I'll Be Home For Christmas

I had the wonderful privilege of coming home for Christmas!!  I spent a wonderful week and a half at home visiting family and friends and then three days in Rochester visiting more friends.  It was a wonderful and relaxing break, and so good to see people from back home (and have a little winter!  So good to see some snow!).

Here are some snapshots of my time at home:

1. My dad and silly brother on Christmas morning

2. My dad ringing the bell on a freezing day for the Salvation Army

3. Me on a beautiful snowy walk in Rochester

4. My family at our traditional Christmas breakfast (so yummy!)

5. Me and my younger sister (I can no longer call her my little sister since she towers over me!)
6. Me and Wally shoveling a foot of snow!

7. Me and Mary -in the kitchen as usual :)

8. Making Christmas cookies with the Ryan's - another great tradition :)   

It was soooo good to be home :)

December 31^st I flew back to Thailand (I landed in Thailand on the stroke of midnight of the new year and saw fireworks going off all over the country from the airplane!).  I had one day to recuperate and start getting over jet lag and then got right back into teaching.  We are already starting to wrap up the end of the school year (so crazy!).  There are only 6 weeks of school left and I am only in Thailand for 7 and a half more weeks!  

Christmas program

Wow, it’s been a really long time since I’ve updated my blog! Since I last wrote GES had three nights of Christmas program, I flew home to the States for two weeks, and now I am back into the swing of things, finishing up the school year.  The next few posts will hopefully catch you all up on some of those things!

Christmas program was a great time.  The first night was the kindergarten program, the second night was elementary school, and the last night was middle school and high school.  Each night there were two different parts to the night.  It started with the indoor program, which was planned by the music teacher here.  The kindergartners sang songs with hand motions and costumes, the elementary kids put on a play and each class sang a song, and the middle and high school included performances by the sixth graders, the ukulele class, the chimes class, and the high school choir.

Here are some pictures from the kindergarten night.  I was a class runner so I helped them "off stage" and made sure they were ready when it was their turn.  The class I was in charge of were all sheep, cows, and donkeys and sang a song about what it was like in the stable when Jesus was born.  It was so cute!

The next night was the elementary school program.  It brought tears to my eyes to watch all my students singing about Jesus’ birth and how he came so that we might come to him.  The play was about Christmas ornaments.   In the beginning the ornaments were arguing about which ones were Christmas-y and which ones were not and how some of them didn't fit in.  But then Joseph came out of the box and talked about how all the ornaments are important.  Christmas is not about ornaments and who is Christmas-y or not, it's about the birth of Jesus, who loves all people (or ornaments).  The story of the true meaning of Christmas was presented and they sang about Jesus’ birth.  It was such a wonderful opportunity for us to tell the parents the true story and meaning of Christmas – it is probably our biggest outreach to parents all year and their chance to hear the gospel. 

I also was in charge of a HelpLive table during each night of the Christmas program.  Over the year, GES has been raising money and support for an organization called HelpLive.  This organization serves children in northern Thailand who are refugees from Burma/Myanmar.  These children have no one to help them except for this organization that houses them, feeds them, and teaches them.  However, they need a lot of support and still have very basic living conditions.  GES has been raising money to fulfill their basic needs (such as blankets, food, and school supplies) and also raise money for them to set up coffee stands so that they can become a self-sustaining organization.  Every cup of coffee sold at a stand would provide a meal for a child (right now they only get one or two meals a day).  I had some of my middle school classes create key chains with a HelpLive tag on them and we sold them at the Christmas program as a fundraiser.  We also had pictures drawn by children at HelpLive that we sold.  Our students at GES are all very well off and so we are trying to open their eyes to children who have great physical need, that they are sometimes not aware of.

After the indoor program each night, everyone would go outside and get dinner and eat at tables set up on our soccer field.  A stage was erected and decorated and after dinner, each class sang a Christmas song and performed.  Some of my students also performed a Thai dance.

I really enjoyed Christmas program, even though it was a very busy time!  I helped make and set up a lot of the stage props for the indoor program.  Each day we would set up the props and then the next day we would take them down and put the new ones up (each night was a slightly different Christmas theme).  I was also able to be the accompanist for the high school choir, which I really enjoyed.  It was a lot of work to learn all that music and put it together with the choir, but I enjoyed it a lot (and the reaction of one of my students was priceless: "You play the piano?  But you're the art teacher?!?" ... haha, yes, you can do both!).

Overall, the Christmas program was a great time and it was really special to see my students perform and sing about Jesus’ birth to their parents, family, and friends!

