This past weekend we went to Koh Samet, which is a beautiful island somewhat close to Bangkok. It usually takes about 4 hours to get there by bus, but we paid a little more money this time and rented a van to take us directly to the pier, at which point we took a speedboat over to the island. It's a great little island because it's not overly developed, and it feels like you're down south because the water is so blue and the beach is so nice. The first day we just relaxed and spent time on the beach, which was really great because we hadn't been out of smelly Bangkok for awhile. The second day, we did something that we had been talking about for awhile...we got tattoos! We had been considering it for awhile, but we never really knew where to go or when a good time would be because you're not supposed to get them wet until they heal, and we spend most of our weekends on the beach! Since we're going to Chiang Mai (not a beach) next weekend, we figured that it would be a good time. Also, Krista (who had three, now four, tattoos) had talked to this tattoo artist on Koh Samet a number of times because he really liked the tattoo on her back. He was really nice and had shown us some of his designs before. We were a little nervouse because we didn't know how clean it would be, but we went to his shop and everything was very clean, and he took the needles out of the packages for us to show that they were sterile. I got a gecko on the side of my foot because geckos are a good luck symbol in Thailand and I also got my name written in Thai (and yes, it definitely is my name...I asked at least four people to verify before I got it done) between the tail and the back leg of the gecko. One other girl that I went with also got a gecko with her name (same idea, but different design) and the other two girls got toe rings with their names in Thai. It actually didn't hurt as much as I thought that it would...but it still did hurt! I went with three other girls who all had tattoos already, so I decided to go first because I knew that I would probably back out if I didn't. It also didn't take as long as I thought, only about twenty minutes. It doesn't really hurt at all right now, unless I wear flip flops which rub right against it. My kids saw it today and were completley amazed. It was quite funny actually, because I hadn't said anything to them, and I was just walking around during circle time when one of my kids pointed at my foot and yelled, "Miss Jill, foot!" They all looked at my foot and just stared, so I walked around and showed it to each of them. They all tried to touch it, and my Thai teachers kept on yelling at them to back up, "no touch, no touch!" I told my Thai teachers how much tattoos cost in Canada, and then how much mine cost (800 baht, about $24) and they were amazed at the price difference. I don't think that anyone, myself included, really thought that I was going to go through with it, but I really like it and I'm really glad that I did!

lost in translation

Here's a riddle for you. I started watching Prison Break yesterday, which is an English TV show that my friend bought while she was in Vietnam. The first time my friend watched it, she accidentally left the subtitles on, but once she started watching, she realised how ridiculously wrong all of the subtitles were. We figure that they probably translated the show into Vietnamese, then a Vietnamese person wrote English subtitles for the show (we can still watch the show with English audio, but we choose to watch it with English audio and English subtitles to see just how much they differ.)
Here are some quotes from the subtitles...see if you can figure out what they are actually trying to say:

1) "My affirmation, judge's adult!"
2) "My client brains doesn't clearly have a little."
3) "Her meeting elephant throws hand grenade still shot you."
4) "Do I ask whether you likes to satirize a person or not?"
5) "Open what fun."

A clue...this is a prison show and some of these quotes happen within a courtroom, that's all you're getting. Good luck!

oh right, we're not in Canada

We had another fire drill the other day, always good for a few laughs. I think the reason why these fire drills are so funny and unorganised is that they don't have fire drills in Thailand...my apartment doesn't even have any smoke detectors! The only reason why our school has them is because the foreign department (aka the English teachers) tell them that they should. So we have them, and they are hilarious. The Thai teachers don't know what to do. They have been told, but when the moment comes, they always go back to the old standby of yelling "RUN!" I feel as though the fire drills are not so much to practice what we should do during a fire, but to show the foreign staff what will happen during a fire, and to help us prepare should one ever occur.

The other funny/scary thing at our school is the lack of fire exits. The kindergarten building, where I teach, is right at the back of the campus. Seeing as the entire campus is fenced in, our only escape route goes right past the kitchen. Since the entire school is basically tile and cement, the only thing that will likely catch fire is the kitchen, where they deep fry and cook Thai-style, over huge open flames. So basically if there is ever a fire, we will probably just stay in our building because it will be safer than going past the kitchen. As we were making our long trek past the kitchen to the front of the building, which is the meeting spot in case of a fire, all of the kindergarten kids were running frantically, of course, in no real lines. Every once in awhile one kid would stop to tie a shoe or look at something, which would result in a pile of at least 10 children who were running right behind and couldn't stop in time. There was nothing that we could do but laugh and try to help them up before more unsuspecting kids tripped and went flying over the pile.

