Tanner's Birthday

 Last week Tanner had his 29th birthday.  He doesn't care much about his birthday but I like having a special day to celebrate him. One of my students (Ongry) shares Tanner's birthday and brought cake for both of them.  The kids always like when they get to see and hang around Tanner. That evening Sydney and Many and their mom brought us a ladybug cake and a great big salad.  The cake was so cute and the center was hollowed and filled with little chocolate pieces. The best chocolate I've had here. Friday we went to Swensens and got I've cream with Ton. T'was a good day. I sure do love Tanner!  Here's to another year of life together!

The cake Ongry brought Tanner

Ongry and me

Ongry, Tanner and me

Tanner, me, Sydney, Sydney and Many's mom, MeMe and Many

The cake from Sydney, Many and company

The deliciousness inside the decapitated ladybug

Tanner making a face to match the ladybug :)

The birthday note from Sydney and Many

The fantastic salad they brought along with the cake.

Ice cream at Swensen's

Tang's Birthday

Tang had her birthday at the end of last month.  To celebrate she took the boarding kids, her family, us American teacher and the boarding Thai teachers out to dinner.  We went to MK (a fun hot pot restaurant.  It was tasty and fun.  I really like Tang and I was so happy we could help her celebrate her birthday!

On the way to the restaurant we had 7 kids and 4 adults in Tangs car (which has 8 seats).  I asked if that was okay/allowed (since I know that would NOT be alright in the US).  She said it was just fine.  I asked what would happen if someone saw us overloaded like that.  She said nothing, unless we were going on a toll road--in which case they would probably give us a discount for carpooling with so many people!  Haha!

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.

The Rest of Bangkok and a Glorious Reunion

After a long day adventuring in Bangkok, we met up with our van and they dropped us off near a restaurant we wanted to try.  We had heard that the restaurant Sunrise Tacos was good.  There were TEN DIFFERENT TYPES OF SALSA!  We were in heaven!  I ordered cowboy tacos.  I didn’t read the description well enough.  I thought it was just 3 hard tacos (which I adore), but the meat was like sloppy joe meat.  Not so good.  I ate 2 of the 3 and had a few bites of Karly’s burrito which was really good.  

The restaurant was close to a mall called Terminal 21.  We walked around and window shopped.  We got some ice cream and Abby and I had a good chat.  They had MOVIES IN ENGLISH at the theater!  So half of us saw “The Fault in our Stars” and the other half saw something else.  We didn't realize how much we had been missing carpet until we saw it at the theater. 

The movie didn’t start until 10:45 and I hadn’t had a lot of sleep the night before so I was worried that I would fall asleep but I didn’t.  It was a treat to be in the theater and enjoy a show in English.  It got done around 12:30 and I was SOOOO tired.  I don’t do tired well.  I am usually really quiet and grumpy.  Occasionally I get to the point where I am really loopy.  It doesn’t happen often, but when it happens I usually find things SO funny and cry from laughing.  I hit that point on the taxi ride home.  We were on our way back to the hostel and I was looking out the window.  I saw a construction worker working in a hole and he was wearing black and white.  The way he was bend over and the clothes he was wearing (and the extreme tiredness I was feeling) registered him as a panda bear!  I was so thrown off and so tired that I started laughing really hard.  I could hardly breathe and started crying.  None of the girls knew what was going on!  I tried to tell them what I had seen (or more like what I had thought I had seen), but every time I tried to tell them it was funny all over again.  I was a mess!  


Once we got home it was close to 1 and I Skyped Tanner.  He was finishing up the closing on our house and thought he’d know within the next few hours if he could buy a plane ticket and join me in a couple days.  I sent him the best flight options I had found and dropped off to sleep around 2am.  The next morning I was up at 7:30 to get ready for church.  When I got up I saw an email from Tanner that he’d bought his plane ticket and would be in Thailand about 48 hours later!!!!!  

We got to go to an international ward.  Once again it was nice to enjoy something in English!  After church the volunteers headed to the airport to go to Cambodia.  I had talked to Tang and she had offered to let me stay at her house for a couple night while I waited for Tanner.  She hadn’t gotten back to me about the address so I was all alone in the big city with all my luggage.  I walked around for a little while and ate lunch at a cute French bakery.  They had wifi so I used that and hung out there for a while. 

 I still hadn’t heard back from Tang and I was REALLY tired.  I decided that I’d go back to the movie theater and go to a movie.  That way I could have somewhere cool to sit and take a nap.  I caught a taxi to the theater.  I ended up staying awake and enjoying the movie.  It was a romantic comedy in Hindi with English subtitles and was about 2 ½ hours long.  

