Shocked.

The craziest thing just happened in my class. Actually, I’m still not really sure what happened. 

I went to teach my first class of the morning and the kids were as naughty as ever. They were being loud, disobedient, and potentially pretending to chloroform one another. I attempted to shout through my lesson on “Physical Appearance” and teach to the small handful who were listening. After setting up an activity for them to complete in their workbooks, I sat at a desk at the back of the room checking the work of the students who were finished. 

All of a sudden, a giant BOOM came from outside the open front window. Being on the third floor and in a class of very naughty students, my first thought was, “Oh God, they finally did it, they finally pushed a kid out the window.” I looked to the faces of my students for an explanation, but all they gave me in return were scared faces, confusion, and oddly a little bit of excitement. Then some of them started saying, “firecracker” and, worse, “bomb.” I looked at the window and there were traces of smoke and an unplaceable scent seeping into the room. I went into sheer panic mode, but had no plan of attack. Then my co-teacher came running in and yelled at the students to get out of the class. The hallway was filled with students and chaotic teachers. One small, older female teacher started motioning for students to leave the building. Having no idea what  hypotheses for the chaos were being spoken in Thai around me, I followed suit and descended. I ran into a fellow American English teacher on the first floor and, appearing less frightened than myself, I asked her if she’d heard the noise. She informed me it was an electrical circuit that had blown. Calming down, I thought about it and realized all the lights went out in my class after the loud noise. 

I slowly came out of my state of panic, looked around, and gathered in the parking lot with the other teachers and students. Some of my students came up to me with their notebooks in hand and asked me to check their work. Brown nosers. I found my friend Leah and we swapped terror stories. Turns out she was on the second floor right next to the electrical tower that had made the loudest of noises. Before she could even finish her whole story, the teachers started calling their students back to class. Leah’s Thai co-teacher whispered, “dammit,” because apparently the mini explosion was in the middle of her naughtiest class and she just wanted to go to lunch. Me too, lady.  

I hesitantly returned to class thinking there was no way my students would 1. all be there, and 2. be willing to listen. Much to my surprise, they were sitting in their seats, notebooks out, and working diligently on the activity. I guess all they needed was a midday freak out and a good sprint up and down the stairs in order to focus. Despite their random change of behavior, I ended class early because I was too frazzled to get back on track...and my lesson really sucked today. 

School continued on normally. No one went home. No firetrucks came rushing to campus. Nothing happened. We went about our days without any detail on the situation, and we also went on without lights and air conditioning. So bizarre. 

Competitions

Last week Chelsea, Mel, and I got to leave school for two days and go to Chiang Mai for part of English Competition Week. ECW isn’t really an official thing, it just so happened that a bunch of competitions for our students took place last week. These competitions are for speeches, spelling, math, science, dance, and potentially more. Mel and Chelsea have been coaching a 6th grade boy and a 3rd grade girl in speech competitions since about week two of their time in Thailand. I just started coaching a 6th grade girl in spelling about three weeks ago. For no necessary reason, our “coaching” skills allowed the three of us to accompany our students, other students, a handful of Thai teachers, and the school’s sub-director to the competitions in Chiang Mai. 

So Tuesday morning the three of us (plus Chelsea’s visiting friend Elise) packed our bags, did some last minute coaching, got to wear jeans to school, prayed for about 30 minutes to different Buddha statues around school, and then hopped in a van to drive four hours to the competitions. The actual competitions didn’t start until Wednesday morning, but we arrived the day before and got to spend the night. 

Side note: I like to play this game called “How Would This Go Down in America?” where I think about crazy Thai situations that are completely normal here and then picture them occurring in an American school. Most of the time, if the situations happened in America the result would be jail time. 

The spending the night situation was so different from what it would have been had this been in America. In America, if you took elementary-aged students on an overnight outing, I would imagine the children would be accompanied by their parents or there would be one adult of the appropriate gender in every hotel room. In Thailand, during this overnight excursion, there were no parents, but there was at least one adult in every room, however, gender did not matter. First of all, our accommodations were not really a hotel. It was a room of four beds and two shoilets (shower + toilet = shoilet). In our room, one of the toilets was completely backed up with whatever had happened in it from the guest before, so we were down to one shoilet. There were dead bugs on the walls and potentially in our beds too. None of us ended up using the “comforters” at the foot of the bed because some were stained and most looked filthy. I slept with a towel for a blanket that night. And not to be super first world-y, but there also wasn’t air conditioning. Now this is not something I would complain about in the states, but when the low of the day is about 82 with ridiculous levels of humidity, no AC is a game changer for comfort. Anywho, back to the student/teacher ratios. In the room next to us was our 3rd grade speech girl, two middle-aged female Thai teachers, and the 6th grade boy. When our 6th grade boy told us his room accommodations, he said it with pure nonchalance in his tone and didn’t even look up from his game of Angry Birds. Apparently mixed genders of students and teachers in a room is a-okay in Thailand. Just one example of when “How would this go down in America?” ends in jail time. 

The next day at the competitions, I split off from the other English teachers and went with my spelling girl, Um (I didn’t have a random mid-sentence language lapse, her name is really Um), and the Thai teacher Nongnoot. My purpose during competition day was to quiz Um beforehand on spelling words she often misspells. This lasted about five minutes and then it was competition time. The competition took place in a room of 44 students from all over Northern Thailand. The room was just a regular classroom with an entire front wall of windows. Plastered against the window wall was about three dozen parents and teachers snapping pics and recording videos of the room of spelling students (quality video that they’ll totally care about in the future). I stood back and looked at my poor little Um, the shiest girl I’ve ever met, who looked sick to her stomach sitting in the middle of the classroom. Round one consisted of a British woman reading 20 spelling words aloud and the students writing them down. They provide a sample sentence, but in all honesty it probably didn’t help whatsoever since these kids are memorizing machines, not English proficient pros. After each round, Um would emerge for a brief break and Nongnoot would immediately go into hounding her with more words to practice spelling out loud. Noot would turn to me and tell me to say words to Um from the spelling lists. It was ridiculous. Um was already nervous and knew as much as she was going to know at that point. I felt so bad for her. In the end, Um made it through seven rounds of spelling out loud and beat out a good portion of the competition by coming in 7th place overall. I was proud, but no one seemed to care because everyone was too distracted by our 6th grade speech boy who got 2nd place and will now be moving onto the nationwide competition in Bangkok (woot!). 