My friend, who is a grade four teacher, told me that it wasn't any better in the older grades. Apparently the head principal/owner of the school was there during the fire drill. Now, if there is one thing that has been drilled into the heads of these Thai children, it is to respect their elders. So these kids were running down the stairs when they saw the principal standing at the bottom. Instead of continuing to run, they kept on stopping to wai her (which is when you bring your hands up to your nose and bow, it is a symbol of respect). She just kept on pushing their hands away and tried to get them to keep running, but a lof of them were very confused and continued to try to wai her. Just when we start to feel like this country isn't that different from home something, like a fire drill, happens and makes us remember how different this place really is. They feel the same way about Canada though...I told my Thai teacher that we don't eat rice everyday in Canada and she said that she would never be able to live in a place like that. and looked disgusted, as though the thought of not eating rice at least once a day was unthinkable!

Another thing that is fairly common at home is bowling. Last night, the foreign department took all of the Thai staff bowling and it was one of the funniest/best evenings that I have spent here so far. I bowled with my Thai teachers, most of whom had never bowled in their lives. (I had downloaded some pictures onto here, but blogger is being tempermental and won't actually show them...) The Thai staff at our school make a lot less money than the foreign teachers do, which is just another frustrating way that they continue to enforce a hierarchy within the school, thus causing a great division between the Thais and the English, and also causing a hatred of the foreign staff by the Thais...but that is a different issue... Anyway, most of the Thai staff cannot afford to go out very much, or go bowling, so the foreign staff paid for all of them to go out. Many of my Thai teachers were quite nervous because they had no idea what to do, but I assured them that I had no idea how to 10 pin bowl either, and after I bought them a few drinks, they were ready to go. I have never seen such bad bowling in my life...and I am including myself in this...but it was the most fun that I have ever had bowling. It was really good to spend time with the teachers outside of the school, to meet some of their boyfriends/husbands, and to just have fun together. It is amazing how much fun you can have with very minimal verbal communication.

This weekend we are not really doing much, just relaxing and staying at home because we're going away for the next three weekends. Hope everyone is doing well at home!

First of all, I should begin by saying that the internet connection here has been somewhat sketchy ever since that earthquake in Taiwan, which is the reason why I have stopped uploading pictures. I was getting too frustrated because every time the internet would cut out, even for a second, the upload would stop and I would have to start all over again. So now I am just going to try to put random pictures on my blog. This also means that you will be able to enjoy our marathon looking-at-pictures sessions a whole lot more when I get back because you won’t have already seen the pictures!

Yesterday was teacher’s day in Thailand, which was great because teachers got the day off, but it wasn’t a national holiday or anything, so it wasn’t insanely busy everywhere. We took a tour of the city and saw the things that we felt we needed to see before we left Bangkok (we hadn’t even seen the Grand Palace yet, and that is the number one tourist attraction in all of the guide books). We went with a taxi driver named Wan who speaks really good English and knows a ton about the city. He took us first to a Thai temple called Sampran temple just outside of the city. He taught us a lot about Buddhism (like how, for example, there is a different Buddha for every day of the week, and how each Buddha means a different thing). We were about to leave the temple, when a female monk (I didn’t know that they existed before I came to Thailand,,,) invited us to the celebration that they were having for teachers. Basically they were playing music and making donations to the monks, but it was cool to see (and to be stared at, seeing as we were the only falangs, or foreigners, to be seen for miles). After the temple we went to the Grand Palace, which was beautiful, but not the spectacular “must-see” that we were all expecting. Going to temples here is sort of the same as going to churches in Europe. In the beginning they are all beautiful and spectacular, but after you’ve seen a bunch of them, they’re just churches and, in this case, just temples. Don’t get me wrong, it was quite beautiful, but nothing that we hadn’t really seen before.

After the Grand Palace, Wan took us to China town where we saw a number of very interesting, and very disgusting, things. We ate lunch at a noodle house, where my friend Nicole noticed that they didn’t actually wash the bowls between customers. They just dumped out the left-over noodles from the previous customer, and refilled the bowl for the next (bet you didn’t notice that when you were eating there, did you mom and dad?!) Then we walked around and saw a number of huge fish, ducks and chickens hanging from stalls with their heads still on, a bunch of live seafood, ocean worms (which are exactly what they sound like, except that they are the size of my arm!), puffed fish guts (they look kind of like pork rinds, except that they are fish guts that they somehow get to puff up. They looked quite gross, and we didn’t really care to find out how they did it). We also saw black chickens, which are very rare and can only be found in Chinatown. These chickens didn’t just have black feathers, but black skin and meat as well…a Chinese delicacy apparently.
After Chinatown, we went to Siam Paragon to go shopping and have some supper. We started talking about how nothing really fazes us anymore. An hour earlier, we had been walking amongst dirty smelly markets, eating noodles for 20 baht, and now we were eating 100 baht sandwiches at Au Bon Pain from which I could see Gucci, Prada and Fendi…and this didn’t occur to us as odd until we really started talking about it. I have never lived in a city with such a large distinction between rich and poor…and so close together. Siam Paragon is probably the nicest mall in Bangkok. We were walking from the skytrain heading to the mall the other day, and if you looked right you could see the ornately decorated mall advertising all of the expensive brand name stores inside, and if you looked left you saw dingy apartments with dirty children running around in diapers. Right beside each other! It’s just weird. There is no “other side of the tracks” here, it’s just all over.
Not much is happening here in the next little while. This coming Friday, the foreign staff is taking the Thai staff bowling, which should be interested seeing as a lot of the Thai staff doesn’t speak English and, well, none of us really speak any Thai. I think that it will probably be a lot more fun for the kindergarten staff because we know our Thai teachers, and our Thai teachers generally know a lot more English seeing as they spend everyday hearing us teach it to the children (in the older grades, the Thai teachers aren’t present during English class, so they don’t really pick up any English like the kindergarten teachers do).

