Dear Charles #18,

i have a feeling this will be my last post while i'm abroad, which is the craziest thought ever. me and conner leave for the longest few travel days of my life tomorrow at 3:30 pm. i leave thailand. i come to tacoma. i leave friends. i come to family. i leave family. i come to friends. its all a part of me now :)

tonight p'lut is having a going away dinner for me at the coffee shop :) i've never had someone have a going away thing before that wasnt my idea. so it will be great. and kyndra will be there which makes it a thousand times better. she got home from the states on thursday while me and conner were making a quick trip down to chiang mai to do some normal stuff...see some baby monkeys, go to the markets...bungee jump. you know. :)

i've been on the internet catching up on stuff for the 2 hours or so, so i will write about the bungee jumping in a bit. most likely when i get back in the states, but by that time i can just tell you to your face now cant i? i wonder what i'll do with this blog...maybe write on it every now and then. i can transfer it into my 'going-to-college' blog. it will be much less exciting though. so maybe i'll save myself the trouble of no one reading it and have this just be my thailand blog, a fun...short lived but tremendously successful series of posts about a treasured time in my life.

thank you thank you to everyone that has prayed for me and supported me while i've been here. there really isnt enough that i can say about this experience. and you helped me! you helped me get here and you helped me stay here! this time in my life has been a polished spoon out of a set of tarnished ones...bad analogy, but you get the idea :) i'll see you all very soon.

Dear Charles #17,

18 days to go, and the countdown begins.
i can not believe that my time here is this close to being over. i need to be honest with you, i am not ready to come home. thats not entirely true actually, im ready to come home but i'm not ready to leave here. thailand is in many ways my home now. i have a physical home, a room that i've decorated, a bathroom that has all my stuff in it, a fridge with all my food in it, a shoe rack outside with all my shoes in it, but its more then that. i have relationships here, i love people here, my heart is joined with places and people that will forever be apart of me, and thinking about having to leave all of this behind, feels like i'm ripping part of my heart away and leaving it here. a piece i think i'll always be looking for, and will only be able to find in thailand.

these last couple of weeks have been the most emotion filled of my life. there was a time, at the beginning of this long process of grieving, that i was ready to buy a ticket home-early-just to be home, i was missing it so much. that feeling turned, in about a week, into absolute sadness when i thought about what going home would mean. that i would be leaving thailand, and everything i've fallen in love with here. since then that feeling has persisted, i've done my best to just make the most of every situation and soak up my last moments, but even then the sadness is hovering in the back of my mind reminding me that no matter how much i appreciate a moment, in just a few weeks its going to be gone, and thailand will be a memory, no longer my current life. well, for awhile it'll still be current, but i wont be actively living it.

i have had a lot of hard talks with my parents and some friends on my thoughts on leaving and one of the things that i've mentioned to them is that, when i think about the heart ache i'm experiencing and am going to experience from the time i get on that plane to when i get home and beyond, is that hurt worth the trade? for this whole experience? i know it is, it's a stupid question because the answer is obvious, but in the moments of the deepest hurt sometimes it doesnt feel like that. what have i gained from pouring my heart and life into something thats just going to be taken from me? a better world view? an expanded ability to love? a cultural experience? is that worth this feeling of emptiness? this almost visible, thailand shaped hole in my heart?

what do i do when i get home to tacoma? and thats what it is now, it is my home in tacoma, not my home. after this, i dont feel like i have a home-home. if anything thailand feels more like my home-home because i've made a life for myself here, separate from my parents, or friends, or american lifestyle. i cant just go back to tacoma and nestle my way back into the life i lead before i left, and it scares me to think of it like that. i dont know how exactly my life is going to be different, what changes are permanent, if im going to feel like an outsider now that ive had this experience that no one else is going to fully understand...

will i be different? will you not like the changes? am i going to be able to handle the transition? can i live with myself knowing what i'm leaving behind here? how is it possible that all these question pass through my brain in less then five seconds, in order to make room for all the billion other ones i have floating around...'?

i need to warn you before i come home, that i don't want to hear the question, "how was thailand?" anyone of you that have traveled somewhere longer then...a week, know that that is an impossible question to answer. theres no way that i can sum up 6 months of life changing experiences into a phrase that is going to satisfy you before you start talking about your new car, or what else happened while i was away. it is going to take months and months for me to be able to figure everything out, and when i do, how exactly im going to incorporate that into the life that i will be entering into. my "american life". im terrified of that transition. i have no idea what to expect because i've never dealt with anything like this before.
i'll do my best to prepare a blanket statement for when i will inevitably be asked how my time here was, if you are subject to such an answer from me, i apologize if i sound..emotionless (?), as i am most likely trying to mask every emotion that is trying to pound its way through my words. every emotion that i can't express with words.

as of right now, i'm not ready to give this all up. i'm not ready to force myself back in a life that seems like a ghost to me now. i'm not ready to walk down a street in tacoma and be content with my life. i'm not ready to think about thailand and not be able to walk out my front door and live it. i'm not ready to say goodbye, and i know that two and a half more weeks here isnt going to change that. i'm not ready for the impending heart break.

bear with me and my transition home, friends. please.

Dear Charles #16,

today i met with esther to continue our math lessons. it's been going as usual...she sasses me, i don't take any of her crap, i pretend i remember how to add fractions and she gives me a hard time for not remembering how because i'm, "american, and i should know how"
so today i was trying to explain a problem to her, to break it down so that we could both understand it better, and she talked herself out of it telling me she "so knows how to do this, this is for babies" so i said in a teasing tone "ok, you can do it by yourself, if you don't want to be respectful towards me then i guess you don't need my help" and i faked a big reaction, turning myself around, putting my arms over my chest and sighing loudly...
a few minutes later esther, the 8 year old, puts her hand on my shoulder and says "ok, if you really want me to respect you then i guess i can. will you help me miss anna?"

haha. shes funny sometimes.

Dear Charles, #15

today broke the mold of the last few weeks. i have been "enjoying" the hot season for awhile now, listening to the rain hitting the pavement only at night, when i'm snuggled away in bed, wishing the cool relief would come during the day. and today, it did! it rained most of the morning, and although it's stopped now the sky is still cloudy which gives me hope for it to continue. granted it is only temporary relief as tomorrow the weather will pick up on the moisture from today and harness it for it's own, deathly humid, purposes. you win some you loose some though right?

besides the overwhelming heat of the past few weeks, the events have been normal: wake up, hit snooze, hit snooze again, shower, skip breakfast, get picked up for school, take off my shoes, check my email, acknowledge that my mom, dictionary.com (with the word of the day) and urban outfitters were the only ones to write me, sigh, turn on the fan, settle myself in my plastic chair, begin the work for the day, listen to the sound of the kids running past my room, muster up patience to work with kids who speak english as their second language, eat too much lunch, continue work, think about what the people i love in america are doing, hear the bell that lets everyone out of school, wait in the parking lot to go home, sweat, sweat some more, get home, shower, nap or read, walk to the market and get something delicious for dinner, commence some activity that's usually different every night, get in bed, try to ignore the heat, clear my mind, sleep, wake up, love my simple life. repeat.

a few weeks ago my room mate, and good friend kyndra left to go home for a month. she's there to raise support and visit her family after being here for almost a year and a half. i miss her like crazy but i'm really glad she gets to do this. before she left here though her friend julie came from WA to visit her and i got to spend a week with the two of them. it was one of the best weeks i've had here :)

one of the days of that week the three of us and p'lut made our way up to a tea farm, and coffee shop close to the border. we ate breakfast and drank coffee. i drank coffee! i figured it was about time to accept my fate as a washingtonian and like the stuff before i get shunned out of the state. plus i'll be starting university next year and i want to fulfill every college stereotype possible, including the ability to say "i've got 2 finals tomorrow that i haven't studied for yet. i think i'm gonna have to pull an all-nighter, starbuck's here i come.." or something of that nature. then achieve mad respect from my friends when i pass both exams with flying colors. all thanks to that little black bean ground and juiced.
so we went to a couple different places where they harvested and sold tea that day and got to see the workers pulling the tea leaves and got to take part in something like a 'tea ceremony' without the fancy clothes or mats on the floor. all of this took place on the top of a mountain, and as we got ready to go i remembered what i would have to face on the way back down: a road shaped like outcome of a silly string fight.

