One of the coolest cultural experiences I've had

was being invited to my friends' father's Mecca party last weekend.

Dah and New are my massueses in the moo baan where i live. They happen to be Thai Muslim, which is not very common in the Land of Smiles, where 98% of the people are Buddhist. They not only invited me to their father's party on Sunday, but they invited me to come to spend the night with them on Saturday night before the party. I was a little bit apprehensive, but for the most part, just curious. I admit I know nothing of the Muslim religion, other than they worship Allah and they have some of the same Biblical characters thanks to Sarah and Hagar. I figure my life here is to experience things that I would never experience at home, experiences to stretch me and push me out of my comfort area....

I arrived on Saturday night with my camera and my backpack and immediately met her family. Her mother and father have had 9 children, spanning quite the age range, so there are many grandchildren and family members running around. I helped the women on the big, flat bamboo porch, sitting criss cross cutting massive amounts of vegetables for the various stews and curries for the next day. I chatted as much as I could in Thai, as no one really spoke English, but one of her uncles. I smoked a Hookah pipe, don't worry, it was just a flavored tobacco product, a sour apple flavor, but it's like a cigar, you just puff it but don't inhale...(hmmm i sound like a former president....) This is what a Hookah pipe looks like.



The men at this time were stoking up about 5 huge fires to put extremely large cast iron pots on to cook the various stews and curries. It smelled wonderful and it cooked all through the night.

Speaking of night, that night I slept in the "great room" with everyone else. Aunts, Uncles, cousins, and then it was New, Me Dah and her father. I still don't know where her mother was this whole time. But everyone just slept on the floor on huge rugs. I was actually quite comfortable and had a good night's sleep.

The next day we had a very fun time, we were the only white people there, and we ate very delicious food. I am proud to say I helped chop the carrots and onions for some different stews and the Massiman curry was the best Massiman curry I've ever had!

Here are some pictures from my adventure in Min Buri with Dah and New's wonderful family:








This is our little trek over the rice fields....my friend Heidi and her two kiddos Parker and Bella.


One final picture of Dah and New's guests from Moo Baan Summakorn. It was a wonderful day!

Break a Leg REALLY means good luck!

Where's Miss Katie?????



So my school put on the most gradious production of the Wizard of Oz. The production was supposed to happen last May, but due to construction delays of our new Godbout Hall, the producers (yes, you heard me....producers) postponed it to this week in November.

My kids were just perfect for the role of the Munchkins, so all elementary school students were able to join who wanted to be a part of it. I had 7 munchkins from my class. There were four different performances for each school section, so each morning I would tell them to "Break a Leg!".....needless to say they were a bit confused until I told them that it really meant good luck. They did a fine job but hey, any little being that is about 3 feet tall wearing colorful clothes and singing is bound to be adorable, right? Here are some pictures from the show, and I'm uploading a video of the final song to show you as well.

Hope you enjoy it!




My friend Dennis played Farmer Joe and my friend Ryan played Dorothy's Uncle....(anyone? I can't remember his name....)




The cast did an amazing job, my favorite was the cowardly lion. He should be bound for Hollywood, or Broadway...




This is one of my former students, Zoe. She played a munchkin, but also there was a surpise part in the play and she was a "mini me" version of the Wicked Witch and went running across the stage. It was quite funny.

My Weekly Schedule

My cousin Heidi just emailed me and asked me a good question, "what is my normal schedule like?" As I was writing back to her, I thought it might be interesting for my devoted readers. So, although "normal" is all relative, but here is what I usually do during the week.

5:30am - wake up
5:45 - call a taxi
6:00am - taxi shows up, car pool to school with Kelli, Natasha and Diana (A taxi costs 100 baht a day, which is 3 bucks)
6:30 - arrive at school, check in, check email, get ready for the day, etc.
7:10am - kiddos come, I usually have them 6 out of the 9 periods of the day. So that means I usually get about 2 hours each day devoted to prep and planning... :)

2:35 - school ends,

monday is thai class for me, and then I tutor for a little girl named Luk Glao. Their "driver" comes to pick me up....sooo high so! (short for high society, meaning upper class) :)
tuesday is swimming after school and tutoring for the same little girl.
wednesday is usually staff meetings and then tutoring for a different family with two kids.
thursday is thai class and walking with Pascale
friday is whatever i want it to be, usually involves a nap. :)

And then weekends, if I stay around Bangkok, I usually hang out by the pool, go to the market, and then go explore the town on Saturday night.