We’ve also been trying to decide where to go for our upcoming holidays. So far the plan is Vietnam for our two weeks in March, and Laos and Cambodia for our 10 days in April. We also have a long weekend in April during which we really want to go to Hong Kong, but it’s looking quite expensive, and we’re not sure if it’s going to happen…we’ll see. We’re planning on mainly doing Thailand for May and then it’s back to Winnipeg I go! It’s crazy and I feel as though it is all going to happen so fast! One day at a time, though. And that being said, I should get back to work!

back to normal

So my parents left for Canada this morning. At 5:00 this morning to be exact. I actually feel kind of bad because I was half sleeping when they left, so I don't feel as though I said a very good good-bye, but I will see them again in a few months. It was really good to have them here, it was a little tough sharing my tiny apartment with two other people, but it was nice to be able to show someone where I live and what I have been doing for the past 6 months. They actually did quite a bit of travelling while they were here and went both down South to the islands and up North to the mountains. I had a few days off during New Years, so I was able to go down South with them, but this country doesn't celebrate Christmas, so we didn't get nearly as many days off during the holidays as Canadian teachers do, which was too bad.
So things are kind of back to normal now. December was crazy with work, visitors and travelling, but January will be quite low-key. We are basically finished teaching, which is crazy, but nice! We have open house, where the parents all come into the classroom and watch us teach, then at the end of February we have year-end concert, which is apparently like Oscar night here and is expected to be fabulous and flawless, so we will basically be practicing all February. Then we have exams, camp, holidays, camp, more holidays and then clean-up/prep for the following year.

Things have also gone back to normal, or so we assume, in terms of the bombings. I have noticed heightened security, though, at places like the mall near our place. Usually there is one security guard at the mall, and he basically just directs traffic. Now there are four security guards and they are searching cars, pulling things out of trunks, checking glove compartments, etc. It's kind of scary, but also nice because at least you know that they're doing something.

Alright, back to work. Hope everyone is doing well!

what bombs?

I just got back from a weekend in Phuket and Koh Phi Phi with my parents. We spent a lot of time just laying on the beach, spent one day snorkelling, but mostly just relaxed. We were especially glad to be down South when we saw on the news that there had been a series of bombs that went off on New Years in Bangkok. I looked at a map that had all of the sites were bombs had been planted/went off and I recognised almost all of them...all very major tourist sites, including one site that was supposed to hold a massive New Years celebration. The first bombs apparently went off at 6:30, as people were getting ready to go out, so they cancelled all New Years celebrations, and a second set of bombs went off at midnight as well, so it's a good thing that they did cancel things.
Things here feel fairly normal, though, I think that almost everyone from our school was out of Bangkok for New Years, because it was an extra long weekend, so nobody was anywhere near any of the bombings. It's a good thing that we weren't in the city, because we never really know what's going on until people from the "outside" tell us. Like the coup, we didn't know about it until Ilda's mom called from Canada to let us know that it was happening. I don't have a TV and I don't understand Thai radio, so if I had been in Bangkok I probably would have gone downtown and had no idea that anything was happening, although I'm sure we would have figured that something was up when there was no one out!
Anyway, I don't really think that there is much to worry about, people seem to be going about their business as usual and, since Bangkae (the area in which I live) is so far from the city centre, you can't tell that anything happened at all.
The other scary thing from the weekend was that we found out about the huge ferry that sunk in Indonesia...right after we got off a two hour ferry ride! We had to get back on a ferry three days later to get back to the mainland, too, which was a little un-nerving, but all went well and I am now back in Bangkok. My parents are up in Chiang Mai for a few days, and will come back to Bangkok on Friday so that we can spend their last weekend here together in Kanchinaburi. It has been a very busy two weeks and, although I have loved having my parents here, I am kind of looking forward to a few days of just relaxing and actually getting some sleep!
I hope that everyone had a great Christmas and New Years!