i braced myself, rolling down my window and closing my eyes, although by the time we had been driving for more then 3 min. none of that did any good. i felt the food and gallons of tea in my stomach dance like a group of seniors at prom. no, make that a group of hard-edged teenagers moshing at a rock concert. i guess my toast and eggs had some sort of vendetta against me for eating them, and the tea decided it wanted to flush my system early. i was miserable. the beautiful scenery around me began to blur, and i clutched my stomach, ready right then and there to sacrifice my clean jeans as the receiving place for my breakfast. kyndra tossed me a plastic bag from the front of the car that ended up being my crutch the rest of the ride. the suckiest part about it all was that i never threw up. i just had the anticipation and the feeling, and the taste with no relief. it took us like 25 min. to get down the mountain, and about 4 and a half hours for me to recover. i think i'm officially motion sick.

the only other exciting event i can think of that has happened since then is my "assignment" as it is now called. a man that goes to the university near my house was at the cafe one day, talking to his friend about how he needed someone who spoke english to look over his thesis paper to make sure his english was good. of course p'lut suggested a wonderful american girl he knows! so i met with supian (from indonesia) and accepted his offer to have me correct his thesis paper for his masters in biotechnology. it was the craziest thing i've ever done, i wish i could remember the title of his paper but i literally didn't understand a word of it. i did my best with the corrections, but when i gave it back to him i reminded him that i am not en english major, and most of the words he used i have never even heard. either way i got a thousand baht out of it which is sweet!

i'm going to write more soon about my thoughts as of late, but for now i'm going to go wait in the parking lot for my ride home, sweat, sweat some more, go home, shower...etc etc...

Dear Charles #14,

how did i come to be so blessed by living in such an incredible country? as i looked out over the sunset on the rice patties near my house the other night, i couldn't help being awe-struck by the beauty of this country. i have been richly richly blessed by such a beautiful place.
i had the opportunity to go down south to a beach called hua-hin for the first part of song-khran last week, and experience another fantastic portion of this country. the journey starts however with the trip there: the night train.

if your thoughts automatically turned to harry potter, and the hogwarts express, we are one in the same. i have never been on a train before, and as i am in the process of reading the series of harry potter when i first heard we would be riding a night train i got child like giddiness at the thought of sitting in a little cart and snacking on chocolate frogs, or 'berty-bott's every flavor beans'. the only unfortunate thing for me is i am in thailand, not in a magical fantasy novel. instead for me i got thai tea, rice and mysterious fruit that looked like a giant maggot but tasted something like a grapefruit.
as we approached the train and i pulled out my ticket to see what platform we were to board on, the tiniest part of me was indeed hoping to see 'platform 9 3/4' but alas. we were to board on platform 3, and muster up the excitement to squeeze onto the train that would be our home for the next 14 hours. i was unable to attain ced excitement.

so i settled into my seat, with my bags at my feet thinking what i could do for the 6 hours proceeding the making of the beds. i decided to take a walk through the train and check out the other compartments, hoping to feel better about my own and to see if the extra 3 dollars was worth it for the bed i paid for. it turned out it wasn't...all the compartments were carbon copies of the one previous. can't someone be upper class even in thailand!? jheese! last time i pay $18 to get across a country...

so after my brief walk, i made my way back to my seat and pulled out my good friend harry potter and got ready for an enjoyable few hours of quality time with him. that didn't last long as my fruit smoothie and 2 waterbottles full of agua finally caught up with me. i dont know what i was anticipating the bathroom on the train to be like, but once i opened the 60 lb. steel door and caught a peek, i knew i was walking into one of my better 'foreign country bathroom stories'. anyone who is uncomfortable with light-hearted potty talk so skip the next few paragraphs.

so the toilet was surprisingly, western style, which is hard to find in thailand. for some reason the thai people think that squatty potties are still a good idea. (someone needs to come educate them) i scanned the perimeter and tried to think up a game plan for the most efficient way to get the job done, with the least amount of contact with any hard surface, including the walls. after a few minutes of standing 'surf-board style' (as to balance myself and not fall over with the jerking movements of the train) i had no choice but to begin the process. unfortunately for me i didn't think through the apparel i was wearing before entering the situation, as i started to un-do my thai style pants which expand to about 4 times the size of a normal person....i was looking at the difficult task of holding all that fabric from touching the grimy floor, standing in a way that my bottom didnt touch the urine lined seat, and avoiding grabbing hold of the stained hand hold next to the toilet. all the while fuming at the train driver for not anticipating my predicament and stopping the fast moving hunk of metal.
let me just say that boys have no idea how good they have it. i've made my peace with the fact that i will never have such an easy bathroom-going experience, but every once in awhile, as in situations like this one, i relapse a little.

so i was doing all that i could, but there were just too many factors preventing me from having anything short of miserable experience. my future was beginning to look a little brighter being almost done, when tragedy struck. the train made one jolting motion and all was lost. it's surprising to me how domino-like affects can happen in moments of turmoil. i was thrown to the side, forcing one hand to the nasty rail and the other to surprise, dropping my pants to the floor. in my stumbling motion my foot got away from me and tapped a lever on the floor that i found out controlled the sink in the tiny room, dousing me, and the small roll of toilet paper left, with dirty train water. in shock of water coming flying at my face i made the fatal mistake of closing my eyes. note to all: when is such a situation, closing your eyes and becoming momentarily blinded to your surroundings is detrimental. i lost what little control i had left of my limbs and landed harshly on the toilet seat. (inner dialogue once i felt the cold on my rear: "yeah..this would happen..") i jumped back up as quickly as i could, to discover that the startling jolt had meant that the train had stopped to let on more passengers. i staggered around and looked to my left where, obviously there was a window looking out on the docking platform and a heap of thai people looking curiously into the barred window. the situation generously finished itself off with the realization that the toilet paper was ruined, and that my flip-flop had somehow come off in the mess, leaving my bare foot resting on the floor half in a puddle of something wet...the contents of which i didnt care to investigate.

the train staff came around to make the beds a little while after that and i climbed the thin piece of metal meant to be a latter, i think, to my bunk ready for a nights rest. you can only guess that didn't come. as i was on the top bunk, i was right next to a fan, and the light..neither of which they turned off. i also had the pleasure of being right by one of the doors to the train that wasn't properly closed by whatever fool came through it last, and heard this door debate whether or not to be opened or closed all night by the wind rushing frantically outside. it was a good experience though..?

we finally made it to bangkok at about 6:30 am the next morning, and got into vans that were to take us down south about 3 more hours away. i tried my best to redeem some sleep that i had lost the previous night, but felt like we were there before i could shut my eyes. when we got to the hotel i snatched the key to my room and ran like the wind to the air-conditioned room i knew was awaiting my stay. that air-conditioning was not turned off for one second of the week that we stayed there. amazing.

so the week at the beach was incredible. just as i pictured it would be. i went down that afternoon and spent the evening there watching the blue green water run up and down the white sandy beach. as was my routine everyday that week. wake up late, walk down to the beach, set myself up on a chair, lay in the sun until sweat was coating me and take a break in the cool water. repeat as necessary.
the walk back up from the water to my seat was a brutal one because by that time the sun had heated up the sand, i'm guessing, to about 310 degrees...resulting in what was a common sight on the beach: a casual walk, that picks up a little, paired with a face of anguish, breaking into a full run to the nearest shade.

so all week was just super relaxing and awesome. the families that i went down with are all really neat people. two of the families have 16 year old sons, who are some of my students. they are pretty typical 16 year boys - you can assume that i was the subject of some torment at their hand during the week. including but not limited to: sand down my swimsuit, squirt gun to the face, wet sand to the face, rapid-fire dunking in the pool, pinching, punches to the leg, target of flying cockroaches, etc etc etc. but they are really high-class gentleman. *cough* *cough*

there certainly are more stories from the week but seeing as this is the longest blog i think i've ever posted, i'm going to spare you and maybe write more next time. also more fun things have happened in the last week since i got home which i hope to write about soon.
i had a little post-trip depression, leaving a beautiful tropical beach, for a stunning rural mountain city. *sigh* oh the hard life. no, the reality of the post-trip depression was leaving free air-conditioning for a tiny room with a rotating fan. i will never take AC for granted again.

