Picture update!

Here are some of Ashley's pcitures from Khao Yai National Park

Inside the bat cave!

Playing with a snake

Thousands of bats streaming across the sky as they go out for the night

A giant centipede!

And here are some pictures from the weekend.  Tiffany came to visit and we actually played with some of the monkeys that we usually try to avoid.

Holly and a baby monkey

Once they started climbing on us we left, haha

Still in Thailand!

Sorry it has been so long since my last post!  About a month ago I went to Kanchanaburi, about 5 hours west of Lopburi.  It's known for beautiful national parks, waterfalls, and the Bridge of the River Kwai.  It was a really good weekend; we hiked the 7-tiered Erawan Waterfalls and walked to the bridge.  Unfortunately somewhere between the fourth and the fifth tier something happened to my camera (I'm thinking I got water on it).  Without any pictures to post, my blogging has suffered..
Here are some of the pictures I did get while in Kanchanaburi.

One of the military cemetaries in Kanchanaburi

 Tier 2 of Erawan Waterfalls

 Tier 4: used as a waterslide, which I definitely went down

Let's see.. there was also a trip to Khao Yai.  Another national park, but two hours to the east of Lopburi.  We stayed at a really cheap, nice guesthouse and had a halfday tour that went to two bat caves and a natural spring.  The guide was awesome and he kept finding all sorts of snakes, spiders, and giant insects to scare everyone with.  The first bat cave we actually got to go into and we could see hundred of bats hanging from the ceiling.  It was a really cool experience.  The second bat cave we went to we didn't go in; it's one of the biggest in the area and has 1-2 million bats inside!  We just stood in a field and watched as thousands upon thousands of bats flew from the cave at dusk.  It was one amazing to see this thin line trail across the sky, continuously for over 20 minutes.  And it was so quiet that you could hear the sound of the bat wings flying into the sky.  Khao Yai was green and jungley and reminded me of the Thailand I was expecting to see before I came here.
Those are the major things that have happened in the last month.  The theme of September is saving money for October!  My last day at Anuban is October 5th and then I have the rest of the month for vacation and most schools don't start again until the first week of November.  I've been starting to plan for the month with a few of my girl friends who also want to go to the south of Thailand.  As of now the rough plan is to take an overnight bus down to the south and then a ferry to Koh Tao (around a 15 hour total journey), then to Koh Pha-ngan and Koh Samui, then to the other coast and go to Phuket and Koh Phi Phi!  We'll see if we can fit it all in or if we just find paradise on the first island and decide to stay!

Lopburi

Last Friday we had a work party to celebrate Luke and Anna's birthdays.  Complete with kareoke, thai food, and presents!  A successful party.  This past weekend our friend Brie came to visit Lopburi.  Ashley and I used it as an excuse to actually see some of the tourist sights in town!  Well, first we went for massages of course!  And Brie was able to get a close up experience with one of Lopburi's many monkeys.  This guy was right outside the door to the massage shop.

Then we went to the palace which had lots of ruins and a small museum.



This week at school was Association of South East Asian Nations week, ASEAN.  On Monday almost all the students and teachers dressed up in traditional dress from various asian nations, it was a lot of fun to see everyone dressed up!

And this was in our front yard :-)





Weekend Trips

It's been a while since my last post, but I've been pretty busy!  Three weekends ago Ashley and I went to Ratchaburi for a night to visit some of our friends from training who are working there.  Ratchaburi is about an hour and a half west of Bangkok.  There aren't too many foreigners who go there, but it is known for having good floating markets.  When we arrived on Saturday our friend Melinda had been invited to lunch and a trip to a floating market with some of her students and we were able to tag along!  We were taken to an amazing seafood restaurant and feasted on some small lobster-type things, a fried fish, a crab salad, mussels, squid, tom yam shrimp, and of course sticky rice.  It was delicious!  Then we headed to the floating market in Amphawa.  Unfortunately we were reminded that we are in Thailand during the rainy season and it wasn't the best weather for the market.  It was still a lot of fun though, nothing some ponchos couldn't take care of!

Melinda's students and our hostesses for the day!

The river is lined with food stalls and vendors and then
 there are boats in the river which sell food as well.

 Last weekend Ashley, Luke, Olivia and I decided to take a daytrip to Ayuttaya. It's about an hour and a half from Lopburi and was the ancient capital of Thailand before Bangkok. We rented bicycles and rode around the town for a few hours. There are lots of ancient ruins and nice parks, which made it a very pretty town to bike around in.

