Think Gilligan with a slightly more varied wardrobe

The Gilligan's Island reference was probably lost on some of you but it fit too much not to use it. It’s no secret that I’ve been known to be a little accident prone and by a little I mean a walking disaster. I’ve actually been really proud of myself in Thailand, no serious injuries, major mishaps, or accidental explosions. However, it wouldn’t be a Colleen trip without a few Gilligan moments. As my dedicated blog followers you get to be the first to hear them.

-Dropping a bottle of electric blue nail polish on my bedroom tile. It shattered. That was fun to clean up.

-Falling approximately 47 times during our trek up the mountain

-Getting pooped on by a hedgehog

-Being seriously overcharged for a scratched watch that is chronically 20 minutes slow

-Accidently dying all of my clothes pink in the laundry. I guess that’s my washing machine’s way of saying it’s time to get in touch with my girly side

-Leaving my helmet upside down in the rain so that it filled to the brim with water. The guys sitting at the restaurant where I parked my bike got a kick out this.

-Shutting my skirt in the car door and not noticing it the entire ride home. It was definitely raining so my skirt was dirty and soaked.

-Buying clothes and then realizing afterwards that they would have probably been too small for me when I was 7

-Nearly flying off the elephant I was riding when he decided he was tired of us and started booking it down a hill

-Forgetting my phone in my bike basket and leaving it there for a good 4 hours. Thanks people of Chiang Mai for not stealing that by the way.

-Hitting my head on all sorts of miscellaneous roofs, walls, and doorways. That’s what I get for being 5’9’’

-Biffing it right in the mud during our service project

Pretty much certain that I’ll have a few more before I head back to the states but that’s what I’ve got so far. J

Resemblance? PS-that shirt was definitely white once upon a time

Woes of a lapsed vegetarian

So as many of you know, in regular circumstances, I am in fact a vegetarian. Until a few weeks, ago it had been over a year and half since I had last had meat. Since I’m living with a host family and in order to avoid offending them, I’ve had to eat meat. Sad face. I knew that was probably going to happen so I started back on fish a couple months ago, but my pride wouldn’t let me eat meat till the day that I absolutely had to. That day came pretty quickly in my adventure. My first lunch with my host family, about 15 minutes after I met them. It wasn’t too bad. I thought I might have a hard time eating it but my adrenaline kicked in and was just like “EAT!” so I did.

The crazy thing is I don’t even like meat anymore. Cue gasps! Blasphemy I know. I’m as shocked as you are. I loved meat back in the day, but I’d say I’ve seen enough whole pig heads just chillin in the market place to stop me from voluntarily eating meat for a few lifetimes. Even bacon (once upon a time my favorite food) isn’t that appetizing when you’ve got decapitated Babe staring at you. In Thailand you see chickens running around all over the place and I’m like “run while you still have legs!” In conclusion, being an herbivore rocks. I’m excited to go back to veg as soon as I get home. J

I love people.

One of the best parts of being in Thailand has been all the awesome people I’ve met and gotten to know. Here are just some of the people I love.

Friends I make in red trucks (like open back taxis where it's not creepy if stranger hop in there with you). I’m pretty friendly and usually a little overexcited to get to speak English so I meet some pretty cool people from all sorts of places, a video game designer from Switzerland, med students from India, Belgian tourists, and the list goes on. My favorite so far were these 3 people we met from Canada, the US, and Bangkok (Dan, Abby, and Oi) doing a mission trip. They were in Chiang Mai working out a passport nightmare and dealing with major housing issues but were still some of the nicest people you’d ever meet. Me and Hayley bonded with them during our ten minute ride and then when we got to their stop they hopped out and then right before we drove away the Dan says “We had some extra money so we went ahead and paid for you guys.” So freaking nice! We were basically giddy the rest of the night.

First ride in a red car

My host family! Piay, Pimu, Satem, and jaja. They don’t speak much English but they’re some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet.