Dear Charles #13,

didn't think I would be posting another blog so soon eh? gotta keep up with me...you never know...im like a cat...or a...different animal that's unpredictable...

this weekend me and kyndra had to renew our visas so that we could legally still be living in thailand. lucky for us we live right up north so our drive is much shorter then someone coming from ..chiang mai or somewhere else more south. the border is a mere 45 min. drive, which we ventured together on just a few hours of sleep and no breakfast (although we did stop on the super highway to get some pineapple...frickin 20 baht for a bag. such a rip off...haha just kidding)
mae sei was our destination which is the last city in thailand before the border to burma. mae sei (for any of you who read kyle's note on facebook about his journey to mae sei and burma, this is the same place....just in case you couldn't tell by the identical names of the places..) i feel like is a 'last effort of selling things in thailand sort of city. you're driving along the super highway, looking out the window to rice patties and mountains, and then all of the sudden there are big gold signs and out of no where a million little shops..all pretty much selling you the same overpriced strings of beads, and fake jade bracelets. once you find a place to park, the process is way more simple then i feel like it should be...simple to the point of being sorta sketchy.
here is the process of getting into this other country (burma) and getting your passport renewed: you walk up to this building that looks like a giant house with a car port that you might find on proctor street in tacoma, and into a room whose door is a piece of fabric draped off of a string at the top of the door. this room is dimly lit, with two desks and three burmese officials and ghetto old computers from before computers were even invented....in the corner of the room there is another piece of fabric which i can only assume covers the bathroom, as right beside it right there in the office is a rusty leaky sink with a stained mirror and soap scum lining the faucet. you give your passport to one of these officials whose desk it littered with thai and burmese and american passports...and he trades you for a piece of paper that is your 'temporary' passport while you're in burma. basically if you loose this piece of paper, you are magically a citizen of no country and you are stuck in burma until...they become a free country.
once this process is done you walk across a little bridge like deal, and are welcomed into burma by crowds of song-tao drivers wanting to take you to all the tourists attractions in burma, then down a flight of cement, uneven stairs into the market where you are bombarded by every burmese merchant known in the country asking you if you want to buy cigarettes and viagra. doesn't matter that they are asking two single women.....they just need to make that sale, however scandalous or illegal.

me and kyndra had clear goals for our time in burma so we did our best to power through the crowd, and kindly but firmly let them know we didn't not want their pills or playing cards. we came there for dvds and bailey's...and we were gonna get it. our first stop was 'scorpion dvd' where we both scored a stupid amount of illegal movies and tv series for..dollars. i managed to get the entire series of 'friends' for $27, as well as 31 other dvds for a dollar a piece. all of them being blue ray and most of them either still in theatres in america or not out on dvd yet. the only not so good copy i got was of 'the curious case of benjamin button' but even then..its still watchable. we tried to move quickly as half way through our browsing a policeman came into the store and started to paroozed around. he never took off his sunglasses, which from the movies i've seen...is never a good thing. we hurried up, unsure if he was about to take that place down or bust a couple caps.
we made our way deeper into the market where we ended up being followed by a teenage girl trying to sell us playing cards. kyndra graciously bought some from her, which made her like us and decide to stick around. the next thing on our list was to get a new bottle of bailey's irish cream, but we didn't want to go into the liquor store with her watching so....we busted out the polariod camera and took a picture of all of us. she was fascinated (as was every other person in the market, which was evident by the crowds and crowds of people that swarmed us, grabbing for the girls picture to see it. it was very..charlie and the chocolate factory, when charlie finds the last golden ticket) which distracted her for enough time for us to grab the bailey's and meet her back down the road.
we decided to make our way out after talking with the girl for a little while (mostly kyndra because she spoke no english) but before we left she gave us a huge smile, pulled the picture from her tray and said that we were beautiful and held up the photo. i have a feeling she'll probably be hanging on to that for awhile.

we traveled back into thailand after that, picking up our passports in the sketchville office (luckily they were still there), and spent the rest of the afternoon at one of our favorite cafes in mae fa luang (about a half hour past our house) called 'parabola' where we talked for hours and looked through thai home-keeping magazines.

so it is now my mission to get all my movies back into america without getting caught. i've heard that for every dvd you bring back into the states, its around a $500 fine :/ let's hope i don't get caught, eh?

Dear Charles #12,

hot season has officially started. can you sense the excitement in my voice? i thought it was hot when i first got here, but oh no. i had no idea that 100 degrees and 99% humidity were on their way over here from africa. i swear if i don't come home with the most perfect golden brown skin, i'm gonna be not stoked.

as my mom and kyle were here a couple of weeks ago, i got some days off of my volunteer job (haha, it will never get old) to see a bit more of this country with them. for the most part, they stayed at school with me during the day which was great! the kids really took a liking to kyle and no one took a liking to my mom....(just kidding mom, please don't throw me out this summer. i bet you look really pretty right now...*nervous laughter*). they were able to help out in a bunch of different areas of the school, including making costumes for the elementary green day play we had last week. they were so cute..just like you would picture costumes for a play like that, big flowers and fish made out of felt and paper, with big holes for their heads to poke through. the play turned out...like was anticipated. there were crowds of kids who didn't know where they were supposed to stand, the one who thought no one could see him picking his nose, the kids who didn't know any of the words to the songs situated right in front, and the girl who just waved at her parents the whole time. the gang was all there :)
so the days we did have off from school, we made it to a couple of hot spots in chiang rai, as well as chiang mai, including, but not limited to...waterfalls and bamboo forests, crazy temples, beautiful flower gardens dedicated to the queen, boat rides through a river, riding elephants, going to a zoo and feeding giraffes....oh wait, i'm sorry, did i just say riding elephants!? why yes! yes i did!
this was the coolest thing in my opinion..i may be partial cause elephants are my favorite animal, but it was the coolest experience. me and my mom shared one elephant, and kyle got his own. i was surprised once we were done that we, and so many other trust the seat on top of the elephant, as it looks like a small park bench that is roped the the elephants body. one false move and...i don't know. i don't want to think about it. after about 20 minutes the driver got off the head of the elephant and grabbed my arm and pulled me down to where we was previously sitting, so for the rest of the time (about 30-40 min) i got to ride on the elephants head. unfortunately for me i was wearing a skirt, and the elephant forgot to..shave its body....i don't know how many of you have felt an elephants hide but it is..not soft. my inner thighs were quite sure of that. other then slight discomfort, it was by far one of the coolest things i've done since i've been here.
having my family here was so exciting. being able to take them to all my favorite places to eat, and having them try all the weird foods i now crave here, walking through my neighborhood and meeting the people who i am currently sharing life with. im pretty sure they had a wonderful time...either that or they really are as good of actors as their college diplomas say they are.

since them leaving my life here has slowly gotten back to normal. i finally made it through the series 'friends' this past weekend. finishing the last episode out of 39 disks....(ugh i'm so pathetic), managing to laugh til i peed a little, cry til i realized that any extra condensation on my face was murder, and take an afternoon of acceptance that i wouldn't see these friends everyday. i was actually depressed on saturday when i finished...depressed. if this is how i act for a t.v. show, i am screwed for coming back to america after 6 months here. you all better get me some darn good welcome home presents.

the realization that this school year is close to ending is creeping into my brain. after this week at school, we're into april where we only have two weeks of school then song-khran (2 week spring break) then we only have may left, and then conner comes to visit and we hang out for a few weeks before we both go home. i basically have like 5 min. to do everything else i want here...*sigh*
i might not get to posting anything again before i leave for my vacation in a few weeks. so to hold you over until my next one...i'll leave you with these thoughts to be extremely jealous of me. i am going with a few other families from the school here to hui-hin for a week. hui-hin is a beach in the south of thailand. for those of you who dont know about the beaches in thailand they are....literally paradise. when you think of paradise, what do you think of?....a room full with bags of sour patch watermelons, and hugh grant serenading you...? no, although that is...a wonderful thought...
no. this paradise is white sandy beaches, blue/green water, palm trees, cool drinks, hammocks...aaahhhh. for a whole week! i can feel my sun burn forming already. so while im doing that, hey, washington...enjoy that rain and slushy crappy snow. i'll be thinking of you while im sipping a cool 'non-alcoholic' drink ;)

Dear Charles #11,

This last weekend I had the opportunity to go to an Aka village with the principle of my school and a few other teachers here. The principle and her husband's main ministry here in Thailand, is working with the village, and employing some of the women there with an arts and crafts project. So they have been involved with this village for the past 9 years or so, visiting them, and also paying 2/3 of the transportation costs to bus the kids in and out of school everyday so that they don't have to stay there during the week. In some of the villages there isn't enough money to get the kids to and from school everyday so they stay at school during the week, and only come home on the weekends. So that's cool.

