End of the Semester BBQ

One more week until I am home, crazy right?! So today we had a goodbye barbecue. :( We would do it the next weekend right before we leave but we are going to Vietnam.

We had American food at the barbecue too because we didn't know if we would like a Thai barbecue, and we like American barbecues. We had hamburgers, salad, and fries. 

During this barbecue it also hit me that I am leaving in a week because some Thai teachers and students that we taught were there (also because it was the end of the semester barbecue). We would be flying on a plane from this day, I'm hoping to see them again if I bring family or friends back, but I will see.

I will miss them all!

We had a surprise at the barbecue! Some of the Thai teachers came!!! In this picture this is Qwang, I knew her ever since the beginning of the trip, she is a very awesome teacher and friend! She wasn't that excited to take a picture though especially because she was eating.

Also during the barbecue we celebrated two birthdays! We celebrated Hannah's and Ake's birthday, after the barbecue we had cake and brownies. We also had four Thai teachers come, in the picture  from left to right there is Teacher Fon, Teacher Cookiek, Teacher Hannah, Teacher Anna, and Teacher Talina. :)

This is Prima he is one of the K-2 students I teach. He came to the barbecue as a surprise, we didn't know he was going to be there until we saw him and his three sibling that we also teach ran after us when we went into the garden home gate.

One more week...I will miss it sooo much, but I am sooo excited to see everyone back home!

Summer Camp

There school year ends at the end of March and then they have summer break or they have the choice to come to summer school (summer camp) to learn more english. We have about 16 pre-k students and about 32 kindergarten-first grade students. We have a total of five rotations that are from 8:30-12:00.

First we line them up and sit them down on our L shape table. "Who's being good?" They are crossing there arms and then they get to sit down.

My first two rotations I teach pre-k students, my first rotation are the younger pre-k students. One of them is one and a half years old and the others are about two years old.

My second pre-k rotation, most of them are two-three years old and they have been learning english longer then the first rotation. Part of my second rotation students are in the picture below.

This is Kaow-Poon he is in my second rotation, he is two and half years old. He loves school, the teachers, and other students. He knows a lot of English, he is also the class clown in that class.

This is Eak-Eak he is in the second rotation too, he is two years old. He is the quiet one in that class, but he is also learning english quickly. He is very shy just like his sister Aom-Aom in a K-1 class.

This is Deva he is in the second rotation (most of the pictures I have of the pre-k students are in the second rotation). The Thai teachers say he is shy, but to me he is not. He always acts like he is the teacher or he acts like he is asleep sometimes to make everyone laugh. During break time he always hangs out by me to do flips or to take my phone and take pictures. He is so cute and funny!

Break time: I have the older pre-k class for break. Break time is fifteen minutes long. They love going in the corner to hang out.

They also run around everywhere, its good then they get rid of there energy during break. So then they don't run around during class time. 

Every student during break gets to drink there milk too. This is Tatar, she is four years old and is in K-1.

More of pre-k, except the first girl on the left side. She is supposed to be in K-2, but she just joined us for summer camp and is in the younger class for now to get started on english. She is improving so much though, and she only started learning a month ago.

Can you tell I love this class yet? Plus, I have them during break so I can take more pictures.

This is the K-1 class, in the picture is Jinpao, Lina, and Tipco. That day we were playing a game from  minute to win it. It was the game where you put an oreo on your forehead and you use your face muscles to move the oreo to your mouth. Except we used a coin and found out some of the kids were so sweaty because they don't use air conditioning that the gold coin was just sticking to there face. Some of the kids understood the no hands part, but some students didn't.

Summer camp is different from regular school because they don't wear outfits and we don't teach in the afternoon. Im glad a lot of the same students came back to summer camp though so we could see a lot of them again.

Laos

We went to Laos for one day to renew our visa, Laos doesn't have that much in it except the Buddha park and we never made it to that because we went to eat lunch and we took to long to eat lunch so then the main attraction closed for the day.
Instead, we just explored the city a little bit and got a massage.

