April 16th - May 1st

Monday, April 16th - started Summer Term 3 at AUA. (2-three hour classes 5 days a week)

Wednesday, April 18th - first real rain since October. We start class at 5:15, lose power at 5:40, emergency lights go out at 5:50. At that time we were doing fake restaurant scenarios with waiters and customers, so the candle lit room actually added some atmosphere. But by 6:30 we were all pretty uncomfortable. Where there is no electricity, there is no air conditioning! Ahh!!! We usually have a 15 minute break, we let them stay out until we got in trouble (about 7:10) because there was light and a breeze outside and none of us knew what to do in a dark, hot, humid room with 20 miserable Thai kids.

Luckily Thais are obsessed with ghosts and one girl lived in a haunted room, so she told her story in English for pretty much the whole time. Every 15 minutes or so I would let her speak Thai for 30 seconds. But oh man, she was a rockstar! I was so proud of her! This girl is definitely not the strongest student in class, but she was just going off. It was so cool to watch. The rest of the class was genuinely interested and asked questions in English the best they could. That took us until the light came back on at 8:10 and then at 8:15 class was over.

Thursday, April 19th - We had a teacher's meeting where the director said, "If this happens again just stay in the classrooms." Craig pointed out, "It's really hot, humid, dark and uncomfortable for everyone. Isn't it possible to be outside if it's light enough?" The response, "Well, right, of course use your common sense. But stay in the classrooms." Let me clarify. Sometimes when someone says something like that the "stay in the classrooms" would be said with a wink, like "I'm just saying it because I have to, but you know what to do when the time comes" but that really wasn't the case here.

Friday, April 20th - As a thank you for handling Wednesday "so professionally" we had an ice cream party on Friday. Miriam, Caroline and I take ice cream very seriously. I think Miriam and me a little bit more than Caroline, but she can hang. So while talking about this ice cream party, we tried to get excited but we knew it was just going to be some crap ice cream, like Wall's or Magnolia. Then Sioabhan (pronounced Cheh-vahn) walks in with a a Swensen's bag. Oh my god. We were so impressed. Swensen's isn't as good as Bud's but it's like the different between Carvel and Good Humor ice cream. But then, out of the Swensen's bag comes Wall's and Magnolia ice cream. Miriam and I gave each other, "We knew it was too good to be true" look. There were also Oreos, but who in their right mind is going to eat Oreos without milk? I ran to 7-11 to get some. When I got back there were only two left but the director (my boss) said that if I went through the effort of buying milk to eat them with it was okay if I had the last two. That was nice.

After work was bowling, which is usually a Thursday activity, but somehow Thursday turned into a (Bud's) ice cream night and bowling got moved to Friday night. Bowling is so much fun. And my bowling place has a 3 games for 100 baht ($2.75?) promotion this month. Not as good as the 4 games for 100 baht promotion from last month, but still pretty damn good!

At bowling, Caroline and I came up with a really fun game with one of my Thai phrase books. She tries to read the Thai (transliterated into English) and I see if I know what it means! No one else thought this game was fun. We decided to keep playing, but it was hard to find a place to go. We settled on a posh bar across from a posh club and ordered Sprite and played until it closed.

Saturday, April 21st - Went to California WOW for the first time in a while with Caroline. WOW!! It was amazing! It looks like all the pictures on the website now. And the locker rooms! Wow! You know that feeling when you get to a hotel and you see all the stuff you've never needed but you're excited to see it there? That's the California WOW locker room. Maybe it was just q-tips, hairdryers, big mirrors, and cushiony stools, but it was really cool. The machines and stuff were nice too. They now open at 8am so I don't have to wait until 11 anymore. I'm finally happy to be a member there!

Later Miriam called and asked if I wanted to go to Tesco Lotus. The answer is always yes. Dressing rooms, set prices, air conditioning, no weird faces for having a 1000 baht bill, it's great! She had never been there and she heard Caroline and me talk about it all the time. I decided to go to "other" one. I had been to it once but had no idea where it was. I looked at a map and it looked liked it was on the super highway. But the superhighway sucks. It's fast, scary, all under construction, and therefore really confusing. It took us an hour to get there. We were there for about 3 hours. We decided to try a Thai pizza company and it was terrible. The cheese had been squirted on. The sauce was sweet and there were pineapples on the vegetarian pizza. I was okay with it, but Miriam refused. She doesn't like sweet stuff or pinapples on pizza. It was okay though. We went to KFC where I learned that the first KFC in Thailand opened in 1983 and in 2000, there were 250 stores in Thailand. How interesting! It was also Miriam's first KFC experiencel.