If I'm not around Bangkok, then I'm traveling or doing some other sort of adventurous activity. :)

If Vonage were a man....

I'd marry it.

Seriously.

It's the BEST thing I've ever owned. Move over iPOD, colby jack cheddar cheese, reeses peanut butter cups and Yellowtail Merlot.

I have a new love...

my new Vonage plan.

I've had messages (in this order) from Andrea, Aunt Jo, Mom, Jen, Christy S, Mom, Christy VK, Miriam, Mom, Mom again "just because I can", JT, Dad, Mom and Mom again.

I think my mom loves my new love more than me. :)

Another great thing about Vonage is that it sends me a WAV file of the messages left. So if I am at school I can check my new messages, or listen to old ones if I need to. Cool, huh?

The Story About an Adventurous Woman and her Hero

So, my friend Christy asked me what was on my foot in my previous blog entry. Funny Story. It starts like this.

One day, a very adventuresome woman jumped out of a wooden long tail boat and headed inland towards the beach for dinner, as one usually does on the peninsula of Railay Bay. Suddenly, she felt a huge pain in the heel of her foot. Unfortunately, she was in water up to her knees so she couldn't figure out what had bit her, pinched her or stabbed her. So she hopped on one foot all the while screaming to her dear friends Meika and Josh, "THERE'S SOMETHING ON MY FOOT!!! OHHHH GOSH!!!!! GET IT OUT!!!!"

The woman then noticed that what she thought was a pinch was actually a SHELL stuck in the side of her foot. I...um... I mean....ah um...the adventurous woman begged her friend Josh to pull it out, not knowing how long the shell actually was. Upon further inspection, right as Josh, the hero in this story, was about to take the shell off of her foot, out pops the head of a CRAB!!! There is a HERMIT CRAB attached to her foot! All of a sudden she starts laughing and shouts, "STOP! Don't PULL it OUT YET, TAKE A PICTURE!!!! TAKE A PICTURE!!!"

So the adventurous lady and her hero Josh, take pictures of the implanted hermit crab. Finally, the hero pulls the hermit crab out of the woman's foot and then they took more pictures.

They treaded carefully into the water that evening, but never again found a hermit crab attached to their heel....

Moral of the story: crab happens.

Watch out IRON CHEF!

Here is a video of my adventures in Chiang Mai over my October break with Meika and Josh. We had so much fun, we learned how to cook the following things:

1. Spring Rolls
2. Som Tam (payaya salad, one of my favorite dishes)
3. Phad Thai (fried noodles with veggies and chicken)
4. Phad Kew Maw (called "Drunkard noodles" because the Thai people usually add a lot of spice....this is what I am cooking in the video)
5. Tom Kah Guy (coconut with chicken) This is one of my favorites
6. Panang Guy (Panang curry, usually a red curry, and chicken)
7. Gang Kee Wan (Green curry)
8. Chicken and Cashews (This is what Meika was cooking in the video, very delicious!)
9. Kaw Neao Met Muang (sticky rice with mango, my favorite dessert!)

I even got a cookbook, so don't worry, I'll definitely cook for you when I come home!!!!

I hope you enjoy the video...it's a tad bit long, but it's kinda funny...don't worry! We didn't have to call the fire department!

XO
Katie

Parrot Video

I'm experimenting with video blogging. I hope you can get this. Let me know if you can see it. Just click on the title "Parrot Video" and check it out!

This was last year at Safari World, when I fed the giraffes.....

:)

KT

say wha????