My real family! Love and miss you! Couldn’t be here without you! (Hi mom!) She’s my most dedicated blog follower :)

My group! There’s eight of us here from BYU and not to brag, ok kind of to brag, we’re all super cool. :) There’s Andrew, Laura, Hayley, Noah, Becca, Jessica, Bronwin, and me. We always do awesome things on the weekends (jungle treks, ancient ruins, elephant rides, snake shows, etc.) but even the less than exotic stuff (cards, movies, and just talking) is a blast with these guys.

The person that invented fans. Basically I owe my life to this individual.

My students, particularly the ones that listen occasionally. Haha They’re really pretty great. I mean there are definitely a few troublemakers but really they’re all good kids, really smart and sweet. I can’t leave a class without 3 or 4 kids fighting over who gets to help me carry my stuff and I always get tons of hugs from them too. :)

The other teachers! Even though none of them really speak English they’re still really nice.

My Chinese teacher friends! Lulu and Feifei, they’re from China and awesome! They speak English and Thai so not only can I talk to them, they also translate for me which is pretty much amazing

Lulu and FeiFei!

7/ll workers who feed my addiction to black current slurpees and Thai candy

Friends back home! I love you people, especially everyone who’s kept in touch. Long distance is hard but it’s really meant a ton. Also, special shout out to Laura Bull and Coco Mack who I ran into at church! Laura was in my freshmen ward and Cocoa and I were in the same Chinese class. Basically the craziest thing ever. I had no idea either of them were in Thailand. So sweet

Laura Bull!

In conclusion, I love you all.

Kids'll be Kids

I’ve always loved kids, partly because I act like one 104% of the time. One of the things I love about kids, is no matter where you go, kids are still kids. There are so many similarities when it comes to kids, they really make the differences between cultures seem pretty trivial. I really saw this last Thursday. It was Wai Kru Day (more or less teacher appreciation day). I for one felt very appreciated, mostly because I didn’t have to teach that day. J There was this big ceremony that lasted a good few hours. It didn’t really have any clue what was going on the vast majority of the time but it was still pretty cool. All of the students bowed to the teachers and gave flowers to the principal, and then one of the teachers talked, and talked, and talked. Of course all of the kids were extremely attentive, for the first about 15 minutes. Haha I was just really happy because I got to sit right in front of the kindergartners. They definitely helped keep me entertained because let’s face it, my attention span’s probably shorter than theirs. Here are some of the best kindergartner moments I caught on camera.

I whip my hair back and forth! I whip my hair back and forth!

This little guy was so cute! He spent the whole ceremony smiling and waving at me.

well, whenever he wasn't busy giving the boy next to him Indian burns haha

The always timeless and also international hair pulling

Secrets!

He was definitely flossing with grass. Potentially the next MacGyver?

Nap time!

Some more cool pictures from Wai Kru Day

All the kids shoes left outside. I don't know why I thought this was kind of cool.

All the kids in the cafeteria waiting for the ceremony

I kind of love this picture

Are you Justin Bieber?

So I’d like to start by saying anyone that voluntarily teaches middle school deserves to be canonized. No lie. Haha Yeah. At Wattaduea Community school I teach English to 3^rd grade up through 8^th grade. My 3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th grades classes are a 20 year old kid with zero teaching experience who also doesn’t speak Thai’s dream. The class sizes range from 2 kids to 7 and most of them are really excited to learn English. Like I said, a dream, especially my 3^rd graders. I plan to dedicate an entire post to them later so don’t worry, you’ll hear more about them on the grounds of them being awesome.

