Tigers!

Just wanted to post a few pictures from our visit to Tiger Kingdom. We'll definitely describe the trip in more detail later, but for now I wanted to get some sleep before the big move tomorrow!

I'd also like to say a quick note about the ethics of the place. First off, contrary to popular belief, Tiger Kingdom doesn't drug the tigers to prepare them for human interaction. If a tiger seems sad, it's probably just because they're tired, as a tiger sleeps up to 18 hours in a day and is a nocturnal animal. These tigers are born and raised to be less aggressive (the same way some wolves became dogs and eventually pets) and trainers don't let the public play with the tigers until they are at least the third generation in captivity. The place is as humane as a zoo and maybe even more so as they get to play around with each other as well as people and we didn't see any pacing animals. Really the only bad thing is that they have to deal with us annoying them for 8 hours of the day while they probably would rather be sleeping. Overall we had an amazing experience and have some great pictures to share. Enjoy! And remember, click to enlarge :)

It Takes Two Weeks to Settle In

I should probably start with the best news of all: we have an apartment in Chiang Mai!
We move in tomorrow and it comes pre-furnished with bedding and all new Ikea-like furniture. Pre-furnished also means it comes with an awesome L-couch, which is pretty much what sold Julia on the place (so for all of you coming to visit, this is for you). AND it even comes with a mini kitchenette! (A hard find in Thailand as it's usually cheaper to eat out than to make your own food at home). So we'll have a fridge, microwave, sink, and mini hot plate/stove.
This is all in a fairly small area (it's a studio apartment), but they utilize the space well so we essentially have three tiny parts: a bedroom/bed area, a living room/couch area, and a kitchen/dining area (complete with table and chairs). Finally, we have a decent size bathroom and an awesome-sized (big) TV which has a place to hook up to our computers, making the internet our television!
We'll have wi-fi, laundry, and a fitness center at a little extra cost too.
It's in a nice area filled with cheap street food, convenient 7-11s and mini marts, bars, clubs, shops, cafes, and plenty of places to explore. It's also right by the Super Highway, which is what we need in order to easily get, well, anywhere, but more specifically to our school and back (which we will most likely do via scooter and it will be about a 15 min. commute). And we're right by the Doi Suthep mountains so anytime we need to get away, it's a quick scooter/tuk-tuk ride up the mountain for some fresh air and one of my favorite wats that we've visited so far, the forest wat, Wat Umong. It's here that we met Little Buddha, our chosen name for a friendly little black cat that we fell in love with (pictures to come). We're also right by Chiang Mai University, which we had a chance to visit during our apartment hunt. It's a beautiful campus with a bit of a college feel to the surrounding area, so we could head there if we wanted to jump into the student scene.
The real kicker is that all of this is well within our budget for an apartment so we have some wiggle room to save, live comfortably, and have fun.
Some news that some of you may or may not like: the leaser is offering the apartment at a cheaper rate if we sign a contract for a year, rather than 6 months. So to save money and to think positive, we are taking that deal. Which means we will most likely still be here at least until October of next year (crazy thought!).

We're so excited about this great find. But we have other things we need to catch you up on!

For example, Sunday Walking Street. Ah, how do I describe thee. Around 4pm to midnight every Sunday, vendors throughout Chiang Mai set up tents and the like in the heart of the Old City. It's like a mini farmer's market, upscale swap meet, Third Street Promenade all rolled into one. It's a must-see in any proper visit to Chiang Mai and we haven't missed one since we've been up here (which makes 3 so far). There are goods of all sorts, from wooden combs to instruments to dog clothes to artwork. The high quality and variety of items combined with the low prices makes it a great place to shop for decorations and souvenirs. And the food. Oh the food. I'll leave the pictures to illustrate the joy and wonder and deliciousness in that.

Be sure to click on the pictures to enlarge them so you can see the delicious detail. It also makes for easier viewing as it becomes a slideshow.

Yummy variety of fruit juices

Fried silkworm, fried giant water bug, fried short tailed cricket, you get the idea.

The world's most delicious waffles

Adorable bao! Or as I call them, manapuas.

Ignore the greasy-sweatiness, it's hot and humid okay.