So our accommodations were...awesome. We stayed in a bamboo hut, a few feet off the ground, and slept on the floor under mosquito nets :) I personally, loved it. We got to have dinner and breakfast with the Pastor of the village and his family, and hang out with the kids and other adults there in the evening. The Pastor and his wife were working with a few men that had been addicted to opium, and are recovering from other addictions, so we got to meet them as well. I had a lot of fun playing with the kids in the evening and taking pictures of them and just being goofy. There is something so cool to me about going and playing with children that you have never met, and especially when you don't speak the same language. It's so much more simple. I love how easily kids will just accept that you are a new playmate too, they don't ask questions, they just play, play, play. Especially these kids...their playground is a big dirt field and their toys are their imaginations. I so envy sometimes the simplicity of their fun, and it really makes me think about all the stuff we think we need to have a good time. Those kids have an honest-to-goodness good time, everyday.

After playing with them, and talking with some of the other village people (if you're wondering if they were wearing hard hats, police outfits, shades, and a Indian head dress...you're correct) we headed off to bed. I was looking forward to a long nights rest, to have enough strength for the next day when we would go to a waterfall, and my mom and brother were due in. Of course that is not what I got. Why would I have a perfectly good nights rest in a village in the hills of Chiang Rai, Thailand? It was all going well until 2:30 am when the roosters, apparently, thought it was time to get up. I swear they have some sort of vendetta against the human race because they were..not letting up. There was one rooster, who might as well have been under my pillow, who would crow once....then a few seconds later another one from across the field would start it up. You can guess this was a domino effect...all the while part of me praying that they were just practicing, and that I could go back to bed. This sort of happened...I blocked out what I could (ha) and tried for some more shut eye. But oh no...at 3:30 am, lo-and-behold my alarm went off! I shot up, feeling...really un-stoked, thinking it could not possibly be 6:30 already. What I did not know was that the day before, my friend Kyle, that works as a chemistry teacher here, got in to my phone and set my alarm to go off. Obviously I kicked his butt. So after that ordeal (which woke up the other 3 ladies in the room...) I once again did my best to roll over, put it all behind and get some rest. The roosters had something else in mind. They went strong all morning, AND at 6:00, the village bells went off to wake everyone else up...you know, just in case the freakin roosters didn't manage to do that at 2:30 am. What made it worse was the the rooster that was hangin out under my pillow started going hoarse. He couldn't even finish a whole crow after about an hour. Poor little fella, I felt like I should of gone and gave him a cough drop or something, but hoarse or not...he was showin off for some hott chicken.

The rest of the morning went alright, we finally all got up (well, we were all already up, obviously, so we got out of bed, is what I meant to say), went to church and then enjoyed a nice breakfast with the Pastor and his wife. Around 11:00 am I got a call from my brother, Kyle, who said that him and my mom got an early flight our of Bangkok, which was GREAT. So we finished up and headed out to the airport to pick them up. I wasn't expecting them to get in until about 3:00 pm, so I made the executive decision that they would get to go the waterfall with us all straight off the airplane. We all know the best way to cure jet lag is to go straight to the top of a 900 meter waterfall. It ended up being great, we all got all sweaty and stinky, but it was beautiful.

So mom and Kyle have been here since Sunday, and it has been great showing them around, and having them experiencing this part of my life. It's bizarre sometimes to think that they are actually here, in my house, in my city, eating my favorite foods, but it's also really fun. It's nice to be able to have someone else experience the same people and places I do, so they can back up my stories so I don't sound like some crazy lady, who you wonder might be drinking the water like she's not supposed to. I think they are really enjoying themselves here.
We're headed down to Chiang Mai this weekend for a bit, after we go to the Elephant Village, and a pottery making place called Doi Den Dang. I'll be sure to tell you about that when we get home. Sending my love to all :)

Dear Charles #10,
ive got a couple stories for you today. ive been meaning to write on here for a few days and just havent gotten to it, so redemption is coming. i hope youre not overwhelmed.

a few weeks ago me and kyndra got some dinner in the market and brought it home to eat while we watched a movie. this has happened a few times, and every time we mentioned how we should really get some sort of coffee table to set our stuff on, so we dont have to keep straining our backs by going up and down off the floor to eat our dinner. so last weekend we finally took action and bought a little table at a store down the street from us. we got it for 200 baht, which is a flippin steal, but the only problem was that it was SUPER ugly. we figured we could just buy some paint and make it all pretty. but this is not the point of the story. the real story comes at the store when we went to buy the table.
alright so this store is like...how do i even describe it... there is just..stuff...everywhere. if ever i have use the word 'stuff' and meant it for what it truly means, this is that time. its the kind of place that you walk in with the purpose of getting one thing (after finding it) but walk out with just a bunch of...stuff...you discovered you needed once you walked in. apparently when i went the first time, i needed a DOREMAN alarm clock, green hangers, and a little box full of q-tips...of course its all justified when you can say that you bought all of those things for about 4 dollars total. (you should be so jealous right now that youre not living here)
ANYWAYS, so me and kyndra went back to this store last weekend to pick up the table we found to be greeted by the 'employees' of the store (im still not totally convinced they werent just a couple of teenagers who waltzed in looking important). they were two guys, young, 'thai hip', which means they had the same hair cut and wore trendy shirts, and honestly...a little sleezy. the way that stores work (most stores) is, when you go in a worker from the store starts following you in toe, wherever you go...i think just in case you have questions, but its honestly the most annoying thing in the world. youre just trying to look around and they are like breathing down your neck. *shiver*
so in this store one of the guys was doing that, we picked out our table and he brought it to the front for us and the guy at the check out counter started talking to us in thai. well mostly kyndra, cause im not that good. so he's taking our money, and looks at kyndra and says " did you two come to thailand for boyfriends?" and kyndra's like, "no, we work at different ministries" so the guys like, "oh...well how old are you two?"
so kyndra tells them and then both of the guys look at me and are like "oh we're 18 too..." so i was like "oh..thats....cool" then they laughed and asked us if we wanted to be their girlfriends......
so we quickly left after many awkward looks and refusals, to these...'oh-so-tempting' thai boys.

in thailand its pretty common to meet someone and the order of the conversation to be..hi, how are you, whats your name, are you married or do you have a boyfriend? which of course makes your self esteem fly through the roof when you have to tell people youre single 3 or 4 times a day and they make a huge deal out of it. "oh you sing-gul! but you so bootifull! why you sing-gul? you shou' nod be sing-gul bootifull gurl!" but then again you get to hear how beautiful you are all the time too so...i guess its a fair trade.

the other story is short, and just sort of a funny, like, i just had to stop and laugh at the situation i was in, sort of story. so last weekend, me and kyndra, and a few other friends went out to this bar/restaurant with the owner of the coffee shop, P'Lut. it was a fun night, we had good food, and there was live music and drunk thai people kept wanting to talk to the table of 'farangs'..naturally...so on our way home a few of us rode in one car and a few in another. i rode with P'Lut and Ae, and we were gonna drop Ae off at her house and then meet the other car at the coffee shop and then go home. so after we dropped Ae off me and P'Lut were in the car, talking casually in tinglish (thai english), when P'Lut turns on his CD player, to none other then his 'romantic ballads of the 90s" CD. if you knew this man, this would be SO funny to you right now. a 40-something, jolly thai man who speaks little english, and this is his favorite CD.
so once i got passed the shock, i proceeded to sing with him. this is when i stopped and laughed at my situation. here i am...an 18 year old girl in a country that is foreign to me, riding home in a pick up truck with P'Lut, singing my heart out with him to 'endless love' hahaha. it was a great time none the less, it was just..funny to me. a kind of situation i would never expect myself to be in.

so ive had 'endless love' stuck in my head all week, me and kyndra painted our ugly coffee table, and all is well with the world. plus me and kyndra are going on a juice fast for the next few days, which im actually really looking forward to. or maybe just the fat dinner im gonna eat when its over....
im STOKED for my mom and kyle to visit...only a few days now til they get here! i'll tell about how much they are enjoying themselves next week :) -anna