Overall it was a really weird experience and very unnecessary for us whiteys to be there, but I think the school gained some cool point for our presence and we all had a really good time.

Embracing Embarrassment

I experience moments of embarrassment pretty much every day in Thailand. Sometimes these moments are voluntary, like when I opt to mimic Gangnam Style in front of my classes, but other moments are so very not voluntary that I can only laugh to keep from bursting into red-faced flames. Monday was by far my most embarrassing moment to date in this country...or perhaps anywhere in the world. 

During the morning assembly each day, an English teacher is required to stand on stage in front of all the students and faculty and sing a song or do something English-y. I normally miss the morning assembly because I help a 6th grade girl practice for a spelling competition instead, so I’m fairly out of the loop when it comes to the routine of the morning assembly. On Monday, it was my turn to be the English representative and since it was the start of a new week I figured I would introduce a new song. I chose “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” because they know the song and motions in Thai and because I’ve already taught it to two of my classes. I figured it would be kind of awkward, but manageable. It was manageable, but more than kind of awkward. 

As I stood facing the flag, listening to the children sing the King’s Song, one of the head English teachers came over and told me it was time to go on stage. My friend and fellow teacher, Mimi, offered to come up with me and sing the song as well. This turned out to be more than necessary because as I reached the stage I was handed a microphone, and everyone knows you need two hands to perform “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.” Without much thought and with a small intro statement, I just started singing Itsy Bitsy Spider into a microphone in front of thousands of kids and dozens of teachers. I honestly couldn’t tell you what the kids or anyone in the audience was doing. I simply sang like it wasn’t weird and like I didn’t have a fear of public speaking, let alone public singing. Then the head English teacher guy whispered in my ear to hold the microphone closer to my mouth. That’s when things went downhill (not that it was going well before this moment). As I went in for round two of the song, Teacher Mimi was doing the motions next to me and accidentally bumped the microphone. I couldn’t help but to chuckle considering I’d nearly taken an elbow to the face, which resulted in me singing the lyric “Down ca-a-a-ame the rain” in a jolted, man-ish laughing voice. I’m not sure if other people laughed, or if the kids continued attempting to sing along, but I am sure an unnatural shade of red overcame my face. I pushed through one more round of the song, said good job to the students, and bowed out before I could even ask anyone how bad it was. 

Despite my public butchering of the beloved childhood song, I have continued to get requests from all of my students to practice it with them during class. Turns out nobody cares how poorly you perform things around here, as long as it’s in English it automatically gets 1800 cool points. 

Universal Camping

This past weekend marked the end of my third week of teaching, so of course all of us English teachers decided to get out of town. On Friday at about 3:00pm, the Sub Director of the school waltzed into the English department office and asked if any of us could stick around to teach on Saturday. Psh, yeah right. Though we were not traveling together, literally every English teacher besides just one was planning to leave town within the next two hours. That one guy got screwed. The rest of us hopped on buses and split town. 

My old friend Chelsea and my new friends Mel, Leah, Mimi and I decided to go camping for the weekend. We took a four hour bus ride to Chiang Mai, slept in a less than comfortable but more than affordable hostel Friday night, and met up with four of Mel & Chelsea’s English teacher friends who teach in Chiang Mai and Lampang on Saturday morning. The group of nine of us headed to the top of the tallest mountain in Thailand to get our foreign camping on. After a few glitches in transportation and some hours of fumbling to find accommodations, we finally found a campground to stay at for the night. Three more girls joined our group (friends of friends of friends), making our grand total for the trip twelve farangs. We rented four tents, twelve sleeping bags, twelve sleeping mats, and got ready for a good time. 

At first glance, camping seems to be pretty universal. The moment we found the campground, I felt like I was at home. Not San Ramon home, but camping home. There was a wooden welcome station, tall pine tree-type trees, a road that wound throughout the campground, less than luxurious bathrooms, and tents everywhere. That was the first difference between American camping and Thai camping, the tents being everywhere. There aren’t really campsites, but rather it’s a fairly flat area spotted with trees and you can put your tents anywhere you want. We made kind of a half-circle village out of our four tents and then set up our mats and a few towels outside to mimic a campfire pit. We couldn’t have an actual campfire because we didn’t have anything to separate the flames from the ground, but this wasn’t a problem because the campground had floodlights on all night. It was like nature illuminated with street lamps. Around our makeshift campfire, we played games and swapped stories and slipped into our own little camping world. Another difference from the kind of camping I’m used to was that this place had a convenience store/shack. This place was a saving grace. We didn’t think ahead enough to plan out food, so we all ate snacks from the shack for dinner Saturday night. You could also rent comforters from the store, which seemed random, but turned out very necessary because it actually got cold up there. I never thought I would get chilly in Thailand, but sure enough I had to pull my sleeping bag up over my head that night to fend off my shivering. That store also had the best morning surprise to complete any camper’s experience: hot chocolate. It was one of the most satisfying cups of cocoa I’ve ever indulged in. At random points during the weekend, we would look at each other and acknowledge, in a bit of awe, that we were actually camping in Thailand. 

After a not so great night of sleep, but an overall fantastic experience, we packed up and returned our rented items. Then another adventure began: getting off the mountain. If you think about it, it’s really not common to go camping without a personal form of transportation. In the states, you’d never take a taxi out to a campground. But in Thailand, we had no other choice. We had to take two songtaos up the mountain, and that was uncommon. So on the way back down we had a wee bit of trouble finding rides. We had such trouble that we resorted to hitch-hiking. It started out as a joke, but once a pickup truck filled with a Thai family on a day trip pulled over, they became our real solution. The family was so kind and more than willing to help us out, so we packed nine of us (the other three girls had their own motorbikes and had already left our gang) into their truck bed. Their only request: don’t crush their freshly bought mountain vegetables. All nine of us and our backpacks were very careful to squish into each other without squashing the veggies. Several minutes into the crammed ride, the family pulled off down a side road in order to do some sight-seeing. We weren’t in a huge rush and they invited us to join with encouragements of allowing them “just few minutes” to look around. We wound up in a beautiful garden where a wedding photo shoot was taking place. It was gorgeous and very random. Afterward the family packed back into the cab and us farangs into the bed of the truck. Once we reached a bus stop, we ended our time with the friendliest family ever by taking group photos, as per their request. It was an unpredictable way to end an unpredictable weekend, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way...well, maybe I could’ve done without the permanently wind-blown hair after the truck ride down the mountain. 

