Everything's Going to Be Alright

Hello family! I reached a turning point this week. I finally came to peace with the fact that I'm going to be living in Thailand for four more months. When I first arrived, I had an initial bout of homesickness and culture shock. I wanted to hop on a plane right back to Utah. When I first came to the school, I had no idea how to interact with little kids, deal with the heat and humidity, the bugs, the girls, the food, etc. A lot has changed in the last two weeks. I have become good friends with the other girls. We can laugh and tell each other anything. They give me a home away from home. I have come to love my students even the elementary kids. At first I thought they were brats but we had a lot of fun playing a game on Thursday and they seem to really listen to me now. I have a lot of fun talking with them. I still love my kindergarteners and I also joke around with them. I think they sometimes can't understand what I'm saying, but always laugh with me. Whenever I see my students outside of class, they always say "Hi Teacher Jessie!" and give me a good hug. Teaching also seemed daunting at first, but it doesn't seem as scary anymore. My head teacher, Courtney, did evaluations this week and I got very high scores in all categories. I finally think I can do this. It also helps that everyone at the school, our coordinator, and Mom and Dad do such a good job taking care of u. The cook is such a nice lady and though she doesn't speak a word of English, she really tries to make good food for us and meals that we will like. She made us a Thai omlette today that was delicious. Our coordinator, Tang, also does such a good job helping us with teaching and adjusting to living in Thailand. She has helped us with our Thai and gives us tons of good ideas of things to do around town and is helping us plan our vacations. Her brother, Tan, has also been so helpful. I told him the other day that I didn't like my bike and he took care of it right away. He took it to the bike shop and it came back today with new brakes, tires, and a basket to put my purse in. We went to Mom and Dad's garden home today and they spoiled us as usual. They gave us chips, ice cream, nachos, and Krispy Kreme donuts. We also finally met Tang's husband, Ake, today. He graduated from BYU and said that Provo is the best city he has lived in. I have also gotten used to the heat and humidity. It doesn't even phase me anymore. So everything is going to be alright you guys! I hope you all are well!

Vacation Schedule

Hello family! We got our vacation schedule at our in-service meeting yesterday. From October 23-Nov 2 we will be spending a few days in Cambodia where we will also renew our visas. We will then spend the rest of the time in Thailand at the southern beach towns. We are going to Phuket or Krabi. We will go back to Phichit for 3 days and then we will go to Chiang Mai from Nov 6-7. Chiang Mai has everything I want to do. It has the elephant riding, Tiger Kingdom, and zip lining. That weekend is also the lantern festival! We will release lanterns into the air just like in Tangled. We will spend Dec 5-7 in Bangkok. I also have the option of extending my trip and going to India at the end of our stay with some of the other girls. I could go to India from Dec 18-22 and fly back to Utah on the 23rd. I would be charged a $300 flight change fee. I still haven't decided on that yet, but going to India would be awesome and I'm only four hours away! This weekend is also the big boat race festival in Phichit and next weekend we are going to the ancient ruins in Phitsanulok. Thinking of vacation gets me through long days of teaching. I hope everyone is well!

Hanging in There

Hello family! I just wanted to give a quick update. I am hanging in there when it comes to teaching. Even though I only teach 20 hours a week, I still spend most of my day preparing lessons. My kindergarten class continues to be amazing and my elementary kids continue to annoy me. I would be very happy if I just had to teach kindergarten. I definitely do not see being a teacher in my career future. I also have to supervise playtime once a week. I actually really like the little kids. I thought I was crazy when I left because I have never really interacted with little kids at all. I now know I do pretty well with little kids. I am also learning to be patient with the elementary kids. On another note, I am getting eaten alive by mosquitios even with repellent. Various creatures roam our apartment including flies, mosquitos, crickets, cockroaches, lizards, spiders,and geckos. There are about five dead lizards in our window and we can hear the street dogs fighting at night. This stay in Thailand is definitely making me stronger and helping me expand my comfort zone. Yesterday was a lot fun! We went paddleboating at the crocodile park, went to the aquarium, got ice cream at the fancy ice cream parlor, went shopping, and then went to a soccer game. The soccer game was a lot of fun. We got our pictures taken with cardboard cutouts of the players and that night our picture was front page on the team's website. I hope you all are well and I hope Leanna has a good first day of school at our beloved USU!

A Good Day

Hey family! I'm still surviving in Thailand. I've only been here a week and a half, but I feel like I've been here a month! I found out today we won't have our vacation until October! I just want to go to Chiang Mai to ride elephants. I also am still suriving teaching. I love my kindergarten class. They are so sweet and smart. My elementary kids are bratty. They are already functionally fluent in English and we need to be doing harder activities with them than what we're currently doing. Since they know English, they never shut up! Friday was a good day. I did not have to teach elementary and we went to the crocodile park and got shakes that night. Today we did lesson planning and went swimming at Mom and Dad's. There is also a freaky Danish guy who lives close to the school. He started following us on his bike on Wednesday asking where the summer girls were. We told him they left. He then said something really creepy. He talked about how he liked braids on girls. He then followed us to the music festival down the street. This morning some girls went running and he started following them. He then tried to slap one of the girl's butts! Who would've known the creepiest guy in Thailand is an old Danish man? I'm glad we live in a gated school with 24/7 security!