Father's Day

Wednesday, December 5th, is Father's Day in Thailand and also the King's birthday.  I had to do a Father's Day craft with my kids so they would have something to give their dad's on Father's Day.  I found this really cute card online and so for the past few weeks I have been making these with all my elementary classes.  I taught them how to fold the origami shirts, then they wrote notes inside to their dads and decorated the shirts.  We also drew ties, decorated them, cut them out and glued them on to the shirts.  Here are some examples of the shirts my students made :)

Wednesday we got the day off of school, but on Tuesday we had a Father's Day ceremony.  We all gathered in the cafeteria where there were speeches made by the administration, a dad, and some students, a Thai dance, and some music.  Afterwords, the fathers of the elementary students went with their children and spent an hour in their classroom.  It was a nice event :)

A Christmas-y GES!

So as I mentioned in my last post, the day after Thanksgiving was a teacher workday so we all gathered and decorated GES.  There were a few different groups to be part of and at the end of a few hours, the school looked great!  One group hung the garland and bows around the cafeteria, which looks so good!

I was in charge of decorating the bulletin boards so I had planned out what each bulletin board would look like and got all the materials ready to be put up.  I thought they came out really nice (and I must give credit to all the teachers that put them up for me - they did a great job and made them even better than I had planned)!  I am especially proud of the nativity scene- I think it looks so great!

p.s.  It is a really strange experience to decorate for Christmas while sweating because it's 95 degrees!  Hard to believe it really is Christmas when it feels like July but I'm trying!

Mexican restaurant + pizza+ milkshake + massage + art room buffet = one of a kind Thanksgiving!

This Thanksgiving was definitely different than any other Thanksgiving I have ever experienced.  In fact, it was hard for me to even remember it was Thanksgiving (I was skyping a friend earlier that week and was puzzled at why she was going to her parents house on Thursday and Friday (why take those two days off and not just wait for the weekend).  Then it hit me - it's Thanksgiving!).  

Anyway, we had school on Thursday but in the evening I went with my two friends Lauren and Sarah to Que Pasa, a Mexican restaurant that has pretty much any kind of food you could want.  Even though they are a Mexican restaurant they make really good pizza!  So I got pizza and a milkshake to celebrate Thanksgiving.  My friends, being the wonderful elementary teachers that they are, even made and wore Thanksgiving attire - a pilgrim hat and an Indian headdress.  We definitely got some weird looks from the waitresses but it was fun.  Our school administrators/bosses also showed up at the restaurant and paid for our meal without telling us (we only found out when we tried to pay and the waitresses were laughing and telling us it was free!).  We felt really blessed and it made me want to be better about doing random acts of kindness - it certainly makes an impact and blesses others!

After dinner we went and got massages, which one of my friends back home said we should incorporate into Thanksgivings in America.  I agree - they are a great way to relax and they certainly make you thankful!  

On Friday there was a teacher workday, so no kids, but we still came to school to work.  We ended up decorating the school for Christmas (more on that in my next post).  After working during the day, all the teachers and their families gathered in my art room for a big Thanksgiving feast.  We each brought a dish to share and gathered around my tables and chairs to share a Thanksgiving meal together.  It was a really nice time of fellowship and yummy traditional Thanksgiving food.  Not quite the homey setting I'm used to but I tried to remove the paint and crayon smell as much as possible :)

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving as well :)

This Made My Day

Parent's Visit!

I am FINALLY! putting up some pictures from when my parents came to visit me!  I hope these photos and descriptions give you a glimpse of our time together :)

My parents arrived on a Sunday night, October 14.   I picked them up at the airport and we went to a hotel near my school for the night.  Monday and Tuesday were the last two days of my first semester and then I had two weeks off before my next semester would start.  

On Monday I only teach in the afternoon so in the morning my parents and I took a taxi to the school and I showed them around my school, my classroom, and my apartment and they watched me teach a couple classes.

On Tuesday, I have very full days of teaching so I sent my parents off on their own adventure.  They took a water taxi into Bangkok and went to see the reclining Buddha and some other temples and  Buddhist structures.  They met a woman who travels all the time and she hung out with them for day (she is the one my mom is talking to in the water taxi picture).  My parents got back in the afternoon and freshened up while I finished teaching.  I was pretty impressed at all they had done and how successful they had been traveling around Thailand on their second day here!  I have never been to the reclining Buddha and I had not been on the water taxi until they came, but they figured it out all on their own!