Can you understand this???? This is an email I recieved this morning. Just thought it was a little funny. XO KT



Dear all

Due to Submarine cable was cut some international portion. It may cause IIG traffic facing high latency with some destination in Asia. Also
We‚re experiencing international upstream via C&W (England) problem, due to local transmission in England fail, it may cause of high latency between Thai-Europe for several destinations.
This is a report from CAT (Thailand gateway) , so our internet in some destination will slow - slowest.

Regards.,
Tech Dept.

Trick or Treat.....x3

I need to recap the whirlwind of a week. I have always enjoyed Halloween in Seattle. When I was growing up, we didn't have very many trick or treaters where we lived because it was so far out in the country. I loved going to my church's harvest parties and dressing up.

For some reason, Halloween ended up being a whole week long event. It's funny, because Thai people have just assimulated Halloween into their culture. They would not celebrate it if they had never met a farang (foreigner) who would explain this silly holiday of dressing up and begging for candy.

So, we dressed up at school on Wednesday, I was Viola Swamp from Miss Nelson is Missing. We paraded around the school, the admin building, the middle school section and the high school section, and then we headed over to the preschool houses. The kids had a great time. Their teacher was pretty tired by the time the parade was over and it was only second period! (we have nine periods a day!)

Then, about 30 little people came over to my house after school in a song tao (a big truck) to trick or treat. Kelli and I decorated the entrance of my house, and the kids all had a great time going around to teachers' homes to trick or treat.

That night my friends and I headed to a local pub downtown, appropriately named The Witch's Tavern. The music is always so fun, and of course the high light of that night was Bobbie and Andrew stealing the show by jumping on stage. i have crazy friends!

Then, Friday night we had a costume party in our moobaan. That was a lot of fun, we had some amazing costumes! We ended the night with some karaoke on my new karaoke machine....but I finally shut the party down when Andrew tried to sing Carolina for the 5th time.

Trick or Treat!

Deep Breath

okay, I've finally had time to breathe. I'm just going to quickly recap my October because time just flew by, between report cards, conferences, my first guests! which involved playing tour guide (loved every minute of it!), Thai cooking school, elephant rides, beach combing, snorkeling, and relaxing pool side, I've just been swamped. I will write more later, but tomorrow is Lil' Katie's first birthday...

I can't believe how time flies!

And Halloween is Wednesday night, and about 35 little batmans, mermaids, fairies and other superheros are comin' a trick or treating to my house....

needless to say, I'm a little busy.

But it's all good.

Here are some pics. I PROMISE I'll write more soon! I need comments! Please respond!

XOXOXOOXOXOXOX Katie

Hard Rock Hotel

So I haven't blogged in a while, and I am sorry faithful readers, I noticed a trend in my blogging. I think about once or twice a month is all you are gonna get.

don't cry. it will be okay.

This past weekend I had a blast. Amazing. Stupendous. and totally, completely OUT OF CONTROL fun times. We went to Pattaya, to the Hard Rock Hotel. One of two international hard rock hotels, the other one is in Bali.

More to come in the form of pictures, but here are the highlights:

**GIANT pool with different areas....one part was even sandy on the bottom and had faux rocks on the side. This pool even had a trampoline to bounce right into the water...poor Christo....I TOLD him not to do a swan dive off of it, but did he listen?!?!

** King's Club members (we paid a little extra to be members for the day....it was WORTH it!!!)

**Bocce Ball Poolside...

**Foam Dance Party

**Sauna and relaxing by the poolside

9/11 I remember

I remember 9/11. It seems as though it was just yesterday. I was a bright eyed and bushy tailed teacher, still very wet behind the ears. It was my first day at Bryn Mawr, my second job, as my first teaching job had lasted only 4 days and was told I was needed at a different school. I remember getting up and turning on the TV to see the plane crashing into the first twin tower.

It felt surreal.

Time slowed down as I realized that I was not watching the Terminator or some Holleywood stunt. Then the next thing I thought of was my brother. As a Marine, he would be needed.

