Around the Village

Hey, Hey!!!

Three posts in two days is pretty remarkable, if you ask me. This one is kind of random with photos that I've taken at the village community center. It has a path around it where I like to walk. It is across from the school. There's a clinic, a volley ball net (well, it used to be), a water purification contraption, a preschool and a petanque area. When I go walking, there is usually this cute little old lady who sweeps the leaves. We have moved on from simply smiling to wai-ing each other. I want a picture of her! I will have to stop walking and try to talk to her one of these days and take my camera with me.

So here are the pictures I did take. They are in no particular order just around the little area. I tried to get artsy with some of them.

There are some chillies growing. You can't see them too well, but I like the bamboo.

Another little fence with some vines.

An I was there picture! :)

More wood and greenery.

Dad, these are for you. It's some sort of water purification. The students don't know and my Thai isn't good enough yet to read the sign.

This is the back side.

Another fence. There are two dogs who live in this house. They don't bother me any more as they think I carry rocks with me. It's a good think they never test me because all I have in my fist is air.

Same fence from the other direction.

This vine is growing on a dead tree stump. It looks so cool when it's covered with the little white and yellow flowers.

Flowers :)

More in color

A little rustic shelter

I love this light. It's attached to this old tree. There are usually two birds that sit on the top of it.

One more gate to finish these photos with.

The next two pictures I find absolutely hilarious. In Thailand as most of you know the weather isn't terribly cold. Though sometimes I feel like I'm freezing. For the most part it's fairly warm. This year is warmer than last year. Anyway, Thai people are afraid their dogs will get cold so they put shirts on them. As if this isn't funny enough already, there was one dog who had socks on!!! Really?!?! Socks! Don't believe me... take a look.

I would like to introduce you to Murphy the sock wearing pooch. (I named him Murphy. He's always around the community center and if I'm going to take the poor thing's photo, I thought I'd name him. :))

Murphy!

And his buddy, "Shaggy" who I named as well. :)

Poor little guys. I walked by one day and they were trying to chew off the shirts. I just had to laugh!

That's all for now. I hope you enjoyed my random photos from around the village. This is probably the last time I'll post before our trip to the beach, which I'm sooo looking forward to. Between now and then, I'll be doing homework. In fact, I may not post until after the new year. If that's the case, I hope you all have a wonderful rest of 2009! Take Care!

Much Love and Hugs,

Lainy J.

Midterms and Snakes, I mean... snacks!

Hey Everyone!

I'm alive, but now the internet is alive too, which is nice. I have been disconnected from the world outside of Legacy making it hard to post anything on here over the last month. This is not to mention homework, lesson planning and test making, which have been taking up all of my time. We just finished up our classes for the first half of the semester. We are now on winter break. Maybe it should be called cold season break over here. :) We get three weeks off from teaching, which we are all excited about. 3 weeks sounds like a lot, but it's totally not especially when you're trying to cram as much into that 3 weeks as I am. All good things though. :) This includes finishing up my first classes at APU. I am trying to accomplish this before the other teachers and I head off to the beach for a few days.

Here are some photos from this past week.

Kolaches are a family favorite and I didn't think I could get all the ingredients. I found most of them and was able to improvise the rest. I was very excited to make them, but not nearly as excited as the other teachers were to eat them. All 5 dozen were gone in 2 days flat!!

Putting in the filling

Rolling them

Getting them out of the oven

Looky, looky! They came out! :) I was very happy!

We have study hall twice a week where we are available to answer questions and help with homework. Sometimes students just come and chat, which is a lot of fun too.

Everyone came since we had midterms and I made them cookies, which disappeared.

Peto, Erika and Amy

Surachai, SomPorn and Samuey

Fon, Maliwan, Boorerung (looking scary), and SomPorn(he and Maliwan are siblings).

WiChai, Atiwat and Uaorawet(Japur)

WiChai and Japur are my boys. I teach them English as well as Fon who joined our class.

Dani and AhJar

I have a few English blunders that I found funny.

Many times, the students will say snake instead of snack, hence the title of my blog. They have a hard time differentiating the sounds.

A couple more that happened during study hall.

Why are you funny? = why are you laughing?

Accuse me. = Excuse me

Book home= Library

Aj., you play computer good= You type well

Everyone knows when someone is singing something and you want to joke around and tell them to stop you ask, "Who sings that?" Well, here's how it went down in Mae Sa Luang.

WiChai belting, "You're Beautiful..."

Aj Nathan: Who sings that?

Student: WiChai

Aj Nathan: No, who sings that song?

WiChai: I don't know Ajan. Some guy you can look it up on the internet. Type in You're Beautiful.