This past weekend we were lucky enough to have Friday and Monday off due to a Buddhist holiday.  We took advantage of the long weekend and a group of us from Lopburi went to Koh Samet, a small island off the coast of Bangkok.  It took us quite a while to get there; two hours to Bangkok, three hours to Ban Phe, and a 30 minute ferry ride.  When we got there it was actually raining a little bit and we had trouble finding a plce to stay due to it being a holiday weekend.  We ended up finding a bungalow that we could fit five of us into so we only had to pay 200 baht each (less than $10!).  We met up with some other friends from our training course and had a great time on the island despite some cloudy weather.  We decided to leave on Sunday and spend a night in Bangkok.  We had some really good Indian food and then saw the new Harry Potter movie at a theater in Bangkok!  It was only 220 baht for a ticket and the theater was nicer than most I've been to in the states.  We indulged once more and had some Mexican food for dinner the next night and made our way back to Lopburi.  It was a great weekend, but now it's time to get back into teaching mode!



6 Weeks In

It's crazy that I've been teaching here for six weeks now!  The days seem long, but all of a sudden it's Thursday and there's only one more day til the weekend and I ask myself where the week went?  I've settled into the routine and I am really enjoying being a teacher, at least 80% of the time haha.  Our school took a picture of all the foreign teachers and the next day it was a gigantic sign in the front of the school!

We get fed pretty much all day long at school.  There's always a snack in the morning: various rolls or croissants or something wrapped in banana leaves.  We also get free lunch everyday.  Most days I really enjoy it, it gives me a chance to try lots of different Thai food (even though I usually don't know what it is I'm eating).  In the afternoon there's yet another snack: more rolls, doughnuts, or sometimes fruit.  This is a picture of my school lunch from yesterday.  There's pretty much always white rice, then some sort of soup with cabbage, the top is a type of curry, and to the left is a spicy meat and green bean dish.  The small dish is fish sauce and chili peppers, which is added to the rice for some flavor.

Last Thursday our school celebrated Wai Kru, which is Teacher's Appreciation Day.  I had really been looking forward to it because I had heard stories of teachers getting flowers and food all day long and that it was a really big deal.  While I did get a couple flowers from students, Wai Kru was a bit disappointing.  The foreign teachers just sat off to the side while the Thai teachers received beautiful flower arrangements.  The whole ceremony was in Thai too, so we pretty much just had to sit around for 3 hours not knowing what was going on.  It was still a good experience, but I did not feel very appreciated.  Here are a couple pictures from Wai Kru.  There were two ceremonies because the whole school couldn't fit in the assembly hall.

A couple weeks ago there was a kitten roaming around at school.  I tried to figure out if it belonged to anyone, but everyone said it was probably a stray.  So I decided to take her home!  We now have a Thai kitten around our house.  This is Loki  :-)

School Days

This past weekend Ashley and I bought ourselves bicycles in town!  This way we can bike to school everyday and it takes less than ten minutes.  It also makes getting around town much more manageable and is good exercise to boot!  There aren't too many bikes around here, and even fewer people walking places, because it's just so hot!  Most people have motobikes, scooters, a car, or hop on a bus or song-thaew.  When we told one of the Thai teachers that we walked to school sometimes, he laughed! Haha
There are days that I show up for the flagpole ceremony and there's something new going on!  Of course the rest of the teachers and all the students know what's happening, but the other English teachers and I stand around looking at each other and smiling.  Last week there was a No Smoking campaign which consisted of the whole school walking around like a parade with the school band and some students even wearing monkey masks!  We all joined in and waved to the younger students who were watching; it was pretty fun!  Yesterday morning and this morning after the flagpole ceremony, a group of girl students stand at the front and lead the entire school in synchronized dancing!  They played two songs, both of which are by popular Thai pop singers.  It was quite amusing.