At that time, we didn't know much, but I just had a knot in my stomach as I knew the unexpected would change things. I feel at times, very selfish because I am happy he is home now. Safe.

I wish that all Army, Airforce, Navy and Marine families could feel the same.

A lot has changed since that day.

And a lot has not so much.

Pirate Weekend....AHHHOOOYYYYYY!!!!!

So we had SUCH a GREAT time in Koh Samet this weekend....we took two 27 people Montri Buses down to the Rayong Pier and then two 30 person speed boats straight to the beach and hopped out like Gilligan's crew, straight onto the beach of Tub Tims. We had a wonderful dinner right on the beach. We danced the night away. But I do believe that my FAVORITE part was creating a treasure hunt for the kids that came with us. There were 10 kiddos, and Kelli helped me create notes and hide them in different places along the beach. The kids were running all over the place, like the Lord of the Flies. Everyone had a wonderful time, and I even got a tattoo!!! Well, don't worry Mama, it's not real....it will come off in about 2 weeks. :)

Bari and Katie's Taxi Adventure....

Okay, so yesterday after Thai class, Bari and I rode home together in a taxi. We take taxis every day, sometimes even 3 or 4 times, so this was no big adventure. We told the taxi driver where we wanted to go in Thai and he understood us....

so we thought.

As Bari and I chatted on the usually 25 minute ride home, she told me about her new camera. So she showed me, and we got to talking, which is never very hard when we are together! Well, about 20 minutes into our ride, we finally look out the window, to see that we are quite passed where we need to be, and so we quickly tell the taxi driver to get in the next u-turn lane...as the traffic is stopped completely, Unfortunately, for some apparant reason, our u-turn is blocked off, so that means that we need to go another mile or so before we can get the next one. And there is a sign for no u-turns, so the taxi driver has to take us down and around another intersection until we can finally get to where we need to go to get home. We finally get to our right entrance, and he doesn't want to turn into the u-turn because there is a policeman there, so he ends up missing THAT u-turn, driving another mile out of the way, finally we u-turn, and turn into Summakorn. (BIG SIGH)

What should have been a 25 minute taxi ride took us about an hour when all was said and done.

Towards the end of the ride, I asked Bari for her camera. We were taking pictures of funny Thai things every 10 seconds to kill time while we were stuck in our Taxi Adventure. Here are some of the things we saw. Enjoy the fruits of our anguishing adventure. :)

A little Thai bling bling....flowers on the grill...whooop whoop!







The elusive policeman that the taxi driver successfully avoided.....




A photo of the taxi driver's dash...it's pretty typical to have gods and goddesses. This one is a Hindu god, but I'm not sure of the name....notice the mini yellow king shirt...always patriotic in Thailand!




TOPS is like a Safeway, you can find whatever you need there, pretty much.


Everyone Loves the King....that is our land marker to know that we are about to come to Summakorn


A bus with yellow-shirted people....notice the artwork on the bus...you don't find that on our greyhounds at home!

Little Tiger and Little Monkey

Little Monkey is the black one, and Little Tiger is the black and white one.....

Just thought I'd post my kitties on the web after my last phone call with Wyatt. I told him I had two kitty cats and he started meaowing. So, without further ado, making their first blog appearance....Little Tiger and Little Monkey!!!!

it's raining...it's pouring....

well.....I guess the rainy season is here. even if it is sunshiny today outside, my house has felt the wrath of a humongous rainstorm from last night.

i know where all the rain went that was flooding the streets. it seeped into my house, buckled the paint on my second floor, and made my kitchen a small swimming pool.

okay, i might be exaggerating....just a little. But I did walk into my kitchen only to find that my floor had about a 1/2 an inch of standing water on the tiles. My cats thought it was great, a giant water hole! I, on the other hand....have NO idea how that water got there, nor how to get it out....it's not like i can borrow my dad's shop vac and vacuum out this water. And what's worse is, it was only the FIRST flood. What's gonna happen the next time???

And then I went upstairs, and thought that my cats had found some white napkins and shredded them up. Upon further examination, I realized that the ceiling has water damage, and the paint is coming off in giant chunks, hence the white shredded look. deep breath.

