Motorbike :D

We now officially have a motorbike! It’s pretty nice to have. Andrew uses it to get to work because it takes less time than the song-ta-ous and walking. We have taken it once across town to dinner. Andrew drove and I rode on the back! It’s pretty scary mainly because of the crazy traffic and drivers in this city. Also, I know Andrew doesn’t have the most practice driving a motorbike. I was much more nervous riding with Andrew than anyone else I have rode with in Thailand so far.

I have rode with three other people on motorbikes; one was a random Thai teacher. That’s actually a funny story. I turned up at a school for an interview last week and one person in broken English told me the English Program campus is across town and she’ll get me a ride. Then a motorbike with a Thai teacher shows up and I hesitantly hop on. He told me to trust him. I said that I really have to because in my country with ride with helmets. Not to mention I had to ride sideways because I was wearing a skirt.  I wonder if I should tell my family that I rode sideways on a stranger’s motorbike with no helmet but hey I lived to tell a great story. This story really shows how nice the Thais are.

I was less scared riding with stranger than I was riding with Andrew. I bet the guy I rode with grew up on motorbikes. Looking around Thailand you see families riding all the time and the kids are comfortable as can be. You see them eating and not holding on and not wearing helmets. Maybe 10% of kids I’ve seen on bikes have helmets. 50% of the time I see the kids without helmets parents are wearing one. I’m still trying to understand the logic there. Maybe kids helmets are hard to find or they grow out of them too quickly? I don’t know but someone should get all the kids in Thailand helmets.  Any takers? I didn’t think so. Well I bought myself a helmet and use it! And Andrew and his big head are still trying to find one to purchase but are borrowing one.

On the motorbike! It's an 07 Honda Click! 

I am finally eating at street vendors without Andrew. I have decided that the food is better at the street vendors and it’s 1/5 of the price of a “real” restaurant. My current criteria for eating from street vendors are that they have to have a wok and cook my food then. I’m not sure if I’ll graduate to eating already prepared food for a long time, if ever. The chefs are so nice. Yesterday where I ate my vegetable fried rice (ordered by using all my Thai food words rather than saying the Thai term for vegetable fried rice) the family was so cute. They had a baby girl a little over a year old. After I ate I was attempting to talk to them and they just handed me their baby. This shocked me, in America who would hand their baby to a complete stranger? She was adorable though! Today when I ate at a street vendor I tried to order pad-thai but ended up with white rice with chicken breast and soup and cucumber on the side (cucumber is always on the side). It was good but I really need to study the Thai words for food if I am going to continue eating at street vendors.

Last night was nice. I went to dinner at a pizza restaurant owned and managed by an Italian. Yummy! It was delicious. I went with two teachers from Andrew’s school that are originally from California.  It was nice because I could refer to towns in California and we all knew where they were. Also we ate outside during the sunset and the sunset was absolutely beautiful. I took a picture but it doesn’t capture the beauty.  During dinner we laughed about stray dogs coming up to the table. There are so many stray dogs and cats here!

Sunset in the city!

After dinner I met up with Andrew who didn’t come to dinner because he was busy playing basketball with his students (one of whom broke his glasses).  Together Andrew and I went to a bar with a guy Andrew works with and his mom. Taan is Thai, he speaks English and Thai, and he works at Andrews’s school to help the students who need to build their English vocabulary. Taan’s mother works as a director at a government school. They are very cool people. They brought us to a reggae bar. This bar was awesome. I loved the atmosphere. It was all outside. The tiles were painted beautifully. They had hammocks and instruments. Andrew and Taan played around on instruments for a while. They played some nice songs while I relaxed in the hammock. Some other fa-rung teachers came as well and we chatted with them about life.

My view of the guys playing from my hammock!

Awesome tiles at the reggae bar!

            Today I went into my future classroom. The kids are finishing up their first semester and did a performance for their parents today.  I was introduced to all the parents. They are very happy to see that I am here and going to be teaching their kids for the second half of the school year. I will be the third teacher this class has had. I really hope nothing horrible happens because I promised to stay until the end of March.  The parents are not happy with the school this year because of so many teachers in that classroom. They say it’s having a huge effect on their kids. I believe them; I bet it really confuses the little ones. I hope I can make up for lost time.  I’m already thinking of all the fun things I want to do with when school starts again in a month so I think I can make up the lost time.

            I love Thailand so much! I feel so lucky to be here! In a couple of hours I am meeting Andrew and other teachers at Andrew’s school and we are all taking a bus up north to a nice beach town. Here we will hopefully see the PINK dolphins that live there (oh my fingers are crosses five hundred times, I so want to see a PINK dolphin).  We will also hang out with the other teachers. And the coolest thing that we are definitely doing (the real coolest thing would be to see a PINK dolphin) is helping at an orphanage fundraiser. The far-rung teachers have been planning this for a while and asked us if we’d like to come help. Of course we said yes, it sounds awesome, I’d love to help orphans! We won’t have any designated duties but will jump in wherever needed.  I guess there will be a lot of games and activities for the orphans so we’ll get to play with them on the beach. Afterwards we’ll enjoy the beach and the beach town. But maybe I should tell about what we did instead of what we plan to do. See you in a few days blog!