top 10 things i will miss.

i did a post about what i was missing from home before i knew i had to leave so soon. now that my days left are down to the single digits (?!!!!!?!?!?!?) i have made a new list about what i am really going to miss from thailand. and while the previous list was in no particular order, this one is.

10. motorbike taxis. at first i was terrified of them. but as time went on, i grew to love them. its exciting riding through the city, especially at night, with the wind blowing and flying passed otherwise stopped traffic. not to mention the thais get a kick out of seeing a farang on a motorbike as opposed to in a normal cab. i still wont try driving, but i will miss these rides greatly.

9. thai massages. its like going to a chiropractor and a masseuse at once. gets all the knots out and relaxes you (generally) at the same time. add in oil or beach setting for extra relaxation. all for between 100 and 300 baht (~$3-9).

8. buckets. its a bucket-o-liquor, i dont think this needs an explanation.

7. cheap cost of living. cheaper to go out to eat than make it at home, bargaining to pay $4 instead of $6 for a dress, getting angry when i have to pay 180 baht for my taxi ride because he went the wrong way and it should have been 140, even though the 180 is about what it would cost to get INTO a cab back home, beachfront bungalows for under $8. i dont know how im going to be able to live back in the states where they actually want me to pay more for a meal out than my budget here would give me for a week.

6. 7-elevens. i had no idea how big of a role this chain would play in my life over here. whether its because i am craving something a little more western, need some more credit for my phone, want a cheap drink for the road, need to break a big bill for the taxis, or just crave the aircon they blast and need an escape from the deathly heat of the streets, it would not be uncommon to go into one of these a few times a day...sometimes even the exact same store 4 or more times.

5. the beaches. the waves may not compare to the monsters of the atlantic, but the beauty and serenity they bring is just unbeatable.

4. the laid-back lifestyle. im accustomed to the fast-passed city life, and occasionally that meant that i was quite irritated with the way things go around here. their 'mai phen rai' attitude and thai time means that theres generally not a routine or schedule. it took some getting used to, but its actually been nice. i suppose this ties into the beaches as well though. who can be stressed when looking at a scene like that?

3. the kids. specifically, the twins, and a few select students. of course the infamous fifa, but also ploy and best for how their faces light up when they finally understand the difference between using 'it' and 'they.' may and even noon, though now she isnt even my student anymore, for how they run up to me in the halls whenever they see me to give me a hug or throw me a smile and wave if they are standing in line for assembly. peam and khamin for not only being so freaking cute, but for also being my saving graces in my 3/3 and offering answers when im sure everyone is sleeping. oo, bam, cd, max and pretty much all of my 3/1 class for just being so awesome and for the progress i have seen them make to the point where they can now start to joke around with me. and even tonson, the first student i had a one-on-one encounter with on my first day last semester, and consequently the first name i learned, even though now it is usually being screamed because he cant sit still or focused for more than 5 minutes.

2. thai food. ku teaow, ALL kinds of curries, som tam, tom yum, ka prao gai, fish cakes, pad thai and spring rolls from khaosan. however amazing you think it is back home, its 100 times better here. and its so.freaking.good. i thought that by now i would be sick of it, but just the thought of going home and being away from these things is making me miss them already.

1. the people i have met here. its cliche as anything, and ive said it so many times before, but this amazing experience i have had is in great part to the people i have been lucky enough to share it with. many of them have already left this part of the world, and have been missed dearly. and now, i must leave our already shrunken group, earlier than originally anticipated. but its not just the remainders from our group who i will miss, its all the new people i have met since may as well. not doing the course again i thought that my social circle would be limited and i would only have to say goodbye to a select few whenever the time came to leave, but that has been anything but what happened, so now im also missing out on time to let these new friendships grow. everyone here has made such a great impact on my life and im beyond sad to be having to say goodbye too soon.

taxi cab adventures.

