Pictures from Way Back

The following are pictures from Julia's phone :)

A picture of our morning school (the primary and secondary building where Ariel works)

The Wat between the Kindegarten and Primary/Secondary school

Some of Julia's adorable students

The hospital nearest us. We took this picture because it's such a nice hospital (especially compared to the one closest to us in India)

This is how Julia's boss thinks she can teach 3 year olds English...Just hand them this worksheet and see what happens.

More adorable kids in uniform

This is how they look every single time they see Khun Kru Julia. They run down the stairs and swarm her with hugs and affection.

Just a funny random picture. This is what school actually looks like. Just a bunch of chaos in the halls really.

The kindergarten building in the morning school, where Julia works

A trip to the market: tetris-ing our groceries

Found this gem on a box of markers

The kids doing their worksheets

Julia spying on me during one of my classes (Secondary 1, I believe. Which is like 7th grade)

The afternoon school classroom

Teacher view

Student view

The following are pictures from my phone or camera that have yet to be uploaded. They go waaaay back since virtually 100% of the pictures uploaded on this blog so far were from Julia's camera. They're also out of order probably.

Our delicious Thanksgiving dinner!

Julia's fave: Pumpkin Cheesecake

Inside the classroom of Jules' kindegarten

I don't really know what to say here...

Loi Krathon celebrations. Julia says I fit right in.

We were forced to play music instead of teach

Sports Day

Includes cheerleading competition

Our vegetable stand at our local market. Yum!

One night we made tacos. And it was the most glorious thing ever. This picture absolutely does not do them justice.

The watermelon we carved for Halloween

A blurry picture of a blurry night

Love this. Except the dude covering Jenna's face.

Favorite. How funny is it that we're not even technically in the club right now.

Alex found a frog

This is Alex's "Stink Eye." It took us a while to figure out what she was doing with her face.

This was when I tried to take a picture of Alex and the frog, but it hopped out of her hand and we all reacted.

The carrot dried out and the coolest/weirdest thing happened to the inside.

Us at the Yi Ping festival waiting for the ceremony to start!

When we went to the Lamphun Loi Krathong Parade, we stayed over at the owner of the school's house in their spare bedroom, which looked like this. It was fabulous.

Us getting ready for the Lamphun Loi Krathong Parade

Me with the principal of the morning school

More artsy pictures of the lantern release

This was us after it rained and the parade was cancelled

The kids saw my camera and kept making me take pictures of them. It was cute.

The process of making the krathong

Say no to Drungs!

Krathongs from the afternoon school

Us with some of our (top) students from the afternoon school

Mr. and Mrs. Loi Krathong pageant

Taco Bell! Oh wait...

Omg this dog.

A delicious dinner we made for ourselves. It's hard to appreciate the full awesomeness behind our food pictures because if you haven't lived here or don't have a kitchenette that only has a hot plate, you wouldn't quite know how proud we were of this meal.

Creeeepy fish

After a few weeks of driving the motorbike to and from work

I eat with my mouthgaers.

An entire truck of durian. Which, if you don't know what that is, I would say smells and tastes like a combination of burnt rubber and smelly feet.

Not sure if I have enough chalk.

A Rant About Being Lost in Your 20's

I have a post in the works that updates you all about our adventures and goings on of the past month, but I'm going to interrupt it for now in order to do something I haven't done in quite some time: write. As in write what I'm thinking, how I'm feeling, no filters, just from my mind to my words to your eyes.

I haven't written in quite some time because, unlike many great artists and writers, I'm not really able to write when I'm happy. When I'm not overcome with some sort of (usually negative) emotion, of fear, of anger, of sadness. But having not written in so long is like locking a door, or closing floodgates. I forget that that's an option, an outlet. And then one day I'll feel overwhelmed and I won't know what to do with it and words will be swimming in my head, but being unused and unpracticed, they don't form the proper sentences. They don't convey, they only add to the confusion. So then when I finally have enough, and--almost always at the most inappropriate time--I have a pen and a scrap of paper, I write. And it starts off shaky (as you can witness yourself), but it starts to flow more easily, more readily. And I feel myself slipping into that zone, that place that isn't quite creative, but at least is productive. It doesn't come up with anything new, it only uses the words, the phrases, the trite forms of writing that we have seen and grown to love, nothing extraordinary in form like C.S. Lewis, nothing incredibly unique like a new language of Tolkein. Just your typical, your average, reused, respoken, but isn't that all that's needed to be able to convey something I want you to relate to? Something I need you to understand. So now, I want you to understand:

Every relatable television character in their early 20's is lost, confused, hopeless, and scared. But nothing prepares you or even properly conveys just how scared and aimless you'll truly feel when you get there. And you want to believe that all your education, your extra-curriculars, your attempts at molding yourself into a "good" person amounts to more than what you've become. But not having it figured out means not knowing where I'll be in the future, not the future as in 5 or 10 years, but in just one year. And even most of the one year is hazy, because maybe I know what I'll most likely end up doing, but I'll most likely want something different--something more. And I know that someday I'll look back on my 20's like I can now look back on my teen years. Because when you're living as a teenager, you know that someday...EVENTUALLY...the acne will begin to fade, and the easy embarrassment  and the puberty, and all that shitty stuff that comes with those years will be something you can look back on. Not with fondness though. Personally, I would never choose to relive my high school years. So I guess that's what's different about your 20s. Because you know the someday...EVENTUALLY...you'll be able to look back on your 20s and remember how lost and confused and scared you were, but you can look at it with fondness. You can remember the serendipity, the freedom that comes with having no one to depend on you. Nothing to tie you down. But right now, living it, is different. Because I'm NOT looking back and laughing about how naive I was. Instead, I'm here, scared and hopeless, frustrated and aimless. And anyway I'm trying to continue looking at the big picture, or thinking about how it's the journey and not the destination, but the problem is that I don't yet have a destination. All I'm sure of is that I want to help people. But ask me what I'm doing in March, when these part-time jobs are over, but we still have a while on our lease for our apartment, so we'll most likely be looking for another job, but for how long, and what are you doing after teaching English, and are you preparing for anything else? (Are the questions that I'm asking myself and that other people would ask me given the chance I'm sure)

Anyway, rant over. A tried and true rant, like angsty adolescence or mid-life crises; let this be anti-climactic and aimless 20s, or maybe to go with Terrible Twos, there are Turbulent Twenties. I don't know, this is why I'm not a slogan writer or a catchphrase developer, if those are things.

A Trip to Chiang Dao

Part of the reason why it seems the expats in Chiang Mai love it so much is all of the small weekend trips you can take around the main city. So on the weekend of December 8th, everything finally fell into place so that we could take our first weekend trip: We had Sparkules, our trusty steed, we had received our first paycheck (and sufficiently freaked out/jumped around with the confirmation that we actually achieved our goal of moving to a foreign country, finding a job, and getting paid for it), and we had time to spare (that we didn't have to dedicate to visa runs, work permits, immigration things, etc.). I had compiled a list of "fun things to do" in Chiang Mai and we agreed upon traveling up north to Chiang Dao, about an hour and a half away. Most famous for its caves and hot springs, the area attracts expats and tourists mostly for its getaway from the city feel (debatable...this will be discussed later). It's quite a small city that is incredibly over-priced, and Jules and I came to the conclusion that one would really only be able to spend about 3 days there before going insane. Don't get me wrong, it was really relaxing and a perfect weekend adventure, but it's a small place that's quickly becoming more well-known and thus more packed with people looking for things to do in a place that isn't ready yet to entertain them all. Because calling ahead of time to book a place wasn't working, we took our chances and just tried to find a place to stay when we arrived. This is why, after an hour and a half drive (which really makes your butt sore around kilometer 40), we were exhausted at being turned down place after place for being too full. What's funny is, coming from LA, I realize how funny it sounds to be like, "Man we drove for a whole hour and a half!" when people definitely do that daily, and in traffic nonetheless. It was quite scenic and chilly for the last half of the ride as we scootered up the winding mountain. Although, thinking back to my life in LA again, I'm not entirely sure I know what cold is anymore, after living in constant 90-100 degree weather. After a bit of a search, we got some help in finding one of the homestays, Hobby Hut, which really completed the experience. It had a tucked away feeling, right by the famous Chiang Dao mountain (third tallest in all of Thailand), with only four traditional Lanna homes, each about 10 x 10 feet, with only a mattress, a mosquito net, a light and an outlet. The owners explained that they realized we have grown used to living with so many things we consider necessities, but really all we need are a few simple things (which they provide with a shared bathroom and kitchen in addition to your one bedroom home). The main things to do in Chiang Dao are to hike the mountain, see the caves, and go to the hot springs. So the next day we set out to see the caves, which is really just a overpaid Thai guide rushing you through a cave and telling you about how all the different formations look like various animals or objects. Though it was an impressive cave, it was already taken over by tourism, and was really only a site worth seeing because it's the thing to do. Though we didn't hike the mountain, it seems that would have been the more impressive thing about the area. As I said, Chaing Dao is a place where tourism is only beginning, and it seems they aren't quite prepared with how to deal with it. For example, when looking for a place to eat, we scootered into town and came across a restaurant that had Happy Hour from 9 am to 5 pm, where all drinks were half off. There are multiple hot springs in the area, and some of them are free, so it was great stumbling upon a small hotspring with some concrete tubs setup right next to a shallow stream. I also mentioned earlier that it has a false get away from the city feel because at night (at least on this particular weekend when we were there), the drunken singing into the early morning from the nearby-but-somewhat-still-far-away karaoke bar really cut into the quiet sounds of nature and stillness. Overall a fun getaway and our first trip out of Chiang Mai, which inspired me to buy a "Weekend Road Trips around Chiang Mai" book.

Among other activities we've been able to find in the area is an adorable mini golf place where each hole is a Wonder of the World or a significant landmark in Thailand. And for my birthday, we went bowling in a place that made me temporarily forget I was in a foreign city.

We have pictures of all these things of course, but have yet to upload them, so hopefully we'll get around to that.


I have a feeling this entry is a bit broken up and anti-climactic but I've had the beginnings of it saved for weeks now and I feel with all the complaints from loved ones, you'll take what you get. So this is it for now, but hopefully...HOPEFULLY, there's more to come.