On Display

I no longer harbor any childhood dreams to become famous within the public eye. Since coming to Thailand, I’ve had my picture taken more times by strangers than a monkey in a zoo. It’s like the freaking paparazzi over here. 

A few examples...

The old town night market: 

There are street markets going on all the time around here. There are at least two nightly markets and then every weekend/week there seems to be an excuse to have several more. Whether it’s the first of the month market, or the vegetarian festival, or a full moon celebration, there’s always something to explore. It’s usually a really good time, unless the market is located in Old Town Phrae. The area around our school seems to be used to white people walking around. Students all yell out, “Teacha! Teacha!” and request high-fives from us. But the farther we get from school, the more looks we get, especially at the market in Old Town Phrae. The other day we were strolling down the street--all eight of us farangs--and a woman stopped two of the girls from our group and asked them to take a picture next to a dried fruit stand. Then everywhere we walked on the street she would stop us and make us take pictures with either her or the merchandise stand/food cart. Then once she started doing it other people appeared with their cameras and got in on it. It must have been a great time for them. For us, it was mostly just hilariously weird. 

The Assembly: 

This past Sunday we had to work. Lame. It was an open house type deal, but it was nothing like open houses in the United States. Instead, the director sat at a table on a stage in front of all the parents and literally read from a packet--a packet which all the parents had in front of them--for more than an hour. This assembly could have easily been replaced by a newsletter. All the English teachers were placed off to the side in a group in front of the assembly. Randomly I would hear the director say “America” or “farangs,” but for the most part it was over an hour of Thai whipping past our ears (actually, it was directly in our ears because they placed the speaker next to us). As we sat there, two teachers and multiple school photographers snapped photos of our presence. Then, at the end, they made us English teachers stand up, introduce ourselves, say where we’re from, and which grade/subject we teach. Then we had to go sit in our classrooms and wait for parents to come talk to us, which they never did. The director continued talking, and once he finally stopped all the parents wanted to leave because that meeting was most likely boring even if you understood it. As far as I could tell, we were there strictly to be seen by the parents and for documentation for future pointless assemblies. 

Gate Duty: 

Every day a Thai teacher and an English teacher stand at the front of the school and greet the arriving students. Last Friday it was my turn to be the English teacher up front. It was 45 minutes of me saying “good morning!” in a sugary sweet tone with a smile pasted on my face to the point of pain. The kids are just too stinkin’ cute to not smile and wave at. Also, if there’s any Up fans out there, my school is filled with little Russells. The boys either wear khaki shorts with their button-up uniform shirts or little tan boyscout outfits. Adorable. Sometimes I actually lol at their uncanny resemblance to the Pixar character. 

Along with greeting the kids just outside of the school, all of us farangs are like celebrities within the gate. We are regularly high-fiving and shaking hands with kids of all grade levels. In the mornings, it takes us only about five minutes to walk to school. After school, it takes nearly three times as long because we’re constantly being stopped by kids who want to utter their few standard English phrases, and as English teachers there’s no way we’re going to stifle this desire just to get home a little faster. 

All in all I feel like a celebrity here...sort of. No one knows my name or anything about me, but they sure do like to take pictures and shake my hand. 

Halloween in Thai Town

Halloween tends to be one of my least favorite holidays. I figured one of the benefits of teaching English in Thailand for these few months was that I could skip all the hoopla of the holiday this time around. I was wrong. In fact, this was quite possibly my most active, engaged, and public Halloween to date. 

Acknowledgement of the day began the night of October 30th. One of the American English teachers suggested all the English teachers dress up and put on a skit in front of the school on Halloween. I thought, “Ok, well, I’m not doing that.” It’s not because I’m a party pooper, I just thought it would be hard to achieve and awkward if successful...alright I’m kind of a party pooper. But, because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, I became oddly involved in the developing of the skit and the planning of the costumes. At about 8:30pm the night before we’re supposed to “perform” two other girls and myself were shopping at Big C (like Walmart for Thailand) and found absolutely nothing in the way of face paint or costumes, which, of course, makes sense since Thailand doesn’t celebrate Halloween. As we were exiting the store with our heads hung low, all of a sudden a little boy comes strutting through the automatic doors in a full on Spiderman costume. We frantically asked him and his mom where they got the costume. Luckily the woman spoke a little English and was able to tell us this one bit of Halloween gold was from Tesco Lotus (the other Thai Walmart, maybe Thai Target). It was getting late and we were on our bicycles, so we decided not to explore that option. Instead we brainstormed and decided to print out masks from the internet, because, let’s face it, the internet solves most of the world’s problems. 

The next morning I arrived to the school at 7:05am in order to print out a variety of scary masks. The rest of the teachers trickled in to print, color, cut, and finally tape the masks to our faces. The American English teacher in charge of the our Halloween festivities came prepared with themed tattoos, those were a big hit all day. An older English teacher from America came in with an entire devil/vampire/scary dude costume, face paint and all. Apparently his Thai wife and her family had some supplies stockpiled. Once we all got masked-up, we exited the teacher room walking like zombies down to the morning assembly. We waited for our cue and ran out into the crowd of 1st-6th graders growling and screaming “boo!” at them. They were confused, terrified, and above all else delighted. Then we hopped up on the stage for our Halloween skit. Two of the teachers held bags of candy and pretended to be home owners awaiting trick-or-treaters. Chelsea and I got to be the trick-or-treaters. This was awesome. Chelsea and I joked how we thought our days of trick-or-treating together were long over, and yet there we were mimicking the American tradition for 5,000+ Thai children. After Chelsea and I received our candy and the skit ended, one of the teachers threw the rest of the candy into the crowd of kids. I’ve never seen such utter chaos. The students, who normally sit with perfect posture in the straightest of rows, broke into sprints & threw elbows to get some of the coveted candy. Afterward we all agreed that was a bit dangerous, but also really entertaining. 

The rest of the day I revolved my lesson plans around Halloween. I had my students play hangman to guess Halloween vocabulary like ghost, zombie (they super love zombies), vampire, witch, pumpkin, and Jack-o-lantern. Then I had them trick or treat to me at the front of the room. The would knock on a desk, I would make scary creaking door opening sounds, they would say “trick-or-treat, trick-or-treat, give me something good to eat,” I would ask them which of the vocabulary they were dressed as, they’d answer & sometimes act out zombie or vampire, and then I’d give them candy. They had fun with it and I loved that it was a super easy lesson. Also, Halloween lasted about three days for me because I had to be fair to all my classes and teach them each about the holiday, but I don’t see all my levels of classes on the same day, hence my three-day celebration. 

