Thailand Floods, Paradise and Teaching

Many people have been messaging us on facebook about the floods in Thailand.  Here’s the deal. The floods are in Northern Thailand. I hear most about Bangkok and Attuthya but many areas are affected. We are a 12-15 hour train ride South of Bangkok so we are not experiencing those floods.  The only way my daily life has been affected so far is that the grocery stores are out of some items because it’s hard to ship the goods. I have met some people from Bangkok that are here in Nakhon seeking refuge while the government figures out a way to let the flood water out of the city.  This has proven to be a difficult process.  Some areas of Bangkok are fine but others do not sound good. I really hope the floods get cleared up soon. I feel bad for everyone affected.

The city we live in has a different climate to the rest of Thailand. Nakhon is just beginning its rainy season unlike all the other areas in Thailand that are just ending theirs. I have heard this town floods. And after two days of rain I already see large puddles of water on the streets. It’s due to poor drainage planning and mass amounts of water falling from the sky.  Just last night we were eating at our favorite street vendor restaurant now named “Nancy’s restaurant” because our friend Nancy and her family own it and work there. Anyways, we were enjoying delicious food and all of a sudden it starts down pouring. Soon after the down-pour it starts to thunder and lightening.  This was the closest I’ve ever been to being struck by lightening. The lightening was right over our heads and we could tell because right after we saw the lightening it would thunder extremely loud. Apparently the distance between you and lightening can be measured by the number of seconds between lightening and thunder.  So basically we shoved our food in our mouths while I said mai chawp (no like) to the storm over and over then headed home. I am mentally preparing myself for this weather for the next two months as well as flooding in our town. But hopefully it won’t be Bangkok style flooding.

I hope I’ve cleared up the concept of flooding and can move on to more awesome topics: paradise and teaching!

We spent last Friday through Monday in Krabi and Railay.  Railay is stunning.  I already put pictures on facebook.  The “pretty beach” on Railay peninsula was probably the most beautiful beach I have ever been to. It was amazing but crowded, even more crowed than it probably should have been because many travelers travel plans have been changed due to floods. Railay is a peninsula, but due to limestone mountains in the way, the only mode of transportation to the area is via boat. This made it even more stunning because there were no roads. I saw a total of three motorized vehicles while walking around, such a refresher from crazy traffic.

My favorite things from the weekend: Seeing monkeys. Climbing boulders to see awesome views. Riding a long tail boat.  Floating on my back in the ocean to stare at incredibly limestone cliffs. Seeing the floating fishing village. Swimming across the bay to an island. Watching the sunset on the beach. Searching for phosphorescence . Making new friends. I could get into more detail but it would mostly just be me saying it was beautiful. The pictures speak for themselves.

I started teaching two days ago! I really enjoy it! I am having a lot of fun getting to know my 23 students and my Thai co-teacher. I am LOVING the prep time. Since it’s a bilingual school, half of the lessons are taught in Thai so half the day I get to prep! Such a luxury that is LONG gone from California schools. So far most of the kids are very shy and I have a hard time talking to them. But I have high hopes that they will open up. Today after I pretended to be Mr. Sun and Mr. Moon and sang some songs they seems a bit more open to talking. The language barrier is also an issue in the talking thing. My students have awesome nick-names (which are nick-names like Jenny is my nick-name); Pear, Plum, Pooh-pa, Palm, Mi Mi, Nee Nee, Toey. Aw they are too cute.

Two notable Thai cultural differences are currently on our minds. One, why do Thais keep giving us little gifts? In the past week we have received four desserts from Thais. Three from our friends and one from our neighbor. We hardly know our neighbor. I just read on-line about it and I guess it's just for fun, to say hello, or thank you. It's very casual but now we are unsure what to do back. Give gifts I suppose. Two, we realized the soap I bought here in Thailand was bleaching our skin white. I was careful to read the ingredients because I was warned of this but nothing jumped out at me that said this will turn your skin white! So we used the soap for two weeks unknowingly and I actually did notice I was losing my tan. I thought it was because of my religious use of sunscreen after three summers in a row. But in fact later I noticed a small picture I could not see when I purchased the soap that had a girl with dark skin in a before picture and the same girl with light skin in the after picture. We just returned from purchasing Johnson's baby soap in hopes that the Thai's do not want to bleach their children's skin. We gave the whitening soap to our Thai friends and they are very happy, hey we did give a gift!

Off to sleep. Must be well rested to teach those children!