Koh Samet

Linda has been to Thailand many times but she had never been to the island of Koh Samet.  Koh Samet is only a bus and a ferry ride from Bangkok so we decided to check it out.

We ended up loving it there. We had no hostels booked so we took it night by night and stayed in 3 different places.

On the first night we accidentally saw the big fire show on the beach while eating sea food curry and drinking Thai beer (soooo much better than Chinese beer).

 How low can you go? (We didn't try)

There wasn't a lot to do on Koh Samet (if you don't count finding new places to sleep almost every day) so we spent a lot of time on the beach.

We ate a pancake nearly every night.  YUM!  These are in Bangkok too but it was more fun eating them on the beach.  You can get just about anything inside - peanut butter, chocolate, eggs, fruit, nuts, and condensed milk. 

We stayed in the nicest place on the last night -it included breakfast and was very close to the beach.

 It was a nice way to start Linda's birthday!

7 Eleven is EVERYWHERE in Thailand.  But in 2 spots on Koh Samet we saw 2 right across the street from each other.   We did have a favorite.  One was cleaner and had more to choose from.

Next: Bangkok!

Thailand - Pattaya and Kanchanaburi

I met up with Linda in the Bangkok airport.  After leaving Xi'an 2 months prior Linda traveled around India.  Our first stop (after sleeping for 2 hours) was Pattaya.  My friend Tanya, who I met in Cambodia, lives there and it just happened to be her birthday.  When we walked into brunch we were in heaven.  We hadn't seen food (or coffee) like that for almost 2 years - eggs, meats, salads, cheeses.  After brunch Tanya rented a boat to take us to an island where we relaxed on the beach for a few hours until a storm came in.  The boat ride back to the mainland was rough. We were grateful we didn't go flying right out of the boat.

It was nice to be back on land!

The next day Linda and I went a bit further south to Kanchanaburi.  A woman met us at the bus station and we were convinced to pay her a couple dollars to help us find a place to stay.  Not a bad deal since we didn't know where to go and we got to ride in this:

We found a nice bungalow on the river.  It was quiet and beautiful.  We loved relaxing on our porch.

A big attraction of Kanchanaburi is the 7 tiered waterfall at Erawan National Park.  We hiked up and it was as beautiful as we read. 

Goodbye Xi'an!

I actually said 再见 to Xi'an on October 22nd.  Whoops.  I'm a bit behind.

The last weekend of classes was nice.  At the end of each class the Chinese teacher told the students I was leaving and introduced the new teacher who had been sitting in the corner during class.  Some of the students did genuinely seem a bit disappointed I was leaving.  A couple asked if I would remember them. 

On my last night in my apartment I went upstairs to have dinner with my friend / Chinese teacher from my first school. I rented my apartment from her uncle.  Her husband made us a wonderful dinner and gave me a box of the tea he always makes me when I visit.

On my last night in Xi'an work had a dinner for the A+ staff and teachers.  It was at a German buffet restaurant (that serves Chinese food) and the beer was all you could drink.   Yikes.

After dinner I went to a bar to say bye to my foreign friends. 

I was surprised at how sad I was saying bye and leaving Xi'an.  I had finally settled in and found a group of people I really enjoyed hanging out with.  I came a long way during my 21 months in China.  I surprised myself by loving the language and studying became my main focus.  As I could understand more and more of what my students said they became real kids and I looked forward to having class with (most of) them.  I also grew as a person in so many ways that I wouldn't have if I hadn't spent all 21 months in China. 

My next stop was Thailand.....

Apartment Problems

I am tired of my apartment.  It's brand new and has so many problems.

Problem #1

The most annoying problem right now is that the apartment upstairs leaks into the apartment downstairs.  How is that possible?  Sometimes I get some of the water dripping into my kitchen but not always.  To make the situation more annoying the people downstairs won't talk to the people upstairs.  So every time it leaks I get the Chinese man (from downstairs) pounding on my door with a lit cigarette wanting me to call my landlord to talk to the people upstairs.
My last apartment was leaking into the apartment below.  So, this is a very common problem.  I know by now not to ask why in China.