Well, I guess I'm gonna have to get my crazy land lady over here so she can hire some one to come and fix it. ei yai yai.

i LOVE comments

please post a comment, as i feel asl though i write for myself and two others...thanks Ryan and Miriam! :) just a thought....

on the other side of heaven

it's 2:35am on tueday morning.

i just found out that one of my best friend's delivered her baby boy angel two weeks ago, and he has gone to heaven. it's times like these when i don't know what to say, and it makes living in thailand even more frustrating because i didn't know until TWO WEEKS later.....

they even had the funeral on my birthday. i think that is the worst part. while i was partying it up, one of my best friends was mourning the loss of her son. i don't have any more words to say. my heart is broken for her and her family.

sweet dreams little man. we will see you soon, as she says, on the other side of heaven. i can't wait to meet you.

godspeed

Honeymoon is over....

Well, it didn't last long. My classroom honeymoon is over....but perhaps this year it never started.

I had forgotten how draining high maintenance students are. I have a little guy, Jack, whom I knew about, but I didn't realize that I would also have 4 other boys in my class equal to his busy-ness. Needless to say, I think it's going to be a long year. Oh well, I guess I've just got to remember that little 6 year olds are like that.

Happy Birthday to my dear friend Kami!!!

My friend Kami is pretty funny. It's her birthday today. We go wayyyy back...I mean, since I'm 30 now and all, we've known each other for over half our lives. Oh dear, that makes me sound O-L-D!!!!

I love my Kami for these reasons: she's funny, likes my jokes, makes really super duper fantastic apple martinis, has a really funny boyfriend, is spontaneous, loves to dance, enjoys the Rat City Roller Girls and will tell me when I have a booger in my nose. Friends like her are few and far between.

H A P P Y B I R T H D A Y K A M I !!!!!

Birthday Bashes

Well, chalk another great time up, this time celebrating my big 3-0....I can't wait to see what this year holds. On Friday night, I had some people over to my house for a little chin dig. It was a blast. One of my friends brought her portable karaoke machine, all you do is plug it right into the TV. I thought I had died and gone to heaven! It was so much fun! We sang for hours. Pascale also made a wonderful chocolate cake for my birthday. Her icing is absolutely out of this world, and she made it especially thick for me because she knows I love it! Now, I'm not one for cakes, but there is just something about hers that I just love!

After Friday night, some of my friends went to Koh Samed for the weekend. So I headed down on the bus on Saturday to laze away the day and have some fun. Someone once told me, upon coming to Thailand, that Koh Samed is just a hop, skip and a jump away...quoting..."three hours, only three hours from door to door"....I guess that's only if you get a private taxi and a private boat to take you there. For some reason, I had blocked out just how long it takes a person to get to Koh Samed....but then again, nothing is easy in Thailand. So I call a Taxi to come to get me, ride a taxi to the bus station, where I have to wait for 45 minutes because I just missed the 11am bus, then get the VIP bus that is supposed to take us straight there, only to find out that it really isn't a VIP bus and it makes stops every 15 minutes or so....so needless to say, when I got to the pier and we had to wait another 30 minutes to get to the island, by this time it was about 6 hours of travel time, in the prime heat of the day, I was ready to just turn around. Finally we get on the boat, and it seems to go about 10 miles per hour, until finally we reach the land of Koh Samed.

I travel to my bungalow on a rickety song taow (or truck with benches in the back) and get to my home away from home, only to find out that someone thought it would be a good idea to build a bungalow over the free flowing ditch....that also just had to be a sewer from the smell of my bungalow. As I was brushing my teeth, I noticed that my feet were getting splashed...it seems that the sink didn't have a drain pipe, it just went right onto the floor and down a hole in the bathroom floor into the above named free flowing ditch......

Besides the 8 hour trek to the island that's only really 3 hours away and a bungalow that smelled rank, it really was a fun time with my friends. We played on the beach, ate wonderful food and the waves were so huge we even got some body surfing in.

