On Sunday I visited the closest local beach, called Bang Saen, which I have found out is where two of the other foreign teachers at my school actually live. The day started off auspiciously when I couldn’t figure out how to open the door to get out of my building. The doors had always been ajar before, even though I have 2 separate swipe cards, one for each entrance. I had to wait until someone else came down to figure out which button I had to press to be let out of the building. Embarrassing, except that I am starting to [View Full Entry]

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Last night I came home to quite the menagerie of critters in my room. Greeting me just inside the door was a serious contender for the World’s Largest Cockroach competition and this roach was also seriously feisty and did not want to leave the confines of my apt. or, after I had scooped him up, my shoe, either! Next there was the usual parade of ants all along the walls in the bedroom and bathroom, as well as the bathroom sink. Not awesome, but at least they kept a pleasant distance from my toothbrush. I got in the shower (and by [View Full Entry]

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Yesterday (Saturday) I worked on my little neighborhood map again, finding my way back to the mall. This time I went to the Hot Pot chain restaurant (at least it’s Asian, right?) Hot pot for one is kind of sad, like going to a fondue restaurant alone. Each table in the restaurant has a huge electric pot of boiling water in the middle of the table and you order the things you want to boil up in there. I got lots of different veggies (including morning glory leaves and bok choy and my recent favorite flavor sensation—baby corn) and rice vermicelli. [View Full Entry]

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Received word yesterday that Vinny has gotten her ticket and will be in Thailand from December 26-January 5! I am hoping to have some time off in there and at least we can find something interesting to do for New Year’s, maybe with some others from the TEFL group or if not, a party of 2 somewhere. Tried on my new black pants today with my pink King shirt (Tuesday’s uniform). Today or tomorrow I still need to get a yellow King shirt for Monday’s uniform. Here's the story with the King shirts: The much loved current King was born on [View Full Entry]

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Just made it home from exploring the city a bit. Got completely and utterly lost, despite the best of intentions. Realizing that in the excitement of all that had happened today, I forgot to ask Joy to write down the name of my apt. building and/or at least the name of the street it’s on (everything I have seen has only been in Thai writing, but even so I thought maybe I should at least copy that down. Should have!!), I decided I better draw myself a little map and keep track of where I went so that I would be [View Full Entry]

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Well, I’ve finished the first piece of this journey and am now into the second phase. I am somewhat nervous about what lies ahead and setting off “on my own,” separate from the group that became very familiar in just a few brief weeks, but I am mostly excited to begin teaching. Teaching English is, after all, what brought me here, though it is somehow very easy to lose sight of that with all of the other adventures I have been experiencing here. If this past month were the entire experience, I would be satisfied, but I am really looking [View Full Entry]

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Andre, Courtney, and I successfully completed our PADI open-water dive certification yesterday, just in the nick of time since I have to hurry back to Ban Phe in order to go to Chonburi on Friday morning!!! I am so happy that we pulled through on the test and are finished, and I can’t wait til the next time I get to dive. We have talked about and priced out the live-aboard boats that you get from Phuket to go to the Similan Islands (which are supposed to be absolutely gorgeous). I decided pretty recently that I wanted to do this. In [View Full Entry]

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