throughout the time here in thailand, there have been numerous encounters with public transportation that could only happen here, and only happen to farangs. more specifically, they would only happen to us: me, steph and tash together in a cab just meant a deadly combination. of course, there is the typical happenings of drivers trying to charge us exorbitant fees rather than turning on their meters or telling us simply "no can," but sometimes things that are just slightly more out of the ordinary. here are some of the best stories we have accumulated.

also, i just want to say that these are probably a lot more hilarious to me than anyone else will find them. just take them as those "you-had-to-be-there" kind of things.

uh-oh....accident!

i cant even remember where we were going. i want to say it was china town for the chinese new year, but that could be completely made up. it was sometime around that time though, and of course, as always in thailand, it was more than quite hot. we searched for a while for a taxi that would take us where we wanted to go and with the meter on (because neither of those things is particularly easy to find here), and finally we did. we sat in traffic, of course, for about 10 minutes, and then pulled onto a different street, where we gracefully collided with a motorbike. i dont think anyone was hurt, but the taxi driver jumped out and started arguing with the motorbike driver, who then drove off. but the bumper of the cab was sitting in the street, and the meter was still running. rather than sit around and let the fare get higher, the three of us decided to just get out and find another cab.

caught red handed...maybe?

while heading from one excursion to another, we were in a taxi and passed by a police stop. these are rather routine in thailand, and usually they just peer in to see if everyone in the front is wearing a seatbelt. that said, if theres a farang in the car, there is usually even less of an issue, and they just smile and wave the cabby through. not this time. we were not only stopped, but the cop asked the driver to get out of the vehicle. at this point, we thought it was funny, if slightly inconvenient, but obviously we are used to that in this country. then the cop sent the driver over to another group of police officers and made him open the trunk, and thats when we got a little freaked out, not to mention that the meter was still running (see a theme here?).

eventually, he got back in the car with only a ticket, i think, but we never actually found out what was in the trunk or why he got stopped.

how many farangs can we get into one taxi cab?

soi cowboy in the area of nana plaza is known as (one of) the sleezier districts in bangkok. it also happens to be one of the places frequented by farangs at night. a few months into living here, steph and i had not yet explored that area, so one night the boys (of course!) convinced us we should give it a try. after a bit, although by no means sleezier than some other places we have seen, we were not impressed, and thought we would rather go somewhere else. everyone had split up by that point, so trying to get people together to leave was a task. im pretty sure we had two in the front, and four in the back, when we started pulling away and someone shouted that they saw andrew up the street. the taxi driver didnt understand that we wanted him to pull over to get our friend (or maybe he did and just didnt want to, never can tell with these tricksters!) and so we threw open the door as we passed and andrew basically did a dive onto the laps of everyone in the back seat. this made 7 farangs and an unhappy driver in the car. well done.

bad-luck american.

frequently when they have a little knowledge of english, the drivers will try to start conversations with us. they ask us the standard questions each time...why are we here, how long have we been here, where do we come from, etc. steph was in the front and tash and i in the back, and the driver had just asked us where we each came from. we told him the three countries (canada, england, usa), and he started to say something else when at that moment i sneezed. the look he gave me, according to steph, was one of absolute horror and disgust. then he looked in the rearview mirror and pointed at me while saying "suay." now this word is ridiculously close to the word "suai," which means beautiful. but thats not what he meant. i had to ask someone the next day, but the tonage he used with the word means bad luck. simply for sneezing. mai khao jai.

round-a-bout.

ive referenced our coyotes nights in a few different posts....the place we go to on wednesdays or saturdays and drink free margaritas for two hours. when going from stephs house, it is only a 10 minute taxi drive without traffic. usually there is traffic, but thats still not a problem. the point is, we know the distance and how to get there. we were on our way to meet people and left with about 20 minutes to spare before the drinks started flowing. 50 minutes later, we were outraged. there was a slight amount of traffic, but the driver was going in the wrong direction. we were traveling around the entire city to get to the restaurant which is just a few kilometers north. when we started seeing signs for where lauren lives, just north outside of the city, we tried saying something to him. he just laughed at us, paying no mind to what we were saying. when we finally got there, we tried to offer less money because he took us the wrong way, but he threatened with the police. so we ended up having to pay for an unwanted bangkok tour AND he had cut our free drinking time down by nearly 50 minutes!