Overall it was a great Halloween and my party pooper attitude was turned completely around by the end of the experience. This is a contender for my best Halloween yet and it definitely takes the bag of candy for most unique. 

Oh, and Thai fun fact, everyone at the school and around town calls it “Halloween Day.” So I’d go to get my iced coffee in the afternoon and they’d wish me a “Happy Halloween Day!” It shall forever be known as that in my mind. 

First Days

It’s the end of my first weekend here in Phrae, and as far as first impressions go, this place couldn’t get much better. My housing accommodations are fantastic, the town is like a Thai version of Monmouth, and the people I encounter are some of the kindest I’ve met. General living here is wonderful. 

Teaching, on the other hand, could do with some improvement. I’ve been teaching the fourth grade for three days so far and it has been the definition of chaos. Allow me to indulge in a ranty list for further explanation: 

• There’s an assembly every morning at my school, during which on our first day us teachers were required to make an impromptu introduction speech to the student body of 5,555 students
• The 10 English teachers (eight from America) were given schedules, all of which were slightly wrong in one way or another
• I skipped my very first class to go on a tour of the school (and by tour of the school I mean one of the English teachers from last term was told very casually asked to explain all of the building to us newbies) 
• Once I made it to my first class, there was no Thai teacher there and I was greeted by a class of screaming kids who only spoke English when they were attempting to get me to play a game with them
• On day two, the foreign language director (a 50-something shorter slender Thai woman with short black hair, glasses, and a stern face) came up to my desk, showed me a piece of paper with another new English teacher’s picture on it and said very matter of factly, “She will make 28,000 baht each month, you will make 25,000 baht.” I came to find out this was because she’s teacher certified, whereas I am not. Although another new teacher from America is going to be teaching science and since he has a degree in science they will give him 28,000, but my degree in English and my teaching of English does not result in such a salary. Confusing. 
• On day two I also was given the task of teaching music in English. So now I’m an English and music teacher. No one told me what this is supposed to mean, so, when left to my own devices, I taught the kids The Itsy Bitsy Spider. 

This post is random and probably doesn’t make sense because I’ve given about zero background and lacked much detail, but I’m not going to fix it since the randomness of it serves as a perfect metaphor for my teaching in Thailand experience thus far. More stories--and hopefully more clarity--to come soon.

Thai Times

I’ve been in Thailand for three days and I’ve already experienced three once-in-a-life-time events. I also feel like I’ve been here a lifetime. 

Event number one: Tiger Kingdom 

Chelsea, her mom Jennie, her aunt Sarah, and I went to the Tiger Kingdom in Chiang Mai. It’s like a zoo, but only for tigers: big tigers, medium tigers, small tigers, smallest tigers, sick tigers, feisty tigers, sleepy tigers...and a couple random parrots. The draw of the Tiger Kingdom is that you actually get to hang out with these grand cats. You go into their cages, lie down with them, rub their bellies, feed the babies, and take a million pictures as urged by the tiger attendants. We began our tiger experience with the biggest ones, which were about two years old. It was initially terrifying. This big Thai man told us to sit next to these cats nearly twice our size, and if we weren’t comfortable looking enough he would tell us to lie down with them. It was an experience so opposite from the United States. It was virtually rule free, which goes against every obediently raised bone in my body. There were a few guidelines, like don’t approach the tiger from its head, don’t use a flash on your camera, and don’t make loud or fast motions. But for the most part you just do what you want around these tigers--including wrapping the tiger’s tail around your neck. The best part of the day was lying with the itty-bitty baby tigers. They are like playful kittens, but also sleepy kittens. (Side note: this is why you can hang out with the tigers. They are pretty much constantly sleepy. They aren’t doped or anything, they’re just sleepy. These ones were also raised by humans, so they see people as one of their own). The attendant in the smallest tiger playpen was a jokester. He kept himself entertained throughout the day by messing with us farangs (white people). He started by telling us the tiger we were playing with was a liger (any Napoleon Dynamite fans out there?). Then when Sarah was petting it he said, “It’s a boy, you see--one furry ball. You can touch one furry ball. So smooth, touch furry ball!” As Sarah gently fondled the baby tiger the attendant man laughed and laughed. Despite being made out to be a fool, I can appreciate someone enjoying their job. 

Event number two: Flight of the Gibbons 

Gibbons are monkeys in the jungle and flying like them means zip-lining amongst their trees. The four of us partook in a four hour zip-lining excursion with our Thai instructors Home & Boat. Boat didn’t speak English very well, but Home was pretty good, so good that he was able to joke with us nearly the entire time. Home kicked off the day by including himself in our family and telling us we could call him Homie. He would say from the top of a zip-line platform, “Are you ready, my family?” We became tight with crazy Homie throughout the course. The zip-line course was so long that I lost track of how many platforms and lines we crossed. We zip-lined downward, then hiked up for a long time, saw some monkeys, and then zip-lined downward again for hours. Some lines were long, others were sort, during others Boat & Homie would say, “Look out for that tree” and then swing us on the line right next to it. The platforms that connected the lines were like tree houses--the best tree houses ever. If we weren’t zip-lining from one platform to the next, we were walking on Indiana Jones-like rope bridges. Unlike a rollercoaster where you wait all day and then the high lasts for a mere 30 seconds, this experience went on for hours and was thrilling every moment. 

