Tah-when-tea-nine

That's how my students say the number 29.  We practice and they can say it in three syllables, but as soon as they aren't consciously trying to say it correctly they say it like that.  I sort of love it though, so I don't help them correct it as often as I ought to.  

I turned 29 this week.  Everyone helped make it a really wonderful day.  I got calls, emails and texts from loved ones back in the US.  My sister-in-law even wrote me a blog post!  The people here in Thailand showered me with love and kindness.

Lots of my students brought me gifts.  Pan and her mom baked me some tasty little cakes.  

One of my students brought me an ice cream cake!  All the kids came in and sang to me.  A lot of them came and gave me birthday wishes.  They wished that I would be happy this year and have good health.  They wished me wealth and good luck,  

Don't ask me what I wished for.  I won't tell you, because then it won't come true. 

MeePhoo

 Basia

Auto

Praewa

 

 Mhew

Yipso

At the end of school it poured really hard for about 20 minutes. Our classroom/school has a lot of windows so it's easy to enjoy the rain from inside.

That evening Sydney and Maeni (2 of my students) brought me an ice cream cake.  Tanner and I took it over to the girls' room and shared it with them.  We talked and laughed (a lot) then light off a couple fireworks.  I pretended to blow out the candles before we took the cake to the girls' room and asked Tanner to take a picture.  He took a video.  I thought that was pretty funny.

 The ice cream cake came packed in dry ice and I was as excited about that as I was about the cake!!!
We just added water and watched it 'smoke'.  Then we used out phone light and turned off the other lights and watched it like that.  It's the small pleasures in life, right?

The next evening (Friday) a bunch of the parents invited us to dinner.  There were about 30 people there: English teachers, Thai teachers, parents and students.  We ate and visited and had a wonderful time.  They even gave me a bouquet of 4 dozen pink roses!  The Thai people are so incredibly kind and generous and wonderful!

Today (Saturday) Tang and Ton took Tanner and me to Swensen's for ice cream.  It really was a wonderful day.  A really great way to kick off the next year of my life.