Dear Charles #9,
God has been teaching me a lot of cool stuff lately. its hard to keep it all under control in my brain.
i knew that i would change here, but i didnt think that i would feel it. i feel my thoughts shifting to different things, i feel my attitude becoming different in different situations, i feel myself acting differently to adults, when i meet people, and in the way i understand and learn. they're not bad differences, theyre just...different. i think the word im looking for is, perspective? my perspective is different with certain things.
the thing that has come up time and time again is worship. it started a few weeks ago when i visited a thai church with a friend of mine. all the songs were in thai, along with the message. so during worship the band started playing a song, whose tune i recognized. it turned out to be..."days of elijah". so i stood there..the only farang in the whole place belting the song in english while everyone else sang it in thai. my friend leaned into me to hear it and asked me to teach her the english later on. it hit me during the middle of the chorus, that worship is one of the most beautiful things in the world. at least to me. here was two teenage girls, singing the same song, crying out to the lord, but in different languages.
its not as if i never thought about other cultures praising God in their own way, but it was the first time i had really experienced it first time like that. it gave me goose-bumps. to God its the same...its his children delighting in him, worshipping him, and praising his name. it doesnt matter what language, or how you stand, or dance, its just...worship.
it came up a few other times in the following days with different services i went to, hearing thai people worshipping, and praying. i just love hearing it, and even though i cant understand it fully..being content that God is being given the glory. its such a wonderful feeling on contentment.

other then that, my thai is coming along pretty good. my thai teacher Pi Phorn (pronounced paun) is very proud of me :) she said i have a natural speaking ability that she rarely sees in her students. so...you know, im pretty much the best. kyndra teaches me little phrases too, commonly used things for average conversation, so does Pi Lute, the owner of the coffee shop we spend a lot of our time at. i so wish you could meet him, he is so great.

im getting anxious for my mom and brother to get here. im so excited for them so just see where i live, and experience my life here. eat the food and go to the same places. oooo im getting all 'tummy nervous'. the good kind...right mom? :)

i'll write more later about how stuff is at school...but im teaching a class in a few minutes and dont have time to write it all right now. until next time then -anna

Dear Charles, #8
hey there! im sorry its been so long since ive posted anything. im sure youre just chomping at the bit to find out what ive been up to huh? well in all honesty not much has happened since i posted last. no big stuff that is...im just living life day to day here. im to a point where this doesnt feel like something im doing for just a sort bit, but that this is what im doing with my life right now, so updating what ive been up to feels a little silly. does that make sense? like you wouldnt write someone about your everyday stuff cause to you its just...normal.
but i will try my best to write about just the normal stuff too, cause in some respects that can be just as exciting cause to you its not normal. this really does make sense if you really think about it. trust me.
school like i said has just become my schedule, its what im used to now. my adventures with esther are becoming, well, fun. i look forward to meeting with her now. in the beginning i wasnt used to the way she acted or talked but now that i know its what shes like its really quite enduring. she told me the other day halfway through her math lesson that she was beginning to quite like math, and i asked her if it was because she had such an awesome teacher like me, and she point blank told me "no its just cause its getting easier" I looked exaggeratedly disappointed, so she came over and patted my hand and said "but youre a good teacher too" so all was well with the world again.
at lunch time here i choose not to eat with the teachers. it makes me feel too...teachery. so i go and eat with the elementary boys and the ESL middle and high schoolers. we all eat at a table outside the main building where we have meetings and stuff, and so far that has become my favorite part of the day. the boys are so funny to talk and listen to. today we had a joke telling session and i was peeing my pants laughing at hearing these ESL kids tell jokes with their 'in progress' english. they were so sure of the jokes they were telling but they were coming out so wrong. hahaha it was great.
i also get told by them what things im doing wrong according to thai culture, so thats good. nothing like getting it straight from a middle schooler.
theres this one little guy named jeremy. im not sure if ive mentioned him yet, but he's a 4th grader from holland, and as un-biased as possible he is my favorite student here. he gives me a real hard time and i gave him a hard time back. we joke around all the time, but its based on thinking the other is really cool. cause we have those moments too, like a few weeks ago the elementary was having what they call a 'poetry party' where they recite poems they've been memorizing for the rest of the school during lunch.
i came right as they were starting and sat on the floor next to jeremy and we were chattin in between people's performances, i kept telling him that they were going to pick his name next and he kept saying they wouldnt, and every time it wasnt him he would look up at me and stick his tongue out and be like 'told ya' so it went on and on till his name finally got called, the second it got called he looked up at me and, man i wish you could have seen the look he gave me. so i jabbed him and was like 'ooooo jeere--emmmyy. go dude!" so he made his way up to the front of everyone looking really nervous, and right before he started he looked over at me and i gave him a huge smile and he started.
it was the funnest feeling, i felt like i was his mother or something. i was so proud of him. throughout his poem he would look at me every now and then and just get this huge smile and have to shake his head to remember where he was. if you knew this kid you might be able to understand a little better why that was so special. i think because of the kind of relationship we have it was so fun to have a moment where i felt so proud of him and i could tell he wanted to do good, for me almost. its hard to explain but it was really fun. of course the second it was over he came and jumped on me and it was back to the big sister/little brother relationship we're so good at.

things with my house mate kyndra are only getting better. i was telling my mom in an email awhile ago, i almost wish it wasnt going as good as it was cause now im going to compare any future room or house mate to her and just be disappointed by them. i think it might have to do with the fact that shes older than me, so i dont have to even think about worrying about there being drama or anything like that. we just have a good time together. we're good buds now :) this past weekend we spent all saturday hangin out and running errands in town. we stopped for lunch and got some pizza at this american restaurant in town and it was....oh my gosh, so good. we had decided after watching so much 'friends' and seeing joey and chandler constantly getting pizzas that it looked to good not to get.

the owner of the coffee shop, Pi Lute asked me and kyndra and kyndra's best friend Ae to come to dinner with him and his daughter and a few others a couple nights ago. we went to this thai restaurant that was like...a buffet, but all the food is raw and they give you cooking stands to cook it yourself. it was SO delicious. pork and chicken and shrimp and yummy thai noodles and rice. i sorta forgot to eat a little cause i was so focused on cooking the food, but when i remembered it was so good. i got full really fast and everyone else just kept eating..i was just like 'how are you people still eating?!" and they all told me i just hadnt been trained on how to eat yet. i guess thai people just eat really slow and little bits at a time, so meals last a lot longer.
in all dinner was great though, Pi Lute brought a bottle of wine and we all enjoyed it while just talking. well i was mostly listening cause my thai is not so good, but they were able to teach me a couple of good phrases which is always good.

so hopefully something a little more exciting will happen comin up so i can impress you guys again but until then...you get to hear about my boring thai life that im already used to. i love that im used to it though, it feels like ive been here for ages and im so thankful that God has blessed me with the ability to be comfortable almost any place i go. i have realized that it is sorta un-commom to just get thrown into a situation and be stoked on whatever happens, but being here has been just like that. ive begun to miss home quite a bit and thinking about being there again is a nice thought, but i know how hard it will be to leave here. especially after another 4 or 5 months.
so often i find myself having to say goodbye to a great experience, and thinking back on it fondly, which in some regards is good cause i know it means ive been able to experience a lot of really really cool things, but on the same hand...it doesnt get any easier each time to have to leave something ive come to love and start anew with something else. so part of me wants to just stay here now for a long time and think fondly of things at home but accept that this is what im doing now so that i wont have to eventually say goodbye. *sigh*
the biggest things ive been working on though is realizing that all of those experiences and people that i fell in love with were all because they were centered around God. God was the cause of all the happiness i felt, so i shouldnt miss those so much necessarily, but realize i can have just as amazing an experience anywhere else because its the same God, and he loves me the same way and blesses me just as much in different ways.
ok so i blabbed on and on about nothing really, and it wasnt very funny. i apologize, but i told you some may not be so funny :/ sorry friends. i'll write soon i hope. let me know if there's anything specific you want to know about, im sure there are things you wonder that i dont know you even care to know about so i dont write about them. any requests?

