I spent this past weekend in Bangkok. But on Sunday I desperately needed to escape the concrete and highways of city life, so I went to this little tiny island (Ko Kret) in the river just north of the city, to spend a couple hours wandering around shops and seeing handmade pottery being made. Most importantly, I went for a long walk and admired all the greenery.

one of the temples on the island

a house on the shore

green! the most vibrant swamp you could ever imagine.

a tiny house seemingly floating in that vibrant swamp of green

almost forgotten little shrines, hidden around the trees

an orchid in its natural habitat

"Hey Emily! How's life in Thailand going?"

"Oh, its pretty swell."

"What did you do today?"

"I gave midterm exams to three year olds."

"Huh??"

"Exactly. And thats what I'll be doing for two more weeks."

Pictures!

Finally!

A random assortment from the past couple weeks... its not great, but its something!

the grounds around the Emerald Buddha Temple

so much shiny gold!

Around the Grand Palace

and then.... this is my home:

the mall right next door

the view upon walking outside

looking up the street, another mall




And these ones are from this weekend in Khao Yai National Park

that little blur in the center is a herd of wild elephants

pretty nature

grasslands where the grasses grow taller than me (and can cut you)

jungle

bridge into wild Thai jungle

a monkey that ignored me

Yesterday was Teacher Appreciation Day. It meant we spent the morning sitting outside watching a parade of students present flowers to the school administration. They walked up in pairs of boys and girls with massive flower creations (some shaped like eggs, some shaped like chickens, some just crazy flower creations that I've never seen the like of before) and bowed to St. Peter and then to the adminstrators and then to the teachers and then scooted off stage on their knees. There were prayers and speeches and songs (I even got to sing "Shine Jesus Shine" with my fellow teachers) and the ceremony took all morning. Then yesterday afternoon, I didn't have to teach any classes.... because the kindergartners were practicing for their special ceremony for us that would happen today.

So today, I was appreciated again! And this time was simply so much more adorable than yesterday. Because tiny little four year old girls stood up and gave speeches and the flower arrangements were often bigger than the student attempting to carry them. And, today, I actually knew the students who were up on stage and man.... they may be hugely frustrating sometimes, but they are also absurdly adorable. When kindergartners sing they basically cover their ears and then yell as loudly as they can. They don't sit still well, unless they've fallen asleep and a couple of them spent the entire ceremony fascinated by the ceiling. So damn cute.

We never had a celebration like this back home. We never had a day that was absolutely about students appreciating their teachers . I like that they do that here. Before the ceremony, I was afraid the students would actually be bowing and presenting flowers on their knees to me personally, and the idea of that was a little intimidating. I don't feel enough like a teacher to deserve that yet. But as it was, I got to watch from the sidelines, included at a distance, and know that the ritual being enacted on stage was for me, but more for teaching and education in general. Certainly something worth commemorating.

A slight worry has been niggling at me, but I think I've discovered a way to fix it!

Ever since I left the country, I've been concerned that there may be a lack of baked goods being made if I'm not there to bake them. And being here, being without kitchen and oven and any kind of baking or cooking implements, is hard. So. I have a simple request. This week, or this weekend, or even next week, could those of you that love baking, love eating (or at least love me) take the time to make a pie or a batch of muffins and share them with friends or family? If you all bake something wonderful, then I can live vicariously through all those various Emily tribute baked goods, and I shall no longer fear a paucity of baked deliciousness.

Thank you in advance and I appreciate your support of this worthy cause.

At this point, I'm going to go ahead and presume that you are all quite bored of learning the letters of the alphabet (this week: E! Elephant, Ear, and Egg!) so I'll move on to a subject that I know most of you care deeply about; the subject that is quite possibly the reason I moved out here in the first place: the food.

I've got to admit, that like a lot of other things, the food here doesn't quite meet much expectations of it. Not so much that it is bad, just that most of the time, it is weird. I can't handle traditional Thai breakfasts simply because eating rice three times a day, every day, might be a tad overkill. So most mornings before I head to school I just eat a banana a peanut butter sandwich. And I recognize that that is entirely boring, but it gets the job done.

My eating habits get much more interesting at lunch. The school serves us lunch every day. There is always rice, always chilies, always fish sauce, and almost always some creepy unknown meat soup/curry that terrifies me. A couple days ago they served us chicken foot soup. I am brave, but sorry, I'm not brave enough to eat a stewed chicken foot (they still have little claws on!!). Sometimes there are greens, sometimes there is egg, sometimes there is meat that doesn't frighten me. Those are the good days. We eat our lunches off big metal prison trays and use extremely bent forks and spoons. We drink water. On the days when all I eat is spicy rice off a dinged metal prison tray, I feel very pious.

After school, there is always a necessary snack. Often it is fresh fruit. The fruit here is certainly a highlight of this whole adventure. Fresh papaya, pinapple, and mangoes whenever I want them and I've discovered all sorts of amazing new fruits like rambutans and mangosteens (mangosteens make my heart melt.... they are so so so good).

