a monkey had jumped on matt and he was busy trying to ask it where his monkey friends took his glasses (because really, they stole his glasses right off his head...bitches). i felt a shove on my back, and at first i thought it was sam pushing me. weird, i thought, because i hadn't really done anything to provoke a shove from him...

...but he was still a couple feet away from me. and a monkey was on my back. then his friend was on my back, and then they were both sifting through my hair like they were looking for delicious bugs. they stole my hair thing and did something that felt like gnawing on my scalp (monkey deep scalp treatment?) i broke into a fit of laughter, because really, what else do you do when there are two monkeys on your back and they're sort of ripping out your hair in an adorably and slightly painful monkey way?

(p.s. kristina, these subheads are completely inspired by your blog. excellent idea.)

sleeping in?

we don't have any plans today, so i got to sleep in (until 8:30, and that i even call that sleeping in is a terrible sign). we're gonna go on a run, head to the market, maybe watch a movie, maybe wander around town, maybe play games, maybe do nothing. we realized last night we haven't really done this--this we-have-nothing-to-do-all-day-tomorrow thing--at all since we got here.

ahhhhhh what a good feeling. hello, lazy saturday. it's nice to see you.

a burger and fries

it's my i'm-not-in-america-but-i-need-to-celebrate-thanksgiving-anyway tradition. paris 2007, it was a huge, delicious, meaty burger at "breakfast in america." two years later, i had a not so huge but just as delicious burger at some place off khaosan road in thailand. excellent choice.

why travel all the way to bangkok when the thai-farang place across the street in suphanburi sells a mean burger, nicki? well, friend, let me tell you. maddy, sam, ally, and i needed to get tickets to go to koh phi phi for new years and rumor had it tickets were significantly cheaper if you bought them at the station itself. and it only takes an hour and a half or so to get there, so nbd. we went.

it was sort of a weird day for me. i realized this blog has mostly just been a bullet by bullet summary of everything i've done, which is all fine and good, but i haven't talked about my feelings much (shocking, i know).

but i was homesick today. and now i feel like i need to talk about emotions (nat's dying of happiness right now). i don't think i let on too much, but i was missing home real bad. it seems like we've been talking a lot about home lately cuz of the holidays, and just thinking about how much i love thanksgiving week in san ramon made me wish i could go back, just for a couple days. when i started to explain thanksgiving to my wonderful first class this morning, my chest twisted and my words stopped themselves in my throat for a second.

these little bouts of homesickness aren't really a big deal. i'm still so happy for thailand, and so happy about my friends here, and i'm not thinking about going home at all. just...some days i miss california and my family (in every sense of the word) more than others. i'm thankful for the good life i have in the states and here in thailand.

so, would you like a job?

after class, maddy and i walked into the teachers' office and saw tons of strangers milling about. kanchana introduced us to a short woman dressed in an elaborate thai costume, and a guy started snapping pictures of us chatting with the woman.

turns out all of these people (maybe 10 or so) are from a university which may or may not have been kasetsart university...i dunno, i couldn't really understand her. the camera man directed us outside so we could all take a picture together, then the group picture devolved into small talk. tahsh, maddy, and i talked to this short university professor/administrator for maybe 20 minutes about nothing in particular--how she spent some time in los angeles and rode the bus, about how we don't like busy cities that much, about how there's a buffalo village in suphanburi, blah blah blah.

once or twice, the tiny woman sort of joked about us working at the university when we finished our contracts, but i sort of figured it was a complete joke. but then, right at the end of the conversation, right when everyone was leaving, the tiny woman called over this other university man.

"ask them to work at the university."

so right there, in the middle of the hallway at our school (a school we've only taught at for a month! out of a year-long contract!), a man offered us jobs as university professors. doesn't matter what credentials we have, doesn't matter how much we've taught, nothing. we just know how to speak english, and that's good enough to be a university professor.

oh, and just to be sure we knew he was serious, the man leaned in at the end of the conversation and goes, "we offer 35...35,000 baht for 12 hours a week. five hundred baht for every hour over that."

SO, all of my jobless friends, don't worry so much. know that you're already qualified to be a university professor in thailand.

the ability to make pancakes and grilled cheese

that's what i want. man, if i could make some banana pancakes in the morning on the weekend, life would be sweet. how jack johnson of me.

i hope hot plates aren't too expensive here. maddy and i might splurge on one once we get paid. december first i'll be rollin' in baht, making grilled cheese sandwiches, and riding my bike places. (oh, i want money to buy a bike, too. if that wasn't clear.)

starbucks, burritos, pizza, spaghetti, and wine

overall, thailand is suiting me quite well. i’m loving the food; the people are enchanting; being able to wear skirts pretty much all the time and never having to be concerned about bringing a jacket out are pretty awesome things. but after a month here (one month anniversary was on friday!), I was sort of craving a bit of amerikuh goodness.

enter chiang mai, complete with burritos, sandwiches, shocking amounts of English speakers, and starbucks. ohhhhh, starbucks. I didn’t realize what a shameless consumerist I’d become until I saw the starbucks here and squealed.

we (maddy, ally, tahsh, and i) left suphanburi around 3:30 pm on Tuesday and, after an hour+ long van ride (100 baht/~$3) and an expensive, equally long taxi ride (~80 baht each/~$2.90), we got to the airport to pick up our train tickets. since we bought them online, we had to pick them up not at the train station but the airport. logic completely escaped these train ticket sellers because 1) they didn’t put the pick up desk at the train station, where the trains ACTUALLY ARE 2) they put them at the airport, which is an hour away from the train station in half-decent traffic 3) not only were the tickets at the airport, but they were at a random cargo station, which is a shuttle ride away from the regular part of the airport where normal people put pick up desks.

whatever. that story’s probably not going to come off nearly as confusing/hilarious as it was in person, so just trust when I say it was a crazy time. we finally got our tickets, made it to the train station, and hopped on our overnight train. maddy and i took some sleeping drugs and slept like babies on the way up there, and when we finally pulled into the station just after 1 pm, i felt completely well rested (though i was starving--shitty breakfast food on the train. whoda thunk).

we checked into our hostel ("a little bird," it was called. i highly recommend it) and the first item on the list was food. western food, to be exact. we'd heard about the delicious western food all over the city, but even so, when we walked across the street to a burrito place, we nearly fainted when we saw the deliciousness of the food. OH MY GOD I'VE MISSED BURRITOS.

on thursday we woke up reallllllll early in the morning to do the gibbon experience, which was a 15-platform zip line thing through the jungles just north (i think) of chiang mai. phenomenal. the pictures tell better stories (but don't judge me...harnesses make everyone look bad).

the rest of the trip was punctuated by tons of shopping, lots of delicious (if expensive) eating of solely western food (hence the title), gallons of coffee drinking, and lots of hanging out with friends from the north. these names won't mean a thing to most of you, but we met up with nancy, brian, brian's friend joe, markus, and cindy, and i was overjoyed. it's weird how close we became during that orientation week, and how much i've missed this people in the three weeks since i've last seen them, and how comfortable i felt with them. thailand friends, you're pretty neat.
this won't be the final chiang mai trip, not by a long shot. i just want to exist in coffee shops there a lot more.