Event number three: Elephant Training & Trekking

Speaking of moments that last forever, the next event was a three day elephant trek in the jungle of Lampang. Chelsea signed us four up for The Mahout Training School and the rest of us had no idea what we’d really gotten ourselves into. The experience began at 8:30am on Sunday, October 21st. We were given Mahout suits to dress ourselves in for the next three days. Mahouts are the elephant trainers and they wear special uniforms of dark blue and a thick linen, so you can imagine how sweaty us foreigners were in the getup. After dressing for the occasion, we were briefed on Thai elephant commands and then drew cards with the names of our elephants and their official mahouts. My elephant was Singkorn, who is 33 years old and a mother of three with another on the way (I didn’t find out until about 36 hours into the experience that she was pregnant, so I felt very bad for kicking & yelling at a pregnant elephant). My mahout was Berm, a 40-something year old Thai man from Lampang who spoke nearly no English and deeply loved Singkorn. This was common of the mahouts; they love their elephants and don’t know two licks of English. After meeting our elephants and mahouts, we were instructed to climb atop them. This went so poorly for all. At one point, my mahout looked at me, terrified & clueless atop my elephant, and questioned “3 days?” and I ashamedly replied “Yes...” and we both buckled up for a very long trekking experience. Luckily the experience only got better with time. The first day we went on to watch other elephants put on a show, learned how to make elephant dung paper, and bathed our elephants in a reservoir. By bathed our elephants I mean our mahouts lead the elephants with us on them into a body of water until they dunked down to the point of making us float. Then we left the elephants in the jungle to sleep for the night as we returned to our accommodations at the training school. When my mahout and I returned to the jungle to fetch Singkorn the next morning, she had torn down the tree she was chained to. My mahout simply said, “Oh...wow” then we carried on with the day. The second day consisted of trekking into the depths of the jungle on our elephants for an hour or so before finding our camp. The camp had three raised bamboo huts; that night we slept on one under mosquito nets while our mahouts slept on one on the opposite side of the camp without any amenities. There was also a kitchen type hut and three Thai-style toilets (ceramic toilets without plumbing, so you flush by pouring a bucket of water down them). Along with us and our mahouts, there were a couple older Thai women who served as kitchen staff as well as a young Thai woman named Mat who served as a sort of tour guide/organizer/language mediator. Mat was awesome, she gave us much insight into the mahout lifestyle. After settling into camp, our mahouts took us on a jungle hike to a beautiful waterfall, stopping along the way to pick wild nuts, exotic flowers, and chop down bamboo walking sticks for us. Despite not being to communicate, the mahouts were very kind and generous toward us. Later on they each carved us our own bamboo cups and made rice and hot water in bamboo shoots over a campfire. Once the evening set in, my favorite mahout moment occurred: the mahouts invited us to take moonshine whiskey shots with them. They carved their own bamboo shot glasses, made their own whiskey, and were kind enough to share it with us. It was a hilarious situation looking back on it. Chelsea and I had never really drank together before and Chelsea and her mom had definitely never taken shots together before. The whiskey was shockingly good, some of the best I’ve had. The mahouts would speak in Thai, us in English, and occasionally we’d stumble through questions in the same language. Mat assisted in translating from time to time and Chelsea did the best she could in Thai, but for the most part we all just laughed at each other taking shots. The best was when my mahout found out we were teachers. He acknowledged the word, gave us a look of shock, and then passed an adamant shot our way accompanied by a  gleeful chuckle. It’s safe to say we slept soundly on our stiff beds of bamboo that night. The next morning we roused ourselves, mounted the elephants one last time, and headed back to the Training School to receive our official Mahout Training Completion certificates before saying our goodbyes. It was a rocky start, but in the end I can admit this will likely become one of my most cherished adventures. 

Welcome to the Real Thai World

On Wednesday, October 17th at 2:50pm I left from SFO to fly to Beijing then onward to Bangkok. I’m currently sitting in the Bangkok airport waiting for my Thai Airways flight from BKK to Chiang Mai where I’ll meet up with Chelsea and her family. 

It hasn’t quite hit me yet, but I’m in Thailand. And I’ll be here for five months. So far the trip has been just peachy. Flying and traveling in general can be a doozy, but this trip has been surprisingly successful so far. Don’t get me wrong, there have already been snafus and there is great potential for it all to go downhill from here. 

It’s crazy to think that just this morning (er, yesterday morning? Time zones are confusing) I was watching Price is Right in my living room in San Ramon. Yes, PIR was my last American TV experience, and I’d have it no other way. And coincidentally enough one of the grand prizes in the final showcase showdown was a trip to Thailand. So crazy. Despite that aligning coincidence and being packed & ready to go, it was ridiculously hard to leave. Saying goodbye to my dad and my dog at home was one thing, then the farewell with my mom at airport really made me lose it. So I tucked my pride aside and began this independent journey as a weeping girl in the security check line. Off to a good start, right? 

As I sat at my gate, I had this panic attack of what am I doing. Sometimes I don’t understand why I choose to do the things I do. Luckily Donald Miller understands them better than I do in his book “Through Painted Deserts”: 

“It’s interesting how you sometimes have to leave home before you can ask difficult questions, how the questions never come up in the room you grew up in, in the town in which you were born. It’s funny how you can’t ask difficult questions in a familiar place, how you have to stand back a few feet to see things in a new way before you realize nothing that is happening to you is normal.”   

Well said, Don. Anyway, as I’m mid perplexing thought, I hear a “Hey there!” from behind me. It was none other than Derek Lopez, my longtime college friend and fellow future Thailand teacher. Even though Derek & I are not going to be teaching in the same city, he and I planned to fly to the country together. It often times makes layovers and transfers less stressful to spout out confusion and airport frustrations to a familiar face. 

Derek had flown from Portland to SFO with two girls teaching through the same program (CIEE) as him. Suddenly I went from being very lonely to part of a foursome. None of us sat near each other on the plane, but that was probably for the better. Derek said he strolled by my seat a couple times and I was conked out. Initially I thought I wasn’t going to sleep on the flight, but then I popped some Dramamine and next thing I knew I’d slept through an entire movie and perhaps a snack (drat!). Btw, for anyone flying to Asia in the near future, I wouldn’t recommend Air China. There is only one TV per section of the plane and it’s not very good quality. The first movie played was some Chinese movie, fair enough. The next was War Horse, which I had to stop watching because the idea of a boy giving up his horse to a war was more sad to me than the idea of me going to Thailand for five months. Seriously, I said in my head “Sheesh, at least I didn’t have to give up a horse.” Once I unplugged my headphones from the sad movie, I slept pretty much the rest of the time. It wasn’t until later that I found out they had played The Lorax next. 

After our 12 hour flight, we got to Beijing and the foursome met up again to attempt to figure out where to go. It was way more difficult than it needed to be and we only had an hour and 40 minutes to get it figured out. After finally finding the International Transfers booth, we had to wait for a worker to come acknowledge our presence--frustrating. That took longer than needed before we could head down to the Chinese security. This was just the worst, most poorly organized security I’ve ever been through. There were two young workers, a boy and a girl, and I’m fairly certain they were mocking us or flirting with each other the whole time. There were no signs indicating what to remove from your bag, so it took each of us about three tries before they cleared our carry-ons. I pulled out my water bottle and asked the male worker if I could keep my water. He said “yes, yes” then proceeded to throw it away. After that snafu, we had to walk what must have been half a mile to our gate, which was now boarding passengers. We had zero time to enjoy the luxuries the Beijing airport had to offer. 