First Day Teaching

Hey family! I'm going to make this post short and sweet. Today was the first day teaching. It was not as bad as I thought. The kids were well-behaved for the most part. I teaching reading and an activity to kindergarten kids M-F and teach health and social studies to first graders on Tuesday and Thursday. We also moved into the apartment today where I found a hissing cockroach in my suitcase! I now really appreaciate the clinic house. I will keep you all updated!

Church and Phitsanulok

Hi family! On Saturday we explored Phichit a little more. We went to the grocery store and the mall. The Thai are very into bras. At both the grocery store and the mall, they had huge bra sections with rows and rows of bras. At the store, a woman was even trying one on right in the middle of the store! At the mall, we also saw the movie theatre with all Thai movies and we're thinking of going to see one sometime. I bought a strawberry Fanta that actually tasted like a carbonated cherry cough syrup. Later that day, we walked to the train station. The train station was in the poor part of town and it was the first time I had seen true poverty with crumbling houses and street dogs running around everywhere. The train station was also where we saw a group of kids playing soccer in the parking lot. We challenged them to a game. It was so funny, after the train came in, a huge group of people gathered around to watch. I played horribly as usual, but it was a lot of fun. Those boys beat us 3-2. Afterward, we took a group picture that is on Facebook. It was so cute that the kids were so excited to see us. We played with the kids afterward. The little girls made us paper crafts with their names on it. That craft will probably be one of the best gifts I get in Thailand. We decided we are going to buy them a new soccer ball when we go back. Now I'm going to stop here before this turns into a cheesy Hallmark Hall of Fame movie. On Sunday, we took the train to Phitsanulok to church. Phitsanulok is about 45 min north of Phichit. We took a tuk tuk to the church. It was so interesting to see the an LDS church in Thailand. The ward members were very nice. A woman held my hand and told me I was pretty and the woman who sat next to me during sacrament gave me candy. We also talked with the missionaries who were white boys from Utah. It was funny because a girl in my group actually knew one of the elders from middle school. We wore headsets and listened to them translate for us. The talks were from recent converts. It was so nice to talk about Jesus and charity in church as opposed to just the evils of gay marriage and modesty that the Utah church is preoccupied with. After sacrament, a few of us walked around Phitsanulok a bit. It is a bigger city than Phichit and actually has tourists because it is close to ancient ruins. It was very hot and sunny. It got freaky when a truck started following us and the man wanted to give us a ride. We said no and bolted before we got kidnapped into a sex trafficking ring! We went to a fancy restaurant for lunch. I got pad thai. The noodles were in an egg shell that I had to cut apart to eat the noodles. A girl in my group got American rice that ended up being white rice covered in ketchup with a drumstick on the side. That is not how Americans eat rice! When a girl used to the bathroom she also found what she was pretty sure was a brothel upstairs!

The 32 Hour Journey

Well, after a 32 hours in planes and airports and an additional six hour layover and five hour drive, I have finally arrived in Thailand. My ankles also swelled up twice its normal size in the process! The long journey began at 4:00 in the morning when we arrived at the Salt Lake Airport for our 6:00 flight to Minneapolis. A poor ILP employee had to be at the airport at 4:00 in the morning to give us our passports and visas although the check in counters did not open until 4:45 so we were left waiting for 45 minutes. When we finally got to our gate, we saw that Elizabeth Smart was on the same flight as us. A couple girls in the group wanted to go and say hi to her, but they chickened out. We saw her in the first row as we got on the plane, but she had her head down like she didn’t want anyone to talk to her. After the flight to Minneapolis, we had a six hour layover. The group of girls going to Phitsanulok immediately headed to the gate, but my group decided to eat some breakfast at Chile’s. Almost the whole time, the girls just talked about their boyfriends waiting back home. I stopped paying attention halfway through this as I find relationship talk one of the most boring topics of conversation. The rest of the layover, we spent waiting at the gate with a tiny seating area surrounding it considering the hundreds of people on the flight. The flight to Tokyo was very comfortable as I had an aisle seat and there was no one sitting next to me on the other side. Then after spending two hours in Tokyo, we boarded our final six hour flight to Bangkok. When we finally arrived in Bangkok, we collected our bags and met up with the last two girls in our group. We did the five hour drive to Phichit in the middle of the night so I couldn’t really get a good look at Bangkok or anything else on the way. The streets were very narrow and we almost hit a couple street dogs on the way. We finally reached the clinic house where we will be staying for a week until the summer girls move out of the apartment at the school. The clinic house belongs to the parents of our coordinator Tang. We even call them Mom and Dad. They are very nice and quite funny. The housekeepers are also very nice and made a wonderful lunch and dinner for us. Today we walked around the city of Phichit. It was hot and very humid! We stopped at the 711 to get water bottles on the way back. A large water bottle in Thailand is only 40 cents and comes with its own straw. The dad then drove us past the huge crocodile park and to the school. The school is huge and is surrounded by a beautiful garden and fountain. It was modeled after Hogwarts and has a Christmas tree in the lobby year round. We met the Thai teachers who were all very nice. Some of the kids ran out to us yelling “teacher!” They were so cute, but we played with them for a little bit this afternoon and they were all so crazy! I’ll have to work on dealing with that. We also met the summer teachers who were all very nice and gave us a lot of tips and advice. We also saw the apartment we will be living in and while it is nice, I’d rather stay at the clinic house! I’m sorry for the lack of pictures and I promise I will post pictures of everything soon!