Proud Teacher

Hello family! It has been too long since I last updated. I cannot believe that I will be home in four days. This semester in Thailand has gone by so fast! Coming home is bittersweet. On one hand, I cannot wait to see my family again but on the other hand, I'm going to miss my students so much. The school carnival and performances were on Friday night. My class performed "Shake it Off" so well for their parents in the audience. Chester, who is usually so quiet and shy, did the best singing and dancing in the class. I was a proud teacher. I have to admit that I started crying during their performance. These kids definitely have a special place in my heart. The last three days I have with them are definitely going to be very emotional for me. I've had many adventures during these last 4 1/2 months in Thailand that I will definitely never forget. However, I think my favorite and most rewarding part of this experience was teaching my wonderful kids. Thank you Basia, Nest, Moo Pee, Sun, Tiger, Pizza, Chester, and Yibso. You have forever changed my life!

Quick Update

Hello family! There is not much to report on. We are celebrating Thanksgiving tonight at Tang's house. I also have my third cold in 3 months, so my nose is stuffy and my voice is completely lost. Oh well! We are also going on vacation with the Thai teachers this weekend at the floating market near Bangkok. The Thai teachers have become such good friends over the last few months. They are the funniest and nicest ladies ever. There's also only 3 1/2 more weeks until I come home. I miss you all and hope you all are well!

Hell Breaks Loose in Chiang Mai

Hello family! I would do a recap of all the amazing things I did in Chiang Mai, but words can't describe how amazing it was to hang out with elephants, tigers, and to do some pretty scary ziplining through the Thailand jungle. Instead I'll write about what happened at the very end of our Chiang Mai trip. After visiting Tiger Kingdom on Sunday morning, we decided to go and see the koalas and pandas at the Chiang Mai Zoo. I had been looking forward to this for months. We got ice cream at Tiger Kingdom and I had just finished my cone in the tuk tuk on the way to the zoo. All of the sudden, there was deep rumble in my stomach and a queasy feeling came over me. The bumpy tuk tuk ride with 6 other people also didn't help. "I think I need to throw up," I said suddenly. Everyone suddenly leaned away from me. I don't blame them. I clutched my stomach and bent over the rest of ride, but I actually didn't end up throwing up. We got to the zoo and I felt terrible, but I still wanted to see the pandas. We bought our tickets and I stopped in the bathroom before going in. I kept thinking I needed to throw up, but I couldn't. The rest of girls went into the zoo and Kim stayed behind with me. After 10 minutes of waiting to throw up, I concluded that I wouldn't. Kim and I headed toward the pandas, but I began to feel really weak. I felt so weak I didn't even think I could make it to the pandas. I sat on a bench and broke down in tears, I felt so sick. Kim was so sweet and just sat with me while I cried. Tanner and Lindsay arrived at the entrance but decided they weren't going in and were just going to wait outside for us. I didn't want Kim to miss out on the zoo, so we decided that I would go sit with Tanner and Lindsay. I felt so weak, I didn't even think I could make it to the entrance. On the way to the entrance, I felt something coming up. Kim handed me a 7-11 bag and I puked into it in front of dozens of staring people. Then I couldn't stop. I made it to the bathroom at the entrance and continued to puke into the disgusting toilets. When I could catch my breath, I started crying again. I was so sick, but had no home or hotel to go back to. I only had a 7 hour bus ride back to Phichit that night. At some point, Courtney came in to check on me. After a couple hours, I emerged. The 7 hour bus ride to Phichit was terrible. It was long and bumpy and I felt like I was going to pass out. Poor Kim had to sit next to me the whole ride. The illness lasted until Tuesday night. The only benefit was that I didn't have to teach for 2 days. Don't worry Mom! I'm all better now! So that was my adventure in Chiang Mai. Thailand is definitely making me stronger! I hope all of you are well!