I slept through pretty much the entire second flight, which was 5.5 hours long. I woke once for the food service, and then I realized if I ate that food I was going to hurl, so I just mushed it around in the containers before returning it to the flight attendant. After this flight we found another CIEE program member and the now five-some traveled to customs and baggage. Customs was suuuper easy and took a total of 2 minutes tops. Then we all got our bags really fast (last time Wendy & I went to Thailand it took about an hour for our bags to pop out, so huge improvement this time). Then came the awkward moment where the CIEE peeps & I had differing plans. They left the airport to split a cab and find their program hotel, whereas I had to figure out how to stay in the airport in order to catch my separate flight to Chiang Mai. 

I thought this would be really nerve-racking and scary to navigate on my own, but so far I’m loving it. Seriously. Thai people are so friendly and helpful. I found a rolling cart for my giant travel backpack and I’ve been pushing it around like a content shopper ever since. They don’t have free wifi here, but they do have these web phone/internet access machines. I used one of them to contact my family and was lucky enough to catch my sister on gchat. After that I bought some Thai water and a coconut/taro biscuit. Lol to Thai food. Now I’m writing this blog and realizing I still have to navigate a flight transaction on my own as well as find Chelsea in Chiang Mai. Here goes nothing!

The Price Is Right (FULL) Experience

Sunday evening my mom and I drove to Southern California in a last ditch effort to get me a Visa from the Thai Consulate in LA so I can teach legally in Thailand. The entire three and a half day excursion was full of shots in the dark. The motto of the trip was “Well, let’s just give it a try,” accompanied with a shoulder shrug. Our four-ish days went something like this: drive to San Clemente, sleep, wake up early & drive to LA, drop off forms at the consulate, go to Price Is Right, drive back to SC, sleep, wake up early & drive back to LA, pick up passport with Visa in it (SUCCESS!!!), drive out to Newport beach, frolic in the ocean, drive to Irvine Kaiser and get a rabies shot, drive to SC, frolic in a slightly more southern ocean, sleep, wake up, get in one last beach visit, and drive back to San Ramon. It was quite the eventful trip, but I’m not going to pretend like you all want to hear about anything else besides Price Is Right, because, let’s face it, PIR is the best ever. 

The Price Is Right Experience*: 

*Disclaimer: This is about to be a major spoiler alert. If you don’t want the mystery magic of PIR to be ruined for you, then by all means please stop reading now. 

This is your last chance. Seriously, stop reading. 

Ok, if you insist. 

The PIR Experience started out with me getting tickets (which are always free, btw) on my phone and then lacking a printer to provide actual documentation of said tickets. Regardless, Mom & I lined up outside the CBS studios with the other PIR hopefuls. (Side note: on a separate trip to LA we tried to get into PIR, made shirts, printed out tickets, and got to the studios with what we thought was plenty of time. However, preparedness does not guarantee you entry to a taping, and sadly we were turned away before we even got onto the premises.) Once we got to the front of the entry line I showed the PIR man with a clipboard my phone, and to my surprise he didn’t even look at it twice before handing us our numbers and sending us through the studio gates. 

Now, when I say the studio gates I mean we walked through a parking lot and then were held in a covered outdoor waiting area. In this area no one official tells you what to do, but everyone glares at you when you ask questions. It was weird. Finally Mom and I asked some other audience members where to go and they directed us to the end of an aluminum bench. We were in this area for about an hour, during which we filled out on camera consent forms, got our IDs checked, became aquatinted with people around us, and received our very own Price Is Right name tags. I always imagined this to be a ceremonious process during which a very old woman who’d been writing name tags for PIR for a lifetime would take your name and turn it into gameshow memorabilia to cherish forever. I was wrong. Instead, a UCSB graduate (shout out to my gaucho pride readers) comes down the line of benches, asks your name, and very casually whips it out on a sticker. As Mom chatted her up, the name-writer revealed she doesn’t even do this every day. Sometimes she works for other CBS shoes, like Dancing With The Stars. Her CBS badge read “Guest Specialist,” and apparently that day she showed up to work and they said she should write PIR name tags for her shift. Talk about shattering the glass. Oh, fun fact: they are required to write your full legal first name on the tag, so I had to be Katelin for the day. 

After the name tags were written, we were shuffled to the other side of the building to sit in another covered outdoor area to wait some more. But before you round the building, they stop you to take pictures with your party in front of a green screen and then they try to sell them to you for a ridiculous amount later in line. Since it was just Mom & me, of course we had to get creative. They did tell everyone to act like they’d just won a car, or been called on down, or got to spin the wheel. It was hilarious to watch everyone “act” for a moment. 

On the second side of the building, they try to sell you food and you just sit for a long time. Somewhere during this side of the building they tell you just how long of a day it’s going to be. We got there at about 11:00am, were let into the building a little before 12:00, then made it to the second outdoor waiting area around 1:15, and then they tell you you’ll be there until 3:00 ish, and you don’t go in the actual studio until 4:10pm. 

At the end of side two of outdoor waiting, the all important interview occurs. This is the big moment to shine. The producer Stan and a young blonde girl in a red dress came out and had groups of ten from the line stand up, go off to the side of a railing (separation for his own protection, I assume), and cheer like crazy. Stan is super charismatic and says things like, “Are you all ready to come on down?” and then without direct instructions everyone being interviewed goes nuts with enthusiasm. Then Stan goes down the line and asks really simple questions like what’s your job, what’s your favorite game on PIR, and other things that don’t elicit much response from the future audience members. In our interview portion, you could really tell who he liked and who he breezed over without a second thought. He ask everyone in our group their occupation and a bartender guy who had mild banter with Stan ended up in the final showcase later on. Crazy. Mom & I were ok. Mom was witty and friendly as always, but I was super nervous and just sweet. He chatted with us for longer than many people in our group, but sadly not enough to result in a “Come on down!” for either of us. The interview portion was very telling though. As a matter of fact we found out that one of the two lively young women who’d been next to us through the whole experience, LaWanda, worked for the TSA in LAX. She was so hilarious, sadly she didn’t get picked either. 