Visa Run

This past Wednesday I had to go to Laos for my visa run.  I came to Thailand with a tourist visa and I'm technically not supposed to be working in the country with that, so I had to go to Laos to get a Non-Immigrant B visa.  I went with Ashley and another teacher from our school, Luke.  We took the night train Wednesday night and arrived in Nong Khai, a city on the border of Thailand early in the morning on Thursday.  We had to get Laos visas, even though we were only staying for a night and it cost about $50!  If I had known it would be so expensive, I think I would have tried to stay there for more than a night and actually see some parts of the country.  But we went straight to Vientiane, the capital of Laos which is only about 30 minutes from the border, and then straight to the Thai Embassy.  The school had given us all the paperwork we needed to get our NIB visas, so we just had to wait in line to turn in our paperwork and passports and then we could pick them up again the next afternoon.  We found a really nice guesthouse and rented bicycles for the day.  Vientiane is a pretty city with good food and a fun backpacker atmosphere.  I really enjoyed Laos, at least the little bit that I saw, and definitely want to go back when I have some more time to travel.  It was colonized by France and still has a French influence, so there were lots of bakeries and bread shops.  Friday morning I even had a bagel with cream cheese!  Something I haven't seen at all in Thailand.  After we picked up our passports, complete with new visas, we got a bus across the border to Udon thani, another city in Thailand.  From there we decided to take a bus back to Lopburi instead of the train because it usually gets there faster and would be cheaper.  We got on the cheapest bus there and left around 9pm.  At 1am we were awoken with flashlights and people telling us in Thai to get off the bus.  We were all pretty confused; Luke speaks some Thai and I guess they were saying that a light broke on the bus or something?  So we all had to get onto another bus, but this bus was already pretty full and I ended up having to sit on a stool in the aisle for the next three hours!  It was an interesting experience and I think it will be worth paying for a nicer bus next time, haha.

I'm a Teacher!

Well, I'm officially a teacher now and I'm exhausted!  We get to school at 7:45 everyday and stand outside for the flag ceremony, which lasts about 30 minutes.  Some mornings I have a class at 8:30 and some mornings I can relax a bit.  My homeroom is grade 5, so that's where my desk is (and where I'm currently writing this post from!).  Mondays and Tuesdays I only have 2 classes, but Wednesdays and Fridays I have 4!  Thursday I don't have any classes, except for a conversation class which I have everyday from 4:30-5:30.  Classes have been good and bad so far.  The older kids all have a relatively high level of English since they've been in this Mini-English Program for a few years.  In those classes I'm teaching things like the stages of human development, the digestive system, and the circulatory system!  (How was a 3 week TEFL course going to prepare me for this??)  The younger kids are harder; not only because they have a lower level of English, but also because they have so much energy and it's hard to get 35 eight year olds to pay attention!  Luckily we have workbooks that all the students were given and a general curriculum that the school wants us to follow, so at least I know what I'm expected to teach them.  The conversation class is a small group of seven and eight year olds that I meet with everyday.  So far, I've just been playing games with them because it has been a long day for both of us and they don't want to sit in one place any more than I want to lecture them.  There are classes when I feel like I'm shouting over everyone to just get them to sit down and classes where I actually have fun!  I know that it will only get easier with time as I settle into the routine.  Yesterday our director brought us to a bank and helped us all open up our own Thai bank accounts; hopefully getting paid on Tuesday will take away a little of the exhaustion!  Back to lesson planning...tomorrow I'm going to teach grade 3 to play dodgeball! :-)

Settling In

Well we finally made it to Lopburi!  And yes, there are in fact monkeys roaming around the street at will.  They mostly stick to the downtown area and some of the popular ruins, but they have no qualms about running up and stealing any food you may have hiding in a plastic bag.  Luckily, the four of us found an awesome house that is in a monkey free part of town.  We each have to pay less 3000 baht/month, which is about $100!  I could get used to this.  Here's a picture of Nermal and Lisa doing some lesson planning in our new house.



We met with the director at our school on Wednesday.  We're working with the mini-English program at Anuban Lopburi School, which has students from kindergarten to grade 6.  I am the new Physical Education and Health teacher for grades 1-6!  Haha, I'm not sure that I'm the most qualified for the job, but I think it will be fun!  The students are in Thai classes half the time and English classes half the time, so I'm hoping that their English will be pretty decent.  We're only actually teaching for about 17 hours a week and the rest of the time we can work on lesson planning or helping out with other school activities.  School starts this Wednesday, so wish me luck! 

Ashley and I took advantage of the long weekend and met up with some friends down in Hua Hin, a beach town in the southern part of Thailand.  We were able to get a minivan down to Bangkok and then another minivan from Bangkok to Hua Hin, it took about 6 hours total, but only cost around $10 to get there.  It was nice to be near the water again!  There wasn't any good snorkeling, but I enjoyed being on the beach and floating in the saltwater.  There was even a Subway in town and I indulged in a sandwich, something I've been missing since I've been here!  It was a great weekend get-away, but I'm anxious for the first day of school!

