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.