taxi ting tong!

without a doubt, probably the funniest taxi story we have. this was just me and steph, on our way back to her place after one of our sunday night splurges. we tried to explore a new area, surasak, because we had heard that there were good places to party and eat there. unfortunately, we chose to go there during the peak of the red shirts disruption, and so we didnt find much...some overpriced decent curry and thats about it. so we headed back. as we were walking back to the main street a cab passed, saw us heading up that direction, and backed up. we got in and because we knew a little thai (we thought) he was impressed and giggly. most of the ride we spent chatting on our own, but occasionally he would throw a comment and a giggle (and i do mean giggle) back at us and that made us laugh as well. but when we got close to her house, all of a sudden he says "hehehe, taxi ting tong! hehehe." in thai, ting tong means crazy, or rather....crazy drunk. wasted. at that point we were on her back street and so we just looked at each other and laughed, but then he sees another white person outside and rolls down the window yelling "farang! teacha! taxi ting tong! hehehe!" and the guy actually was another teacher at stephs school, but one who was not too impressed with the exchange that happened.

early return :[

now that the flight has officially been booked i can actually write this post.

last week i found out that i need surgery. its not life-threatening, but it needs to happen sooner rather than later. after taking into consideration the price of doing it over here without insurance and the recovery time, i have decided that the best option is go home for it. this means that i will not be finishing out my contract and staying here until the end of september and then traveling until middle of december, but will be leaving in three weeks.

i was starting to get homesick and was missing a lot of things (hence previous post), but as soon as even the possibility of going home now came up, i immediately knew that missing those things was rather trivial and that i was not ready to leave. the numbers are now playing mind games with me. i dont know why it matters so much, wanting to be away for at least a year. i mean, 10 months is only 2 shy of a year, but when i think about coming home now rather than october or december, it feels a lot more like i just got here. funny how that works.

what i miss.

***note. i wrote this last week with intentions of posting today. there have been recent developments that kind of make my feelings about this change, and i will post about them next.***

9 months ago today, i left the states. im 75% through with the initial year away i had intended. as ive been talking to more people who have just recently gotten to thailand, i find that im frequently being asked about things i miss most from back home. around thanksgiving i made a post about what i missed at that time, but the things that make the list now are very different. i think that as time has gone on, i have become more used to what is available here that serve as near 'substitutes.' for example, though its still really hard to find real juice, they have things that are close. for what is on this list, nothing similar exists to fill in temporarily.

1. bagels. lightly toasted with lox and cream cheese, tomato and onion. o man i cant explain how badly i want this. in fact, mom, this is what i would like you to greet me with at the airport, whenever that day arrives.

2. pickles. dill pickles to be specific. most people who know me know how much i love them, and there arent any kinds of pickles here, or anything close to the pickled taste even, to satisfy this craving.

3. turkey. i never realized that this was a bird that asia doesnt have. you think chicken is close enough to turkey, but when you cant get turkey you realize how different they actually are. and when i dont eat ham or most other sandwich meats, lack of turkey is noticeable (not that i really get to eat sandwiches to miss this, but still).

4. my clothes. im so sick of everything i have over here. and it doesnt help that most of it is stained, ripped, or otherwise ruined by the heat.

5. looking nice to go out. the heat here makes it pointless to even worry about this one.

6. dc nightlife. no explanation needed.

7. crabs. they have seafood out here, but all the marylanders know nothing else is the same. (though thanks mr winer i do have a small container of old bay which i use on pad thai and in tuna, hehe).

