Ko Samet

Early Friday morning half of our group set out for a weekend getaway trip. We headed to a little island by the name of 'Ko Samet'. The island is about 80% forest and is a national park. It was only about a three hour van ride with an additional 30 minute ferry ride to the island. BEAUTIFUL!

Thailand beaches have finally redeemed themselves, this was absolutely gorgeous! Perhaps one of the most breathtaking views I have ever seen (and this island is supposedly not even one of the best, I have to travel further south for those). Friday night Shannon, Lauren, Jenn, and myself wandered around and found this cute place to eat on the beach...literally on the beach...mats on the sand, lanterns on the table, cushions as seats...adorable. After dinner we walked along the beach and heard a bar playing some good tunes and we gravitated towards it. It was a low key place where we befriended the two bartenders. We played Jenga with them as well as connect four. They gave us control of the music selection and taught us some bar tricks (how to get money from two bottles without touching the two bottles, etc). Here I flew my first 'khom loi' a.k.a. candle powered paper balloon lantern. It was awesome. We rounded off the evening with some sparklers, writing names in the sand, and a late night dip in the ocean...

Saturday, the rest of our group came to the island and we all went snorkeling. We got the entire boat to ourselves, sweet! On our 4 hour tour, we went to a fish farm, snorkeled the rocky uninhabited west side of the island, fished (many ate what was caught-I tasted), jumped from the top deck of the boat, and watched a glorious sunset. Lets just say that this day was near perfect. We continued on well into the night, starting with a group dinner then heading out to a couple beach bars where we spent majority of the night dancing. Fun Fun!

This morning was a rough one for some (me included...what?) but we sucked it up...got some grub and hit the beach before having to leave and come back to campus. I am telling you this place was wonderful! I am so excited to go back ...my mom and I are heading there for Christmas, YES!!!

drama drama drama

Unnecessary drama if you ask me...I have failed to mention some of the bs that has been going on over here (here meaning the university I am at). I had orginally planned on not saying anything as I wanted you to all believe I am living this grand life where its all sunny days and glorious. But I want this blog to be an accurate account of my year here. Let me assure you the drama has subsided and things are starting to get back to normal. Now what is this drama I speak of???????
Housing and 2 hour conversational courses!
I know petty little shit, right! WRONG! We live in the sticks, timbuktu, outskirts of any point of civilization...we have been fighting to move to the city campus since before we got here and its just gotten worse when we saw how far removed from society we are...before we came we were told we would be able to move 2nd semester but we have since found out how big of a fabrication that was...and now we are being told repeatedly that its not going to happen.
Then Monday ...poof... now 8 of us (oh but there are 15 of us) can move only if we teach this additional course. Some people are okay with it ... others like myself are not. I am not going to teach this 2 hour conversational class that is not part of my contract. Oh yah and it meets 6pm to 8pm, 5 days a week. UGH.
So I plan on making my voice heard but before I can....a meeting is called and now all of a sudden ALL of us HAVE to teach this conversational class. WHAT? YEAH! WHAT? YEAH!
Okay so I have been stressed with my two levels of lesson planning (thankfully I have a team of teachers here to bounce ideas off of and get ideas from and an amazing mom who continously sends me website resources) but now I get to throw a whole new lesson planning in the mix. ARGH! I am just not going to think about it right now. No, not right now.
It will be okay I have calmed down considerably. Today I went and worked out twice (once in the morning and once in the evening) to help bring my stress level down and really what else is there to do here???? I just need to remain positive and absorb all this...for christs sake I am in Thailand! I am living in Thailand! Yeah that's the spirit...and right now all I am thinking about is our weekend get-away trip to Koh Samet Island. I plan on forgetting all about this so called drama. Drama? What drama? Once again the infamous thai phrase comes so in handy here...Mai Pen Rai (no worries).

Loi Krathong

The other evening was the full moon night of the twelfth lunar month here in Thailand. Which is also called "Loi Krathong". In Thai "Loi" means "to float" and "Krathong" is a raft. People usually make little banana-leaf boats to float onto the river. They are decorated with elaborately-folded banana leaves, flowers, candles, and incense sticks. They are intended to float away ill fortune as well as to express apologies to the River Goddess. One Tuesday the university had a Loi Krathong celebration and on Wednesday three of us went into the city to view the festivities.
I was so lucky that some of my students were performing at the celebration and I was able to take some pictures with them before they performed. Afterwards I headed to our little pond to view some of the students Krathongs.