Dear Charles, #7
i thought i was going to try and not post as much but...screw that. too much happens here that i want other people to think are cool. so you better think this is cool.
so monday was 'australia day', i know all of you that celebrate that know what im talking about :) so i went with kyndra and some of the people she works with to this american/australian restaurant a little ways away from bandu where we live and had some good 'ol fish and chips. there are like 4 australians that she works with and one lady who grew up in england but lived in australia for many many years, so shes like...honorary auzzie. but she sounds english. so most of the night i again, looked stupid while i admired their accents, while they said simple things like "i would like a hamburger and a bbq chicken pizza" aahhh so cool. plus they called ketchup, 'tomato sauce'. but it was all in the accent. plus for the first time ever i had an auzzie tell me that i had an accent. thats one of those things i always knew but, thought that i didnt really. just like they dont think they have an accent.
anyways so we played australia trivia games that i knew non of the answers too, and sang the australian national anthem. which i just hummed.
on tuesday night i got to go up to the mountains and visit an AKA tribe with kyndra. one of the women she works with is from there so she invited a couple girls to come up an celebrate the laos new year. it was so great- (i just got my camera charger [thanks mom] so i can take pictures finally) i have pictures of the house we ate dinner in that i'll put up when i figure out how to do it. so we had a thai style dinner which was basically, we all are in a circle on a mat on the floor of this wood/bamboo house and there were plates and bowls of rice and mysterious meats and curries. we ate family style and it was so delicious. they had sticky rice and regular rice, and lemme tell you, you have not had sticky rice till youve had it here. its so...sticky! and the thai word for white rice translates to 'beautiful rice' which i think is funny.
so after dinner we made our way up the mountain a little higher (in the dark..its a wonder i didnt fall on my face through the trees and roots and things) to a place where more AKA people were playing music and dancing around a colorful and lighted monument kinda thing. in the beginning i just sat around with the other farangs ('foreigners'...however this is the last time im giving you the cheat sheet for that, from now on you gotta just know it. ooo im gettin tricky on you guys!) untill this little woman from the tribe grabbed my hand and brought me into the dance. she was so precious and little and was trying to teach me how to do it. of course im pro and got it right away...oh yeah and im totally proud and dont have a humble bone in my body. (arent you proud parents? haha im totally kidding)
so it was a great night, good food, good dancing, cute old ladies.
oh yeah i also thought i would mention to you all that im in the tutoring class with esther right now and i had to sneeze and so i joked that i was going to sneeze all over her and she put her paper over her head in fright and told me that i was quote 'a gross girl'. then later on i was biting my nails and she looked at me and said, ' youre actually chewing on your fingernails? thats why i called you a gross girl' hahaha im getting to a place i think where i know shes going to talk that way, so sometimes i say dumb stuff just to hear what she says to me.
im such a great teacher.
sawadeeka-anna

Dear Charles, #6

alright alright alright, so much to tell you about! i dont even know where i can start. i'll start from friday afternoon at 4:30 pm:
so me and amber got tickets to go to chiang mai for the weekend on this VIP bus. the bus was pretty much better then first class on an airplane. the seats were huge, they reclined, with a foot rest! they had cup holders and the stuartest gave us water and orange juice and a little thaibiscuit thing (that i didnt actually eat cause it smelled sweet but looked like it had ground beef and raisins in it, and i wasnt that hungry) it took us about 3 and a half hours to get there but i just had the sweet vocal serenade of chris thyle from nickel creek put me to sleep.
so we got there, and off the bus to be bombarded by short thai men holding signs for tuk-tuks to take you into town...so we found one guy and told him where we were staying and he got a confused look on his face, which naturally gave us a confused look. so he asked another driver, i can only assume was how to get there...so the two of them talked for a few minutes then finally the driver came over to us and nodded and pointed to his tuk tuk. "i take you der now" so we hopped in the back of his little transportation device and off we went through the streets of chaing mai. luckily he got us to the right place *phew* transportation is so crazy here- but i'll talk more about that later
so me and amber checked in. the lady that owned the place we stayed at was a christian who spoke really good english, she was so cute. we dropped our bags in our little hostile type room, and decided to head down to the night bazaar they have there. so we're walking down these streets to find out that not two blocks over, we're suddenly in the red light district of chaing mai. there are bars, after bars, after bars, and old white men, after old white men, after old white men. you know you hear about that and you read about it but when you actually see it, it is so different. we hurried past that part of the street and kept going on our way to the bazaar. we finally got there and looked around for about an hour, got an american hamburger (amber was so excited, she's been here since september so i obliged when she asked to eat american even though i dont miss it at all yet) and decided we should go back to the room and sleep. we did get a tuk tuk on the way home cause we assumed the bars were probably getting a little routy since it was later.
so saturday morning we wake up to find that our toilet is not working and our shower and faucet will only produce cold water. oh goodie. we did our best to bypass that and get going with our day (that turned into me not actually showering the whole weekend, and finding interesting ways and places to go to the bathroom). amber was really needing to get a coffee maker so we went to a mall there and shopped around for a little while. i was reluctant to do such american stuff but amber really needed the "break from thailand" and i didnt want her to be a grumpy gills. (you were great amber and i was happy to do it)
so after killing an afternoon with looking around little shops and stuff and buying beautiful thaijewelry, we hopped on a song-tow (bigger version of a taxi, smaller version on a city bus) to a different part of chaing mai where we went to a night safari!! it was so great. we got there about an hour before the tours were gonna start so we walked around this huge lake they had and looked at the animals they had there. which was an impressive selection...tigers, hippos, panthers, monkeys. it was pretty much like a zoo, but more wild and...well in thailand which makes it way cooler.
so just before the tour they had this laser light show over the lake which lasted an impressive 8 min. and was shown to a variety of songs from popular movies. haha it was so funny- pirates of the caribbean, lord of the rings, star wars, all playing out to vibrant and neon lights in the forms on eagles and lions. ( it was super cheesy) me and amber decided to get in line before the light show was over and beat all the old asian women with the grandchildren to the front of the line.
so we get on the night safari..safari thing (like a bus with no doors, whats the word im looking for?) and ended up getting sandwiched between a boisterous family from isreal and an obnoxious family from italy behind us. this made for an interesting and annoying journey.
the tour guide asked that no one use their flash on the tour which apparently the two families didnt hear or didnt understand. they were takin flash pictures like crazy and standing up and talking loudly to each other..that mixed with the thick thai accent of the tour guide and the baby that started cryng two rows up made it really hard to concentrate or enjoy to the fullest. however i did still get to see the animals and silently enjoy them and praise God for his amazing creations.
that night i could hardly sleep in anticipation for the next day, because i was going to go play with tigers for the morning. yes i said it...and no i didnt groom them, unfortunately. i did cuddle with them though. i have an album on my facebook of pictures, so until i get some up here if you have facebook then go check it out. the girl's name was pancake and she was wonderful. she was asleep but still wonderful. i got to play with the baby tigers too...im still waiting for the pictures from amber for that one, but they babies were just...oh my heart was melting. they were just romping around and yelling and playing. it was the best ever.
so when i got into the cage with the big ones...guess who was there....the italians. im not kidding. the lady that sat two over from me was wearing a "chiang mai night safari" tshirt and everything. this was a really obnoxious just...oh i was not stoked to see her again. she kept walking right in front of me and being all, italian and stuff. *hrmph*
so after the best morning of my life playing and cuddling with tigers we went back to town and hung around a day market till we had to catch our bus back to chiang mai. i met a really nice couple from ireland that was retired and had been traveling around asia for the last 6 months while amber went to get some american lunch (her last chance before going home) we talked for like 15 min. i just sat and smiled staring like a fool listening to their accents :)
it was a great weekend. there was way to much to do there in the short amount of time i had so i'll definitely be going back. when conner comes and visits me i think i'll take him back there cause there is a place where you can go feed and hang out with some monkeys...obviously thats super cool and he loves monkeys so we'll be doing that for sure. hope your weekend was as exciting if not more exciting then mine! oh wait.... im in thailand and played with tigers, nothing is more exciting then that. maybe next time :)

Dear Charles, #5

howdy-doo non thailandians! ....because after being here two weeks i am almost 100% thai. my life long dream of being an asian is panning out nicely. the fact that i eat rice at least twice a day and i 'wai' everyone i meet are good signs of 'asian turning'. haha...oh im so getting struck by lightning this weekend.
oh! speaking of this weekend! after school today me and my friend amber, who is another volunteer here (she's teaching kindergarten) are hopping a VIP (ooooo) bus down to chaing mai! chiang mai is like a bigger version if chaing rai but a smaller version of bangkok. its somewhere in the middle of a hill-tribe and big city. so ive heard about tons of cool things to do there but i wont tell you guys any of them until i come back so i dont say..."they have this tiger grooming class where you get to groom real tigers" and have you guys think im doing something really cool when im not. or wont get to depending on how much it costs. ahhh money is so dumb. although everything is super cheap here. i eat for about 30 baht every night....and our exchange is about 35 baht to an american dollar so...i'm eating for less then a dollar, and i get lunches free at the school (one of the perks of being a full time volunteer.....you know, not getting paid and paying my own rent, but hey free lunch! im not bitter.)
its so funny how im getting used to the pricing already so much here. like the other night amber asked me if i wanted to go get some dinner with her and we went to this really nice place near our house called 'barongs' i opened the menu and i was like..."95 baht?! are you kidding!?" haha you guys thought i was cheap and froogle before i left the states, after living here for six months im not gonna want to spend any money on anything over there. so you all better like your souvenirs cause its all youre getting from me for the next 10 years until i can get a real job.

