calling in sick, again...

sawatdee kah and kor toht kah (i'm sorry)!

i had been meaning to blog but then we had review week which was busy. the next week was exam week, which was also very busy, and now it's almost august and i just returned from three days in Hua Hin, just southwest of bangkok.

i have much to report. i'll do it in sections, so find a topic you like and read away!

Asian Cup 2007... my first professional, international soccer (football for anyone outside of north america) game!

in mid-july i attended the thailand vs. australia soccer match for the asian cup, hosted by bangkok this year. it was a very adventurous evening and i had a lot of fun. i went with many aussies, a couple thais and a brit... and anelda (did i even need to say it? she's my partner in crime, though no crimes are actually committed.) anyway, the aussies voted for australia while the rest of us (brit, american, south african, and thais) all voted for thailand. our adventure started with a motorbike ride to the MRT (subway). then a subway ride to the river, where we took a CRAZILY overpacked boat-bus to ... uh, the campus of....??? i don't know... and we walked from the river to the stadium. *pause* (since it is monsoon season, it began the daily raining during our wait on the dock for the boat-bus and didn't stop until the game was at halftime, then began raining when the game was finished, again. SOOOOGGGGY!) *unpause* once on campus the air was filled with (rain, of course and...) lots and lots of excitement and festivities! life in the rainy season just moves along with umbrellas to keep hairdos intact and looking cool. on our walk to the staduim, we stopped to have a beverage of choice and then at the gates we were able to purchase all the thailand fangear that we needed. i bought a THAILAND! scarf, a thai flag ribbon (for my hair), and an awesome sweat armband, in thai colors, of course. i was feeling wicked supportive in all my gear and we had a great time cheering the team on to an unfortunate loss, four-nothing. the game was very exciting, at one time the crowd passed an enormous thai flag across the stands (i took photos.) and they even did the WAVE! nuh-uh!? YEP! it was awesome being a thailand fan from america. after the game we were asked many times to be in photos. it was my celebrity moment, i guess. it was fun. i'll never forget it. we took the bangkok bus home for 8 baht each (32 baht to the dollar makes it... cheap!) then, two nights later.....

Dinner with the Brothers

the Brothers are like the principals of the school (where I work) and they wanted to take the foreign staff out for dinner. we went to a beautiful, classy restaurant right on the river and ate all the thai food we could manage. i tried several new dishes (all spicy and the names of which i have lost) and was able to talk, though briefly, to the Brothers that i hadn't met before. i also had the opportunity to chat and joke with many of my collegues that i don't see outside of work. they're such a fun bunch! there's an american teacher, mr. mike, that i just can't help but make fun of... and he's so good at taking it and giving it right back. a little piece of home right in the office. (for the record, he has one of THE most beautiful children i have and will ever see AND he's just my friend.) mike is also the guy that, though he doesn't know it, got me through a couple of nasty bouts of homesickness just with his giant smile.
anyway, the dinner with the Brothers was very special and i felt, once again, so spoiled and treated with such kindness and gratitude. i love this place!