8. driving. i thought that driving so much in high school and college had made me hate driving forever. now that i havent been able to have control over my own transportation for so long, im finding i actually do miss it. especially in the summer when the weathers nice and theres fun music to blare.

of course there are other things i get occasional pangs for. at one point i really wanted pretzels. recently the only thing that i wanted was a watermelon jolly rancher, and they are currently on their way from the states :] i miss wearing heels, but at this point im so used to open-toed shoes every single day that i dont know how i would adjust back to that....or most of western culture, come to think of it.

catch up.

i was going to go ahead and write separate blog posts for everything that has happened since i arrived back from phuket, but if i try to attempt that, i will NEVER get caught up to where my real life is. so this is going to just be a jumbled mess of basically the last month.

so we arrived back at school, and though a week late, went right back into the routine. it turns out that this semester, each grade only has 3 classes rather than 4. this means a few things. first, when they separated the kids into the groups, they did a better job, so now my p#/1s are amazingly good at everything (essentially honors students) and my p#/3s are basically special education classes. i dont mean that in a negative way, its just the way it is, especially p3/3. id say over half the kids in that class have learning disabilities, but thai school systems do not recognize such disorders and just push everyone through together (remember, they cant fail). needless to say, that class has been quite a challenge. also, it means that the classes are a lot bigger. rather than the low 20s, now each class has well over 30 and closer to 40 students in most cases. finally, it means less teaching hours a week for me (wooo!). as i see each class 2 times a week, i was teaching 24 classes last semester. this knocked out 6....but in order to get me teaching 20 hours a week the school tacked on two kindergarten classes once a week each >:( the fact that it is literally only to make me teach 20 hours is blatantly obvious, as there is a separate teacher for kinder classes and she sees the classes twice a week and then i see two classes once a week each and steinar does as well. it throws off the whole consistency thing with the students, and makes planning difficult as we all have to work together. not to mention, teaching kinder kids is a completely different ball game. i definitely am not a fan.

giving me two random kindergarten classes was only the first thing the school changed this semester. they are trying to work to become...different. i leave it at that because i really have no idea what they are trying to accomplish, only can tell that they are working towards some kind of goal. things change daily, and most of these changes make little sense. for that, and a few other reasons, im kind of regretting staying at this school. my main reason was that i was reasonably happy here and used to it, and didnt want to have to learn a new routine. im learning a new routine anyway and not as happy as i was, and had i changed schools at least i could have been in a better location and making more money.

speaking of location.....i had been trying to move apartments since february. i wanted to be closer to the school, the center of town, and have internet at my place. i started communicating this wish to my 'agency' but was told that i couldnt move until april because apparently when i moved in i said for 6 months...which i know i didnt say. whatever. then in may every time i tried to have someone come out to help me find a new apartment, it never worked. by the time they would have been able to get here, it was middle of june, leaving me with just over 3 months, and i didnt see the point. so im not moving, im staying in my place without internet and walking a mile to school in a monsoon most mornings because, o yeah, now its rainy season in thailand. and thats no fun at all.

pictures of my luxury apartment, because i never posted them before.

hmmm, what else?

o, i had a birthday last month. i dont feel any older this year. im not sure if its because it hardly feels like i even had a birthday, as there are few people in this country who even know what day it falls on, because my outlook has changed, or because my life actually feels slightly suspended from reality. but i went with steph, lauren and stephen over to koh samet and had a nice, relaxed, birthday weekend.

to move off of the negative stuff....ive been meeting a lot of new people. since i wasnt getting any new teachers at my school and was not doing the course over, i wasnt really expecting to meet that many new people this semester. steph and i were planning on spending most weekends together on our own, which would have been fine, but its been nice meeting a new group of people too. there are two new ati groups, and because ive been really (i mean REALLY) into watching the world cup games and going out so much to see them, i have met a decent amount of other farangs living here as well. with each new person, the social circles expand. and while at the core there is pretty much always the general similarity of being english teachers, everyone out here comes from different places and has different experiences to share.

sorry there is such a depressing tone to this post. but hey, it shows everyone who keeps telling me that they are jealous of my life that even though im in thailand, life is still life. its not all buckets and beaches....though it does help to have those things there to turn to when life gets to be like this :]