My Last Week in Thailand

This post probably won't make too much sense, I have way too many thoughts going through my mind and I don't really no where to begin.
I celebrated my 20th birthday this previous weekend on an island here in Thailand. My group and I stayed at a really nice resort and partied it up I seriously had the best birthday of my life! (: I can't wait to come back home and celebrated my birthday again with my friends.
Speaking of "friends", I have really learned so much about them since I've been gone. I've always believed that you can't fully trust anyone and as much as I've tried to change that outlook it's almost impossible. My trust level on almost everyone has gone way down. I know I'm not in a dangerous place or that I'm gone for a long time but you truly do find out who is there for you and who isn't. I'm not saying that I'm the best person or the best friend, people make mistakes but I'm tired of having to beg people to want to talk to me. It's just not who I am.
This week is the last week I have with all the friends I've made and the people at my school. The children have taught me so much, even though we don't speak the same language. Words cannot describe the feeling I get each morning when I walk into the classroom. I get to do arts & crafts, and eat snacks with them. I go outside and play and teach them the colors. My goal for the next two days is to teach them the alphabet, hopefully. I couldn't have asked for a better experience. My teacher, Chuwana, spoils me so much. We get there and she has Thai fruit, which is amazing, set out for us. She randomly brings us snack and Thai iced tea, which is my new favorite drink. She brings us to lunch at least once a week and makes us eat so much amazing food that we feel like we're about to pop.
I just got back from dinner with a few of the teachers and their family. It was more food than Thanksgiving! I had such a huge food baby belly when I was finally finished eating. I'll upload those pictures soon. The food here is such an interesting variety. They even bought us presents! And the teacher tried to set me up on a date with her son.
I am seriously going to miss my group of people so much! I am definitely making the most of the next few days before I never get to see most of them again. I feel as if I can navigate my way safely through the city now. Especially since I've been lost several times already lol. I know the route my van driver takes to school - traffic is ridiculous here. It takes us at least 90 minutes to get about 25 miles. My van driver is amazing. We don't understand each other but I get the front seat everywhere we go, that's what I get for being skinny lol. At first it kinda sucked because I felt isolated but I get to view everything and the van driver gives me candy or water or random gifts. I can tell he has such a kind heart without holding a conversation with him. Thats how the people in Thailand are though. It's none as the Land of the Smiles for a reason. I've never felt unsafe once here, even in the most sketch neighborhoods.
I'm not really ready to leave here yet but I am excited about coming home. I leave for New York 12 hours after I get back to Florida. I can't wait to see my family. Anyways, I'm running out of things to write about. I'll try and update everyone once again before leaving this amazing country.

- Brit

Week Two (:

Grand Palace

Grand Palace

Hey (:
I can’t believe this is the eleventh day that I have been in Thailand. Everything here is still so breath-taking and amazing. This past weekend was by far one of the most exciting weekends I think I will ever experience in my life. We started out by visiting the Grand Palace in Bangkok, which is beautiful. There’s a ton of pictures up on my facebook if you haven’t already seen them. Then we took a bus to a city called Kancahaburi where we stayed in an amazing resort. It had a pool, spa, a huge tower, a restaurant, ATV’s, etc. Then in the morning we got picked up by our tour guide and piled into our vans and started our weekend adventure. We went to a few market places, saw a temple like thing, walked across a 50 year old bridge that was created by hand (there’s a picture of that as well in my Thailand album). We went to a waterfall that was really beautiful and in the process of trying to get a group picture together I managed to slip and bust my chin open. It bled a lot for like two hours and we were going to take me to get stitches but by the time we got close to town it finally stopped bleeding. It was pretty painful for the rest of the weekend and now its gross looking. We did some other cool stuff, saw a museum, walked way too much then went and checked into a different hotel. From there we went to dinner, sang karaoke and called it a night. We had to be awake at 6 the following morning for the most exciting part! We ate breakfast and took a boat across the river. We explored an abandoned Wat and walked towards trucks that took us to an elephant ride! It was a pretty intense ride, they have taxi’s that are a remodeled truck with benches and idk I’ll take a picture because it’s hard to explain but we took that through some crazy roads  and stuff. When we got to the elephant place everyone was extremely excited. It was three people per elephant and it was about an hour long ride. They took us through the rivers a few times, and around a jungle. It was the most amazing sight ever, and it’s a lot different than being on a horse. After that we had to walk through the jungle area to get to bamboo rafts. Well this walk included crossing a river several times so we were soaked from our feet to our chest. It was kinda intense because the current pulled us. Then we got to the rafts, and it was literally a bunch of bamboo sticks tied together and you used another piece of bamboo to paddle. It was so interesting! We travelled up the river about 20 minutes and started to swim, there was a pretty tall rock so we swam over to it and jumped off of that then continued out rafting adventure for about another 20 minutes. From there we went to a few more shopping markets and got on a van to head back to Bangkok. But it was by far the most exciting weekend. 

Elephant!

It was pretty tough waking up Monday morning for the school but everything here is so worth it. I wouldn’t trade this opportunity for anything in the world. I love the people in my group, I adore the people at my school, the cadre is amazing. I honestly don’t think anything could go any better. This weekend were traveling to the beach and going to a weekend market that I guess is really huge and well known here. I’m excited because Saturday is my birthday (:
But, it’s after 1 and I have to be awake by 7 for school tomorrow. I miss everyone and hope everyone is doing great! I’ll try and update this again before the weekend.

- Britany 

The First Few Days in Thailand!

Hey everyone!

So, as you all know I have been in Thailand since the 4th of June. It's about 11:20 p.m. on the 7th right now; I'm 11 hours ahead of Eastern time. This trip is by far the most amazing experience I have ever had, and I feel extremely blessed for this once in a lifetime adventure. 