After the interviews, we moved to another side of the building where we went through security to make sure we weren’t packing and then they confiscated our cell phones (absolutely NO pictures on the premises...clearly I snuck a few). Then we sat on some more benches (this story is riveting, isn’t it?). But these benches were the best because they had views of several overhead flat screen TVs on which we were shown a previous episode of PIR. They brought out their best material--it was a double showcase winner.

Finally, after three different holding locations and four hours of waiting, it was time to go inside the studio....then we had to wait on the stairwell to get up to the actual studio room. Once we rounded the second flight of stairs, there it was: the Price Is Right set. It was glorious. I smacked my mom on the arm, pointed, squealed a little bit, and realized it was truly happening. I was going to get to see a live taping of The Price Is Right. Brace yourselves for a major spoiler alert: the studio is tiny. Like itty bitty in comparison to the illusion shown on TV. With the trickery of lenses and whatnot, the studio looks like a high school gym or football field even. In actuality, it’s like a mansion’s living room. It seats 300 people, which sounds like a lot, but I cannot express to you how tiny it really is. Even the announcer George Gray came out and asked whose first time it was and then joked in a whisper “It’s really tiny, isn’t it?” George was great, btw. He’s funny, quick-witted, and surprisingly crucial to the production aspect of the show. The shockingly small stage held all the prizes and games behind moveable doors or drop down curtain things. I always imagined they were running back and forth and panning the camera over multiple stage areas, but truly it’s all just right there in the teeny space. 

Once it was time to start taping, things started moving really quickly and a lot of it was a blur. To recap, it went something like this: 

• The stage manager came out and asked us to clap & scream when told and, most importantly, to stay with Drew onstage.
• Then the man of the hour, Drew Carey, miraculously appeared out of nowhere with his unnecessary but still adorable small microphone.  
• George called down the first four names. 
• The second female called was a bridesmaid in a wedding group right in front of us. The woman called up was sitting directly in front of me, so I should be getting some camera time there. 
• The whole time a producer is on stage waving his arms frantically motioning to clap and scream. 
• A prize appears for the four contestants to bid on, but it is hard to see for everyone in the audience because there are cameras all up in the prize’s grill. 
• A producer and some other dude motion for the rest of the audience to yell out guesses and hold up numbers on their fingers. 
• No one can hear a thing during this process, so I’m not sure how anyone ever gets close to guessing the actual price. 
• A woman wins the bidding war, runs up on stage, gets to chat with Drew, and then gets to play...PLINKO!!! (I couldn’t believe I got to be there for an actual game of Plinko. Dream come true with an additional dream wrapped inside it.) 
• The models appear out of objects, hidden doors, and even prizes really randomly.
• Fun fact: My favorite model, Rachel the blonde one, is pregnant! Due in February and still strutting her stuff on PIR. 
• More people get called up and play games and come on down and bid and get called up and play other games and continue in that cycle. It’s a serious whirlwind. 

More stories from the whirlwind: 

One of the best aspects of going to a taping is the banter with Drew during “commercial breaks.” He stays out on the stage and just chats with the audience while they’re setting up the next games and prizes. Drew wished people happy birthday, happy engagement, happy wedding, happy anniversary, and he even signed a girl’s shirt. Drew was way more hilarious and dirty minded in person than on TV. This one guy behind us, who looked like the black younger version of Drew, was wearing a shirt that said “Drew Carey’s Love Child” so Drew chatted with him. It went like this: 

Drew: “That’s a hilarious shirt, man.”

Love Child: “DREW, I’M YOUR LOVE CHILD.” 

Drew (while mimicking tugging at his collar): “Not the way I do it kid, not the way I do it.” 

Lots of laughter from the audience

Drew: “How old are you anyway? And where are you from?”

Love Child: “35 and I live here now, but I was born in Vegas.” 

Drew: “Vegas, huh? What was I doing when I was 20? Shoot, yeah, you could be my kid. What do you do for a living?” 

Love Child: “I work for Budweiser.” 

Drew: “That’s my boy!” 

And then Drew continued to make negligent parent jokes and child support humor. Then the sound lady played the song “Love Child.” So funny. 

Later on during commercial time banter, Drew was chatting with someone on one side of the stage when all of a sudden this older black lady from the opposite side shouted out, “Drew, I waited outside all day and then they went and stuck me in the corner!” Her seat really was in a kind of corner situation. Drew went and sympathized with her and asked her what she did for a living. Turns out she’s a gospel singer, so of course the audience started chanting sing, sing, sing and sure enough she stood up in all of her orange outfitted glory and sang. She bellowed out the most beautiful version of “Amazing Grace” I’ve ever heard. Everyone cheered and gave her a standing ovation, and a tech guy even came out from behind the stage and clapped for her. It was magical. 

Those are some stories you’d never know if you were just watching the show, but I do have something for everyone to keep their eye out for while watching this particular episode. There was a tall, older blonde woman who looked like an aged Barbie that gets called up on stage and is wearing the shortest of short shorts. As she walked the four steps up to the stage you could actually see the bottom of her butt cheeks hanging out. And due to age and gravity and this being a family show, it was not pretty. Anyway, when she came back to spin the wheel, she had pants on. I guess they went and found her a pair of pants, because that’s def not what she came in wearing. That woman ended up making it to the showcase showdown along with our bartender guy from the interview phase. I won’t completely spoil the episode and tell you who wins, you’ll have to tune in to CBS at 10:00am on December 17th, 2012 to find out. 

After the showcase showdown, they did one last giveaway. They put everyone’s names/info in a basket and pulled one name out for a lucky winner to receive a come on down from George, an interaction with Drew & the model Manuela, and some prize money. Then, before we were dismissed, a producer came out and asked us to do one more take of a missed shot for them. Apparently when they were filming some jewelry with us in the background our faces weren’t enthusiastic & dazzled by diamonds enough. They also had us reshoot the beginning pan-over-the-audience shot. So we screamed with excitement like we hadn’t been held captive for hours. Then they ushered us out silently as George rerecorded a few descriptions of products and one contestant’s name that he screwed up. 

Finally, we were released from the studio at about 6:10pm, seven hours after arriving for an experience of a lifetime we weren’t sure would happen. My mom and I left with sore faces & hands, but also a bucket of memories. Worth it. 

One more plug before I end the world’s longest blog post: watch The Price Is Right on December 17th at 10:00am on CBS & look for my mom & me in the fourth row on the right!!! 

