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!