Day 202

Walking down our apartment complex street to go eat dinner. We live way at the end, soi sip song (12). Those bright lights at the end are the main street, Phuttha Bucha. Phuttha Bucha means "offerings to Buddha."

Day 201

The view from our happy hour spot tonight, before the rain and lightning.

Day 200

This place is right near the apartment and is always packed on weekend nights. I thought it was a hot pot place but it was actually just a grill your own food place. We thought we ordered beef, chicken and salmon but definitely ended up with at least 6 different kinds of thinly sliced meats and an unknown kind of fish (it could have very well been salmon). There were veggies too, and it was all pretty good.

L-R Jordan, Joy, Megan, Cristal, Nina

Day 199

My slippers at work! We take off our shoes before entering classrooms and offices, so for most of the day our options are socks, barefoot or slippers.

Day 198

I am an official Movie Club member and have rented my first movie in Thailand: Food, Inc.! It's in Thai, not English, for my students to watch. Good thing I won't understand... (joking)

Day 197

Our first meal made at home in our new electric pot, potatoes and eggs. Tasty, only thing missing is some cheese! :-)

Day 196

Close up at Wat Arun... more first month of Thailand pictures to come in a Picasa album soon. It was hard to pick today's picture!

Day 195

Friday night at the mall.

Day 194

Broccoli juice!

Day 193

Just wanted to give everyone a better idea of the street we live on. See that first driveway/entrance on the left, where those three students are crossing the street? That's where you turn to get into our complex. The complex is huge, there are twelve streets (it's all residential there though, no food vendors or anything like that) in the complex, most with three buildings some with more. Each of the three buildings has 6 floors and I think each floor has 4 apartments each.

This photo is taken from a walkover, but people hardly ever use it, they just cross the street whenever they can. See that blue krapong on the left? Those are the little guys I take to work, and guess what? Jacob's sitting in that one!

Day 192

Typical weekday night, take home dinner and watch Friday Night Lights! I'm getting so much better at spicy, see how spicy both our plates look??

Day 191

Meditation time at Monday morning assembly.

Day 190

More Hua Hin beach time! We sat at this little restaurant on the beach for a few hours with some fruit smoothies and tasty food, and fun European tourist people watching. The sand looks extra white in this picture for some reason, but it was pretty white anyway. That's Jacob sitting at our table looking at me taking the picture. We had a great weekend and are looking forward to many weekend trips outside of Bangkok in the future!

Day 189

Hanging out on the beach at Hua Hin!

Day 188

I'm teaching! This is my project class in the school kitchen, we just made rock candy to learn about evaporation and molecules. Plus they're all excited about eating it next week.

Left to right going around the table: Kim, Pop, Fem, Artie, Cristal, Rew, Palm

Day 187

Chatting with Mom, Pops and Copps!

Day 186

Learning how to play euchre with Jacob, Megan and Joy! They all know how to play already, and being very nice and patient with me. :-)

Day 185

Jacob found the rugby team for KMUTT, the university campus where my school is located. He might start practicing with them for the exercise. They had a game today, and told Jacob to come watch at 4:30pm. Around 5:15pm the other team hadn't shown up yet and they said they didn't know what happened or if they would show up. We decided to hang out to watch them practice anyway, then as we were about to leave at 6pm, the other team's bus showed up. We stayed for the first 20 minutes or so of the game, they were better than we expected! Jacob's a good six inches taller than the tallest guy on the team, but they are pretty quick.

Also, see that large crane? Directly to the right of that, the pointy building, that's my school. We're floors 1 through 10 and floors 11 through 14 is another school.

Day 184

Jacob's first krapong ride! I've taken one a few times now, just to/from work, but we took one to dinner tonight. I didn't mean to make this blurry, but I couldn't get a not blurry one... and it kinda looks cool anyway.