Now grades 6-8, slightly different story. Picture if you can classes with 38 bad attitude teenagers trying to learn from a ridiculous challenging English book while having previously studied under teachers that don’t actually speak English. So definitely a few challenges there but I’m starting to get the hang of it. Youtube and “Boys vs Girls” games are pretty much my best weapons. I’ve still had to get creative though. I was teaching my sevies about rising intonation when asking questions. The book’s sentences weren’t exactly grabbing their attention so I did a little bit of a rewrite. I had everybody ask their neighbor “Are you Justin Bieber?” with crazy exaggerated rising intonation on the “ber.” The response was “I’m not Justin Beiber. I’m Lady Gaga.” They got pretty into it thanks to the far reaching abilities of American/Canadian pop music, however it did have some unintended consequences. No one in my 7^th grade class can say Justin Bieber without sounding like they’re going through puberty to the extreme. Sorry Justin!

On a completely unrelated note, fanny packs are amazing. I bought one from a little market near my house. Best investment ever. It’s like being a kangaroo without all the unwanted pressures that come with intense adorability. I will most likely be wearing it everyday for the rest of of my life so be prepared to pretend like you don't know me when I get back. haha

Me with some of the eighth graders and a few of the younger kids

Some of my sixth graders. I love this picture

That's me and my fanny pack! I know you're jealous.

Snakes, Scorpions, and Hedgehogs! Oh My!

Last weekend was filled with all sorts of fun little creatures. Snakes, scorpions, hedgehogs, and also not so little water buffalo. It was pretty awesome. The snakes, scorpions, and hedgehogs were all at the snake farm. I got to hold all of them. The snake was actually my favorite. So cool and crazy strong. One of the hedgehogs was pretty much the cutest thing ever. The other hedgehog sort of looked like an alien. I tried to give him a chance and after he pooped on Noah I figured I was safe. I was wrong. He wasn’t quite done. Haha All over my shirt too. It was pretty funny. Next, we watched this crazy snake show where the snake guys were seriously invading a pythons’ personal space. One of the performers was like 6 years old. So crazy! Sure makes me feel lame. My 6 year old self couldn’t cross the street alone.

Scorpions all up on me.

SONIC!!!

Me, Jessica, and Hayley holding a MASSIVE snake. So freaking strong! We could feel him wrapping around our necks. It was nuts!

cute little daredevil

After that we checked out a rice farm. We got to try planting, picking, and also water buffalo riding. It was really cool. After that was the orchid gardens. Some really pretty flowers. We also checked out this awesome lake not too far from Chiang Mai.

Me on a water buffalo. I've decided I like them. :)

Orchid garden!

Cool lake

Also, keeping with the critter theme, some of you may know that I used to have an irrational fear of dead bugs. Well…fear conquered! How you may ask? Right before our trek a couple weekends ago I ate 5 of them. Ha true story. They sell big bags of fried crickets at the market so me, Becca, and Jessica all chipped in to buy some. It felt pretty counterintuitive paying to eat bugs but Hayley and Noah had already eaten 3 so we figured it was our turn. The worst part was grabbing them out of the bag. Uuuew! They really weren’t horrible. A little on the squishy side, and the after taste was pretty nasty but could have been much worse. We still had a ton of crickets left after and Noah was thinking we could feed them to the elephants we were riding that day but Andrew said elephants don’t eat bugs. I said that’s because they’re smart. You do get so desensitized to insects here. It’s awesome. You just pick em out of your food and keep eating, and no one even judges you! It’s great! J

I want to ride my bicycle I want to ride my bike

I totally just got that song stuck in your head, didn’t I? You’re welcome. J BYU gave us each a bike to use for the summer and let me just say they are awesome! Straight out of 1943, I swear. Bright orange with a basket and a sweet bell that rings every bump I hit. Basically I feel like a balla. Haha I really do love that thing though. I was pretty nervous to use my bike at first, partly because I lack any sense of direction and also because I haven’t ridden a bike since I was 8 years old. Now I absolutely love it! It’s so nice not having to depend on rides from people! Sweet freedom! I also enjoy the fact that I have yet to crash. For me, that’s pretty good.