On Wednesday night I bought a Krathong to float in the Chao Phraya River. I can use all the help I can get of letting go of some things in my life. If a little candle raft is going to help me get rid of some anger and grudges, so that I can start afresh and on a better foot then so be it!

At one point we were walking along a main street trying to find a way to the river and found a little alleyway that had a sign with a picture of a boat and a pier so we decided to walk down it. Good thing we did. We got to the pier right as the fireworks were starting and we had a front row view. It was beautiful. On our way back to the main road we stopped in this little restaurant for a drink and to stare at this weird looking fish (yes it's a real fish).


P.S. I have been in Southeast Asia a month now! Can you believe it?

My Top Ten Lists

My Top 10 list of things I wish I would have thought of or done BEFORE heading to Thailand!
10. Learn the basics of the Thai language.
9. Bought a pocket Thai/English dictionary.
8. Diversified my packing wardrobe.
7. Bought Keen Waterfront shoes.
6. Bought a better camera.
5. Researched where in the world is Bang Na Thailand.
4. Tutored ESL adults.
3. Map Quest & Google Map the heck out of Bangkok. Nothing worse than being lost in a city where no one speaks the English language and you have no idea how to get back to where you need to be.
2. Lost 20 pounds because all I am eating here is rice and noodles and inevitably going to gain 50 pounds!
1. Done research on ESL games and activities to help ease my now constant frustration of lesson planning!

My Top 10 things I have learned SINCE being in Thailand!
10. I live 45 minutes outside of Bangkok :(
9. Don’t drink the water.
8. Only get into taxi’s where the driver will start the meter.
7. The beach is not that far away.
6. I really don’t like seafood.
5. There is no rhyme or reason to half the stuff that is done here. Some things are done so ass backwards. I quit trying to figure it out.
4. If you ask 3 different Thai people the exact same question (directions for example) you will get three very different answers.
3. Everything is “Mai Pen Rai” <--- no big deal, never mind, no worries.
2. Skype is my best friend.
1. Carry toilet paper and hand sanitizer with you EVERYWHERE!!!

Cheap Cheap Happy Hour

This past weekend a group of us headed south to a little place called 'Hua Hin'. Why? Cause we needed it! My first week of teaching was pretty crazy. I am not a trained teacher...I just play one in Thailand. Its all a learning process...right? I suck at lesson planning though. Thankfully I have teamed up with some teachers and we bounce ideas off each other! You know the teaching part is not bad, these kids are so much fun...all we do is laugh. Hey I am getting them talking and seeing that I am teaching Conversational English I think I am doing a good job. So far so good! This semester I am only teaching 3 classes. All of which are on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Which is a pretty sweet deal if I say so myself. The other days I am in the office and working on lesson plans. I don't like lesson planning. Blech!!
So Friday afternoon a group of us headed for a little beach get-away! We took a van to Bangkok where we hopped on another van headed for Hua Hin. After our two hour van ride we arrived to Hua Hin...

We found our guesthouse and quickly freshened up and headed out for some grub. And street pad thai was had. mmmmm mmmmm mmmmm. Following eating we walked the streets and bounced in and out of bars. It was fun. Saturday morning we headed for the beach. It was overcast and hazy but relaxing and just what I needed. We were there for a few hours before the storm clouds came barreling through.

We successfully made it to a bar before the rain hit. YAY! When the rain cleared we headed back the guesthouse to "shit, shower, and shave" (as my dad would say) before taking the town by storm again! While waiting for some of our group a few of us noticed an artist working across the street. We approached him and talked with him for a bit. He was working on this portrait and my picture does not show the many intrinsic details he had on it. He said he started this picture three weeks ago and would not be done for another four. Wow is all I can say! He let us look at some of his pencil sketches as well and oh wow they were so beautiful! So detailed. This guy was adorable, nice, and so genuine. He laughed and was all smiles! It was wonderful.

Saturday night we once again pranced through Hua Hin having a few drinks before calling it a night. Today (Sunday) we stopped off at the beach for a bit but it was windy, cloudy, and a slight bit chilly. We decided to take a leisurely stroll and window shop on the way back to the guesthouse before taking the van back to Bangkok. And then a cab back to Bang Na. Home sweet home.