Problem #2

The smell!  Every apartment / bathroom smells in China.  They have not figured out how to make the proper S pipe so that the sewer smell doesn't come back up.  It's gross.  But my apartment has extra smells that I haven't been able to figure out.  I think the other smells come in the window, mostly when it's open, but sometimes when it's closed.

Problem #3

The amount of dirt that accumulates even with the windows shut.  In order to keep up with it I would need to clean every other day.  It has probably been a month or so since I dusted my bookshelf and this is what I found when I moved the books.

Problem #4

The vent and light above the stove top only worked for 5 months.  This is actually the least of my worries but it just shows how cheaply made everything is in China.

Problem #5

The washer.  I HATE doing laundry.  The washer I have isn't quite manual but nearly.  You have to turn on and off the water.  At first I didn't realize this and had quite a mess on my hands.  After the clothes wash in the left side you have to drain the water and then put the clothes in the right side to spin.  Sometimes the washer goes crazy and jumps itself all the way around.  Now the tube to the water tap is broken and I have to hold the tube while filling up the washer. It still leaks all over the place and it's pretty boring standing there for 5 minutes while the washer fills up.

 

 

 

Problem #6

The walls are thin and you hear everything.  Even what people do in the bathroom.

Problem #7

This isn't actually a problem but it is pretty funny.  There was no room in the kitchen so the refrigerator is in the 2nd bedroom.  Good thing I didn't want a roommate.

 

Problem #8

I'm not sure what exactly this problem is but remember my mop??


Most of these are very small annoyances and hardly important.  My landlord is the kindest Chinese man I have met here.  He's so patient with my Chinese.   He has allowed me to rent an actually great apartment for an incredibly cheap price.  He didn't ask for a security deposit.  I broke my lease with no problems. He said I don't even have to clean when I move out.  So when I think about it like that I am forever grateful for this apartment - the smells, the mushroom, the washer, and all.

Teaching got easier!

I originally posted this on March 21st, 2011. I hadn't even been teaching for a month and I thought it would never get easier. I like looking back to see how far I've come.  Now I can think on my feet, understand my students when they speak Chinese, control them (sometimes), and most importantly I have a lot more confidence. The beginning was rough.....

I'm struggling a bit with this teaching thing. I thought every weekend would get better but as I found out yesterday that's not the case. I felt like Sunday was my worst day so far. It didn't help that I was being assessed in 2 of my classes. I know I'm doing something totally new that I've never done before in a completely new country where they speak a completely different language. I'm out of sorts in almost every possible way. Still, I don't like the feeling of not knowing how to do something.
A few things that frustrated me this weekend:

-Kids were just bad. I think maybe it had to do with the rain. (ha! I blamed kids behavior on the rain!)

-No one understood me. Obviously this happens a lot in class but this weekend I never seemed to be able to get my point across no matter how much I mimed or drew on the board. I got sooo many blank stares.

-I still can't remember student's names. I'm even struggling remembering faces. I don't recognize my kids in the hall before class.

-In one of my 2 hour classes I did my entire lesson plan in the first hour. On break I asked other teachers what else they do in this class so I was able to gracefully recover but geez. I spent time preparing! I guess I'm still getting used to how I actually need to prepare.

-I had to jump around like a rabbit with 5 year olds - while their parents were watching and I was being assessed.

-I had a class of 4/5 year olds that collectively went insane. The parents did nothing. It was like as a group they all linked together and decided how they could be as bad as possible. It was a ball of screaming, bad 5 year old Chinese kids. They were literally all on the floor fighting for toys. So much for the fun games I planned.

After a weekend like this it's hard not to want to throw in the towel. I have to remind myself why I came here. Teaching was a big reason. Sometimes I wonder if that's actually what I'm doing though. I teach about 300 students in one weekend and I feel like I don't get to know them.  Are these kids learning anything??

There's a girl in one of my classes that keeps asking for my phone number. I always forget to bring my phone with me to class and I don't know my number. She put this in her notebook for me to see when I graded her homework.

She asked me when she should call. Is she really going to call?! I mean her English is ok but what could we possibly talk about on the phone? ANYWAY - I need to walk away with something positive from a weekend filled with lots of frustrations so I think this is pretty good.