Truth

And we thought the Songkran festivities were over. Silly us. Upon our return from Phuket 2 weeks ago, Ton and Ake took us to Phichit's water festival with George and a few of the Thai teachers.

Ton drove us all in his truck, so the majority of us squished in the back with the 3 huge water barrels. We tossed buckets upon buckets of water at people and definitely got soaked in return. Toward the end it seemed a lot like a parade, we were driving in the fast lane and people on both sides of us were cheering and saying they loved America. It was so much fun.

 On our way home, I stood in one of the empty water barrels to help make the back a little less squished for everyone as they huddled as low as possible to avoid the wind. It was there that I realized just how much I've changed from this experience.

Last week I was talking to one of my best friends and she asked me a question. She said, "What's the best lesson you've learned while in Thailand?" It took me a few minutes to go through the many things I've learned while abroad, but I finally settled on one. My reply went like this:

"The best thing I've learned? Oh gosh... I've become so much more self confident. I feel way more independent and I'm pretty sure I could conquer the world at this point, haha. I guess the biggest thing I've learned is to not let my comfort zone rule my life. Bigger and better things exist outside of it and I've got to step away and brave the change to embrace the opportunities that are out there."

The phrase Live & Laugh has been floating around in my mind for a few years now, but this experience has helped me gain a deeper understanding of what it is to live and truly enjoy each moment. Adventure is out there for each of us and all we have to do is remember to make the most of our time. Circumstances, your way of life.. it all changes. Focus on the now and you'll be amazed at what you can accomplish when you set your mind to it.

                  Tipco

Who knew that one meeting could change my life?
I took a chance and did something that surprised everyone: I made a spontaneous decision to travel and serve. Doing so meant that I had to leave everything behind.. school, work, family, friends, and the only way of life that I knew.
But you know what?
I'm a better person because of it.

I used to be a person who was scared of little kids and the idea of teaching, but not only have these kids found their way into my heart, I've discovered that I can do whatever I set my mind on.

As we start preparing for our departure, I find that more and more of my highlights are coming from my kids. It's the funny things they say and do, it's D-Day wearing his Thor costume to school, it's playing with them both during and after classes that makes me wish I could take them home with me. They are the reason I came here and they are the reason I don't want to leave.

Sun

All the Places

I'll admit, I've been dreading adding another post because of how much has happened in the past month, but I guess 3 vacations in a row will do that to you.
*I feel like 5 days of working on this post definitely validates my dread :P*

Back in March, when the school year ended and right before our 10 day vacation, we had to say our goodbyes to many of the students who wouldn't be returning for Summer Camp. I didn't think I'd grown so attached to these kids... but it was hard.

I took my journal to class and had each of my Basic Reading students draw a picture and sign their name in the back, so I'll always have a piece of them. Such a good idea! For one of our class activities we also drew giant monsters, which were SO cute.. but I seemed to have lost them.. Dang!

The next morning, after driving through the night to get to Bangkok, we jumped on a plane that took us to Krabi, where there were some of the most amazing beaches and cliffs I've ever seen. When I imagine Thailand this is the area I think of.

KRABI


This was the first beach we visited during our stay in both Krabi and Thailand, and holy smokes, it was incredible! It wasn't too touristy, the beach was clean and the water was warm!

This little guy stole some items from a woman's bag and started to get aggressive when she tried to retrieve them. After a quick skirmish and some stick throwing, the lady grabbed her stuff and ran, leaving us to face the thief. He saw my bag and literally began chasing me!! I tried running away, but he was quite determined. With thoughts of monkey teeth and claws sinking into my leg, I (softly) whacked him with my bag to change his mind. I guess he decided I wasn't worth it... so be began chasing other girls in my group.
Moral of the story: Monkeys are TERRIFYING

We took a longboat to Railay beach

And dang was it gorgeous!!!

I was quite enthralled with the water
(in case you hadn't noticed)

Of course, we visited one of the temples before leaving

 From Krabi we flew to Phnom Penh, Cambodia to renew our visas. Did you know Cambodia uses a mixed currency system of both the US Dollar as well as the Cabodian Riel? True story. $1 is equivalent to 4000 riel, so they use riel in place of US coins. After bribing the official to get our visas done on time we explored a bit of the city.

CAMBODIA:

PHNOM PENH 

Top: Taking our first real tuk-tuk from the Phnom Penh airport to our hostel. In Cambodia. Cambodia!!!

Left: Breakfast with Hercules at this legit diner that had pictures taped up on the wall drawn by people from all over the world that had eaten there. We decided to leave our mark :)

I found sugar cane!!! It's more common to juice the sugar out and drink that instead of gnawing on the cane... but where's the fun in that???









Our hostel, the Lovely Jubbly (if you ever go to Phnom Penh, Cambodia I definitely recommend this place!), set us up with some tuk-tuk drivers who took us to the Oudong Mountain temple. There were a ton of stairs up the mountain - over 600 - and the village kids made sure that all 7 of us had our own personal tour guide.

A baby monk!!

My 12 year old tour guide!

We had the opportunity to walk through the Tuol Sleng S-21 Genocide prison and met one of the 7 survivors.