I’ve had a couple of close calls though. There was this one time I’m just merrily riding my bike along when this car opens their door right in front of me. I swerve out of the way and just barely dodge it. It was pretty much awesome. I felt just like a ninja, except I don’t think most ninjas yell “HOLY CRAP!” as they do their moves. Very recently I was riding my bike in a torrential downpour when I didn’t see this like grate thing in the road. I hit it and my bike starts making these crazy racecar noises. At this point I’m about 87 percent sure my bike’s going to blow up. I check the chain and the tires and there don’t seem to be any problems, just I just keep riding but there go the racecar noises again. As I’m playing an explosion countdown in my head, I think to turn off my little pedal powered headlight. Crisis averted. Yes!

One of my favorite moments on the bikes was when Becca didn’t have her’s but me, Noah, and Hayley all did so we took turns riding doubles. This looks so funny!!! I wasn’t too bad at it. I looked slightly intoxicated, but that’s pretty normal for me on a bike. The best moment though was when I was giving Becca a break from riding on the back and letting her drive. We totally like fell over right on this busy street, so I had to jump ship, landing right in a gutter. Hilarious. After that we revoked Becca of her doubles license haha Hayley tried but couldn’t stop laughing and I really couldn’t blame her. It is pretty funny. I rode with Noah for the rest of the way. He’s basically a pro. He didn’t even look drunk! Now that takes skills. We’ve done the doubles thing like 3 times now and I’m getting good! Now that’s a skill you can take right to the bank J

Check it! Like I said, ballin

I'm not as white as I look, I swear!

It’s true. I’m blond, blue eyed, 5’ 9’’ and also white. As you could imagine I blend right in. haha Actually Chiang Mai has a lot of tourists. You see farangs (foreigners) on vacation all over the city. So I really don’t stand out too much there, but out where I live on San Sai (about a 30-45 minute bike ride) from the city I’m definitely like the only one. People at school make a really big deal about it. I don’t think they’ve ever had an American teach here before.

The first day of school was peppered with all sorts of funny moments related to my caucasianness. One of the teachers told me I looked like a Barbie doll. I must say that was a first. If I had to classify myself as a Matel toy I’d probably think magic 8 ball or a viewmaster! But everybody's entitled to their own opinion. My favorite moment was when I was just talking to one of the Chinese teachers for a minute and all of sudden she looks at my arm and goes “Wow! You’re white.” And I’m like “Thank you?” haha I really need to learn how to say “I’m one-sixteenth black” in Thai. J

One of the bad things about being white is you always get the farang price. You can get ripped off so bad if you don’t know how much things should cost, especially when it comes to transportation. They’ve got tons of rot dengs (red cars) and tuk tuks in Thailand. They’re both pretty much like taxis, expect the prices aren’t set. You’ve got to haggle. At first we had no idea what we were doing, but by now we’re pretty savvy. So the other night Hayley and I were trying to catch a rot deng and this guy tried to charge us like quadruple what it should have cost. I was pretty offended and just walked away. He totally thought we were dumb tourists. To quote Stephanie Tanner “How rude!” I guess now that I’ve been here a while I feel so different from all the backpackers and people on vacation, I forget I look just like them. Darn this sparkley vampire skin.

It's just like Disneyland!

I recently realized just how ingrained Disney is in my thoughts. Last weekend we went on this incredible trek through the jungle, riding elephants, rafting, hiking, and spending the night in a Hill Tribe village. So sweet, and pretty much everything we did or saw I had a vision of Disneyland or a Disney movie pop into my head. White water rafting was about half a step up from Grizzly Rapids with a little bit of Jungle Cruise mixed in. Bamboo rafting was about 3 steps down from It’s a Small World. Haha The Indiana Jones song was definitely playing in my head the entire time we hiked through the trees. The elephants gave us all flashbacks to Jungle Book and Dumbo. I half expected George of the jungle to swing down on a vine with Tarzan. When we woke up in the morning with our hut surrounded by clouds, Andrew could have sworn we went to Narnia.

