fortune tellers

in class last week and this, both my 9th graders and 10th graders have been making cootie catchers/fortune tellers (why did i always grow up calling them cootie catchers? they don't catch cooties at all). what a great opportunity to practice the future tense and learn about life, right?

most of the kids write something like "you will be beautiful" or "you will be rich" or "you will get a boyfriend" or "you will meet your true love." (except with more grammatical mistakes.) but one 9th-grade girl had something different....

girl 1: "pick a color."
girl 2: "pink"
g1: "p-i-n-k. pick a number."
g2: "seven"
g1: "pick another number."
g2: "five"
g1: "pick another number."
g2: "four"
g1 (opens the flap of her fortune teller and starts laughing hysterically and a bit maniacally): "you will be mexican!! hahahahah"
me: "what, is that really bad?"
g1 and g2: "yesssss!"

and i thought being racist toward mexicans was america's own special thing.

p.s. going to koh samet this weekend. i'm only really bringing books, games, bathing suits, flip flops, and my sarong. it's all i'll need.

the joy of packages

this week packages from nat AND my fam came. there's nothing better than a good package from home, or even a handwritten letter in a real envelope and everything. a couple times i've gotten mail on a particularly rough day and it absolutely made everything better. getting little bits of love from home helps me remember what a phenomenal support system i have back in america, which i desperately need from time to time. so to everyone who's sent me anything with any amount of postage on it, thank you. i appreciate it more than you know (or than i can express).

oh god, you guys, that was a sort of emotional paragraph wasn't it? GROSS. actually, in all honesty, i feel like i'm more emotional over here than i was at home...or maybe it's just because i'm not as busy, i have more time to actually stop and dwell in those emotions for a while...who knows. just be reassured, people who thought i was an emotional robot, that i'm apparently not.

in a completely non-thailand-related note, "just dance" will never be overplayed and it will always make me want to be in downtown sb on a thursday night.

p.s. you know how i know i'm becoming a real thai person? i messed up some labels on my calendar and i reached for some liquid paper (wite out).

happy and rich or beautiful and poor?

body image is a tricky subject over here. i'm not sure if it's because i work at a mostly all girls school, or if it's because my office is made up of about 20 women and one man (poor, poor man), or what it is, but it seems like people have a very strict sense of what a beautiful body type is, and they're really aware of what is not beautiful.  

stick-skinny girls are beautiful. if you have some fat on your arms, if you have some round cheeks, if you squeeze your big butt into your pants, if you have a little roll hanging over the top of your skirt, you are in danger of being labeled "the fat one." seriously, if we're referencing one thai teacher in our office with another thai teacher, they have no problem going, "oh, are you talking about the fat one?"  

my students will sometimes call me over just to point out how fat their friends are (thai students seem to be notorious for throwing their friends under the bus and embarrassing the hell out of them whenever they can). they'll point to the fat ones and go, "ugly! ugly!" i don't know if i've ever heard a thai person call anyone even slightly overweight gorgeous (save for white people...we're always beautiful to them).  

i was doing would-you-rather questions with my 10th graders a while back, and the question was "would you rather be poor and happy, or rich and sad?" out of probably 400 students, maybe 20 said the poor/happy option. today i read this article about happiness with my smart 12th graders, and it posed a similar (but more detailed) would-you-rather situation. out of the five girls that were there, three definitively chose the handsome, rich, lonely, stressed situation over the ugly, poor, surrounded by friends, happy situation.  

in all cases, these students made their choices not based on money, but on looks. when i pushed the kids for why they picked what they did, they all went, "you get to be handsome! drop-dead gorgeous!"  

i've been trying to figure out a way to do a lesson on beauty and confidence, and how any body type can be sexy if you just own it, but i can't figure out a good way to make it interesting and not just nicki lectures her students on how to be better people. *sigh*

i can shop for hours

i really really can. and at the same stores, too. i think i can actually be pretty annoying to shop with, because i like to think for a really long time about a product before i purchase it. i'd prefer to pick it up, inspect it, really debate my needs vs. my wants, think about how much money i have, think about what i want to spend my money on that weekend, think about what i want to spend my money on in life, think about what i want to do in life...you get it. i like to put a lot of thought into most of my purchases, especially when they're for myself (i have no problem spending money on other people. i have no idea why). but when i shop with other people, i try to limit this because 1) i don't wanna be that crazy annoying friend and 2) it's not a form of shopping that's particularly conducive to hanging out with friends. 

but luckily, this weekend in amphuwa was all about my semi-neurotic form of shopping. the plan was to get to amphuwa on saturday in the early afternoon, shop in the market for a few hours, go see some other stuff, come back to the market to shop/eat stuff, go sleep, come back to the market to shop/eat stuff. 

perrrrrrrrfect. we probably spent seven hours in this mile-long (ish) market, and i was lovin' it. the atmosphere was laid back, there were snacks everywhere, coffee was abound, and there was SO much girly stuff (as in shirts and jewelry and decorations, not tampons and bras, as a friend guessed). 

in that other "see stuff" time, we took a boat ride to see some fireflies--my first time ever to see the bugs with the light-up butts. ally and tessa were shocked that maddy and i had never seen'em. only in disneyland (55). anyway, they were excellent. by the time we got on the boat, we were exhausted from hours of shopping, so the relaxation of the boat tooling along the river probably added to the goodness of the experience. actually, in retrospect, though i rave about the shopping, that boat ride was probably my favorite part of the weekend. 

