Halloween!!

 Halloween is an excuse for others to dress up to be something their not... 

well I use it as an excuse to show my real self! 

Halloween is not a holiday that the Thai people celebrate... but we sure do!! Today was such a fun day for the kids, parents, thai teachers,  but I think we had more fun than anyone. The kids showed up with their costumes and have to say..  and they were all so adorable.

Today we had a haunted house for them to go through, bobbed for apples, had a cake walk, made doughnuts and painted pumpkins. I do have to say though, when I was walking through the market to find pumpkins... I was a little let down because the pumpkins were well... not quite the same.

So we painted them orange!!

And what would halloween be without trick-or-treating? The parents came (quite a few dressed up as well!!) at the end of the day with treats and toys so the kids walked around the school and got to experience a little bit of America! 

Pordee loving his trick-or-treating bag.  Some things never change :)

Chiang Mai

So when the school has a holiday break, we take advantage of the long weekend and skip town for a couple days. This trip we took up to Chiang Mai and it has been one of my favorite parts of Thailand! We started off friday after school (which I have intended to blog about, I will get around to it eventually) and headed to the bus terminal. We left Phichit around two in the afternoon and arrived into Bangkok late friday night and headed straight to our hostel. Hostel... yes! It was so much fun, who needs expensive hotels when you can have a hostel! Saturday is when things really started to happen. We woke up fairly early and headed outside of the city a bit where we rode elephants! We took about an hour trek on elephants into a village where the long neck women live. The elephants were so much fun and it was incredibly beautiful being able to explore through the mountains.

After that we watched an elephant show where they had elephants throwing darts and popping balloons and throwing balls into hoops and all kinds of things like that. Then we went straight from there to a place called Tiger Kingdom. The name basically speaks for itself but we went and we got to play with tigers. It was so much fun being able to play with the little baby tigers. They were only three months old. The rest of the group went in with the adult tiger. Not me though, I like the kittens. And it was well worth it.

I even got to feed one. I got pretty lucky!

So far the trip was a blast. Then we just kept on going. We went and saw a temple that was partially underground and had tunnels going throughout it. The thing about Chiang Mai that is so unique is that we were inside the city but it felt like we were in the middle of the jungle. Its such a good mix between nature and city.
After the temple we cruised to the night market and explored the city at night. It was weird to be in a part of Thailand were there were more white people and it wasn't so odd for us to be there. In Phichit, we are basically the only white people and I think I have seen one other white the whole time we have lived here. It was kind of nice though, to almost blend in. The next morning we went to church which ended up being amazing, they had a general broadcast throughout Asia and we got to listen to Ann M. Dibb, H. David Burton, Anthony D. Perkins, and Richard G. Scott speak. Then we got to see our second baptism while here in thailand. We have been really lucky to be able to see those. Then we went and saw another temple that was pretty high up in the mountains and that night, we did one of my favorite things thus far in our trip. Me and two of the girls rented scooters and rode around the city and while the sun was setting we rode up into the mountains and then got to see Chaing Mai from a beautiful view.

The View of Chiang Mai at night. It was stunning!

Then that night we went to the famous sunday night market and came back and crashed! The next morning we woke up early again and headed outside of town a little bit and did something that will check something off of my bucket list....

BUNGEE JUMPING!!!

Prep work for the jump.

                                              

View from the bottom

View from the top! Still gives me a rush thinking about the initial falling off the edge! 

My certificate of courage! It was a perfect ending to a great trip!

Aristotle (week 12)

"The more you know, the more you know you don't know."

When I think about what I want to say to summarize, well just about anything about my time in Thailand, I have a hard time formulating words. The things I have been able to experience and have been faced with so far have challenged, built, and strengthened me. At the beginning of this trip I would have simply stated it like this;

Five girls. Simply strangers. Placed in a small town in a foreign country. Distant from nearly anything that resembles familiarity. A task to teach a foreign language to children, something none of them have done before. Given food that commonly allows questioning. In a place where communication to anyone local conflicts with a huge language barrier. And all this, the things that had started out so foreign, have become my life. 

Some of the things outside of teaching that we have been doing:

Beginning of our 9 day trip to Bangkok and Pattaya!

Transportation to the beach on the island of Kho Larn.

Our main mode of transportaion in Phichit... 

And when we aren't riding our bikes... we take two seated tuk-tuks. I got to ride on the back of the drivers seat, headed to the Phichit soccer game. 

The girls after the soccer game

Look familiar? We made the news!

The rains come down and the floods come up and we accept the challenge!