I knew there was an easier way back to town, and upon finding it and heading in the right direction (no scary super highway this time!) I fell off my bike. I was merging from a shoulder to the road and waited too long and the road was bad and blah blah blah. It doesn't matter. I thought the bike could do something it couldn't do, so it said no and fell over, I fell over and then Miriam fell on me. I skinned my elbow and my knee and a little bit on my foot, and, luckily, Miriam only scraped the side of her toe. I knew owning a motorbike came the inevitable accident. I just hoped it wouldn't be too bad. This wasn't too bad! I fell over, I got up, I was ok. My bike was ok. Miriam was ok. We went back to Miriam's and I tried to clean the wound a little bit. This was the night of Renata's classy birthday party and I wanted to go there, so I stopped at a pharmacy, got some stuff to clean my wounds and made my way to the party. I did my best to clean it, put some Neosporin on it, and proceeded to play cards and eat fancy foods like pita, olive dip, dried apricots and apples.

We played spit and Egytian rat screw and I even did a round or two of halvzies (with about 1/3 of the real rules).

Sunday, April 22nd - Called Mom and told her I was in an accident. By the way, the Thai word for accident is "ooh - bah - tee - het", one of the most fun words I've learned yet. Earlier in the week, Miriam announced we needed another ice cream party and Sunday at my apartment was it. It was changed into a "Cards and Ice Cream Party" after Renata's party. It was fun!! Joe (fellow AUA teacher) misunderstood and brought whisky, but that was ok too. After some people left, the rest of the party made our way to a pizza place where we continued to play cards.

Monday, April 23rd - Miriam showed up to AUA with a halvzies bruise on her right under-forearm from playing at the pizza place. I've never felt prouder. I still had my nasty elbow. I showed some people and was told, "Beth, that's gross. That's infected. You have to go to the doctor." Damn. I bought alcohol to clean it but when I tried it on my knee (minimal compared to my elbow) I screamed louder than I can remember, so I didn't actually clean my elbow at all. So the infection shouldn't have been that surprisinging. I noticed the nastiness, but I thought it was residual Neosporin. But Neosporin isn't green puss.

Also at AUA today was a notice about wearing a crazy, brightly colored, patterned - sometimes called Hawaiian - shirt on Friday. (But no t-shirts.)

Miriam came to the hospital with me on Monday and tried to distract me as three people held my arm to clean it. It was painful but I didn't scream. They told me to come back tomorrow to get it cleaned and re-dressed again and gave me antibiotics and said everything would be covered by my card. I asked if I could get a topical cream instead of oral, but he laughed at me and said it was too late. The bill with dressing and antibiotics was about $25. I thought it was supposed to be free, but $25 seemed pretty minimal so I didn't question it.

Tuesday, April 24th - Went back, got it cleaned and dressed again and then paid 160 baht. I didn't get it. They said it was going to be paid for by insurance.

Wednesday, April 25th - Tried to figure out what was going on. Turns out, the nurse saw my card and wrote that I had a card, but since I hadn't shown the cashier, she didn't know I had insurance so I had been paying for everything. But the card only covers when I see a doctor and then the follow up, so I had to see a doctor on again. The nurses dealt with my elbow first, so when he came in, he looked at my newly cleaned and dressed elbow asked, "What happened?" "I fell off my motorbike." "When?" "Saturday." "Ok," and then walked out. Then I went to the cashier, showed the card and didn't pay anything. Interesting. They told me to come back on Friday.

Thursday, April 26th - back to Thursday bowling night, but I was out of commission. I did bring my computer to try to use their wireless internet, but they turned it off early.

Friday, April 27th -
1) the hottest day of the year
2) Hawaiian shirt day (I wore my brightest shirt, an orange polo, but Ben was the winner/only participant)
3) the last day of the crazy, billion hour summer terms
4) Craig, Caroline and Miriam's last day teaching

AUA provided a nice meal for the combination of reasons 3 and 4. The director got Oreos again and even bought me my own milk. That's one of the nicest things anyone's ever done for me. I almost cried. We had goodbye speeches for Craig, Caroline and Miriam. Them leaving is really going to kill me. Besides being my good friends, passionate ice cream eaters and spit players are hard to find around here.