Krabi

Hello family! We are leaving for Chiang Mai at 4 AM tomorrow morning so I better recap Krabi before we leave for our next vacation! I also realize that all my posts lack photos. Please just look at the photos on Facebook and when I get them all together on my computer, I will do a big post with pictures! Now onto Krabi. We flew into Bangkok from Cambodia on Tuesday, October 28. We met up with Michele's mom, Anita, at the airport. She is such a nice and fun lady. We caught our flight to Krabi and took a bus to our hostel. We then changed into our swimsuits and took a tuk tuk to Ao Nang to hang out on the beach. It was beautiful and looked like it came straight out of a postcard. There was also a colony of monkeys wandering around the beach. They were very used to humans and even climbed onto a man's shoulders and didn't even flinch when people took pictures with them. The next morning we took a 2 hour ferry ride to Phi Phi Island. Phi Phi Island was one of the craziest places I have ever been to. The entire island was filled entirely with American and European tourists. The only Thai people on the island were people who worked there. It was almost all young people too. The entire island was filled with bars and clubs. People there just party all night long. It is practically desereted during the morning. We met several Scandinavian young people who live on the island. They work in the bars and just party their lives away. We met a nice Danish guy named Anders who worked in one of the bars. He said we were probably the only adults on Phi Phi Island who didn't drink. Despite the party atmosphere, Phi Phi Island was the most beautiful place I have ever visited. We spent Wednesday just hanging out at the beach. On Thursday, we took a longboat tour of the islands around Phi Phi. We also went snorkeling. Yes, even I went snorkeling! I still don't know how to swim though. I just wore a life jacket and stayed by the boat. Our boat driver gave us bread to attract the fish. Seeing all the pretty fish underwater was breathtaking and a once in a lifetime experience. On Friday, we hung out at the beach some more and did some more shopping. That afternoon we took the ferry back to Krabi. On Saturday we took another longboat tour around the Seven Islands. The water was so shallow you could walk from one island to the next. There was also a giant rock that you could go rock climbing on. When you get tired of rock climbing, you just jump off the rock into the ccean. I was too chicken to climb the rock, however. We had a barbecue that night and went snorkeling again to see the glowing plankton in the water at night. On Sunday, we flew back to Bangkok. We took the Skytrain into the city and did some more shopping at one of the megamalls. We took the night bus to make it back to Phichit in time to teach the next morning.

Cambodia

Hello family! We just got back from our two week vacation to Cambodia and Krabi! I will just recap our Cambodia trip in this post. It was a crazy experience! We left early Thursday morning October 23rd. The van picked us up at 4 AM for the 5 hour drive to the Bangkok Airport. We flew Bangkok Airways to Phnom Penh. It was the nicest airline I've ever flown. We got served lunch even though the flight was only an hour long. We got to the Phnom Penh Airport and bought our visas on arrival. We took a tuk tuk to our hostel to drop off our stuff and then we went to the Killing Fields. It was such a humbling and sad place to visit. Cambodia lost almost a quarter of its population under Pol Pot's regime. They had an amazing audio tour with stories from survivors. The Killing Fields was an amazing place to visit. We went back to our hostel and that was when the trip took an interesting turn. We found out that our hostel had visa renewal services and that they could take our passports to the Thai Embassy to get our new visas. Since we no longer had to go to the Thai Embassy the next day, we had no reason to stay in Phnom Penh and decided to ditch our hostel and take the overnight bus to Siem Reap. This is when it got sketchy. The tuk tuk driver who had been driving us around all day took us to this travel agency to buy our bus tickets. We bought tickets for the 11 PM bus to Siem Reap, but we didn't have enough change to buy our return tickets. We went to a restaurant for dinner and one of the girls (definitely not me) wanted our tuk tuk driver to eat with us. He was friendly but semi pervy. I was rolling my eyes at the rest of the girls who wanted him to eat with us. Then a guy from the travel agency appears out of the blue and sits down at the table with us. He actually followed us to the restaurant. He pressured us to buy the return tickets and promised us free transportation in Siem Reap if we bought the tickets. I was skeptical of this because of all the rip offs in Cambodia and sketchy travel deals. However, we ended up buying the tickets from this travel agency guy while the pervy tuk tuk driver was flirting with Courtney. Everyone in the restaurant was staring at us knowing we were being taken advantage of. I had no idea what we were getting into. The woman at the hostel had never heard of the bus company we had bought our tickets from. To make a long story short, everything worked out. It was a legit bus company and the travel agency guy delivered on his promise of free transportation in Siem Reap. I will never do that again though. The overnight bus was a crazy, uncomfortable experience filled with interesting characters. It was something I'm glad to check of my "life experiences" list, but I never want to take an overnight bus in Cambodia again. We got to Siem Reap Friday morning and took a cooking class later that day. It was a lot of fun and we made yummy curry. We also got fish foot massages that day. On Saturday, we saw Angkor Wat at sunrise. It was beautiful and all the ruins around Angkor Wat looked like they came right out of a movie. On Sunday, we went to a temple and a waterfall on Kulen Mountain. It started pouring rain and we got soaked. It was beautiful to see all the water rushing down the moutain. However,I didn't have that good of a time though because I wasn't feeling well that day. We took another overnight bus back to Siem Reap and got back to Phnom Penh Mondy morning. We got our passports and new visas and that was a relief. We also visited an orphanage. We had heard of the scam orphanages in Cambodia that charge money but we found a legit one online. We went to an orphanage called Lifhouse Society and it was so much fun to hang out with the kids. There were mostly teenagers there during the day. They were very nice and painted our nails for us. We also bought some bracelets that they sell to raise money for the orphanage. We spent one more night in Phnom Penh and flew to Krabi on Tuesday. Cambodia was a nice trip, but I like Thailand much better. I will do a post on Krabi next!