Endless varieties of noodles

Delicious fruit shakes. I love the way they have the ingredients in the cup, so you know what you're getting. And you just pick one and he adds some sugar water and blends it! He also had a system so that the ones on the bottom row (typically just one type of fruit) were the cheapest and they get more expensive as you go up.

There are also some less-appetizing things, which are still probably delicious

Julia's one non-food picture. Some adorable puppies (might have been drugged, but what can you do :[ )

Street sushi? Hmm...

Quail eggs

I'll be sure to get some pictures of the apartment once we've moved in! Also an address :)

The Job Search

Just a word of thanks to everyone from home who has been encouraging us this past week - your sense of perspective really helps! Typically, being in a foreign country always feels like a whirlwind at first. We've been going through the always-anticipated and ever-unavoidable culture shock all while living on a ridiculous budget and trying to turn our rapidly dwindling savings into paychecks. That's not to say that we haven't been falling in love with Chiang Mai, and more broadly, Thailand. It's difficult not to love delicious street food for under a dollar, scooter rentals for under ten, and opportunities to schmooze with elephants and tigers just a tuk-tuk trip away. We're so excited to be able to indulge in all of that once the dust settles! Still, a month happens in a week, and it's easy to feel defeated. Sometimes it's nice to sit down and give each other a pep talk. Here's a typical conversation:

Aire: We've been to so many places! None of them want us! What's wrong with us?!
Julia: Dude. We've been doing this for 4 days. If we were unsuccessful in a 4 day job hunt in America, would we consider ourselves failures?
Aire: Okay true. You're right.

ten minutes later

Julia: Is it our pictures? Should we take better pictures? What if we don't make enough and our lives are miserable? What if we're not good teachers?

This takes up about ten minutes of our day. The rest is replete with emailing, calling, and visiting schools within a 15km radius. If you were wondering what it's like to land cold in Thailand and try to find a job from nothing, don't worry - I'll let you know in gruesome detail. Let me prelude this by emphasizing that Thailand is run quite efficiently and all mishaps and misfortunes are entirely due to our tight budget and inexperience. Oh, and the heat. Actually, mostly the heat.

On pavement pounding outings, we like to come as prepared as possible so we can be in and out of schools. We print about 10 copies of everything we need for applications, which tends to be anything from just a CV to a CV, cover letter, picture, copy of diploma, copy of TEFL degree, copy of passport, copy of visa, and official transcripts. We put each little packet in a folder and have one prepared for each school. Upon arriving, we get mixed responses - anything from confusion, sitting around waiting for an English speaker, an impromptu interview, or a formal application sheet. Where the fun really lies is in renting a scooter for these trips. Unfortunately, though, compared to America, Thailand is extremely appearance conscious. Wrinkles, mismatching outfits, or a hair out of place can cost you the job. Unfortunately, when we arrived in Thailand we realized that the heat and swelling made all of our shoes too small and extremely uncomfortable. Unfortunately, when in Thailand the lining of skirts and blazers very much restrict walking ability, not to mention capacity to scooter. Fortunately, Ariel and I are not too easily discouraged. Our first day out, after scootering to my first interview sitting sideways on the bike as cars whizzed by on what is termed the "superhighway", clinging to Ariel for dear life with one hand while directing her using google maps with the other (+1 for iPhones in foreign countries), we decided it was probably best to perfect this whole deal. The next day, we walked/scootered around in blouses,shorts, and tevas. When we neared a school, we located a well-positioned pay phone and sneakily slipped on our pencil skirts over our shorts and quickly changed shoes. It gave us a certain sense of satisfaction to know that we were wearing shorts under our skirts. Probably comparable to the "imagine everyone in the audience in underwear" tactic. While still exhausting, it got the job done. We didn't die on our motorbike, we didn't worsen our blisters, and we looked pretty darn classy.  

