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Teaching the monks
These are the monks who we taught for a week in rayong. such great kids. Sa Wat Dee Ka everybody...
So all the instructions for my old blog were in Thai and I had to change over to this new one. Because of that, i've got to play catch up now for the past few weeks. Sorry in advance for the length of this blog, but skim it and check out what i've been doing for the past few weeks. From here on out, the posts will be much shorter.
So i'm in Thailand. Did everybody know they don't speak any english here? I arrived in Bangkok a month ago after a brief one day detour of sleeping on the bench of McDonald's in the LA airport after missing my connecting flight to Taiwan. Rocky start to say the least. I stayed for two days in Bangkok and was not very impressed. The city is not old world enough to be that interesting or modern enough to feel like anything more than a b rate new york. It was also unbelieveably hot. I managed to get out to a few temples, but was about to pass out, so spent most of the day in the air conditioning. It was also incredibly disconcerting to
massages on the beach in Ko Samet
These women are unbelieveable. One hour for about 4 dollars. be in a place where you understand no signs, none of the speaking around you and where noone understands you at all. I'm just starting to get used to it now but it's been the greatest culture shock of any of my traveling by far.
I met up with the people in my program the next day to head down to Ban Phe, which is about 3 hours South on the coast. I spent the last month in a program with about 30 ppl. We stayed in a hotel right on the beach and basically replayed freshman year dorms. Our days for the first week consisted of teaching class from 9-12 then an hour and half break where we all went out and played in the water (which is HOT. It's unbelievable, like a bathtub) and on the beach before heading in for class until 4. The first weekend we took the ferry boat over to Ko Samet, which is a little backpacker's paradise about 40 minutes away. We stayed in little beach bungalows and got massages on the beach....kind of incredible. Candida, Becky, Gena and I jumped on a boat and got a full snorkeling tour of the island
Teaching the monks
These are the monks who we taught for a week in rayong. such great kids. which ended with a rickity fish farm and lunch at a restaurant on stilts. You sat down at the table and dangled your legs under the floor over the water. They even had a water slide into the ocean! At night the place goes nuts. There are fire throwers and bars all along the beachfront with a bunch of people just walking in between. The next day Candida woke me up and dragged me onto a motorcyle for a tour of the island. At this point, we were both clearly still too drunk to drive, but she had lost a contact so I was the designated driver. We got on the scooter and i promptly drove it into a wall. Candida tried as well but tipped it over onto us with the engine running when a car drove our way, so again i seemed like the best of the two bad choices. We headed out and managed to make it through the day, although i'm still carrying the bruise on my leg from the second fall!
The second week was spent having our teaching practice at a local monastery in Rayong, the next town over. We got to teach groups of young monks who were so awesome. Really smart and polite. It was a pretty incredible experience to be in that environment.
The course ended about a week ago. In our few days off, we took a trek in the jungle through the pouring rain which gave me a bronchial infection. Then I spent the next night swimming until 4 in the morning because there was crazy bioilluminescence in the water (the millions of tiny organisms that come out at night and light up like neon whenever you move. So they attach to you and also move when you move even a finger. It's unreal.) which ended with my getting sea lice all over my boobs. I didn't realize this until in Bangkok the next day when I started to itch so badly I had to run to the bathroom and rip off my bra. Unfortunately I happened to be wearing a white dress but putting it back on was just not an option. I was with my friend Jeff and we managed to get down two streets with about 20 thai men literally turning their motorcycles and almost crashing looking at me before he suggested that i might want to buy a shirt....
Crazy night in Bangkok as a last hurray with the group then everyone left for their respective cities. Two other kids, Jordan and Kristin are with me in Ayutthaya. We live on the main island where there are unbelievable ruins and temples interspersed with the city itself. I live down the street from the grand palace park. The apt is small but I love it. Very tropical feeling and we got bike yesterday so we're starting to explore. I took mine out and got pretty lost today for a few hours. I got out to the back areas of really jungly brush and houses on stilts in the little canals. They clearly don't see many foreigners as they all were pointing me out to their kids and taking pictures yelling "farang! farang!" when i biked past!
I start school tomorrow. I am teaching 4 year olds through 12 year olds! I have no idea what the schedule is and am only being given a pretty sparse outline for two of the classes. Other than that, i'm supposed to make up the whole schedule on my own. Awesome.
Well if you made it this far then korp kun ka (thank you). Promise that they'll be much shorter after this! Hope you all are doing well and come to Thailand!
Amy
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Steve
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Enjoy the adventure
I'm hooked on Thailand. I've been there several times there and I love the people. I hope you have a great adventure. Thais are so Jai dee. Khun kao jai mai krup? Sawadee krup from Canada and have a great time. Steve from Ontario Canada