Royal Palace

CAMBODIA:

SIEM REAP

Phnom Kulen Mountain, where a building is built around a massive rock formation so that a huge reclining Buddha could be carved from the tip of the stone and where the spiders are insanely ginormous. Check out the normal-sized door handle for a size comparison :P

This is the culprit for my temporarily incapacitated phone and lack of photos for the rest of this vacation. Spread randomly throughout the bottom of the shin-high water were some very unusual, perfectly circular, holes that went down about 3 feet. A few holes had logs sticking out of them to protect people from stepping in them; however, some were left log-less, which I found out the hard way. When I fell in one of them my bag was completely submerged, drenching my phone and the rest of my belongings... leaving me camera-less for the real waterfall.



Photo courtesy for both the waterfall and Angkor Wat at sunrise goes to Samantha!

"This looks like a nice place to grow."

                            - The trees

Upon our return to Phichit we began teaching Summer Camp. Though the teaching is the same, there are a few differences from regular school. For one, I've been teaching the younger kids as well as my Basic Reading kids. That's been fun. Getting used to the lower developmental levels was a bit of a struggle, but I slowly got the hang of it :) Our schedule is another change we've all gladly gotten used to. During the school year we all had varied schedules, but Summer Camp combined my Basic Reading class with the younger kids, meaning Sabrina and I joined the rotation with Shae, Jes, and Kelbi. Instead of teaching from 9-12 with three additional classes spread throughout the week, now we teach with the other teachers from 8:30 to noon and have the rest of the day to do whatever. It's pretty great. 

I'll admit, I was scared to begin teaching the younger kids, but they're not so bad. I do have a hard time keeping them entertained and engaged in my lessons, but the more I teach them the better I get. This just reaffirms for me what I already know: Change can be tough, but that doesn't mean it's bad. Chances are it'll do you some good :)

Friday, April 4th was our fourth day teaching Summer Camp and also my birthday! Kelbi and Shae surprised me by bringing their kids in during milk break and singing Happy Birthday to me, which was so absolutely cute :) After teaching I walked back to the room to find a cake! Somehow my friends managed to find time during our busy teaching hours to make me one, chocolate of course, and to top it off they handed me the sweetest card and a Snickers bar! But wait, it gets better. My birthday fell on an evaluation day (that's not the good part). During class, when Samantha was sitting in the corner watching and taking notes on my lesson, I saw her writing a lot down on the sheet and figured I was doing terribly and would receive a lot of suggestions on how to improve my classes. Imagine my surprise when Samantha handed me this after teaching :D Oh, and it was out of 5, so I did real good :)
To say I felt loved and appreciated would be an understatement. My day had been made about 10 times over, which was good, because I spent the last 8 hours of my birthday in a squished van with Kelbi and Jes as we made our way to Pattaya for the weekend.

PATTAYA

Pattaya is Thailand's Las Vegas... and it was a blast. The beach wasn't the cleanest or best I've been to, but the atmosphere of the whole area was fantastic! We rented motor scooters and sped throughout the city when we weren't shopping or swimming.

Haha, and we may have had a run in with the local police for not having a Thai license... oops!





 It was our first day on the scooters and as we rounded the corner to the main touristy street with the shops and the beach a cop waved us to the side. We pulled over and showed him our US driver's licenses, to which he shook his head, pocketed our licenses and said "No good." He wrote us each a ticket, told us to pay the 400 baht at the police station and then come back for our licenses. Sketch, right?
Since we had no other choice we complied... and rode our scooters to the police station. We stashed our bikes by Starbucks, because we didn't want the cops to confiscate them, and walked back to our cops to get our licenses...



...only to find out that the receipt the police at the station gave us acted as a temporary Thai license and allowed us to ride the scooters for 5 extra days. So there's that... Haha :) It was a fun adventure and definitely the highlight of that trip.


The next 4 days of teaching flew by, and soon we were off on another vacation. We left Phichit late Friday night and arrived at the Bangkok airport early Saturday morning with time to kill before our flight to Phuket. Upon landing on the island our pre-arranged ride took us to a snorkeling tour place. It was pretty cool, we got to see a a lot of different islands, including the 2 Phi Phi islands, Monkey Beach, and a few more that I can't remember the name of.

PHUKET

The beaches at all of these islands were gorgeous! Each one had pure white sand and was surrounded by the clearest water and rocky cliffs covered in trees.

About halfway through, our guide handed out snorkeling gear and gave us the opportunity to see the corral and fish. Even though water kept sneaking in through the tube, that was by far my favorite part of the tour.

There were so many fish! I loved the striped blue and yellow ones as well as the bigger mixed color fish. They had red, blue, green and pink splattered all over their bodies, which I found quite interesting.

Phuket is the vacation we booked back in January during our first week here. See, we lucked out and our stay in Thailand overlapped with Songkran, the Thai New Year water festival. It's the biggest festival of the year and people from all over the globe come to Thailand to join in on the water fight celebrations.

Ice cold water, baby powder, and colored clay are all part of the fun. People set up barrels of ice cold water and sell water gun refills along the street while random people run up to strangers and wipe baby powder or a colored substance on their face.

We couldn't go anywhere without getting drenched. It was like nothing I've ever experienced and all the while I could only think,
"Wow. Am I really here right now? This is incredible!"

That night we found a New Year's concert on the beach. It took me a little longer than the rest of the girls, but soon I was jumping right alongside them to the music, which, oddly enough, was in English.

If you ever get the chance to visit Thailand during the Songkran I wholeheartedly recommend it. I'm also convinced that we need to add a country-wide water fight to our 4th of July celebrations. Wouldn't that be the best??

 

Yes. Yes, it would.