The Bloom & The Rest of the Week

Hey everyone!

Sorry I have gotten a tad behind with the postings.  Jet lag has officially kicked me in the rear.  So since I have written last I have a few neat little things that I was able to do!

The biggest thing that has happened in the past week was that for two days, campus 2 went on their team building retreat (Tues May 7 & Wed May 8).  We were put into groups.  Each with about 10 members.  Abbey, Rachel and myself were all with a fantastic group.  At 7am we were to be at our campus and ready to leave.  I was very excited since we were having a car rally on the way to our resort we were going to. 

Together our group had a list of 8 tasks to complete before arriving at The Bloom.  We made several stops along the way to pick up things such as cultural items and different goodies that they asked for on the list.  After each thing we did, we had to take a picture and send it to the leaders though a program called line.  Our team was able to complete all of the tasks and get to the resort on time!

Once we got to the resort, we were able to settle in before our welcoming ceremony. Abbey and I shared a room.  The view of the mountains was absolutely astonishing, and although I took some pictures, they can not truly express the beauty of it all.  The rooms, pool and meeting area were all incredible.      

Our welcoming ceremony was Zen.  Lines of people sat in front of lead staff and each of us received a white string bracelet with a message from our staff member who put in on our wrist.

After the welcoming, we did several different group activities for the rest of the afternoon with only a short break before supper.

Supper & karaoke were cowboy and cowgirl themed.  A lot of the Thai teachers were dressed up.  It made me feel a little silly wearing just a skirt and a tanktop, but I don't have my sister here with me to lend me cowgirl clothing.  Either which way, we were able to have a blast singing and dancing.

Abbey, myself and some other teachers turned in early to try and sleep on a comfy bed.  It was exhausting just having come a few days before and trying to keep up with people use to the time.  In the morning Abbey and myself enjoyed a swim before we checked out and had an amazing North American-ish type of breakfast which was very tasty.

Before heading home with our group, we stopped off at a floating market.  Of course, I came back with a few different items to send home. :)  Abbey and I were excited to be able to take pictures with some transformers and even had some Thai icecream. (Yum yum yum!)

The end of the day brought us back home, had a quick meal on the soi and then led us to our first class of the semester.   Our classes start shortly after we get home and run from Mon. - Thurs. till almost 9pm.  It makes for a very long day.

The rest of the week, we have just been settling in at Lertlah.  Mostly attending meetings, organizing and preparing for the school year to begin.  Our school bell plays "Its a Small World" which is interesting.  We have already eaten at the cafeteria and later in the week, Tyler and myself discovered the noodle house down the street. 

Friday night we went out for supper with a combination of all foreign staff for a welcome to Thailand party.  What should have been a 40 baht cab ride there turned into a 140 baht.  It was alright though because we were able to see some cool things around our place.  Once ate a bit, chatted and left Rachel, Lyle, Abbey and myself walked home.  On the way we stopped at what to be some kind of carnival / night market.  It was unbelievable. There were so many different things to see and buy.

As for yesterday and today, it has just been mostly relaxing (with a trip to The Big C to stalk up on some items yesterday).  My stomach has not been overly happy with me so taking it easy was a good choice on my part.  Hopefully I will be 100% tomorrow for work.

Miss F.

...And here is your desk....

Well to start off, yesterdays nap was long. Too long.  That meant that when I got up to finally go to the market to buy food, it was 8pm and they were starting to close up.  I did however get an amazing chocolate desert for 6 baht. (I think this will be happening again tonight. :-) ) After my stroll to get supper with Abbey, I came back to my room and had a lovely chat with my uncle who is currently in the Ukraine.  When I finally did get back to sleep, it was only for a couple of hours before I woke up and couldn't fall back asleep.  Needless to say the jet lag is kicking in.

At 7am the campus 2 crew got together and met at the front gate to taxi over to the Lertlah campus we will be working at.  You can tell we are new teachers when we were all excited to see that we got our very own desk and for myself, I received a special surprise. I will be the M1 (or grade 7) science teacher as well as M3 English (grade 9).  I was extra excited to see that I get to teach Slum Dog Millionaire for my Novel study!  We were introduced to some of the returning teachers as well as being introduced to the Thai teachers.