my escapades with 3rd esther, the girl i tutor on mondays/wednesday/friday are getting more interesting. on wednesday i was sitting in my classroom waiting for her to come in..she walked in and looked at me for like 30 seconds then said "um...actually i usually sit in that chair" (she sat in it on monday..the first and only time i had met with her thus far" so i calmly responded "well do you think it'd be cool if i sat here today?" so she thought for a minute...and VERY reluctantly said "yeah...i guess thats fine"
so she started to work on her worksheet and about 15 min in she asked for my help. SOOO, i got up, looked at her problem and told her what it was that she needed to fix and how to get the correct answer...after we figured it out and the answer we got was different then her original one she was like..."no but i think this is wrong, this is not what i got..." (inner thoughts: "AAAHHHH BE QUIET LITTLE GIRL!") so i have to like hype up my patience before i meet with her. i wish i could video tape a class with her so you could see her and hear her...its all in the looks and the tones. so we had a whole other side of the worksheet that wasnt done yet and class was like 10 min from being over and it was taking her a really really long time to subtract 15 from 17, so i asked her if i could show her an easy way that i use to subtract things and she says " no i dont have time for that, i dont have much time and if you show me how to do that we're wasting time" so i said" so you dont want me to help you find an easier way?" and she says " no and now we're talking and wasting time..look we've been talking and i just wasted time i could be working" so....ha ha....theres esther. ooohhh shes a jem. pray for me to have patience with her.

on a lighter note im getting along swimmingly with my housemate kyndra. shes actually from washington (reppin' it up for WA!). shes working at another ministry here called Banam Jai (thats not how you spell it but its initially 'home of the open heart'). its a ministry that works with kids that have HIV. She's really funny...much like me...*cough cough*. shes been really good about showing me around our town and writing down good things to order at our favorite food place, 'grumpies'. (its not actually called grumpies but thats what we call it because the lady that works there has zero patience and when you walk up shes just like...'what do you want" ,"well whats good?" "just tell me what you want i dont want to tell you whats good, just order" [in thai of course] hahaha, shes really actually great, the other day i went to her place to get some fried rice and she looked me up and down and was like 'oh you actually look cute today'.... really a sweet sweet lady)
so kyndra is great, we watch friends together and go get fresh squeezed orange juice. its orange season here right now so the oranges are exceptional and the juice is like...oh so good. me and kyndra are on like sarcastic love/hate terms which is the best kind. i had to go get more money on my cell phone and i was like..."kyndra! i just put like 200 baht on here last week! stop texting me stupid!" and she just responds..."stop..calling me. stop being dumb" etc. etc. so its going really great.

yesterday at school was very exciting because once a month here the school serves farang food (foreign food...american food) and everyone is so stoked. as for me i havent been here long enough to really miss american food, im still in 'excited about everything thai' mode..which im really hoping doesnt ware off or my last few months here are going to be misery. so we had this pasta meat thing. it was pretty good, and it got served with bread and butter which i have to admit...simple enough -but it tasted so so good. but im good without eating american food for awhile.
this last weekend a couple that lives in my neighborhood took me and amber out for lunch to "barry's" (you can tell by the name that this was a american- golf themed restaurant, and barry was middle aged). i refused to get a hamburger like everyone else and stuck with curry and rice. plus farang food is really expensive here. you know like...200 baht a plate. whoa, kinda steep for me.
alright so im tutoring steven this next period so im gonna go get ready for that. wish me safe travels this weekend in chiang mai! ill tell you about all the cool stuff i actually did when i get home. sawadee-ka, anna

Dear Charles, #4
so i had my first day of work today. wasn't really how i thought my first day would go but it was alright. my schedule is like, crazy, crazy, crazy. i am working with almost every grade level from 1st through 10th grade, which is a good variety but i feel like i am constantly changing my mind set, and who i am talking to and how etc. especially because they're not only different grade levels but different languages. or...different levels in their english more like. i am doing a lot of one on one tutoring with ESL kids and helping them refine their papers or homework assignments, and then one on one with elementary helping them with spelling and word comprehension and stuff.
there's this one little girl named esther, and i am tutoring her on her math...shes in third grade, and from india, just to set this scene a little bit. so i was going over some multiplication/division cards with her and then she had a work sheet with long addition, subtraction, multip., and division to do. of course i am a graduated american teenager who only ever uses her calculator anymore (my argument all through grade school that i would always use a calculator has proven to be true...told you mom) so i had to re-teach myself how to do these problems and fast so that i didnt look like an idiot in front of this girl. so the first couple problems i let her do by herself...then my freakin job came in, she needed help. great. i did the problems with her and then checked my calculator (haha) on my ipod for help and got a different answer then she did, so i re did my math and realized the mistake and told her that we needed to fix it and she shook her head and said " no i think your computer is wrong, i learned it this way so its right" so clearly i have a case in my hands. we worked through it and i got her to understand how to work the problem out the right way. *phew* i thought i was gonna have to take out a third grader there for awhile.
the rest of my day was pretty slow...im not exactly sure what im really doing yet so i think everyday will be a bit of an adventure. and to think these people are letting me teach their children. hahaha. its weird for me to think that the current events class that i am teaching to 10th graders i am totally coming up with as i go along...and this is their high school education. but i guess i can give an assignment that i dont really know anything about and they do the research and come up with their own knowledge. it all works out. so lucky for me i can pretty much do all of this without knowing what the heck im doing. haha good good good.
i have to admit that everyday i just look forward to when i get to eat. the food has not let me down yet. except for the crickets i munched on this weekend...they were a bit of a disappointment. and by disappointment i mean they were gross and weird. but i'm trying everything that is offered to me...including steaming cups of mysterious liquids and food that looks like someone just threw it up. usually ends up pretty good...but its also usually pretty spicy. (the person just ate like 60 hot peppers, yay for me)
as for entertainment....i wont tell you guys that my house mate has all the seasons of 'friends' *cough cough* that i have been watching almost any free moment i get. YOU KNOW, all those moments that IM NOT enjoying this beautiful country and getting out and experiencing the culture or meeting strangers and creating memories that will last a life time...*cough.......cough..* alright im gonna go eat some yummy curry or something. Sawadee-ka, Anna