Day 183

My first batch of hand-washed clothes! We did our first load of laundry last week, it was easy. We put clothes to wash then gave a lady some money, she moves them to the dryer then folds them for us and we pick up a couple hours after we drop off. That's what we'll do with most of our laundry. These are a few pieces I didn't want to wash and dry in the machines. This is the balcony off our bedroom, and back in the corner over there is our maca (hammock)! It's an ENO hammock we brought over with us, it's great! It's generally hotter than we want to be outside, so we don't use it much... but we could if we wanted to! :-)

Day 182

Jacob found a Rugby club that he might start playing with, and one of the guys owns this sports bar. The Rugby World Cup started yesterday, and we went to watch the Argentina vs. England game today with some of the Rugby guys. I don't know if you can tell, but these people are pretty much all white. This is the most white people I've seen in 2 weeks! There was one American we talked to, but the rest were British, Scottish, Irish, Australian, etc. It was fun! I also had a pretty tasty club sandwich with fries.

Day 181

Dinner! One of the other teachers has been talking about this great meat on a stick guy all week, but he was always out of food or gone by the time I got home. I caught him today, and it was delicious!

Day 180

Walking around the 1-kilometer path at the park right near our place. It had rained earlier in the day and looked clear, but part of the way through our second kilometer it started sprinkling. Definitely raining by the time we walked back home, then really pouring by the next half hour. Now it's been raining for a few hours, this is probably the day it's rained the most since we got here.

Day 179

Ordering dinner! This is right in front of our apartment complex, we went around 6:15pm but that's early for Thai dinner so not all the vendors were set up yet. I got bah-mii-nam (tasty noodle soup with stuff in it and pork) and Jacob got bah-mii-gee-ow-nam (tasty noodle soup with stuff in it and dumplings and pork).

Day 178

Went to my first Thai mall today! They had this photo booth and you take a picture (for free) then you can email it to yourself or post it on facebook! Apparently it's for a funniest photo contest but I didn't realize that until later, I just thought it was cool. Megan and Christina are in this picture, two other teachers at DSIL. They are wearing the pink uniform shirts that I'll be wearing soon. They are tailor-made so I got measured last week and will get them soon. Pink, great color.

Also, the parking garages are crazy! So many cars, they just block each other in but then leave the car in neutral so other people can push cars out of the way to get out. Crazy!

Day 177

Dinner with some of the other ENS (English Native Speaker) teachers at DSIL! We had a tiny table for the six of us, but tasty food. Meals are usually done family style, everyone gets a plate with rice, a fork and spoon, then just pass around the dishes! Jacob was sitting where the empty space is, he took the picture for us. Nina is on the left, she grew up in SoCal and she's Thai. Next is Matt, Joy and Megan, all UNC alums who studied abroad here their junior year. Thanks for always showing us around!! :-)

Day 176

This is one of the bigger outdoor markets near us. You probably can't really tell the size from this picture, but it's fairly large. It's hard to compare it to anything, but there are also much bigger markets in Bangkok. The largest is over 35 acres! There are probably 3 long aisles in this area, then across a little alleyway there's another area just like it. During the week it's mostly just produce, meat, fish, and food to eat from vendors, but on Thursday-Sunday the parking lots get taken over as well and clothes, shoes, jewelry, cell phones, etc. etc. are also sold. This market is actually where we got our cell phones. It's also a Muslim market. The internet (and it's very smart) says Thailand is anywhere from 90-95% Buddhist, but there's a Muslim neighborhood near us and this is a Muslim market, so we see lots of women wearing headscarves here, and there's a mosque nearby.

Day 175

We came here for dinner, it was very fancy. Meals were about 100 baht, instead of 30... dinner was still only about $15 total, but that's big time expensive here! The food was really good. There were these cool lights hanging in the trees, other places around here have them too. The lights are kind of like Christmas icicle lights, they turn on and off going down the length of each one. Not sure if that makes any sense, but Jacob really likes them and we'll buy some whenever we see them. We also got to watch a Russia vs. Macedonia soccer game over dinner, Russia won 1-0 but Macedonia definitely put up a good fight!

Day 174

My desk at work! That's the mindmap for my project (Chemistry, with six 10-12 year olds)!

Day 173

The view from the top floor (6th) of our apartment building. From the second floor we can't see the Bangkok skyline, but we do see lots of palm trees... and lots of power lines.