JOKE= Failed!

Well, that's all for this post. I have one more coming your way with some photos from around the village. I hope this finds you well. I miss everyone very much. I'm looking forward to seeing many of you in April when I come home.

Love and Hugs,

Lainy J.

Marching to Your Own Drum

Greetings!

I would like to introduce to one of my students. His name is Atiwat. He got married while I was at home this past summer to another student, Fon. There were gone for a while, but are back. He works taking of the garden and misc. projects. He is very talented musically. Choir class has changed to small groups practicing songs. They were practicing a song and wanted a drum beat to go with it. They were using a bucket, but Atiwat thought this just wouldn't do. He asked us for various items and told us he was making a drum. About a week later it's finished. Not only does he have a drum, he made a complete drum set. I think it's pretty cool! Unfortunately our neighbors don't think so. So, they are back at the farm. Nevertheless, I think they are really cool!!!

Atiwat with his creation.

The drums!

By far, my favorite part! It's so ingenious!

Atiwat showing us his skills.

It was a fun Friday afternoon. Choir class ended up being a jam session, which went on for a few hours. It was a lot of fun!

Lainy J.

Ahhh... Thanksgiving!

Hey There!

I hope all of you had a fabulous Thanksgiving filled with family, friends, love, thankfulness and yummy food.

Thanksgiving in Thailand makes me miss home. Thanksgiving here is very different than being home. More than the food and not being with family. I seem to look at things differently and have a new appreciation for family, friends and times spent together than I did before. I have always loved time with family and friends, but I guess like the saying goes, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder." Even though it's not a typical Thanksgiving, I do like Thanksgiving in Thailand. Legacy tries to go to an orphanage or do some sort of outreach on Thanksgiving. I love this. In doing this, Thanksgiving takes on a completely different light than it does at home.

We went to an orphanage in Chiang Mai which provides a home for about 50 children from 3 months to 6 years. After 6 years, if they are not adopted, they are moved to another orphanage. The orphanage they are moved to is actually near our school. The children who are in the home are there because their parents took them to the hospital and left them when they were sick or maybe they are hilltribe and cannot afford to take care of them if they were sick or various other reasons. It breaks my heart to see little ones who don't have parents.

We took them milk and cake. They loved the milk, but really the cake. I thought this was funny because most kids LOVE sweet stuff. After giving them the goodies, we got to play with them. They were absolutely adorable! They were very loving and were very funny. I got to use my Thai with them and they were sooo cute! I have been looking for an orphanage to volunteer at once a week to take a break from being "Ajan Elainea" and to help out in a different capacity. I guess partly selfish motives because I miss little kids. We'll see if it all works out. It would be a lot of fun to be able to go in on a regular basis just to play with the kiddos.

Here are a few photos from our visit.

This little fellow was sooo cute! He had the most adorable smile ever! They were seemingly camera shy so you don't get to see this cutie's smile.

These warmed up to me pretty quickly. The girls were harder to persuade to talk than the boys. They were really cute. They were having a tea party in the little train.

These two were helping sweep and pick up the leaves. It was sooo CUTE!

Typical little boy picture with a gun. Haha! They even like guns in Thailand.

Let's play a game... You're tall so... I'll tell you in Thai what I want and see if you can figure it out. I pointed and then heard, "Mai owe!" "Mai Owe!" Then I would ask, "Ani?" "Mai Owe!" Haha! I got it right though. She wanted the ball. Not sure how you say it. But I got it!

To my dear climbing friends, these little guys could climb that little crib, which held all the toys quite well! They would fly up that thing no bombers needed or a belayer. However, I think a belayer would have been useful. :) I think they would make some excellent rock climbers someday.

After going to the orphanage, the three of us teachers went out for Thanksgiving Dinner at "The Duke's" We met a couple of my friends from home who volunteer at the orphanage where I volunteered my first trip to Thailand. It was a fun dinner. It was almost like home. Not quite, but good enough when you're in Thailand. :) It was yummy. No pictures this year and we didn't where hats like we did last year. We decided to be normal. Haha! Whatever that is.

Today it was back to classes as usual. No Black Friday shopping here. I got to talk with some of my family on video skype, which was fun. It was almost like I was home amidst the chaos of all the little playing. :) Almost. (I love you guys!) It diid feel a little more like home after baking some cookies and making dinner tonight.

