the good life: yikes...been awhile....

so the thing is... i love traveling...while all my friends are getting married i have been able to travel all over. I have been to mexico, thailand,japan, hong kong, spain, england, china, italy, and greece... and if you can count it...in the airports in korea, and taiwan. i have had countless adventures and i wish i had kept a better record of them for everyone to read. i guess i will try and recap.

you already heard about mexico... so next is thailand! i had been going to school at BYUH and did my internship in thailand...it was a last minute decision- not unlike almost every other decision i make. i went with 6 other interns and we taught at the public schools in bangkok. i lived with a very rich lady outside of the city center- making me an hour or so away from the rest of the interns (boo). they have a whole hierarchy thing going in thailand so my rich host mom or khun may as i called her, didn't really talk to me... at all. and they wanted me to bow down to her... not really something i was into. i hung out with her staff mostly. it was a good time except no one spoke english except her driver, his name was golf. he proposed to me a few times. haha. i was also in a constant allergic reaction- coconut is no friend to me... i did have a great time through it all though... the kids at wat nuanchan were great. i especially loved my 5th grade class.

one of my favorite memories would have to be the time we got deported.... that's right- the school didn't work out our visas right and we overstayed our welcome. they basically told us we had to leave the country right away or pay 3000 baht... which is about how much it would cost to go to cambodia... so of course we chose cambodia! we hired a sketchy van driver and all piled in for the ride to the border. when we got there all we could see was a casino and a whole bunch of street kids, it was so sad. they had umbrellas and were trying to shade us so we would give them money. brandon was so tall though they kept poking him in the face with their umbrellas. we tried our luck at the casinos- i bet a whole 10 baht (33 cents) and lost every single time! brandon and zach faired a bit better... but we were chased out by a machine gun carrying guard when i tried to take a picture of zach who had some issues in the bathroom with the bidet and it spraying all over the place... haha. use your imagination.

another great memory from thailand would be shopping. emily and i would go around to the stores and before we could even look at anything we were stopped with yells of "missy no big sizes here!" geez... fat complex much?

also there are lady boys EVERYWHERE! we had a game we would play- he or she? brandon seemed to be the best at this game... i even followed a shim into the womens bathroom once to see if they stood or sat (definitely a stander!) most of the people that worked for my host mom turned out to be lady boys!! they are VERY good at hiding it let me tell you! one night i came home to one of the kitchen staff girls sobbing (oa is her name)...she didn't speak much english but i asked her what was wrong... she told me that jyep (another kitchen girl) was a "casanova" i was like uhhhhh what? and with the help of "talking dic" (yup that's what they call the electronic dictionary) she showed me the word "affair" - now i'm thinking...are they lesbians? how did i miss this? so i confusedly type "couple?" into good ol talking dic which obediently translates for me. oa nods yes and i'm trying to put together the pieces she yells out in her excitement that she remembers some english- "jyep man!" then i was REALLY confused... what?! i had seen her every day- she was most def NOT a man... but turns out my lady boy senses were off and jyep was a man. my question is this... what does that make oa? technically not a lesbian if jyep is a man... but what woman wants a man that dresses and seems for all intents and purposes a woman? and what man if not gay wants to dress as a woman but then still be with women? i guess the lady boy will always be a mystery to me!

another big part of my thailand experience was all of the monk villages i went to. my host mom was super into it and she even had one in the mansion of a house she lived in. (i lived off to the side in a guest house-that's right a whole house to myself!- complete with a shower out in the open that soaked the entire bathroom every time you showered- an asian favorite i learned) we had some famous monk guy come to the house and everyone was so excited we worshiped a ton and had ample amounts of water and flowers thrown at us... along with some beads and instant coffee..he even talked to me and gave me 20 baht which apparently was a huge honor because i got whacked in the back of the head for answering his english question (how are you?) with a good and you? instead of the expected answer khop khun kaaa (thank you in thai).

oh thailand... i don't think i can put into words that experience... eating on the floor, going to wats, hanging out with friends, getting lost in taxis, sitting around for hours on end watching remember the titans on my ipod or playing snake on my thai phone, countless sacred ceremonies and sacrifices, more buddhas than i have ever seen in my life, cheap food, not knowing anything that i was eating, crazy kids, squatter toilets... and so much more...

sawasdee kaa!