When the movie ended I saw that I had just missed a call from Tang.  I got in touch with her and got the address to her house.  I grabbed some food and then took a taxi to her house.  The taxi ride was close to half an hour.  It was dark and I was alone in the taxi.  He was taking a lot of back roads through empty neighborhoods.  I was glad I had a cell phone and kept it in my hand the whole time.  He got a bit lost so I called Tang and she told him where to go.  By the time I got there and got settled it was around 8 and I was exhausted.  I was also feeling a little like it was Christmas eve since Tanner was going to be there in about 36 hours.  I went to bed at 8:30 and slept for 14 hours!  I passed the day by FaceTiming with my parents and watching the Simpsons.  Tanner’s plane was scheduled to land at 11:40.  

I headed to the airport at 9:00 and ate at Burger King and read while I waited.  At 11:45 I went to the area where Tanner would exit customs.  I had butterflies and it felt like an eternity waiting for him.  Finally around 12:30 I saw him!  He gave me a great big, long hug and it was wonderful!  We caught a taxi back to Tang’s and I was so so happy to hold his hand as he told me about his flight.  

Here we are the next day with birthday doughnuts at the airport.  Tanner has his birthday while he was traveling, so we got doughnuts instead of having birthday cake.  That's way better in my opinion--I don't care for cake myself.

Here I am!

Wow!  The last month and a half feels like it has flown by!  Why haven't I been posting?

1) MY HUSBAND IS HERE!  And when I get off work I have a friend right there.  It's been great!  He was able to finish thing up and in Arizona and we now own a new {to us} home.  So not only do I have my best friend here, but when the two of us eventually find our way back to Arizona we have a home (and half an acre) to go home to!

He flew in on his birthday and we got Krispy Creme to celebrate.

2) I have been traveling like crazy!  That's kept me occupied and away from the blog.  The good news for you?  This week will be full of vacation and adventure posts!

Market, Temple, and Karly's Birthday

Karly’s birthday was a couple weeks ago.  She wanted us to go to the town temple and dinner and the as a celebration.  Around noon we headed out to the temple.  We went to pull in and park our bikes and were blocked by a market.  We thought that was great!  We locked our bikes and walked through the market for a couple hours.  Apparently they have markets that come for a couple weeks and we just stumbled upon it accidentally.  It was a very happy accident! 

They had clothes and dishes.  They were selling hedgehogs and bunnies.  There were terrible roasted bugs and frogs.  There was delicious coconut water. 

Abby and Lindsie ate the a maggot from the tray on the bottom left in this picture.

Holding this huge, nasty bug was enough for me.  I did NOT eat any of them. 

They have these types of foods everywhere.  None of them look or smell appetizing to me at all.

A game called Cookie Run is VERY popular over here.  All my students adore it!  I got it on my iPad, but I don't love it the way they do. 

Little figurines.

These guys were cutting coconuts, pouring out the water, and carving out the flesh.  They the lady in front was selling the coconut water with shavings of fresh coconut is a big cup of ice.  It was so refreshing and light.

After we had seen all the market had to offer we headed over to the temple.  

We had been told that we needed long skirts to be respectful.  I had one in my backpack that I just slipped on over my shorts.  The girls that hadn’t brought one were provided with one there.  We went inside and there was a monk, some candles and a very large Buddha statue.  We didn’t know what we were supposed to do and was was allowed and what was frowned upon so we watched the natives to see what they were doing.  Some of them prayed, a few knelt and recited with a monk, one make noise on an instrument of sorts and a lot of them were taking pictures.  We felt that since we aren’t Buddhist the best/only thing we ought to do was take some pictures.  We snapped a few in front of the large Buddha and headed outside again.   We were inside for less than 5 minutes.  We wandered around the grounds, took some pictures, and looked at the river/canal that holds early river racing.  Apparently people come from all over the country to watch the races.  

Around 3 we headed home.  I stopped at the bank and Tesco with 2 of the girls and everyone else headed home. 

That evening we hopped back on our bikes and headed out for dinner and Swensens.  We went to the Swiss Steak House.  About half of the girls got steak and they said it was divine.  I got a veggie omelet that was okay.  When we go back I will most certainly get a steak!  Swensens after was delicious as usual.  I got the Oreo brownie Sunday in a waffle bowl. 

It’s always nice to get out of the school for a bit and experience the town.  And of course it’s always good to eat ice cream!

The next day we had cake for Karly’s birthday.  There isn’t an oven here at the school, so we ate microwaved cake in cups, which was surprisingly delicious.  We also didn’t have any candles, so Abby putted up a cake with candles video on YouTube.