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