I've have been so thankful to be able to teach this past week. Japur/Uaorawet is back in my classes with another student added. Japur is a walking miracle and to see his view on life after his near death experience with the motorbike is amazing. He has always been sweet with a good disposition, but he's even more so now. He wrote something in class along the lines of, no matter how much we prepare, how careful we are, or how we try to protect ourselves, sometimes people can still crash into us. At the time it was something that I really took to heart and was food for thought. We can try to do EVERYTHING in our power to make things go right or get things done, but in the end, we don't have control over everything. Someone or something can crash into us. It really made me think.

Thank you for your prayers for Japur. I know that's why he is doing so well. He has the Best Doctor up above. Please continue to pray as he is still recovering, quite remarkably though.

I think that's all for now and I have brought you up to speed on my life so far. I'll try and get back into posting more regularly. It just seems if I'm not doing homework, I'm preparing for a class or at least should be. :) I hope this finds you well, happy and thankful.

Sending Love and Hugs from Thailand,

Lainy J.

To Laos and Back...

Greetings!!!

I've been back from Laos for about a week. I have no idea where the time goes. It's crazy! The trip went smoothly, but the bus ride was very long and not so comfortable. I was very thankful to get back to my own bed! The trip was comprable to the flight to the US, which is rough. However, there wasn't a time change.

Monday night we set out for Laos on a pretty nice bus. We were supposed to arrive in Udon Thani, Thailand at 7am. We didn't get to U.T. until 9:30. From U.T. we changed bus stations and caught a bus that would take us the rest of the way to Laos for under $3 for a two hour bus ride. It just so happened that we got to the border at lunch time. Well, lunch is a huge deal here. You just have to wait. There were some tourists that didn't quite understand this fact. I wanted to tell them "Jai Yen Yen!" In essence, take a chill pill. I refrained. We got our Laos visas and were on our way to Vientiane. We arrived at our guest house, for which I was thankful for a bed and a hot shower. Nothing fancy, but fabulous nonetheless. My student was happy for the T.V.!

The next day we got to the Thai Embassy to apply for my student's visa, which went smoothly after getting there. We passed every embassy possible except for our beloved Thai embassy. I saw a white guy who said hello. I promptly followed him into a building to ask him where the embassy was. He walked into a school type institution where I was greeted by people who could speak English, which was greatly appreciated. They pointed us on our way with nice little drawn map. It was such a blessing. We got to the embassy and then had the rest of the day to hang out. There's not a lot to do in Vientiane, Laos. My student was entertained by the television! (What is this world coming to!?!) I went and walked around more as if we hadn't earlier that day. Haha! I found a little coffee shop, which was perfect for people watching. Laos is so close to Thailand, but it is very different. I love Thailand so much more especially when I travel around South East Asia. I'm always happy to get "home."

The next day we had the morning free. I found another coffee shop to sit and people watch, while doing a little reading. Then we head towards the Embassy, which took far less time than the first time. Leaving us with more time to kill than expected. We hung out at Pataxay Monument, which was about the only thing to see in Vientiane besides some comical signs. They were preparing for Sea Games. So the fountains were shut down for cleaning.

I hope there aren't any smoking games. This made me laugh pretty hard! It had to do with the Sea Games that are coming up in December.

I'm not sure what the elephants were all about, but something with the Sea Games, I think.

Jess, I thought you'd like these though!

Now here are the many photos I took at the monument while we were killing time. Taking photos and watching people is a good way to pass the time. Sometimes even taking photos of the people you're watching is fun.

Monument with tourists.

Monument!

Trying to be artsy.

Trying to get people to buy their photography skills. There were quite a few takers to my surprise.

This is the park across from the monument.

At the opposite end was a world peace gong. It was neat!

The monument from the park. This was the only fountain with water in it.

It was in need of being cleaned too.

My student.

Cheese!

We had to get one of both of us to prove we were there.

Following our photo op, we went to the embassy at 12:30. It was supposed to open at one. A line had already formed when we arrived. It was the first hot day since we had been there. After waiting in line for about an hour, the embassy opened and we were able to get it and get the visa. From the embassy, we went to the bus station, caught a bus to Udon Thani. Then from there to other bus station in Udon Thani and caught the last bus to Chiang Mai (home sweet home for now).

It was a whirl wind trip. I was happy to return to Chiang Mai. The bus ride back was much less enjoyable than the prior, but the destination was much sweeter. The trip was full of meeting interesting people and people watching.

The next photo, I call "Happiness in a Cup!" :) The following Sunday after returning. I went into the Chiang Mai just to get away and hang out. I was super excited about the red cups at Starbucks! There's something about going into a Starbucks here, which feels like home. When I need to get away from school and am missing home, this is one of the places I like to go.

Well, that's all for now. Another blog to come soon from Thanksgiving. :)

Take Care!

Sending Love and Hugs,

Lainy J.