Fridays are traditionally celebrated at Salsa Kitchen which is tough because it tastes good but has the tendency to make people sick sometimes. But for the last Salsa Kitchen, we all went. It was also Chris (Jeff from the Elephant Park's friend) birthday, so everyone was out! First Salsa Kitchen, then Heaven Beach, a bar in the backpacker area with all the reggae Thai boys with Thai girlfriends who have no shame in hitting on white backpacker girls. Jeff, Chris and Lee like it because it has a pool table. Max and Johnny (new AUA teachers) finally came out and met up with us too. They're funny. Max is from England but has lived in America for the last 8 years and I can understand him with no problem. Johnny on the other hand, is from Northern Ireland, and I can't understand a word he says. Ever. Max needs to translate. They're young and fun and cool, but I don't know if they're really going to able to replace Miriam and Caroline in terms of ice cream and/or card games.

I forgot to go to the hospital.

Saturday, April 28th - SPA DAY! Miriam, Caroline and Beth's last hurrah. We decided on a place called Urban Spa. Thailand has two sides. The foreigners like the beautiful, traditional side with silk skirts, intricate hair styles, and really slow wais (the bow with the hands in front of your nose) and then there's this cartoon (they think modern?) world that the Thais love. Urban Spa is more of the second kind. It looked like a cracked out hospital. Brightly colored closets, metal beds, and cartoon character slippers. The counter in the front actually looked a lot like the new Bud's (Ice Cream) shop. But it was cheaper than the other places and we got sick of walking around looking for a place. We got a $30 package which included a 1-hour Swedish massage, a 30-minute steam room and a 30-minute body scrub. It was really nice but we had to get split up which was not the point of the outing. Miriam said, "Oh I'll be fine, really! I've got my book!" I said that I wasn't sure if she'd really be able to read it. Caroline and I kept her in our thoughts by thinking about how she would be able to read her book in all of the various positions of the massage. Turns out she only read during the steam room. We were given disposable paper underwear which they called "drawers". From a list of words for undergarmets, drawers is the last one I would choose for women's underwear. Go Thailand!

Saturday night - My first real Indian meal! So, Indian and I don't really get along, but Miriam really likes this one restaurant near the Night Bazzar so I sucked it up and tried yet again. I went with a set meal which came with rice, 3 bowls of stuff (I think some lentil thing, some other yellowish thing with chicken and butter chicken), a little thing of the yogurt and some crisy bread. I liked it all except the crispy bread! I got plain naan and a real lassi and loved it. The yogurt helped the other yellow stuff not be so spiced, and everything else I think I actually enjoyed. It was amazing. I'm very proud of myself.

Nice meals are usually followed by Bud's Ice Cream, but it closes at 11, so we had to come up with another plan. There's a Haagen Daz in the Night Bazzar, but we usually we skip that option because it's ridiculously priced. However, someone suggested a walk, and our walk somehow led us to Haagen Daz, and it was everyone's last night together. One scoop with no toppings is 130 baht, plus a 10 baht "dining-in" surcharge, bringing the final price to 143 for one scoop of ice cream. Remember, you can bowl three games for 100 baht. A night at a guesthouse is starts at 80 baht. A gigantic plate of Mexican or Italian food is 120 baht. Filling my motorbike's gas tank has never been more than 80 baht. And this one scoop of ice cream is 143 baht. We tried our best to take advantage of all of the dining in privileges, but they didn't even have a bathroom!

Eventually they closed and we had to find another spot. Johnny and Max were waiting for us to tell them where we were going to go to drink, but we ended up making our way to McDonalds (The Night Bazzar area is so silly. The main intersection has a McDonalds on one corner, a Starbucks and Haagen Daz on another, and a Kodak store with a huge screen on top, trying to be like Times Square or Tokyo) where I bought a 15 baht water, thereby allowing me and my group of 6 to sit at their tables.

First we played 3-on-3 Mastermind. Here's how to play Mastermind. Pick a 5 letter word (ex. crazy) and then the other team guesses 5 letter words (no double letters) and you say how many of those letters are in your word.

night - 0
horse - 1
phone - 0
right - 1
great - 2
racks - 3

So that was fun. We play this game with 4 letter words with our kids. It's fun.

Mastermind, a couple games of halvzies and then McDonalds finally kicked us out we called it a night. Max and Johnny were still waiting for us to tell them where we were drinking. "Water at McDonalds??" did interest them.