Dear Charles, #3

bobar kept me up all night last night...he's a snor-er. so i woke up a little grumpy. however i usually wake up really good here. unlike in the states (ive gotten accustom to saying 'in the states' as opposed to 'america' cause thats what everyone says here) where i would moan and fight my way to stay in bed. then again waking up early might have something to do with my singing neighbor. oh yes i said it right. my neighbor lady wakes up at about 4:30 or 5 every morning and starts singing her heart out, and doing laundry and dishes...and maybe ceremonially breaking a few plates or something. maybe she's greek....hhmmm i'll have to look into that. whatever it is its noisy, but sometimes the tropical birds and the sound of the wind in the trees drowns her out. oh wait...no....that would be the noise of her two rot-whilers fighting to the death. aahh the natural sounds of thailand. so beautiful.
so i made it through my first week in this foreign place, and i love it. and yes for those of you who were wondering, i have eaten strange substances from street venders and ridden on the back of a strangers motorbike (dont tell my dad). everyone and their mom rides a motorbike here, they even have special motorbike parking areas in the grocery stores. its a really effective way of getting around, but im sure the people that dont wear helmets and end up in the hospital would tell you different. i get to school every morning with a family named 'Fish' i hop in the back of their pickup and it takes about 7 min or so to get to school from my house. you definitely cant be persnickety about a hairstyle here and ride in the back of a truck to work. the wind in your hair at 50 miles an hour on the super highway does a number to it.
earlier on this week i asked my room mate kyndra where i could buy a hair straightener and she told me to talk to a woman named nok who works at the cafe we frequent and that she would love to help me. so i walked to the cafe around mid-day and asked pi-lu (the owner) if nok was working and he said she was out but asked if he could help me, so i snickered, feeling a little silly asking this 40-something thai man about a hair straightener but he was very helpful. he pointed me to a beauty supply store (where you can obviously just go and pick up some spare beauty, luckily enough for me) across the street and told me i could buy one there. he proceeded to walk me across the super highway (streets here are something between a freeway and a normal street- many cars at fast rates) to the store and said that nok would be right over. he left me there and a few min later nok and her partner ak came into the store over-joyed to help me find this hair straightener. the two of them have been speaking english for about 3 months, which made everything a little trickier, and of course i know how to say..hello....how are you and...no which did me very little good. they were speaking to the sales lady in thai and trying to convey to me what was going on which was...well i had no idea what was going on. i ended up getting the idea that the ones they had were no good and that we should go somewhere else, so back across the super highway we went to a diff shop where they were no good either. i felt horrible that i couldnt converse with these two, but they did pretty good at saying what they could to me in english. all i really remember was them pointing at a orange and white striped cat on the street and saying ' oooo you lie ga-field moobie? ga-field da cat" haha i nodded and we agreed that odi was an exceptional dancer. SOOO, we went back to the cafe and pi-lu said that we could use his truck to go to a store in town to find one (this all became a much bigger deal than i meant it to be) so i hopped on the back of a motorbike with nok and we went to go get pi-lu's car. we got in the truck and went to a different beauty supple store and finally found what we were looking for. nok was so happy that we got there and found a good one that she bought one too :) afterwards she asked me if i wanted to do some more shopping, so i agreed and ended up buying a pair of converse all-star tennis shoes for like $9 which is tight cause they're like 40 or 50 in the states. nok did her best to teach me thai in the car, but i of course failed miserably. she taught me like 5 or 6 phrases but al i remember is..'chai' which means 'right'.
so within my first 5 days of being in this country ive never been, i ended up going all around town with this girl i just met who spoke hardly any english and came out victorious with shoes and a hair straightener. i thought it was so funny while we were going across the super highway on her motorbike that i was in the situation that i was in, and how i got there with three words of thai. haha, and here's to many more adventures to come. sawadee-ka, anna

Dear Charles #2

guess what?! im in thailand fools! i just arrived yesterday, and have not had internet access till today. haha how conformed am i? "oh no! no internet for 3 days! what will i do?" really i was just anticipating coming to my blog to tell you all about my crazy last four days. not at all to see which of you love me enough to write me and wish me a safe and happy journey. so far only 6 of you have proven to be true friends. thanks true friends, you know who you are.
so my disgustingly long journey has brought me to Chiang Rai, Thailand. it is absolutely beautiful here. theres something about this place that makes me feel like ive been here a long time, and another part that is wondering why i havent come sooner. everyone here is so nice and have been so good to me. creepishly nice and helpful....as if someone wrote them....and told them i had.."special needs"...i might have to have a talk with some of you. hhmm.
so i traveled for, i think 2 and a half days? im way to lazy to calculate out the time change and find out what it really was. plus i get a bigger reaction if i say two and a half days as opposed to just one or two. you know its all true too. here's how it goes. "so ive traveled for about a day... response: oh, huh, thats not horrible but still a bummer. im sorry." REVISED CONVO- "yeah man it took me two and half days to get here....response: two and half days?! man thats brutal!" so this is how it goes. anyone saying different is lying.
also...i promised him we would try and find his mother while we're here. alright so, my first plain ride was 11 hours to alright so on to the travel. first off id like to introduce you all to bobar. he is my very best travel companion ever, and a gift from my brother conner for christmas. he is a teal elephant, and he will undoubtedly be making appearances in this blog. he's new to thailandtokyo. that sucked. the guy i was sitting by spoke one word of english, which was hello, so you can imagine how far our conversation went. eleven hours after that he shocked me by waving as he walked away...but it was a wave from the heart, it was all in the flick of the wrist, i knew he'd miss me. so when i got off the plain i had another flight to bangkok shortly after, and when i got off the walkway thing you take to go to the plain there was a small asian woman who was saying something about a transfer flight to bangkok, so i told her i was going to bangkok and she quickly told me to go up the stairs and look for another lady, that i had to hurry because the flight was boarding, and she said a few other things in japanese. she was pretty frantic. so i got pretty nervous that i was going to miss it, so i started running. looking completely foolish no doubt, with a backpack twice my size jumbling around on my back and a purse full of nerds that were rattling with every step. so i find a line to security and a small japanese lady pops out of a crowd with huge eyes and says " o you fo' plain do ban-kok?" i said yes so she hurried me to the front of the security line, passed a woman in a wheelchair (my conscious will be heavy for years) and quickly to a group of three other people who were also on the flight. so we all started running through the airport, behind this woman who was no taller then me but still half my size with a sign over her head that said the flight number and gate. after about 5 min. of running like fools, peeking over bags and people to find the woman we were following we made it to the gate. we ran up to the counter, i was panting, and sweating (no big shock there) the person looked at my ticket and just said.."no no no- you wrong flih" hahahaha, i was not on that flight! there was a list of four people on this woman's list of people that were coming from my flight from seattle to the flight to bangkok so shortly after. i looked at the list and the woman was pointing to the name "flogarty" so i laughed and said im not flogarty im peirson! so she got huge wide eyes and put her hands on her head and started rambling in japanese, so she turned and ran back to the gate to find the real flogarty, while i found my real gate # for my flight and calmly walked there. it turns out my flight was delayed 2 hours. ahaha, isnt that just how it goes?
so i made it to bangkok at 2:00 am and had to wait there for 12 hours! for my flight at 2:00 pm the next day. i tried to get some sleep but i had all my bags with me because they didnt get checked through all the way to chiang rai, and i was too paranoid that someone would steal my 48 lb. bag right in front of me to go to sleep. looking back that was dumb. but i met some nice people while waiting. one man was about 85, he was thai...i could hardly understand anything he was saying but we talked sure enough for about half an hour.
so now im here! im at the school that im gonna be working at right now, in the library. its so funny to be writing to you all and hearing a gaggle of thai students talking to each other in the background. haha i guess i d better get used to it.
i'll write when i can. i hope you all are doing alright and that tacoma is recovering from my absence. i understand if youre all in shambles, i would be too. love to everyone! peace-anna

Dear Charles,

last night i had my going away party..funny thing is im going to see almost everyone that was there again before i leave, (except for lucy wold, dang girl went to have an amazing experience in ecuador, and she didnt wait until after i left to leave...i love you to pieces lu) but sometimes you just need an excuse to party right? plus a dance party 2009 hadn't happened yet so there's reason enough right there. i can safely say that the party was the best of the year. some of you might be saying to yourself..."now, anna, isnt that a little presumptuous? that was only day 2 of the new year" well to you i say, no. not presumptuous in the slightest. im a pretty good judge of a killer party, that definitely was one. i had taquitos there for crying out loud! any party with taquitos is a darn good one.
now, im sure youre wondering why the beginning of this blog says 'dear charles'. its really a funny story so i'll start off with that. Charles Wilcox, whom most of you know, was among the guests at the party last night. we got talking about this blog, and he was telling me how much he was anticipating it to be humorous and well written, all the while the perspiration in my armpits getting more and more intense...anyways somehow we got talking about how i would entitle my first blog 'dear charles'. he didnt believe me, so naturally we put money on it. safe to say i have a crisp five dollar bill waiting for me when i get home in june....dont think i'll forget charles. in fact i think i'll do it one better....every blog from here on out will be written in a 'dear charles' format. so, get used to it folks. it'll be good for me, just like some people name their diaries so it feels like they're spilling their guts to a person as opposed to 60 sheets of college ruled paper.
As i enter my last week as an american, im taking time to appreciate the things and people around me that will be truly missed. two ply toilet paper to start..oh how i'll miss your soft touch. cloudy skies...moving on. origins 23 coffee shop, don't cry when i get my free WIFI from a coffee shop in thailand. and finally over-priced avocados. you've seen the last of me for awhile...but i'll be back, and when i am, you better be back down to at least a dollar a piece.
I'm so stoked to share my experiences with you all through this blog. i pre-apologize if any of them aren't up to your standards....(charles)...i'll do my best. i appreciate all your prayers as i take this incredible journey, i know it'll probably go by really quickly. but the sooner i come back, the sooner you all get your cool souvenirs. peace!