This was a building in Laos a couple blocks away from us, I think it was a national museum but we were not allowed to go inside.

Do you think these are big or small statues?... They are really small statues.

In our hostel there was a ton of graffiti everywhere. This was one of the drawing! I find graffiti and drawing on walls really cool when they are everywhere.

We only went to Laos for a day, but it didn't have that much in it so we didn't have to stay long. Its cool now that I have another visa in my passport and some more stamps! :)

Wat Phra That Doi Suthep Temple

After our trip at the zoo our feet were aching, but we still had a lot more to do that day. We needed to go to the temple at the highest point in Chiang Mai. It was a long twisty road up the canyon, but when we got there it was beautiful!

Before we went we thought we needed to climb 1,000 stairs to get to the temple, but we ended up taking the elevator instead of the stairs because our feet hurt (it was a big zoo in Chiang Mai)... 

This was the first part of the temple we saw when we got to the top. It was a huge temple on top of the mountain and it was very pretty. It is the most popular one in Chiang Mai.

We were more interested in the viewpoint though looking over the city and the forest. It was very beautiful. From the view of the city we could even see the square in the main part of the city.

This is what part of the forest looks like, it has a lot of palm trees and a ton of other trees around.

When we were looking at the viewpoint this was another temple right behind us. There were like three temples on top of the mountain. We didn't look at them as much as we looked at the view.

Chiang Mai Zoo & Aquarium

Welcome to the Chiang Mai zoo where it is probably triple the size of the Hogle Zoo. It is also very spread out so we need to walk awhile to the next animal. I was excited to see this zoo because it is a lot different from Utah's zoo and had a lot of different animals.

We also found out a ton of the areas the animals are living in are not very enclosed, the cages are really short or they have no roof on the bird area. Its weird that no animals try to escape.

How do Flamingos stand on one leg, I wish I could balance that long, but they do it to conserve body heat. They're also pink because of there diet that is primarily consists of organisms they eat for example shrimp and algae that is high in pigments. When they lifted there necks all the way and stood up all the way they got really tall.

These hippos were really loving there food, and one of the hippos wouldn't stop eating even though it had a ton of food in its throat/mouth still.

A leopard! It is a very beautiful animal!

We could feed the giraffes too! One person in our group fed the giraffe. The giraffes, ostriches, and zebras were all in the same area.

A very cool flower at the zoo, I enjoyed the look of this flower. :)

They are trying to bring the mammoth back by putting an egg from a mammoth into an elephant and the elephant having a mammoth. Hopefully it works, fingers crossed for them.

Black bears, it looked like the bears were laughing when i took a couple pictures.

The monkeys are protecting there babies, it looks like the monkey on top and the monkeys on the ground got in an argument and are not talking to each other, while they have there arms wrapped around there baby monkeys.

These animals sort of like ostriches, but I don't know what the name of the animal is, when they looked at you it looked like they were questioning you. "What are you thinking?" "Why are you looking at me?" "Are you about to do something?"

The Chiang Mai Aquarium and Zoo were in the same area so we decided to go to both.

The aquarium looked really cool, it was dark and it had a lot of cool looking fish tanks. Like this fish tank was the first one we saw and it was right in the middle with pathways around it.

This was one fish tank, the fish are the worm looking things coming out from the sand. They are very long and odd looking swimming around.

Hello fish, what are you looking at? Time to finish the zoo, bye to the aquarium.

We were exhausted by the end of the zoo day, our feet hurt, but we still had a couple more activities to do before the day ended. It was a very good day at the zoo, I saw a ton and enjoyed it very much. We were going to the temple on top of the mountain of Chiang Mai and joining part of the Songkran Festival water fight.

Songkran Festival

Songran Festival or also known as a water festival. It is a huge water fight (probably the biggest water fight in the world actually), people are everywhere with water guns and buckets that are going to dump water on you. We couldn't walk anywhere without getting drenched in water. This festival is from April 13th-15th and continues a couple days before and after the festival. We participated in a couple days of the water festival. 