Long story short, after calling and emailing 25 schools and applying in person to a dozen of the most promising, we had little to show for it - one interview that was too low paid for the distance, long hours, and the meh vibe I had about this bougie, pretentious school for upper class Thai kids, one interview for part-time, far-away work, and 4 schools that may or may not have full or part time work and may or may not have responded to our application. We were getting pretty discouraged. But then, on Saturday, after spending the previous day researching the plethora of well paying jobs in Bangkok, we finally had a win! We received a call from a school we had dropped into the day before, saying they had one job opening and maybe two. As of today, we have visited two of the school's locations, observed the classes we will be teaching, submitted our documents for a work permit, and looked over our contracts! The school is new and looks great. There are other farang teachers who were friendly and even able to give us advice on what salary to negotiate. And, because it's a Christian school, we even get a week off for Christmas! Amazingly, after our unrelenting search and plenty of feelings of hopelessness, we seem to have a found a job for both of us, located near where we want to live and paying what we expected. All that's left to do is a demonstration lesson on Wednesday, which seems to be more of a technicality than a weeding out process. It's been crazy not knowing whether or not we're going to stay in Chiang Mai or move back to Bangkok. The cognitive dissonance is ridiculous! We went from trying to talk up Bangkok and downplay Chiang Mai to the other way about and now our minds are just a bit frazzled.

On an only slightly related note, it's very strange taking my resume really seriously for the first time. I had never thought of the things I had done in the past, be it work or volunteer trips/jobs, as resume builders. So it's bizarre being asked if I have teaching experience and realizing that, unintentionally, I do. I'm actually fairly qualified from their perspective, and all from things that I did purely for the enjoyment of it and put on my resume as an afterthought. It's nice to see how life can sort of line up like that, and I hope I can be lucky enough for that kind of thing to carry me through the future. Keep doing what you love, I guess.

A nice thing about this process is that despite the heat and lack of money, applying for the same jobs, sharing all the same food, and being around each other non-stop, Aire and I are still definitely each other's rock. As always, one of us is always around to be positive when the other is feeling cynical. It's great to have someone pump you up for interviews and treat you to a 50 cent fresh orange juice (a generous 20% of our typical food budget for the day) just because you managed to not make a fool of yourself that day. I probably couldn't do all this without her, and it would absolutely not be fun.

Speaking of food budgets, the weekend night markets around Chiang Mai are by far our favorite part of the city so far (which is not exactly fair, considering it is one of the few things we have done because they're technically free. But still). The Sunday night one is the best, starting just down the road from our guest house and continuing for a good mile. Fantastic, unique stalls abound - there are delicious fresh waffles, quail eggs, jelly drinks, noodle dishes, grilled insects, and more! Naturally there are also loads of boutique-y items, as well as some things that are actually pretty tasteful and/or useful. It's fun to see what we think are the best stalls - that is, the ones that seem to have a genuinely cool idea that corners the market in some way. That's always my favorite thing to do at farmer's markets at home, and the concept is similar here. It's fun to try to think of your own idea. Here's a start: don't be the old lady who is only selling plain wooden combs. Be the guy who has a line of people clammering after his fresh waffles full of chocolate or nuts or bananas or pork or all of the above. Yesterday, we were feeling good about our interview that morning so we decided to treat ourselves to the extraneous food items we have yet to allow ourselves. We bought everything that looked really good and came out stuffed and satisfied, if not a bit sad about how far behind budget our splurge would place us. After counting it all up, we realized we had spent $2.75 between the two of us. Again, we had failed at splurging. PS. Come visit us in Chiang Mai. And come on a weekend. Dinner's on us!

A Win

After so many days of heat, exhaustion, walking, being frugal, and trying desperately to keep our hopes up on this get a phone/get a job/find a place to live journey, this is what Julia and I listened to when we finally had a win:

(As well as this No Doubt vs. Eminem Mashup uncensored version, but that might be less appropro for here)


I will tell you what that win is at the end of this entry just to keep you reading.

Many things are more difficult here than they would be in America. That may seem like an obvious statement, but it's not because of the reasons you think; it's the heat. It's so hot and so humid that just walking to get lunch is an extensive endeavor that makes us feel like we just spent the whole day at Disneyland. At one time, while we were walking in the heat to get somewhere that people would normally use a tuk-tuk or taxi for, Julia referenced the debated topic of how much money is necessary for happiness. And we decided we agree with parts of the theory. If we weren't trying to be frugal, we would probably take more taxis rather than walking, which would save us time and energy. We wouldn't have to be sweating with swollen feet when we get to every destination. And with food, we walk further to find something cheaper and we try to buy fewer snacks. With our accommodations, we go for cheaper guest houses with no AC. If we had more money to spend at the moment? No walking in the heat, AC all day errday, and nawms galore. You get the point.

