Hugs!

When I came to Pak Chong and found out that I would be teaching P1-P3 (6-8 year olds) I was a bit nervous about not having any older kids.  Mostly because the younger the children the less English they understand and even when I'm making an effort to speak simply some more advanced vocabulary comes out.  Yesterday, for example, I was telling one of my P3 boys to sit down in his chair and eventually had told him to do so so many times that eventually I found myself saying "Post, sit in your chair properly." Yeah, 8 year old Thai children don't know what the word "properly" means.  But while there have been some language struggles with the small ones it also hasn't been all that I feared.  In fact, for the most part I've grown to love teaching the small ones!  For one thing, they are extremely easy to please.  If I let them write on the board I'm a hero and we can listen to the same song week after week and it never gets old for them (it gets a bit old for me but then I get to see them laugh and smile and its all worth it).  The best thing I do for them though is I have this stamp set from IKEA that I use to stamp their workbook exercises and it pretty much makes their day if I put a little stamp on their hand also.

Aren't they cute?! From left to right: a paw print, a heart, a flower, a frog face, a sun, and a ghost

But with all this success in our teacher/student relationship I still wasn't getting the physical affection that I got in Chaiyaphum.  I missed the hugs!  This week however that has changed all thanks to one little girl.  It literally took them seeing one other child hug me and me returning the hug for all my P1s to decide that I deserve a hug every time they see me.  It's awesome.  I'm also sick for the first time all term but still, I wouldn't trade the hugs and love for anything.  

Teacher Caroline, Teacher Bee, some P1 girls - So cute!

Laundry

Part of me wants to write a post - I know that I should and that I want to get back into the swing of blogging.  And I know that other people (I'm looking at you Mommy and Omo and Gram) enjoy it.  But I'm feeling uninspired.  I don't know what to write!  Please, please, please, if there are things you are interested in knowing about my life or about Thailand I would love some inspiration!  A simple question can inspire a short novel response from me (my cousin who is soon to be attending Bryn Mawr can attest to this - her messages to me are short and simple, sometimes just one question! and yet each time I manage to write a several paragraph response) so again, please hit me with some ideas!

Anyway, I guess today I'll talk about laundry.

In Chaiyaphum, laundry was the bane of my existence.  My life there was so easy and so happy and laundry was the one thing I never got used to.  The apartment/hotel I rented a room at didn't have a washing machine and there wasn't a "laundromat" (which here is basically just someone who owns 3 or 4 washing machines and lets other people pay to use them) within walking distance so I had to give my laundry to someone else to do.  Now, you might be thinking, "That sounds nice!  I want someone else to do my laundry!  Gosh, Caroline, why are you complaining about someone else doing your laundry?"  But its not all its cracked up to be.  For one thing, the lady I gave it to didn't want to do my undergarments.  So I had to hand wash them.  I hate hand washing (yeah, yeah, first world problem, I know - but still, does anyone actually like hand washing their clothes?)  Also, I just like being in control when it comes to laundry.  I like checking the pockets right before I put the laundry in and putting the new blanket and towel in together so that when they shed/bleed they are the same color and it really won't matter.  That's just the way it is for me.  So even though I don't enjoy doing laundry, I definitely prefer doing my own laundry myself.

Happily, here in Pak Chong I do get to do my own laundry.  The landlady here does other people's laundry but I am also able to use the machines myself!  It is 30 baht (1$) for a load and because I have to hang dry and I have limited space I end up doing laundry a lot more frequently than I would in the U.S. because I don't want it to build up.  Of course, it build up some anyway because I'm me but I don't let it build up nearly as much as I did in Chaiyaphum.

See what I mean about needing inspiration?  I just wrote a post about doing laundry!  But just in case you all were curious about what laundry is like in Thailand, this pretty much sums it up.  A lot of people send their laundry out to people like my landlady.  She washes, drys, and irons and it probably costs less than 100 baht per load (just an estimate).  Yet, I still prefer to do my own.  In fact, that's what I'll be doing after school today! 

Exciting Times

It’s hard for me to know where to begin since it’s been so long since I’ve blogged!  But today is my Mom’s birthday, and well, the least I can do is update the blog for her!  Happy Birthday Mommy!

Right now I’m feeling excited.  I’m on my way to Bangkok as we speak and tomorrow I’ll be going to Pattaya for a birthday celebration weekend (August must be a popular month for birthdays!).  The group of friends I’m going with is a group of people I always have a good time with and this weekend will be no exception.  We’re staying in a house all together, with plans to hang out by the pool and check out the city night scene, and it’s Italian themed so there will be good food abound!! (We are excellent as a group at throwing a themed party – as in, we are excellent at coming up with theme and then making excellent food to go along with that theme!) 

I’m also excited because it’s August which means that later this month I can mark the year point since I’ve been in Thailand!  The past year has been one of the consistently happiest in my life and has absolutely flown by.  Some days it’s hard to imagine I’ve been here longer than a month!  Two years ago when I decided that living abroad was definitely something I wanted to do after graduation (well, I had decided that before then but the plan changed two years ago so that’s where we’re marking it), it was really important to me that I find something that I could do for only a year – no 2+ year contracts for me!  Now of course the idea that I would be leaving this month or in a few months is strange.  Don’t worry family and friends in the U.S. – I plan to come back eventually!  But now seems like the perfect time in my life to be unsure about next year’s plans or the year after that (or even maybe the year after that?) and that uncertainty is really exciting for me.  I’ll be honest – I have 48 new, clean, unused pages in my passport and 5 more years to fill them up with new people, new foods, new languages, new landmarks, and new adventures so adventuring is exactly what I plan on doing!  (Disclaimer: I’m not actually setting out to fill up all 48 pages in the next 5 years – but getting some new ink on those pages, yeah, that’s a goal :) )

So today’s mood is definitely Excited.  I’m excited for my mom – the best, most wonderful mom in the whole wide world – I’m excited for this weekend and others like it to come with the amazing friends I’ve made here, and I’m excited about a whole world of possibilities for living and travelling.  Who knew August would be such an exciting month?!

Love you Mommy – Happy Birthday!!! Y