WAIT. the monkey. the monkey was a really great part of the weekend. so we stayed at this guesthouse place about a 10-minute drive away from the market, so it was a little bit away from the hustle and bustle of everything. we were surrounded by houses, so while we were wasting some time on saturday, we went next door, which was just some lady's house. (or maybe she was actually the owner of the guesthouses, and i just never knew. someone who was on the trip, please correct me.) she and her family said they had a pet monkey, but it wasn't around when we came over. after a tour of the house, lo and behold, the monkey came out. he noticed he was the center of attention and maaaaaaaaaaan did he take advantage. he started swinging from tree branches, doing flips, flopping on the ground, playing with/pulling on the pet dogs, kicking it with the talking bird, and generally proving the point that monkeys would make awesome pets. he would even take breaks to go hug his thai family.

our goal is to get back to amphuwa just to stay at the monkey house and befriend the monkey.

a funeral, a dinner, and a baby

suriya, this adorable older thai teacher in our office, has been taking care of her dad all year. he's very old and very sick, she explained. over the weekend, he passed away. apparently, when someone dies in thailand, everyone even remotely connected to that person goes to the funeral, because even maddy, tahsh, and i got invited. all the teachers in our office went. funerals here last for a number of days--usually about a week, i think. for most of the nights, tons of people come to the temple and bring huge wreaths and listen to blessings or talk about the person or something like that (i dunno, kanchana said the people were chanting in balinese or something, so i had no shot at understanding it). on the final night of the funeral, the person is cremated, and i'm under the impression that it's more close family on that night. anyway, the whole funeral thing didn't seem so sad (and i'm not saying that because i'm semi-dead inside). everyone was there, but nobody was crying (i even leaned over and asked kanchana one time if anyone would cry, and she said no). nobody seemed particularly wrecked, but this is probably because you'd lose face big time if you wept in front of the crowd. so though it was a funeral, it didn't have that same depressing air that american funerals have.

also, kanchana took us to her sister's house this week to help her niece and her niece's friend prepare for an interview on friday. we ate tons of food from the market--kanchana wouldn't stop buying us things--and hung out in this HUGE house. it was awesome. kanchana's gonna teach us how to make papaya salad there sometime soon.

someone in the office is about one month pregnant. that means i'm gonna get to see her have the baby. BABIES!! i'll try to get pictures.

i'm off to the amphawa floating market this weekend, so i'll see you sunday, internetz.

late p.s. if you happened to see this post between 9 am saturday morning and around midnight on sunday night (thailand time), sorry this was all randomly in a different font for a while. and now i have no idea why it's still a smaller font. i tried clicking "normal" up there on the size button. that's real annoying. oh, well.

extremely delayed p.p.s. it's because i wrote this in times and the rest of my blog is in georgia. iiiiiiidiot.

something awesome

when you buy beer at 7-11 (those stores are EVERYWHERE here, btw. i dunno if i've told you before. they're like the starbucks of thailand, minus good coffee and atmosphere, plus that distinct 7-11 ringing sound when you go in the door), they ask if they can open it for you. this country rocks.

anyway, there's something awesome in my life that i haven't told you about yet.

it's my bike.

look at her! what a beaut!

"nicki, you must look like a complete idiot when you ride that bike."

hmmm...no. i look really sleek and sporty. i felt like suphan didn't REALLY know how cool i was, so i got this bike in hot pink so they know now.

seriously, though, this bike is probably the best purchase i've made in thailand yet. i was pretty nervous to ride the bike at first cuz the streets are madness here. the lines on the street are mere suggestions, and looking behind you when you change lanes doesn't always seem to be a necessity. we drive on the left side here (that was a little weird to get used to), but if your turn is down there to the right and only have a short distance to go, you can go ahead and drive on the right-hand side. no need to go left and make a u-turn and all of this business.

motorbikes scream past me and cars (not pedestrians or bicyclists) have the right of way. cars don't have to stop on a left turn, so you better be looking out for them cuz they're surely not always looking out for you.

i thought biking in iv was madness. if i'm supposed to die in thailand, it'll be on my bike.

ohhh, i'm exaggerating. i've had my bike for about a month and a half now, and after a week, i was pretty used to getting around on it. now it's awesome. i don't have to take a tuk tuk everywhere (the excitement wears off after a week or two of these open air fellows being your only transportation), and i can just hop on my bike between classes and make it to the post office/grocery store/whatever. almost every time we ride'em, maddy and i rejoice in the wonderfulness of the bikes.

two wheels of EXCELLENT.

random musings

we didn't do anything thrilling this weekend, so i don't have any thrilling stories. yesterday we went to see this huge palace in ayutthaya and i swear i was in europe for a little while. it looked like a mini versailles. i'll have to show you some pictures on fbook later this week.

to change subjects completely, i realized a few weeks ago what an ugly city bangkok is. not just the buildings, or the traffic, or the stores, or whatever. i mean the people. i can count the number of bangkok locals i've been attracted to on one hand. this is terrible, especially coming from a place as beautiful as santa barbara. i mean, really, about 82 percent of people there were sexy.

anyway, i started noticing the general level of attractiveness of people around me everywhere in thailand, and it's pretty damn low. thai people are charming and fun and awesome, but attractive they are not. especially men. then again, i'm not exactly looking my finest here. my hair has no idea what to do with itself and can't even keep a decent ponytail, much less a semi-good scrunch. and blowdrying? yeah right. my legs are covered in bug bites that i'm pretty sure i'll have scars from. i'm growing my own rice belly. my nail polish is always chipped (though this isn't the reflection of the country so much as my laziness). so maybe you're just meant to be uglier in thailand.

and in another subject change, i found a funny comic on the internetz tonight. usually i think it's pretty stupid when people post comics or internet funnies on their blogs cuz you just stole someone else's humor...and i dunno, i've just never wanted to be one of those people who just points out other shit on the internet.

but i think you'll read this one and understand why i, nicki arnold in particular, felt the urge to show you.

lollll. thanks, digg.

(p.s. extra lolz at the unintentional grammar error, too)