Sunday, April 29th - Met Craig, Caroline and John Locke (there are 4 Johns at AUA) for breakfast and said goodbye. C & C are in Bangkok for a week, then China, then Nepal, then India, then Rome, then Germany, then England?, then NY?, then Boston for grad school in September.

Miriam and I had another Tesco date but with our own bikes and at the easy to get to one. We both bought a pair of brown Thai schoolboy Scouts Day shoes. Miriam said she was going to wait until she got home to wear them, but I busted out with them on Sunday night. My Thai friends pointed in shock and said, "Schoolboy! Not teacher woman." I promised not to wear them to work.

Sunday night I met up with a couchsurfing friend named Melik who I had met before my Krabi trip. He was having a birthday dinner/party. He's one of those people who's good at everything. You kind of admire them, you kind of hate them. I think it might be called jealousy. He graduated from Georgetown, is fluent in like 5 languages, has lived in a 15 different countries and used to make a lot of money in money stuff in NYC, but now lives here enjoying it while he works on books. Or something like that. I didn't know any of his friends but they are all real people. Like writers, owners of important things, stuff like that. I didn't know this was going to be the case beforehand. I was wearing my schoolboy shoes. It was kind of awkward. We went from the restaurant to one of the woman's apartments and it was by far the nicest apartment I've seen in Chiang Mai. Real floors, a kitchen, 2 living rooms with filled bookcases and nice, comfortable couches, a separate bedroom, everything. I feel like I'm not doing a very good job of describing it, but it was just unreal in comparison with where me and my friend live. Melik's real birthday is on Monday so he got everyone drunk and then got them to promise they would come bowling and karaoke-ing on Monday night.

Monday, April 30th - Went to lunch with my Thai friend Yong at a BBQ place in the mall. I've seen this BBQ thing for a while now, but I felt like you need 1) friends 2) someone who knows what you're supposed to do 3) no other plans. This was the first time it came together. They put a big grill on your table and then surround the grill in water, like a mini moat, then you just order tiny dishes of a bazillion kinds of meat and fish and vegetables and either grill it or drop it in the water, or drop in the water and then grill it. It was fun! We got the buffet so we got to try everything. A dish of rice each, 2 dipping sauces with garlic, lime and pepper for the dipping sauces each and then we shared 4 different kinds of chicken, 6 different types of pork, 2 different kinds of tofu, 4 or 5 vegetables, and 2 or 3 fish things. It's kind of sickening to eat that much meat, but it's so fun that you don't realize it. And then the water turns into a pretty good soup. And the buffet extended to the ice cream too! It was nothing special (Good Humor I think), but you know, a nice thought.

After recovering from lunch, I met up with Renata. She's been here for a while and knows the "Ugh! Everyone's leaving!" feeling all too well. It was nice talking with her. I have a lot of farang guy friends here, but I think she's the only farang girl friend I have now.

Monday night, I stayed true to my word and met up with Melik and company. He got a strike while talking on the phone with friends in Dubai. He's that kind of guy. I did alright the first game, a lot better the second game, but then decided to go for a 6 pin average for the third game. That was a lot more fun. I think I'll do that more in the future.

Then karaoke. It was fun, but both activities were bittersweet because I didn't really know these people and I wanted it to be my old crew! I'm pretty sure I was 7 years younger than the youngest person (Melik) and I think 28 years younger than the oldest. You can see how that could be weird. I knew all the songs they chose, and could sing along, but I really wanted to do Britney, N'Sync, and oh god, Hanson, but I wasn't going to let any of them know that. I sang along to The Carpenters, ABBA, and Petula Clark and kept my mouth shut. Melik drunkenly harmonized perfectly to every song.

Tuesday, May 1st - I have this week off and I have no plans. So far, Monday - eat a lot of meat, Tuesday - sit in an internet cafe all day, Wednesday - who knows? Melik offered to learn Halvzies and spit and said, "It's fine, I learn card games in 5 minutes" so I might take him up on that. Other than that, I've got to make some decisions about the internet situation in my apartment and go to the post office to send packages I've been meaning to send since February. And catch up on my AUA "Professional Development" work.

Still no YouTube in Thailand. I'm thinking it's never coming back.

And CONGRATULATIONS to Maisie for being an official walking person!

Pictures - here

*** I posted two blogs today, read on if you'd like ****