MORE PICTURES--- Please see Blog Entry below.below. :)

Little Gecko upon arriving back home
Blood from Leah's incident- still evident a few days later
The streets of Hua Hin
Boxing up a storm
Orchids
For some reason when I upload the pictures they come up as a bunch of gobbly gook and then turn into pictures, so I will put them up and then write what they are after...

Hua Hin

Showing off our boxing skills in someones big boxing garage (we looked up and noticed it was someones house...)
Got to meet up with Winnipeg friend Evan!
CLR+SKS:
Poor Leah- actually not in the picture...she sliced the bottom of her big toe on the curb and we had an adventure-- note the ambulance attendant wearing a Kiss T-shirt.
Fish eating off the gross stuff on our feet!!! Yes, we paid (someone made some easy money!) to have fish eat the bottom of their feet...
Wow- What a weekend. This will sort of be short and recapped- I have just received a rude wake up to reality upon return to teaching today(this was on MOnday)-- AH! It's hard, and time consuming and frustrating and when I'm tired from a weekend on the beach :) and early mornings... all the time (those things.. on top of)... being away from friends and family... and when I'm tired of hanging out with 23 people all the time.. IT's HARD! It's hard to remind myself that I am not a TERRIBLE teacher....that I can figure it out and it's hard to find BALANCE...when I don't know all of the curricular requirements off by heart. Sigh, but I'll make it and LOVE teaching ....right? Hopefully I don't burn out before then!

Anyway, I had a WONDERFUL weekend.
Friday we went to Hua Hin- a city on the Beach about 2 hours from Bangkok.
Friday we went out to the beach- as a jazz festival was on and looked through the open market. On our way home we had an adventure one of the girls hit her foot on the curb while crossing the street and totally cut a huge chunk off the bottom! After seeing a lot of blood, going to the nearby police station, and getting an ambulance (complete with attendant wearing jeans and a Kiss t-shirt), going to the hospital and having very little clue what they were saying, we got home around 2... Leah is now okay- they cut off the chunk of skin that was hanging off and she is recovering nicely. OUCH!

Saturday was spent on the beach- after doing a round of aqua-size in the hotel pool, and having a lovely sit down breakfast we headed to the beach to enjoy the cool breeze- and overcast day, only after having our feet nibbled on by fish (actually!)...it's some sort of Thai Fish Foot thing...where the fish eat your feet and make them all clean and smooth! (see the pics!).

We all went out for supper and tried to go to a Thai boxing match- except it was cancelled due to the Jazz fest, so I took matters into my own hands and had a little boxing match of my own! (See pics)... then we headed back to the beach to meet up with a Winnipeg friend Evan. After a couple hours on the beach and karaoke we made it home and woke up to a BEAUTIFUL sunny day on Sunday. Complete with a morning run in the beach (HOT HOT HOT) and swimming in the pool with scantly clad men from Finland .... we all got nice and tanned/ burnt in a matter of a few hours and headed back to Bangkok. That was my weekend- how was yours?

Happy Belated 70th Anniversary Grandma and Grandpa!
p.s my day on Tuesday was much better and I have an evaluation today-(Wednesday, so here's hoping!)

McDonalds in Hua Hin...YUM
Below Ronald McDonald is Wai-ing (paying respect-greeting).


WOO, we are finally on the beach!

Yum Yum: Shaun's favourite- meat on a stick

Lots of interesting food: top left= baby ducks, some slugs and cochroaches, grasshoppers.... I decided to pass by the local delicacies this time.

little gaffers, big gaffers

This will be quick. I"m absolutely exhausted 12 hour days at school are a bit too much for me.. but I have to stay at school and work because I am absolutely tired when I get home.. and my feet hurt.

I can't remember if I updated or not..
A few things:
- $4 Full body, one hour massage on sunday.
- The little guy under plastic was a baby gecko I found (and released) on the window.
- To follow, a picture of a new roommate I have...a spider, body the size of a nickle... legs extend to the size of a LARGE fist- creepy, thankful Seth leaves in our apartment block and grew up in Africa.. he came onto the scene to save the day and commented-- oh it's no problem that's just a hunter spider.. not poisonous- THANK GOODNESS, glad it was in Lindsay's room and not mine! AH!

I will have to take pics of the school soon, to answer a question I work at Lertlah School- Campus 2. It might come up in english for you if you google it. but my laptop is in Thai mode so I can't read a thing on the site. If you google it and click on images, it's the first picture-- I'll have to take some pics, cuz it's an absolutely BEAUTIFUL campus.

Anyway I've been up since 5:20--and I'm not used to being such an early riser Consistently it's now a REGULAR (gasp!) occurrence.. and I feel like I'm wilting. Well Better go to bed. Class tomorrow and starting university classes here tomorrow as well as I need to prep LOTS during the week this week as we're going away for the weekend to Hua Hin (google that too!)xox.
CLR

I'm here?

Today was the first day that I felt like I was actually in Thailand- We were tourists! We didn't have to think- or cry about the amount of schoolwork we had/have to do, or the 92 kids names I need to learn..etc. etc. The school took both the foreign department (us) and the thai staff on an outing. It was amazing!

Unfortunately I will have to buy a new camera soon :( Grrr.. the charge on my camera died early this morning so I only got a few pictures in-- and at that they don't give the scenes justice.

We went to 3 temples and down a river (to be VERY brief). The architecture is AMAZING. the views are BEAUTIFUl! the people are SO kind... and the history is RICH!