Outside the McDonalds in Hua Hin

Goodbye Chiang Mai

This was our last week in Chiang Mai.  Sunday a group of 9 of us did a cooking class.  It was a lot of fun and while I might not be able to replicate the meals exactly, I definitely learned some good techniques.  We started by going to a traditional market and our tourguide, "Cook", showed us all the ingredients that are important in Thai cooking.  They had everything from pig heads to bags of MSG!  (Cook assured us that we would not be using any MSG in our cooking.)  Then we went to an organic farm and got to see some of the Thai vegetables we were using.  I got to make five dishes; Thai vegetable soup, green curry, papaya salad, pad thai, and mango sticky rice.  It all tasted great and I was stuffed by the end of the day.
On Tuesday I visited a Thai dentist and had my teeth cleaned for 600 baht, about $20!  Since I haven't had dental insurance for the last year, it felt really nice to get them cleaned.  They were very thorough and knew pretty good English, "You floss everyday?". 
We had our last two days of teaching practice at a school in Chiang Mai.  This time we were teaching 16-18 year olds and the classes went much smoother than the previous week.  Their English levels were quite good, so classes went well and they behaved much better than the 6 year olds too!  Originally I thought I definitely wanted to work with younger kids, but the teaching practices made me realize how much harder it is to teach them when you don't speak any Thai!  I'm still not completely sure what age I'll be teaching, but I think learning some Thai will be very helpful no matter what.
Tomorrow I'm heading to Lopburi with my roommate Ashley and two other girls from the program.  We're supposedly all teaching at a primary school in Lopburi, but we haven't really gotten much more information than that.  Most Thai schools are on break right now and I guess the Headmistress doesn't get back until tomorrow.  Lopburi is the part of Thailand that is famous for monkeys!  Apparently they roam the streets at will and can be somewhat of a nuisance, I guess I'll find out soon enough!

Elephants!

Today a group of twelve of us went on an elephant and rafting tour.  It was SO much fun!  We started with elephant rides, it was about an hour long ride through the countryside.  There was a mahout with each elephant, guiding them along.  There was also a baby elephant following its mother!  The elephants were beautiful and we even got to sit on their necks for part of the ride!  It was pretty surreal.

After the elephant ride we hiked for about 20 minutes to a small waterfall and got to swim in the river.  The water was a little chilly, but it felt great and it was really pretty.

Lastly, we went bamboo rafting down a river.  There were four of us on a raft and a Thai guy steering us.  We were all completely soaked from head to toe because the rafts were partly submerged and because anyone that we passed by on the river would smile and then splash us!  There were lots of Thai families and groups of people hanging out by the river, floating, and drinking.  It was definitely something I want to do again!

It was a long day, but so worth it!  It reminded me why I chose to come to this country.  Tomorrow we have a cooking class booked, so hopefully I'll be able to make some yummy Thai food when I get back!

Actually in the Classroom

I now have two days of teaching under my belt!  Yesterday we all had to attempt a young learners lesson.  We were split into four classrooms and everyone had half an hour to try and get through a lesson plan with 38 six year olds.  It pretty much felt like being thrown into a shark tank.  Apparently the kids were only there so that we could practice and were actually on their summer vacation.  Needless to say, it was difficult.  Everyone made it through without breaking down and we are all better for it.
Today, we each had to conduct a basic lesson plan with thirteen year olds.  They were ten times more well-behaved than the little ones, which made today much less stressful.  It was still pretty challenging because there were 48 of them in the classroom and no matter what, it's hard to make everyone pay attention to you without feeling like you are yelling.  The classrooms are really noisy: a combination of 48 students and no real windows or doors.  They're also quite hot; there are fans going, but when you're up there and no one's responding to your question it's hard not to sweat.  That being said, I think today went pretty well!  Tomorrow I have to do a listening lesson plan with 50 fourteen year olds, I'll let you know how it goes...

A Well Deserved Day Off



Ashley, Brit, Keely, Melinda, Tiffany, Jess



This week we had an extra day of class on Saturday so that we would be prepared to go into classrooms next week.  Six days of class had taken a toll on us, so a group of us went out to a couple bars in old city, the central part of Chiang Mai.  We ended up at this awesome reggae bar with a live band.  When we showed up no one was dancing, but by the time we left around 2 a.m. we even had some Thais dancing on the tables!  It was the perfect way to unwind after a long week.