Tuesday night I took my parents to their first eat-on-the-side-of-the-road, hole-in-the-wall restaurant.  Down the soi (street) there are lots of "restaurants" and places to buy food just lined up on the side of the road. I took them to one I really like.  I think they enjoyed the unique experience and the food was pretty good!  I get my dinner there about once a week, although I usually just bring it home to eat, but thought they would like to have the full experience.

The last two pictures are my parents having their first tuk tuk experience the next day!

Wednesday was my first day of vacation!!  We took the water taxi into Bangkok.  Here are some pictures of our ride (my first water taxi experience!).

We got off the water taxi and went to the Grand Palace.  We had to rent skirts and pants before we could enter to cover our shorts.  We walked around and saw all the detailed, elaborate, and huge architecture.  We also went into a temple, saw the coronation room, and went into a museum that talked about textiles and clothes in Thailand, and had lots of the queens dresses on display.  It was a pretty hot day but it was nice to walk around and see the Grand Palace.  After that we took a taxi to one of the main roads in Bangkok where we had some really good pizza.  On the way home we took the BTS (sky train) so my parents could experience that... and back to our hotel room to crash.

Thursday was our day to leave for Koh Samui, the island we were going to for a week.  Our train didn't leave until the evening so we just took the day easy, did laundry, played games, and hung out at my apartment.  Around 6:30 we left for the train station.  We got to the train station and tried to figure out where our train would be coming so we could get right on.  Seeing as most people don't speak English, it was a challenge just to figure out where to wait for our train.  Finally we sat and waited, but the train was pretty late.  After a lot of waiting and stress trying to figure out what train to get on we were told to get on a train that had just come (and was on the other side of the tracks).  Since these trains only stop for a minute or two we quickly grabbed our luggage, raced to the other tracks, showed them our tickets to make sure we were getting on the right train, found our train car, and got on.  Whew!  The train started moving and we sat on our train beds still not even sure we were on the right train going in the right direction.  We soon found out we were on the right train and heading south so that was good.  So we slept on this train overnight and in the morning we got to our train stop.  We thought the train would drop us off right at the ferry, which would take us to the island.  When we got off the train we were quickly told to get on a bus that would take us to the ferry.  So we got on the bus, not even sure if we really believed that we needed to, but that's what everyone else was doing so we joined the herd.  We found ourselves on a two hour bus ride heading to the ferry.  We finally got to the ferry and got on.  The ferry ride was nice and we were able to take in our first sights of the Gulf of Thailand.  When we arrived at Koh Samui and hour and a half later we took a 40 minute taxi ride and a total of 18 hours later arrived at our hotel.  Whew!  What a trip!

The pictures below are us arriving at our resort.  It was drizzling so the hotel guy greeted us with umbrellas and juice and showed us our island bungalow, complete with freshly picked flowers on the bed.  That night we went to the restaurant at our resort, which was right on the ocean and really peaceful.  I got masaman (a creamy red curry soup) and my parents got cashew chicken and lasagna, which was all delicious.  We ate there most nights and since it's not a popular time to vacation we almost always had the place to ourselves.  We spent the next day just exploring the island a bit, walking down the beach near our resort, walking down the street to see what restaurants were near by, and ended up having lunch at a little cafe where we got pizza and milkshakes.  We also did some research about what we wanted to do while we were there and we booked two tours for later on in the week.

On Sunday we took a songthaew (where you are basically sitting in the back of a pick up truck) and we went to a beach further north that was supposed to be really nice.  We walked on the beach a bit, went swimming (I found a coconut in the water) and then it started to rain.  We found some shelter nearby so we sat in there watching the rain and eating goldfish.  Then we walked a bit more and decided to go back.  We soon discovered that it rains almost every day in Koh Samui around 1:00 pm (at least when we were there) so most of our beach days were cut a bit short, but it was still nice.

That night we went to an Italian restaurant called Olivio's near our resort, right on the ocean.  It was a beautiful setting with delicious food.  Definitely a good end to the day :)

Monday was our first day of adventure.  We had booked a tour for the day so right after breakfast they came and picked us up at our resort and took us to to a boat where we joined a group of about twenty other people.  It was a bit of a cloudy windy day and we weren't sure if the weather was going to hold up but it actually turned out to be a good day (cloudy but not too hot, which was nice!).  We took an hour and a half boat ride (a very windy and bumpy one at that!) to the Angthong National Marine park, which is a group of forty-some small rocky islands which are absolutely beautiful.  Our first stop was snorkeling!  We got on our snorkeling gear, got off the boat and looked into the water.  It was incredible!!  What I saw under the water was probably the coolest thing I had ever seen - like being in a tank at the aquarium.  Fish were swimming inches from my face, there was incredible coral, and I even saw some large Rainbow fish.  It was so cool!  (Oh, and in the last picture on the left, you can see the profile of a gorilla n the rock!)