Partaking in History

Last Friday, September 21st, 2012, The Endeavor space shuttle made it’s last flight atop of a 747 down to Los Angeles in order to be stored in a museum for the rest of time. 

I didn’t hear of this adventure until Thursday night when my dad suggested we attempt to take BART into the city in order to see it on his day off. It sounded like a lot of work and I really didn’t know what he was talking about so I suggested we just go on a hike instead. Then my mom weighed in and was utterly shocked that we wouldn’t get in on that opportunity. Then I did some interneting and realized just how big of a deal it really was. 

Friday morning I woke up earlier than anticipated to see my dad scoping out The Endeavor’s flight path for the day. Rather than navigating the streets of SF early in the morning and warding off other hopeful viewers, he proposed we hike to the nearby hills overlooking our valley on one side and the bay on the other side. Being able to time this out correctly and at an optimal viewing location was a long shot, but we went for it anyway. 

Dad, Delilah, and I drove to the parking lot of Las Trampas and vigorously started the hike. I’d never done this hike and my dad was only fairly certain it would be a successful place to view The Endeavor. Also, we started this hike at 9:25am and The Endeavor was to take off from Sacramento at 9:30am. It would take less than 20 minutes to fly that distance and it would certainly take more than 20 minutes to hike from the Las Trampas parking lot to the top of the hill. As we climbed upward, a motorcyclist rode down the paved path and warned up of the closed road ahead. Sure enough, the path ended 20 yards ahead where EBMud workers were constructing road improvements. As we contemplated turning back, my sister Nicki texted us from Sacramento with a picture of The Endeavor riding atop the 747 with the capitol building in the background. This was just the extra motivation we needed to find an alternate route to the top. 

We hiked onward, looking up at every common commercial plane that flew overhead uneventfully. Finally we reached the top of the ridge, but not the spot intended to be our final location. For no apparent reason, we hovered there looking around. I directed my gaze toward Mt. Diablo, wondering out loud if perhaps we should’ve driven to the top of that mountain for a better view instead. And then, just as my doubt of location was verbalized, a small, bulky dot appeared in the distance with an even smaller dot next to it. I turned to my dad and questioned, “Is that it?!” with hopeful enthusiasm. And sure enough, as the dots approached, their blur took form and The Endeavor was revealed. It was unlike anything I’ve ever even dreamed of seeing. A 747 flying low is impressive on its own, but then to be mounted by an actual space shuttle is incredible. The small dot next to it was another plane in place for either/both protection and documentation. As the duo flew overhead, we had a perfect view of them with the iconic Mt. Diablo in the background. It seemed as if the pairing flew directly above us at one point. We stared in awe as it passed over our ridge and drifted down into the bay lands beyond us. It felt like we were part of something great when it was happening. After the sighting, we were on a historical high and, as it turns out, so was everyone else on the ridge that day. We came across several other hikers who had also seen The Endeavor, all of whom matched our enthusiasm for the siting. Later that day we watched the news recap of the event and saw the extreme measures others went through to view the same thing we did. And after all that, I truly think we had the best experience possible for us & The Endeavor. History, man. 

What I do

Now that I’ve moved back home, people have been asking me on a regular basis what I “do”...whatever that means. So here’s a helpful list of my day-to-day activities: 

• Yoga: My mom and I started going to yoga classes at the San Ramon Community Center. I’ve never done yoga before, and let me tell you, this is the best place to start. It’s a gigantic room not even a tenth of the way filled with about 12 yoga participants. Included in that crowd: middle-aged women, one overweight man, more middle-aged women, my mom & me, and even more middle-aged women. It’s hilarious. The most hilarious part is the fact that there is actually a yoga pose called “wind relieving pose.” You lie on your back, pull your leg to your chest, and get extra yoga points if you let one rip. Kidding of course, except that really is a pose. Community Center yoga is the best. 

• Listen to the new Justin Bieber CD: The new Biebs album is really teaching me a lot about how to be successful in the music industry. Apparently the secret to creating a chart-topping hit is to just whisper swag in the background every 17-22 seconds. And if you want to enter a whole new realm of musical genius, simply turn it into an adjective, like swaggy, halfway through those hot beats. 

• Walk my dog & make new friends: I was walking Delilah the other day and as we approached a woman walking her own dog she called out, “I’m scared of dogs!” And no, you didn’t read that incorrectly, she was indeed walking a dog herself. As we got closer she followed up her declaration of fear with, “I realize that’s kind of ridiculous, but I never know if dogs are going to bite me or bark,” after which she proceeded to bark like a yappy, scary dog. Needless to say Delilah and I didn’t make any future play dates with her. 

• Go to the doctor: Since I’m planning on going to Thailand in the near future, I’ve had to go to the doctor on a regular basis these past few weeks. I routinely make a fool out of myself there. My most foolish encounter was when took a chance asking my lady doctor about a suspicious mole on my back. The conversation went like this: 

Dr.: “Where’s the mole?” 

Me: (pointing to my back) “It’s somewhere around this area, it’s the mole with some red around it.” 

Dr.: “Oh, is it itchy? It looks itchy.” 

Me: “Yeah, it’s really itchy, maybe kind of irritated.” 

Dr.: “Yes, that’s a bug bite.” 

My days are riveting, truly. I may not have a job or a routine to my days, but I sure do keep busy with entertaining nothingness. 

My Life as Compared to Indiana Jones

My dad and I went to see Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Arc in IMAX recently, and as I sat engulfed in Indy’s original premiere, it occurred to me that I am Indiana Jones. Ok maybe not. But I did find some of his more famous lines and memorable adventures to be relatable to my current life situation. 

You see, I recently bought a plane ticket to Thailand. I leave mid-October to meet up with my oldest friend, Chelsea, who is teaching English there now. I hope to teach over there as well. In theory, I have a job lined up. In theory, I should get some official paperwork done before I go. In theory, I should have more of a plan. In reality, to quote Indiana Jones, “I’m making this up as I go.” With that one-liner in mind, I’m basically a female version of the icon.

But here’s the snag in my otherwise flawless comparison, while Indy’s religion is archeology, mine is God. So while I may not have whip-handling skills that will save me from countless attempted assassins, nor do I have George Lucas writing my ever-heroic life, I do have a God I can trust to write my never-failing story. So fear not blog readers, my adventure as the female Indy will turn out just fine (actually, it’ll turn out even better because at least the love affair in my story will last longer than one movie in a trilogy). Stay tuned to find out how The Author fulfills my Thai tales.