The Boys and School

the past two weeks have been, first, revision week, and second, exam week. the thais take their mid and final semester exams very seriously (yes, you remembered correctly, i'm still teaching grade ONE), so the week before exams is spent reviewing all material covered in the previous nine weeks and then exam week is exactly like midterms or finals week at college... except stricter and much more organized. yes, all grades are heavily tested every ten weeks. they do not take learning lightly. it's a serious business here. (AMERICA COULD LEARN A THING OR TWO. eh-hem. okay.)
revision week went splendidly. we touched briefly on all the topics i had covered over the previous weeks. to my surprise they actually remembered it all! yippy! i prepared them for their exams as best i could and felt confident, for them, that they would be successful. the week ended with anelda and i taking down information off bulletin boards and covering other things on the wall with newspaper (as not to give away answers on the test). yep, it's SERIOUS.
on monday, the following week: exam week (dun-dun-duuuuun), grades one, three, and five show up to school and line up in a completely different location than the rest of the school year to sing the national anthem and say the school prayer. on a quick breeze-by of my classroom i noted some coded signs on the door and the desks had been rearranged into perfectly spaced rows, 5 X 5. (i have only 20 students, but grade two does their testing in the grade one classrooms... and they have 25 per class) *back to lines* my thai co-teacher and i walked the boys to the classroom where they took out their supplies (pencils, ruler, rubber (eraser, don't laugh), and colored pencils ONLY) and lined their bags up on the benches outside our classroom (YEs, it's SERious) in numerical order... also the order in which they were arranged in lines. (normally they are in height order for lines. fun fact.) then we went in (shoes on this time) and they sat in numerical order and i said "good luck and make sure you LOOOOK at the wOOORRds. read the words. don't forget! and good luck!!!" then my co-teacher wished them well, we gave them smiles and left them with another thai teacher who conducted all their tests for the two days they took them.
the boys took exams the full day on monday and half day on wednesday, and didn't come to school on tuesday and thursday (grades two, four, and six come then). school resumed it's normal schedule on friday. while the boys were testing, we had a long list of tasks to accomplish including planning, documenting things, organizing, and correcting the exams. (which are triple-checked. mmm hmmm.) my boys, i can proudly say, all did very very well. they LEARNED!!!! a good feeling to have the kids not only pass the test but exceed. now i know what it feels like! (and i didn't do it alone, trust me.)
amidst the fun of correcting exams, cleaning off my desk, organizing and filing things away and doing planning, i fell very, very, grotesquely ill. caught the stomach-rager. nastilicious! here's the stats for those who are mathematically inclined: 12 vomiting episodes (accompanied by the ever-favorite Dry Heave), 3 trips for the squirts (sorry... details....*shoulder shrug*) and 2 multi-tasking adventures involving both of the aforementioned tasks at the SAME TIME! 3 am to 8 am NONstop. i'd heard rumors but never expected to experience it myself. i hope to never be that sick ever ever again. missed work thursday and went to hospital after teaching half-day on friday.
THE HOSPITAL. i bet you're all wondering about that adventure!
not so bad! really. we checked in, showed the good ole insurance card, went to the nurses station (where they check your blood pressure and temperature and ask your symptoms right there in the lobby), and waited our turn. (forgot to mention that partner in crime was also struck down by the gastrointestinal bathroom party. sorry friend! and she had taken such good care of me on thursday. so, there were two sickies taking a trip to hospital.) once i saw the doctor, who spoke english just okay, i was sent to the 'cashier' window where i didn't pay a baht, was checked out and sent to the medicine pick-up window where i received my SEVEN prescriptions, only one of which i was instructed to take until finished. i can check that off my list now... get really, really sick and go to the hospital, CHECK. (maybe a big check will mean it won't happen again.)

Hua Hin aka. Let's Get a Breath of Fresh Air NOW!

i had just enough time to feel better while packing for a long weekend in hua hin with an american friend, evelyn. she's the librarian at school and comes from utah. she's something of an anomaly because she speaks english, thai, laotian, and vietnamese (and has quite a skill with ebonics, which is endlessly entertaining). on saturday morning, we left for hua hin, a favorite vacation spot of the thais (and the king, i might add), which is just down the "elephant trunk" of thailand, or about three hours southwest of BKK. we took a 180 baht van with all thai locals, no buses and no backpackers, directly to hua hin, minus a pitstop about halfway to re-fuel and get a snack. the van dropped us at a very shady location, in rubble underneath an overpass, hidden away from the street... which was fine because it's the station for these private vans.
we wandered past the tuk-tuks and mini-trucks/taxis that kept offering us a ride "where you go? pai nai?" nobody we asked really knew where our guesthouse was located so we called the owner who kindly offered to pick us up on his motorbike. he took us separately to the guesthouse, Jing's Guesthouse (highly recommended. very clean, very kind people. peter (brit) and jing (thai) are lovely people as are their staff members. price was great: cheap cheap!)
once settled into our lovely dark brown room, we ventured out on the town to find a bite to eat and enjoyed lunch at an irish pub that had air conditioning. the temperatures in hua hin were much higher than they have been in bangkok in the last month. it was like summer/hot season all over again! after lunch we had a wonderful foot massage from the gals at the guesthouse and then checked out the beach, showered, had dinner, and called it an early night. (did i mention that we met at 6 am to catch the van and arrived in hua hin by 9:45 am?)
the next two days were spent wandering the shops, streets, and beach of hua hin, meeting and making various friends along the way. evelyn eavesdropping on everyone's thai commentary all along the way (it's FUUUn to hear what they're actually saying!). we didn't see rain until our last night (which was last night) there... and it was a much appreciated break in the heat we had been experiencing. it was a relaxing, rejuvenating time... and mom, i'll take you there. you'll like it. :-) the car/van ride home was a wonderful look at the thai counrtyside... though it's at an incredibly fast speed. hehe. i love thailand!

now i'm just preparing for eight days of teaching before our next three days off from school for Mother's Day. (with twelve weeks straight without a break, these days off are much deserved, let me tell you.)