We were in Chiang Mai for the water festival, there were a lot of foreigners and a lot of thai people that were involved in the water festival. In Chiang Mai there is a square around the main part of the city that has a north, east, south, and west gate. The areas by the gate had the most people and the parties like the picture below.

Near the gates they also had a parade, mostly for the Thai people. The Thai people were dumping flower water on the people in the parade to wash there misfortunes away.

This is just one street we started walking down and the crowd of people and the getting soaked with water begins.

HAPPY THAI NEW YEAR! Or how they say it is Sawasdee Pee Mai!

Tiger Kingdom & Orchid Garden

Smallest Tigers!

Today we went to see the tigers, rawr! The smallest tigers actually made a combination of a meow and a roar. The tigers we saw were six months old and three months old. They were so tiny and so cute, I want to take one home with me!

These are the 3 month old tigers. At first they were calm, but then they started playing with each other! They are sooo cute!

This is a 6 month old tiger! They were pretty calm and played around when we were leaving.

This is a 3 month old tiger when he started playing around!

Right when we went to the younger tigers (3 months old) I sat down and the tiger came right over and started playing on my lap. It was so soft and it was like a dog that is a puppy, but a bigger puppy. He started to bite my shirt and my arm a little bit because we think he was teething.

 Right after tigers we went to the orchid garden in Chiang Mai. It was really pretty and really calming, I never knew plants can grow like that.

A row of the orchid garden.

 Multiple rows of the orchid garden.

Right after our main activities for the day we went to the city and took a part in the Songkran festival (water festival).

Ziplining & Bungee Jumping

Today we were doing a high ropes course or also known as zip lining. This is my favorite thing ever! I love ziplining so much! We went with a company that was called Eagle Track Zipline. We did a bronze package, that means we were able to do 15 different platforms. I wish I was able to do a lot more, but the rest of my group wanted to do the cheapest option.

This is one of the ziplines, in my left hand I hold onto the rope  connected to the wire and with my right hand I hold onto a bamboo stick which is the brake. The bamboo stick is bent so it fits perfectly around the wire to put the bamboo stick on and hold it tight to brake.

 These were a couple obstacles in the course, these couple look easy (which they were, more then other ones I have done anyways). Except only after 15 platforms everyone was worn out, I could have kept going because I was enjoying it so much! Especially when we were doing activities after ziplining. We were going bungee jumping, having a really good American restaurant and going to the night markets.

One of the obstacles in it was they dropped you down to go to another platform and we were all kind of nervous for it, but it ended up being almost the best one!

This was our group that did the bronze package. One thai women and four of us americans! It has a lot more gear then the other ziplining I have done. In my left hand is the bamboo stick. Also underneath the helmet we needed to wear this hairnet looking thing that covers your hair. It was kind of weird, but I enjoyed being with this group.

Near the end of our trip of ziplining while we were waiting for a ride back down the canyon we stopped by the waterfall right next to the lunch area. Thailand is so pretty especially in the mountain area and pretty much everywhere!

Thailand has three different seasons: dry season, hot season, and rainy season. While we are here we are in the dry season and partly the hot season. I'm guessing if we were here during the rainy season that waterfall would be a lot bigger because in the rainy season I heard it pours everyday nonstop.

Next on our list for the day was bungee jumping. When we got there I wasn't that nervous, but once they put the wraps and rope around my feet I was getting really nervous. They made sure everything was tight and then I needed to hop over to the area they brought you up to fall off of.

The whole way up the crane he was explaining what he was going to tell me when I fall off and the rules of bungee jumping and when he said 3.2.1 bungee I fall off. When he started to count down I don't quite remember him saying bungee and I fell off then I don't really remember in between that time until the rope caught me again. When I fell off I thought, yep I am really doing this, and there is nothing holding me for awhile. It is a lot more then a trust fall!

When I was waiting to come down I kept twisting while hanging upside down, I kind of got dizzy. When I did get untied I noticed that I hit my toe on the way down and my toe bruised and swelled a little bit (I don't exactly know how).

Overall it was a good adrenaline rush and I am really glad I did it, just a bit frightening...haha