And then in the evenings I just eat street food from the vendors around my apartment. I have a favorite egg lady (an omelette over rice is an amazingly perfect meal) and a favorite curry lady (who last night had the most incredible ridiculously spicy mushroom curry) and I visit one of those two stands most nights of the week. But I also sometimes branch out and find soups or noodles or unidentifiable fried things. The problem is that so much is unidentifiable, and I never quite know what I've ordered until I'm tasting it - and sometimes not even then. Thai people eat all the parts of the animal, and they use all sorts of sticks and leaves and berries that people back home would never be willing to eat. So a perfectly safe looking curry can sometimes contain "foods" I'd never expect.

On weekends my eating habits tend to diversify, but that often means I want hummus or Indian food or simply a salad (fresh, raw vegetables are a surprisingly difficult thing to find here) so I spend the money to go to more touristy parts of town where I can find the foods of other cultures and where the local food is advertised with signs in English and higher prices.

Overall, I suppose the food is good, aspects of it are great (the fruit! the curry! the noodles!). But sometimes its scary. I tried pig intestine. It was bad. I tried fish cheek. It was good! I am finding it amazing how satisfying spicy eggs and rice can be (when supplemented with carrots from the grocery store). And my tolerance for spiciness it becoming impressive. I eat things that make my lips burn and my face sweat and that is just normal at this point. The Thai teachers laugh at us at lunch, because we actually spice up the food more than they do.

There are a million foods I miss from back home. Coffee, wine, crunchy whole wheat bread, and cheese are at the top of the list. Luckily, mangosteens go a long way toward making up for all that.

I just had an absolutely wonderful weekend!

We had last Friday off school because it was a Buddhist Holiday (the anniversary of the days that Buddha was born, achieved enlightenment, and died). So with a three day weekend ahead of us, I left with three other friends after work on Thursday to head south to the ocean, the beach, and the islands. We went to Koh Samet (the nicest, close-ish island, I believe) and the journey there was a bit of an adventure, but somehow every part of it worked out. We took a taxi to the bus station in Bangkok. The ride that should have taken about 45 minutes took over two hours so we missed the bus we'd been hoping for, but instead were approached by a man with a van and a plan to take us down to Ban Phi in less time than the bus and for only a little more money. The van was quick and easy and air-conditioned and he took us right to the pier where we chartered a speedboat to take the four of us across (we made it long after the last ferry, so again, the speeboat was faster, more expensive, and our only option). We got a little lost upon reaching the island a bit after midnight, but miraculously made it to the guesthouse we'd rented. All in all, it seemed incredible that every little bit of transportation logistics fell into place so I could wake up friday morning, walk out the door and have a cup of coffee on the beach.

Friday morning was glorious and I had my feet in the ocean with minutes of being out of bed. The afternoon was actually a little dreary, It rained but we made the best of it. After all, there was ocean and there was sand and there we were, not in Bangkok anymore. We learned that we could replace pina coladas and margaritas with irish coffee, and that makes a perfect beach cocktail on a rainy day. More friends made it down as the day went by, so by the mid-afternoon we had a whole crowd of holidayers. The weather cleared up in the evening so we went swimming and had dinner on the beach. We ate and drank sitting on beanbag chairs with the water lapping up at our toes. People shot off fireworks and we watched some immensely talented Thai guys juggle fire and jump through a flaming hoop. As the evening went on we were roped into a (flaming) limbo and a (flaming) tug-of-war and then an epic Thai and tourist dance party that stretched from club to club and all across the beach. We danced for hours that night. The sky let loose again at the end of the night, meaning my walk back home got me utterly drenched. But still, it was an almost perfect day.

On Saturday the weather was pretty much glorious the entire day. I woke up early and had my breakfast and my banana pancakes on the beach by our guesthouse and went for a walk while I waited for my traveling companions to rouse themselves. I then went with the girls to a more secluded beach than the party beach we'd been on the night before to spend the day swimming, tanning, eating, drinking, and getting the ride of our lives on a massive inflatable banana boat. It was basically another perfect day. The sky was bright blue. The water was shimmering turquoise. There were people who walked past selling snacks and fresh fruit out of baskets, we happily obliged. After many hours of sand, I walked home, showered, napped and then went out again for a quieter but still entirely lovely evening on the beach.

The next day was sadly our last. It was probably the prettiest day we'd had yet, so of course it was sad to know we would be heading back home and back toward work in another couple hours. But I again got to have a solo walk on the beach, a lovely breakfast and tasty lunch (so many fresh fruit smoothies!!) and an afternoon rest in a hammock before we had to catch the ferry to make the van to get a taxi back home to our apartments.

Altogether it was a splendid weekend. It came at the end of a long and semi-stressful first month of work, so it really felt like a well-deserved, relaxing holiday. I had the chance to meet some new people, see a new place, eat a lot of good food, and simply relax. It felt awesome to be out of Bangkok, away from the highway that is my home, to see some trees, to breathe some fresh air. And right now, I'm back at work, halfway through Monday, and it is going ok. The break helped. A lot. And knowing that there will be more breaks, more adventures, and that there are simply so many more places to go, is what will help me get through the tedium of the letter D.