Other than this, applying for jobs has been stressful because what isn't stressful about being unemployed with no income? Add to that the lack of an immediate support network (thank you internet for allowing us to communicate with loved ones, how would we ever have survived in the 70s, oh wait that's what my parents did) and the previous issues with weather and money and you've got our stressed selves.

Since we were going to live here for a year and not just study abroad, we wanted to see if we could use our iPhones instead of buying a cheapy phone here. That whole process turned out to be more nightmarish and expensive than we ever would have imagined. I'll spare you the long-winded story, but suffice it to say that unlocking our phones and getting the right SIM and plan while communicating in broken English (and reading handy pamphlets that are only written in Thai) was an adventure. I say adventure and not a terror only because it's over! We have successfully unlocked our iphones and gotten a phone plan with unlimited 3G and Wi-fi. Which also means we can make our phone a hot spot. Yaaaaaaaaaaaay!

Still searching for a job, but we're hoping apartment hunting will be fun.

Thanks for checking in and maybe next time I can squeeze another entry out of Jules.

Oh and I almost forgot!:

Ariel: +66 909 183 214

Julia: +66 909 183 215

It won't cost us any money if you call, but it'll cost you, so if you have a smartphone, stick to Whatsapp or Wechat. And if you don't know what apps I'm talking about, download them now so we can text each other!

Holding on to hope for a job and a place to live,

JujuAire

The end of one, the beginning of another

Julia put it perfectly when she said that, in many ways, America felt like a vacation and now we're back to figuring out the life we want to live. Hard to describe the feeling that you belong in a place you have never really been to and don't quite know yet. I'm excited to start trying to learn the language, though it's definitely going to be difficult. It took 1 hour of being in Thailand to learn that, despite my best efforts to not get tan, I look Thai and therefore blend right in. And it has taken a short 4 days to have that fact confirmed and reiterated. So now me not knowing Thai makes me look worse than Julia not knowing Thai. And me learning Thai would just make me look like a stupid Thai person, as I wouldn't be able to say very much anyway. Alas, none of this should come as a surprise.

For our second and third day in Bangkok, we went to Chinatown and Old Bangkok. We experienced our first thunderstorm as we were leaving the Grand Palace and got drenched in the pouring rain, but it wasn't so bad because it was still nice and warm out. 

Currently jumbled and at a loss for words, so for once I'll let the pictures do the talking and maybe Julia can pick up where we left off in a later blog entry.

Bangkok Chinatown. One of my favorite pics.

A wild rootbeer has appeared! With some tongue and intestines in the background to give it a nice "we're not in America" feel. Another favorite picture.

So green and so beautiful. A park we stopped by in central Bangkok to catch our breath and take in the scenery.

Part of the Grand Palace in Bangkok, where the royalty used to live. Super shiny and interesting Asian-western hybrid architecture

More of the Grand Palace. Demons on a pillar.

A temporary exhibit as part of the textile museum where we got to try on some traditional Thai clothing. Had a mini professional photoshoot :)

Upon closer inspection, this guard looked like he was about to pass out. Tough job in the heat and humidity. Still, swanky clothes and an important position.

Where are you mailing your letter? You have two options: Bangkok. Other places.

Pose and clothes making us look Greco-Roman rather than Thai

Favorite picture of Julia, also looking Greco-Roman

Stopped by a mall with a Harry Potter-esque bathroom

Tried to capture the essence of the traffic in Bangkok. Providing a taste of everyday life and not just the touristy stuff.

Beautiful quilt mural in the Hua Lamphong train station in Bangkok

Our first Pad Thai! Came in adorable omelette fashion.

Trains with bedding, pillows, blankets and curtains (not to mention AC). Julia's face says it all.

Welcomed with a snazzy sign and we're home :)

Off to get SIM cards and a map. Then we need to do some research about nearby schools and such. Unfortunately, we probably won't have the funds to do any sort of vacation and so we'll have to jump right in to the job search. Wish us luck!