We were also put into our groups for tomorrow and Wednesdays team building.  All we know so far is that we are having a car rally and that we are going into the mountains.  There are 10 of us total in our group, 3 of us are from the U of W.  I think we have an awesome group, and I can't wait to get to know everyone better.

After some of the returning English teachers took us to a mall near by our campus.  We went for an amazing lunch and bought cell phones to use out here.  Of course with the heat, on the way home I stopped for a slurpee with a couple of girls (as well as to pick up our sim cards).

The plan for the rest of the night is to do some course work, move my fridge to my room, hopefully go swimming tonight (it is weird I still have not gone) have some supper from the soi and get some much needed rest.

Until tomorrow.

Miss F.

Day One: Life in Bangkok

Well here I am, and it still has not hit me that I will not be going back to Canada anytime soon. The heat is bearable in 2hr doses.  Thankfully our rooms have aircon.  I have not even been here for 24hrs and my room is already a natural disaster. 

This morning I woke up from sleeping on a rock. (not actually, the mattress is just as lovely as sleeping on a concrete floor.)  When I finally decided to come out of my room I was greeted by Sarah and was able to get some of the things I bought before coming out.  Once my items were moved to my room, I was then able to join a group of fellow practicum students for breakfast, although our timing was horrible.  We went outside to see it was pouring.  Not shying away from rain, we walked through the puddles to a near by market.  By the time we got there we were soaked and starving.  We were able to order some soup which only cost us 30 baht (or $1.02 in Canadian money).  I also had some yummy fresh pineapple for 20 baht.  I was so stuffed after and still can't believe that I paid less than $4.00 CDN! Crazy!

After our journey to the market we came back to our apartments and got ready to go to The Big C (which is kind of like Walmart).  Needless to say Abbey and myself came back with a lot of items that we couldn't bring from home. About an hour and 5000 baht later, our rooms are packed and we are exhausted....

Plans for the rest of the day/evening will include going swimming in our pool, relaxing, walking down our soi (which is Thai for street) to get some supper and organizing our rooms!

Tomorrow we get to see our classrooms (which I am super excited about) and later in the week we will have team building activities with our co-workers. As nice as it is to relax, I can't wait to get into a routine.

Miss F.

Welcome to Thailand

Hello all fellow travelers and well-wishers alike!

I have made it here safely to Thailand.  After years of wanting to set out on a journey of a life time, I finally have had the opportunity to embark on something I could never possibly forget.  I will try my best to keep this up to date and share all amazing and wonderful things I get to experience here in Bangkok.  Hopefully you will enjoy what I have to offer.

So lets start off with what has happened in the past couple of days, shall we?

Day one: May 3rd

Well today was the day that I left home for the trip of a life time.  It has been almost three years since I last moved somewhere, so it is a tad weird.  I arrived at the airport with little sleep at 3:30am accompanied by my niece, my mom and Mikey.  The trip from Winnipeg to Toronto was spent mostly sleeping.  Once we landed in Toronto, I was able to meet up with some of my close friends.  They brought me gifts and wished me luck.  I wish I could have stayed longer, but I was afraid I would have missed my flight.  Of course, I had plenty of time and ended up going for lunch. 

 As I type this, I am on a 13hr flight to Seoul, Korea.  So far, I have been passing my time with sleeping, eating (some pretty yummy food for being on a plane), playing games (like Pacman & Tetris) & watching movies (like OZ and Silver linings playbook.)  We passed over the Atlantic Ocean, which was filled with ice and provided us with the most incredibly breath taking view.  We are all starting to become restless sitting so long but we still have at least 5 hours to go.  Hopefully we will land safely very soon.

 We have landed safely in Seoul, Korea and I must say this airport is huge! It has a bunch of interesting things in it to see while we have our layover.  Believe it or not, there is even a garden in the bathroom.  Just another few hours till Bangkok.

 Arriving in Bangkok we could sure feel the heat.  At a lovely 30 degrees, the air is humid.  We were met by our Lertlah staff to take us safely to what we will call home for the next 10 months.

After dropping our stuff off in our new homes, I was able to send a quick message to let everyone know I was safe, but when it is your first night in Bangkok and you are hungry you can not just stay in.  So off we went, (myself and Abbey) to walk down our new street. (our 12hr time difference meant that we were walking at midnight here or noon wpg time.)  We scouted out a 7-11, bought some food and went home to get some sleep.

That was our first taste of Bangkok.  More to come soon! 

 Miss F.