I resisted the urge to sleep in today and Ashley, Melinda, Amy, and I went to Doi Suthep, one of the sacred mountain peaks in Chiang Mai.  After a long, windy ride up in a sorng taa ou we reached the entrance to Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, the temple at the top of the mountain.  We hiked up 300 stairs until we made it to the temple.  There were lots of other people there, both foreigners and Thais, and lots of people praying.  The wat was beautiful and we got a nice view of Chiang Mai. 

 

After we got back, we went for Thai massages.  You can get an hour long massage for 200 baht, which is about $7!  It was heaven.  Then we walked around the night market, where you can pretty much buy anything, even bugs (and no, I wasn't daring enough to try).





So many food stalls, so little time! (4/22)

Ashley, Amy, me,  and Tiffany

The food in Thailand lives up to the hype; it's as delicious and cheap as I hoped it would be.  The main road by our hotel is lined with food stalls and open-air restaurants.  For breakfast, a lot of Thais eat curry, rice, or soup.  As a breakfast lover, this is a hard transition for me, so I've been sticking to fruit.  I bought some mangos from the market and they are some of the best mangos I've ever had.  For lunch we get an hour break from class and some of us will walk to one of the many restaurants that line the streets.  I've had a really good green curry, a pho-type soup with pork, a curry coconut chicken soup, papaya salad, and really good smoothies.  For dinner we'll either eat something similar or go to one of the food stalls on the street that come out in the evening.  There are all kinds of food stalls; everything from sushi to omlettes (don't ask me why the omlette stand doesn't come out til after 5pm..) to meat on a stick to spring rolls to desserts.  I've been having a lot of fun trying new things and will often end up ordering something without really knowing what's going to come out.  The prices are so cheap here that it's hard not to try everything!  My green curry dish was 35 baht ($1 is about 30 baht), a fruit smoothie is 20 baht, and a 2 egg omlette served on top of rice is only 15 baht!  Dinner for 50 cents is hard to beat.





soup with pork meatballs



Oh yeah...we're here to work! (4/18)

Today was our first day of the TESOL course (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages).  There are about 20 people in the class; the majority from the US and some from England, Ireland, and South Africa.  The first two days of the class are a crash course in Thai culture and language.  Our Thai teacher, Pat, taught us the proper way to wai, which is a Thai greeting with hands in prayer-form and a bow. 
Then we had our first Thai lesson.  Thai is a tonal language, which means words can be said in high, low, neutral, rising, or falling tones.  A good example of this is the word mai, which can mean five different things based on the tone.  Mai mai mai mai mai could mean "new wood doesn't burn, does it?".  Needless to say there is quite the learning curve...  After class ATI took everyone out for dinner to the Chiang Mai Cultural Center, where we saw some examples of regional Thai dances and dress.

Dinner at the cultural center

Finally In Thailand! (4/15-4/17)

Well, after five flights and over 30 hours of traveling, I am finally in Thailand!  I was lucky enough to arrive without having any delays or plane trouble and my suitcase even made it here too.  I checked into the Sinthana Resort on Friday afternoon, unpacked a bit, and then caught up on sleep.  Yesterday I decided to explore the area around the hotel a bit.  The hotel is on the outskirts of Chiang Mai, right across from Chiang Mai University.  The majority of the restaurants and food stalls around the hotel are completely in Thai.  I was a little overwhelmed to try and attempt that on my first day, so I found an ice cream shop and had kiwi ice cream for lunch. 

In the Bangkok airport

I was relaxing back at the hotel when my roommate showed up!  Her name is Ashley and she's from Florida originally.  She arrived with a few other girls from the program, so we all decided to go into town and get some dinner.  We rode into town on a sorng-taa-ou, which is basically a small pick-up truck with two benches in the back.  It cost 20 baht per person, which is less than a dollar, so it's definitely the cheapest way into town.  We ate at a touristy-type restaurant that had English on the menu.  I had the Pad Thai which was very good.  We stayed out for a couple more drinks and then headed back home.
Today, we ate breakfast at the hotel buffet.  I had rice and a chicken and veggie combo that was pretty spicy.  They say that areas with hot climates eat spicy food to help raise their body temperature, so the outside temperature won't seem as hot.  I embraced that theory this morning and powered through my spicy breakfast in hopes of sweating a little less throughout the day.  Ashley and I decided to walk around town a bit after breakfast.  We stumbled upon a small outdoor market with lots of interesting food choices.  Everything from fresh fruit and vegetables to dried fruits to fish and meat.

Ashley at the market