2 Christmas parties down
4 more days of class
5 days until the Christmas Program
6 day's 'til I go home
13 days 'til Christmas!
It's hard to believe how quickly time flies by! For the speed of days, right now at least I am very thankful because, well it brings me closer to vacation but at the same time I wonder how I could possibly ever get everything done?
Last weekend we got Monday off in honor of HM the Kings Birthday. Like every 3 day I headed out of town, this time to my favorite beach in all Thailand, Koh Samet. We left early Saturday morning and caught a van at Victory Monument. After a little drama with our van (the company told us we could have a PRIVATE van for 2000 Baht, our driver didn't particularly like that so after much arguing we brought on a British Farang couple as well) we were on our way, at 160KM+ to boot. Honestly it was a little scary the guy drove CRAZY! My dad would have hated it but we made it to the pier in record time. To bad it was the wrong pier. And by wrong I mean the pier we don't normally go to. Apparently our evil driver had some sort of thing going with a speed boat company at that specific pier. Since we had planned on taking a speedboat instead of the ferry anyway we just didn't argue and went with it.
Before we left we hadn't booked a room because they either wanted us to pay up front or they didn't take reservations so we got there with our fingers crossed. Lucky us, the first place we went to had rooms for us. The were mildly expensive but that's how the Kings weekend goes at all hotels.
We spent both days there just laying on the beach and swimming, eating beach BBQ for dinner, dancing, watching firelaterns take off into the heavens and fire shows on the beach and even taking part in some fire limbo and muay thai. Quite an adventure if I do say so myself.
On Thursday we got another day off for constitution day. The Crux of days off on thursdays though is well... you can't go anywhere but I guess it helps save money right? To take full advantage of the day a group of us teachers headed down to Chinatown to do some Christmas shopping for our students. Instead of overcrowding Taxi's to make the jaunt downtown, we opted for a slower but more roomy and scenic ride on the river taxi. It was very enjoyable. Chinatown is the wholesale kingdom of Bangkok which is AWESOME on some accounts but can also drain the bank ACCOUNT. I came out with some great gifts for my class as well as a million pairs of earrings, no joke. Wholesale only though, they make you buy 10 or nothing.
Intermixed within these days was a little bit of work. I had my small group meeting on Tuesday night with delicious pot roast for dinner. Then we had our Farang Staff Christmas Party on wednesday night complete with secret santa and lots of goodies, and even some Wassail! It smelled deliciously of Christmas.
My wrapping job for secret santa. When they don't have real wrapping paper you have to get creative. I made the bow for a TGI fridays add from a magazine.
I made these a my food contribution to the party because I needed something easy.
Last night was our ALL staff Christmas party with a white elephant gift exchange. Last year we had some issues with the Thai staff not really understanding that white elephant means you bring not really nice stuff, so a lot of their gifts were nice while our were crappy. This year they seemed more clued in which was better but there were still a couple of the good gifts. I still ended up with a weird tshirt and some hotel soap. Needless to say no one wanted to steel my gift :) Afterwards us farang staff sang the 12 days of Christmas and acted out each role in partners. Me and Michelle did "8 maids a milking." We were a little hilarious, or a lot hilarious. Then the Thai staff did a few performances as well. My favorite was a dance to the song "Sorry, Sorry, Sorry" by a Korean pop band named Super Junior. Afterwards I came back home and a dew others came over. Bridget made popcorn and we celebrated the Christmas season by watching "Little Women."
Today I took a me day. I woke up early thanks to the bright morning sun shining through my 3 huge windows then called my family. Later I took the bus to the mall, ate some Mc Donalds, watched "New Moon" again (I've decided I like the books much better than the movies and a big part of that is because I picture Bella very different and Edward a little different too), then I did some shopping. Now I've been working on projects and watching movies all evening. It's wonderful.
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