After snorkeling we made our way to the Green Lagoon, which is supposedly in a famous movie.  It is an island with a big green lake in the middle.  We "hiked" (a.k.a. climbed up really steep narrow stairs) to the top of this island to get a good view of the lagoon.  Then we climbed down the other side of the island to see the lake up close.  It was definitely beautiful up there!

After the Green Lagoon we took the boat to a deserted island where we had a delicious lunch (how they had that nice of a lunch on a beach in the middle of nowhere was pretty impressive!).  So we sat on picnic tables on the island and had lunch with our fellow tour friends.  Then we went kayaking around another island, which was a huge rock formation.  As we were kayaking around the rock it started to get really windy and rain (yep, it was around 1:00!) so kayaking became pretty intense!  But we made it back and the weather cleared up.  We walked down the beach, collected coral and shells and went for a bit of a swim.  After that we took the boat an hour and a half back to Koh Samui (and the weather got really bad again and we rode through pouring down rain, bouncing all the way back!).  Kind of crazy!

We got off the boat and they drove us to the last part of the tour - elephant riding!!!  I have always wanted to ride an elephant, so I was excited.  My parents and I all got on an elephant, with a guy sitting on the elephants head directing it and we rode the elephant around dirt paths.  It was a little sad because the area was really poor and run down and the elephants looked a little sickly, but it was still a cool experience.  While we were riding, the man on the elephant with us made us jewelry out of palm leaves - my mom got a ring, I got a bracelet and my dad got a necklace - they were all really neat!  After the elephant ride there was an elephant show where the elephant did different tricks, and that was really neat too.  After that we got to see the elephant up close and pet it.  The last picture is my parents and I riding the elephant :)

Tuesday we had a relaxing day where we went to Lamai beach further south.  It was a really nice beach and we went swimming and laid on the sand.  Soon it started to rain so we found a nice restaurant on the beach and ate lunch.  Later we went back to our resort and played games and just relaxed.

Wednesday we also had a relaxing day.  It rained most of the day so we just played games and relaxed at our resort.  Our big adventure of the day was going out for lunch.  We went to a hotel located on the top of a mountain, overlooking the water - it was a really neat view.  I got a pineapple fried rice dish that came in half a pineapple - pretty cool!  And I found a really cool chair :)

Thursday was our last full day in Koh Samui.  We had booked another tour so after breakfast we got picked up in a jeep and went to the southern end of the island.  Our tour guide (who was a little wild) had us sit on the top of the jeep as he drove up part of a mountain, which was kind of cool, kind of scary, since there was nothing really holding you on!  But we made it to a place where we went zip lining!  We zip lined through the jungle, had to climb up a bridge and then zip line some more.  My dad even went upside down!  It was really fun!  

After zip lining our tour guide took us to a beautiful waterfall.  Then we rode some water slides that were near the waterfall and then we had a delicious Thai lunch.  After that we were taken to another beautiful waterfall.  It was only a half day tour and not quite as exciting as we were hoping but it was still fun and nice to see more of the island and see the waterfalls.  It was actually the most beautiful day we had had there (no rain!) so we were glad to be back early so we could have a little more beach time before having to leave.

So after our jungle tour we came back to our resort and spent some time on the beach, swimming in the ocean, playing games and swimming in the pool at our resort, which we hadn't done yet.  It was a really nice day and really relaxing.  

Friday morning we were scheduled to leave Koh Samui (we were supposed to leave on Thursday, taking the taxi, ferry, bus, and train all the way back to Bangkok but it was just too much so we opted to take a one hour plane ride the next day!).  We got on our plane and flew back to Bangkok (and saw some really cool views out the window)!  We went back to the hotel we were staying at before near my school.  The last four pictures are views from our hotel room (and a sign welcoming us!).

Friday afternoon I took my parents to the park that I had explored earlier (and shared in an earlier post).  We walked through the parks and then got bikes and rode them around.  We didn't happen to see the water monitor lizard, but we had fun anyway.  And we got some ice cream :)

Saturday was our last day together.  I took them to JJ's market so they could experience a large Thailand market and get some souvenirs for friends (and get mango popsicles (see last picture)).  After that we came back to my apartment, hung out, played games and then left for the airport.

It was so great to have my parents here, to show them around my school and apartment, and to vacation with them.  It was really hard to say goodbye and have them leave but I am grateful for the time that we had together and that they got a taste of my life here and can picture where I am.  Hope you enjoyed reading about and seeing pictures of our time together :)