My favorite view of the day... besides hoping to see GIANT fresh water eel and seeing lots of turtles and snakehead fish instead-- was seeing a buddha head that had grown into a tree! (see below). During the burma war-- when Burma was in thailand fighting, they chopped off the heads of many buddha at a great palace. One of these has got éaten up ' basically by a tree..and it's amazing.

The day was wonderful, complete with a river ride on a two story ship down the river ..with an AMAZING buffet (definitely not going to loose weight in Thailand!) complete with on board karaoke, we did a trio singing a Britney Spears classic and 'Show me the meaning of being lonely...''ha ha ha. it was HILARIOUS-- but the Thai people LOVE Karaoke! I also enjoyed lounging on the upper deck in 41 degree weather.. that's 41 DEGREES CELSIUS-- not including the humidex. AHH. it's amazing.

School has been going okay, though it's VERY very busy- and regular classes begin this week. I teach gr 5 and 6 (P 5 and P 6, I have 4 different classes I teach)--and I teach 5 classes per day.

Yawn, I'm getting tired of next week. Here are a few highlights from todays outing--until my camera died, I will upload some one elses' pics this week.

I'm off to finish off my fresh fruit smoothie (literally almost a half a pineapple and strawberries... YUM!)-- for 66 cents.


ps. the girl in the photos with me on the prior post is Lindsay my apartment neighbor and good friend from Winnipeg.

Yum Yum--

Where did all the Pad thai go?

YUM YUM YUM Pad Thai!

AUTOPAC-- bad pic I missed the broken cars...

Walt Disney type castle = School (Not my school)

Morning Taxi Adventure

Wow, what to say- This week has been CRAZY! Thrown right into teaching and life in thailand-- learning so much about the culture: what not to say (here and yet are very bad!)... and trying to not get my white shirt dirty, there is SO much planning to do... and we've been teaching 3 classes each day on top of all that mixed in with a bit of orientation- leaving for school at 6:30 AM... and getting stuck in traffic jam for 2 hours. Today was a 'stuck in traffic/ taxi driver didn't know where he was going' type of morning. We got in the taxi at 6:35 and arrived at school at 8:40: What a long drive! Between looking about random phrases in our phrase book, seeing the AUTOPAC of Thailand (I can't believe there were not more cars here.. the driving here is absolutely CRAZY!)... we drove past a castle looking school and got to explore a part of Bangkok we'hadn't seen before (all not bad things of taking''short cuts'')

Anyway I am very tired and for the 3rd night in a row have brought home textbooks and work that I will take back to school tomorrow unfinished as I run out of steam at night SO easily.

My feet are sore from standing so much during the day and wearing bare feet in the classroom... but I'm surviving. I haven't quite learned all my kids names yet (ie. Shogun, New, Japan....) but I'm sure they will come soon!

Hope you are having a great day whatever you're up to..
Please see below some pics of the adventures of the day as well as the Pad Thai that is no longer (costing 25 Baht= about 75 cents).

yum yum yum

quick pics

Ready-Set-Go!

I was going to sit down and try to write about what I have done since I got here and realized I've got all the days mixed up, so instead below are some highlights and I will put a few pictures. I need to locate some more pictures from various other cameras that are here and then I'll share them with you....Highlights thus far:
-experiencing spicy food beyond spicy (not particularly my favourite).
-seeing live fish and some sort of little seafood larva at the market-- moving around.
-seeing a MASSIVE mall! complete with water park (including lots of speedos!), a theme park (including a carousel ride I will never forget: pictures will accompany another day), a whole floor of just IT related things...
-great apartments- somewhat more like a dorm room, but definitely sufficient, clean and feeling more homey by the day.
-Skype! It connects me to home SO easily!!
-Open markets
-air conditioned taxis
-pool on our compound :)
-putting up dollarama decals in my room= excitement!

So far the food is great, but I have to figure out which stalls on the street are completely sketchy and which ones are fine. TONS of seafood. I bought a bunch of small bananas for 30 cents for breakfast today.

Today is our first day we go to school. I am nervous, we haven't really had any orientation since we got here, I think that's what we're doing today. Hopefully I'm still teaching the same thing! :) In any case off I go. For some reason I woke up a whole hour early and decided I would use it wisely...and wrote to all of you. Please feel free to leave questions!

I made it!

We made it to Thailand safe and sound.. our apartments are really nice-- more like one big room. I will post pictures as soon as my camera gets charged over night! Hope all is well WAY across the ocean...and I will post some pics tomorrow. FYI it's completely 12 hours later here...so it's 3:01 am here, but 3:01 pm there... :)

Up up and Away..

I'm in Soeul waiting for the day to start. We had a very long flight, but survived.

I'm in soeul all day..it's 5.15 am here.... our flight was really long. 13 hours, plus the flight from winnipeg to toronto and now we have a 15 hour wait here, we missed the whole day of thursday.... We have nothing to do all day, but we will sleep and hang out and play dutch blitz I guess?!

To quickly give an update before my laptop dies...
-Monday travel advisory goes down, find out that potentially we will go this week. 9:30pm
-Tuesday 10am receive a call/ email... that we will be leaving... Wednesday pm
-Tuesday lunch find out our flight leaves Wednesday 6:50 pm... to Toronto, few hour layover, and 13 hour flight to soeul, 15 hour layover..
-Today. we missed the whole day of thursday and now it's 5:45 am in Souel and we're waiting around all day...
-I will get to Thailand late tonight, Friday --friday am your time, so not sure when I'll get set up with the internet...
-We also found out our new apartment is ready--complete with a pool, so although there will be many long hours and tears it shall be soothed a bit by the pool :)
-Missing Canada and all it holds already--but looking forward to a great year of adventure.. when I can think coherently I will provide some highlights of my adventure so far!