P.S. The title of this post is dedicated to all the Thai beach venders who would come up to us and say "cheap cheap happy hour" to try to get us to buy the goodies they were selling.

Reporting to duty...Ajarn Heidi

I got my class schedule!!! I teach Tuesday and Thursdays at the Hua Mak Campus....which is about 45 minutes away from where I live. Remember I told you I live at the BangNa campus? I volunteered to commute to the other campus as did 2 other teachers. I'll admit, I volunteered for selfish reasons more than anything. I wanted to be in the city more and the Hua Mak campus is waaaaaaaay closer to the train station, downtown, and civilization.

Today was my first day! Today I officially became Ajarn (Thai for teacher/professor) Heidi. Thankfully yesterday I took the university van service to the campus for a dry run (as I have never taken the van service before and never seen the campus of where I was going to be teaching). Thank goodness I did. What a mess! I teach at 9:30 am and apparently there is no van service to the other campus until 11am. So what does that mean for Ajarn Heidi??? That means she has to either flag down a van and beg them to take her to Hua Mak campus (can you imagine the language barrier here?) or find this one specific Thai woman in a yellow shirt who will flag down a van for me. I chose the latter this morning (I also met up with a seasoned veteran teacher who has been here for 6 years, he was super helpful this morning, thank goodness for Clayton)! Anyways back to teaching...today I taught 3 classes. Two basic classes and one level one. My basic students just starred at me, I have a feeling they had no idea what I was saying...even though I repeated myself and simplified the language. Oh man this is going to be hilarious! My level one students were so awesome that the lesson I planned for today and Thursdays class they breezed straight through them...oh crap now I need to create new lesson plans for them for Thursday. Oh the joys of being an unepxierenced teacher trying to create lesson plans and activities. HA ha ha ha. Mai Pen Rai! Mai Pen Rai!

"One night in Bangkok and the world's your oyster..."

It was more like two nights in Bangkok...but this was sung throughout the entire weekend! Friday night- Halloween!!! Okay so we had to work with what we had right?? So that limited our costumes a bit. Three of us were ajarn pirates, Griffin was a vampire, and Lauren L was a cocaine addict supermodel. Hilarious!

We ended up heading to a tex mex place for dinner...cause we all needed something different. MMMM Sangria. Anyways we befriended the manager there who told us about a dive bar with cheap drinks and a costume party. YAY! We immediately headed there. We sat in the bar drinking our two for one beers and playing a drinking game only to realize 2 hours later that the party was upstairs. HA. We head up there to find out the free beer just ended. Oh bummer. But we made friends and had a great time.

Saturday we sleep in (aaaah) and Shannon, Lauren M. and I plan on heading out for a bike riding tour. We get to the meeting spot only to find out we needed to make reservations. We put in our names for Sunday. Instead of cabbing it back to our awesome hostel we decide to walk. After about 45 minutes of walking we are all sweaty and gross we stop in a little tea house to relax and get a drink. We sit down and grab some English papers and start flipping through them. I found an advertisement for the 6th Annual World Film Festival and notice there was a free showing of Martin Scorsese's film 'Shine the Light' (about the Rolling Stones) at an outside area by one of the malls (Siam Paragon). So we agree to head there. We got there early enough to get seats. I was envisioning movie in the park but not at all, this was pretty sweet...we got free popcorn, several free beers, and a free movie! As well as a free laugh or two at the expense of the drunk guy dancing and singing along with the stones.


Sunday we along with Jenn and Lauren L head to take the bike ride. We start off at the southern tip of the city and took a boat across the river into what they called the Jungle. Lets just say it was beautiful, green, and breathtaking. For 70% of our ride we were on these narrow little paths above water. I thought I was going to bite it on the turns. Thankfully no one from our group fell...Jenn almost did but didn't. We stopped at the Bangnamphung Floating Market. Where I bought a coconut tree plant/seedling. YAY! After a quick stroll through the market we hopped back on the bikes and rode to Sri Nakhon Khuankun Park where we fed the fishes. Then we rode back into the city. It was so much fun and we found out that this company does several overnight biking trips too! YAY!

After our afternoon of biking we went to Tesco (the Thailand version of Walmart) bought some necessities and headed back to campus! Time to get ready for our first days of teaching!