Then the next night, we signed up for night fishing. I thought of adventures and pictured giant fish just wanting to be caught. They even said the fishing boat had karaoke....and that was definitely a selling point for me! First we rode the choppy waves to a spot for squid fishing, and then the fisherman taught us how to squid fish. You just drop the lure down all the way to the bottom, then pull up an arms length of rope, then just pull up, let it slack, pull up.....then let it slack...pull up....let it slack.....well...you get the picture. So finally, after 3 and a 1/2 hours of pulling and slacking, Andrew caught the first squid. It was really exciting and there was black ink squirting all over the place. But after about 4 hours with only a couple of squid we decided to head home. I guess the fisherman forgot to mention that it really wasn't the season for squid, nor did he mention that the water would be murky and so therefore hard to catch anything. Oh well, at least we caught a couple of squid for them to eat.

My 30th Birthday Party

The YUMMY cake!




Here are the pictures from my 30th Birthday Bash. We had a GREAT time, that is for sure!!!

Class List...say wha????

Okay, so yesterday I got my class list, and I thought I'd send it out because it's quite comical. I'm sitting at my computer laughing right now as I re-read the list of names. Oh, it's going to be a great year.

Granted, these are the students' nick names...but these names are what they are called, even when they are adults.

Miss Katie's Super Stars, as follows:

Milk
Brian
Internet (NOT kidding!!!)
Lilly
Fong
Sunny
Lily
Inn
Ani
Boom
Big
Pea
Jack
Nikil
Dew
Tini
Wow-Wow
Keen

I think for the first day of school I'll have them make up silly sentences with their names. "Wow-wow, there is a big pea inn my milk. Fong!"

Back in Bangkok

I'm here. I'm home. I think.....

I have been back in Thailand a week now and have really enjoyed being back for the most part.

I say for the most part because I seem to "forget" about the things that are NOT so enjoyable about Bangkok. Take for instance, this morning. It's the rainy season. That's fine, I'm from Seattle....and it rains a lot. But add the fact that I am dependant upon a Thai taxi service to get to school on time in the mornings and sometimes, well....I think they think that the same rules don't apply when it's raining. Like they just don't show up, or they show up 45 minutes late.

Good thing school starts tomorrow. Hopefully it doesn't rain.

The Happiest Place on Earth isn't Disneyland.....

it's with my two favorite kiddos in the whole world that also just happen to be my niece and nephew....It's amazing how much love I have for two little beings....and they aren't even my children.....

I had SUCH a wonderful time with them, it is really hard to say goodbye as I head back to Thailand in a few days. I cried all the way from Spokane to Moses Lake, but now I think I'm all dried up, no more tears left. I don't know if I'm sad because I'm leaving or I'm sad because I know that the next time I come home I won't be able to spend as much time with them, and I'm always so worried that Wyatt won't remember who I am....but I know that I just have to hold tightly to the giggles and the laughter and the dancing around the living room, running through the sprinkler, making funny mouth noises just to hear Abby coo, and accidentally intentionally leaving the cookies in Wyatt's arms' reach so that he can "sneak" in the kitchen and steal a cookie, thinking Auntie Katie isn't looking....Erik and Laura are such wonderful parents, I honestly don't know how they do it....they have so much on their plate but they still find that balance for family. I hope someday I can do as good of a job as they do.

I am so blessed to have such a wonderful family. I feel as though I have stored up enough of them to last for at least the time that I'm gone....only time will tell if that is true or not, but until then, phone calls and skype and photos and memories are better than any thing else....

well....

.....then again, Toad's Wild Ride comes in as a close second.....



lil' cookie monster in training.....


We watched the Deer Lake Parade on the Fourth. Wyatt loved the tractors, flags, and the frozen otter pops.



Happy Fourth of JULY!!! Wyatt's first boat ride with all his cousins!


Our little dream boat....what a cutie she is!!!


one of the many photo shoots!


Auntie Katie's little hippies....don't tell their daddy!!! :)