Mini Vacation Before Our Vacation

Hello family! This weekend we FINALLY made our way to Sukhothai, the ruins of the first capital of Thailand. We have been meaning to go for two months now, but Sukhothai has been flooded so we finally got to go this weekend. We left Saturday morning and took the train to Phitsanulok. We then had to take a tuk tuk to the bus station and take a bus to Sukothai. It was about an hour away from Phitsanulok. We had originally planned to rent bikes and bike around Sukhothai, but we were already tired when we got there. We ended up taking a tuk tuk tour around central Sukhothai. Our driver took us to all the major ruins and the tour lasted about 3 hours. The ruins were awe-inspiring and were in the middle of a beautiful park! Our driver took us back to the bus station and we took the bus back to Phitsanulok. We all pretty much slept the entire bus ride. When we got back to Phitsanulok, we walked to our hotel and checked into our rooms. We hadn't eaten anything all day, so we made our way across the street to the Big C. I had pizza and Dairy Queen for dinner and it was glorious. That night we were going to go see the new Dracula movie in English at Central Plaza, but Courtney, Michele, Kim, and I were too tired to go, so only Lexy and Leanna ended up seeing it. The next morning, we went to church. We ran into the ILP girls teaching at the school in Phitsanulok, so we decided to leave after sacrament meeting and go hang out with them at their school. The girls in Phitsanulok were so nice and fun to hang out with, we wondered why we haven't hung out with them before. They have already taken their vacation to the islands, so they gave us lots of good advice on what to do there. I also grew a little jealous of the Phitsanulok girls. They only have to teach 10 hours a week while I have to teach 20 hours. Their coordinator also seems a lot cooler and less flaky and cheap with them like Tang is with us. However, I had to remember how blessed I was to be teaching at the Phichit school. If I was at the Phitsanulok school, I never would've met my awesome kiddies. I can't imagine being with any other kids besides Nest, Pizza, Moo Pee, Sun, Basia, Yipso, Tiger, and Chester!

Hump Day

Hello family! Tomorrow is Wednesday so that means it's hump day! Not only are we already half way through the week, we are also officially half way through our stay in Thailand. We've been here for nine weeks and have nine weeks left! It has been a little hectic this week with finishing winter camps and getting ready to leave for Cambodia and Krabi next week. Mom and Leanna also leave for Boston this week to visit Katie. I'm so jealous you guys are having a vacation without me! Eat delicious food for me.There are only nine more weeks until I see you guys again!