Aside from proving that Walt Disney’s a genius, this really showed me how incredible this experience is when the only things I can compare it to are movies I grew up on. It’s so surreal that I’m even here but there are those days when it hits me. The trek was definitely one of those days. It was so beautiful. I wish the pictures did a better job of capturing it. Hiking through the jungle, up the mountains, in the pouring rain was absolutely incredible. The valley covered in clouds was completely breathtaking. It really is amazing! I’m so lucky to be here!

Just one of the beautiful views from our hike. Oh! Another movie it just reminded me of, Jumanjii!!!

Cage of doom! This is how they got us across the river, in the crazy cage slid across this zipline thing. Pretty much insane. Sort of felt like being trafficked....

On our hike. Noah and Bronwin wearing sweet hats our guide Rambo (no lie. That's his name because he's awesome) made out of leaves. Noah's makes him look like Peter Pan. Way to keep with the Disney theme :)

Elephant riding! I think you should all know that our elephant had a serious attitude. Towards the end of our ride he was a little too excited to get rid of us and started booking it down this hill. I definitely screamed (and by scream I mean man yelled) as I came a good couple inches off my seat and clung on for dear life.

We crossed all sorts of rivers and streams. They were all really pretty, though slightly treacherous for balance challenged individuals like myself.

Say my name say my name

Air high five to anyone that got my Destiny’s Child reference. Since I’ve moved a bunch I’ve gotten pretty used to people getting my name wrong. I’ve gotten used to answering to all sorts of interesting things. Holly, Cole, Collin, Kaylin, Katie, and also Jessica. Yeah, not really sure where they got that last one. Haha Well anyways, my name’s a bit on the tricky side here with the double l’s. Since most Thai’s use r’s and l’s almost interchangeably, my name generally comes out as Kahrreen. It’s starting to grow on me.

Nicknames are really big in Thailand because their full names are epic long. I’ve been given quite a few different Thai nicknames. The first one I got was given to me by my host sister Jaja. It’s pronounced Nam which means water. I’m thinking it’s because I’m always super wet (got to love that humidity). The next nickname I got means full moon obviously because I’m so white that I glow in the dark. Another one of my nickname’s means honey. I’m still trying to figure that one out but I think it may have something to do with my resembling Winnie the Pooh.

My personal favorite hast to be Kru Farang. This is what all of the little kindergarteners call me. It loosely translates to teacher white girl. Haha Pretty much hilarious. They totally love me though. I don’t teach them or anything but they still always run up to me and give me huge hugs. They don’t do it to any of the other teachers, just me so I kind of feel like they might be racist. I’m trying not judge them too harshly though. ;)

Jaja! My cute little host sister!

Just a couple of the little girls that call me Kru Farang

They're basically adorable but pretty wild. Think kindergartners from the cartoon Recess.

Hello Internet!!!

So I finally decided to do this blog deally. My friends have been trying to talk me into it for a while. Yay peer pressure. Haha I do like writing and I’m really good at talking when no one’s listening so I concluded that blogging was right up my alley. Also, this summer I’m actually doing cool things so no time like the present to start. I have to admit that I’m terrified of commitment and I also don’t believe in exerting unnecessary effort so this blog may fizzle. You’ve been warned.

How about we begin with a little background, shall we? I’m currently doing a development internship in Chiang Mai Thailand. I know, right? Haha yeah I think it’s pretty cool, but then again, I’m probably a little bit biased. I’ve been here almost a month now which is insane! Man it flies by! I guess that means I’ve got quite a bit to catch you up on but since I have a short attention span I’m going to spread it out over a few posts. So for now I’ll just let you know I’m teaching English in a local community school. I’m here with a group from BYU. There are 8 of us living all over the place in Chiang Mai doing different internships, but on the weekends we all get together and have crazy awesome adventures. Well I figure that’s pretty good for now. Sorry that’s boring. Man it takes skills to make Thailand boring. I’m awesome. Haha

Peace!

THAILAND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(with approximately 17 exclamation points)