On May 28th, I left Florida for Fort Knox, Kentucky where I met the other 19 cadets (6 females, including myself) and 14 males and my 2 cadre members. There's people from all over the states here, Washington, Virginia, Jersey, Texas, Florida, Connecticut, North Dakota, Georgia etc. We all get along so well, which is surprising but amazing. While we were in Kentucky we stayed in the barracks and had to go over a few prepared safety briefings. Then, each cadet as a requirement had to brief everyone on their research topic; mine was Thai architecture. The few days at Knox wasn't all about briefings though thankfully. We went and watched the Hangover II (it was filmed in Bangkok and we saw the same hotel today), went to a minor league baseball game, the Spaghetti House and the Patton Museum. We were all so excited though to finally leave base and start our journey to Thailand.

On the 3rd of July we woke up around 5 and finished the last minute things before leaving for the airport. We flew out of Louisville, into Chicago for a 2 hour layover then onto Tokyo for a 3 hour layover then arrived into Bangkok June 4th around 10 p.m. The flight from Chicago to Tokyo was extremely long, it lasted about 16 hours of just sitting in one spot. I thought I was going to go insane. Anyways, onto the exciting part. 

The Victory Monument that
helped Joe and I find our way on
the map.

The night we arrived at our house in Bangkok, we got a brief tour of the rooms and attempted to sleep. The next morning we woke up, ate breakfast and learned about our plans for the day. We had a brief orientation and drew a piece of paper that had an adventure on it. These slips of paper were duplicated so we were in pairs, and I was paired with a guy Joe, from California. Our adventure consisted of us having to take a bus to the local train station and ask them for prices and times, then we had to navigate back to the house. Oh and we had 2 hours to complete this task. Well, apparently the same bus that takes you to the train station does not take you back down the same roads. We ended up in downtown Bangkok where nothing was in English and everyone only understood Thai. We honestly had no idea where we were or what to do. But we stayed calm and found a city map at the bus station with every route on it. However, the map didn't tell us where we were located and every word was written in Thai. We then decided to walk down to the end of the street and find out where we were and hoped to find it on the map. Our plan worked because we saw an important monument called the Victory Monument which was clearly labeled on the bus map. Joe and I both agreed on bus 97 and started looking for the correct bus. When we got on bus 97 we soon noticed it was the same bus we had gotten kicked off and learned that the bus does a complete circle around Bangkok. By this time we were an hour late, but we were just excited that we knew where we were going. When we arrived at the house we found out our colonel started searching for us. We had an interesting talk when he came back and he had gone to the train, bus and police station in hopes of finding us and was really impressed about our adventure. So now we joke that me and Joe know our bus and train schedules in case anyone ever wants to know. Then, that afternoon we went on another adventure to something called the Floating Market. It was really interesting, we got on this cool boat thing and went down a river learning about different buildings and the culture. 

It's so fascinating to learn about this country and to actually see everything in person. They have stray dogs almost everywhere throughout this city, and almost nobody has air conditioning. People work on the side of the streets to sell Thai food or things they have made. The country here is so poor, 1 US dollar is equal to 30 Thai Baht, and your able to buy an ice cream cone for 20 baht, which is .80 in US money. 

On Monday we spent almost all day doing orientation, which in my opinion was so boring. We heard about the history of Thailand, the King, each school here, the colors, the wars, etc. for a little over 3 hours. Almost everyone was starting to fall asleep. Then we had lunch and started with our first Thai Language lesson. It lasted about 2 hours but we really did learn a lot of useful information. I can say hello, how are you? It was nice meeting you, my name is, I'm from (country, state and city), What's your name? The numbers, and a few other useful phrases. We have our 2nd language lesson on Thursday. After dinner a few of us walked to the market right down the street and just hung out. 

This morning, Tuesday 07 June was our first day going to the local schools. We're split up throughout at least 10 different schools and daycares. Some of the group are working with special needs children, some with high school, middle school, elementary children and at local daycares. I was placed in a Kindergarten classroom and during their naptime I go upstairs and work with Luke, from Texas and Major Stebbing, in the 1st grade classroom. We're teaching them English which is a lot harder than it may sound. I downloaded a few apps on my iPod and I feel as if there's more learning apps for them than apps I've downloaded for myself. 

Random cool building
we Saw on the boat

The kindergarten classroom was more complicated than the first grade. I don't think anyone really knew English there, including the teacher. It's so difficult communicating with someone when neither person understands much. I was introduced to each child - classrooms over here consist of an average of 35 students. Then they sang some song thing and started PE, and thats when I left for lunch. The 1st grade teacher took us a few blocks away to a restaurant on the river and bought us lunch, which tasted amazing. After lunch, we continued with our teaching in the 1st grade classrooms. We went over numbers and the letter "C". The kids were so adorable, at first they were super shy which is completely normal then they started opening up. When we left they all gave us a high five and shook our hands a few times. When we left, we started something called the transport activity which consisted us of learning how to travel on the skyway train and the local subway. In order to get to the skyway though we had to take a boat. It was such a great experience! I took a ton of pictures from the boat (: Then tonight a bunch of us, about 9, took some taxi's and went to a big market about 25 minutes away. We shopped, looked at random things, walked around a lot, and saw girls that were actually guys. Oh and we ate this really cool ice cream thing! I'll upload that picture tomorrow though. Then on our way home, our taxi driver said he knew where he was going but he took us to a completely different neighborhood that we've never seen. When we told him it didn't look familiar he refused to look at our map that the people where we're staying made for us. It's pretty nice, it has directions in Thai so we can show anyone if were lost, like tonight. However, when we tried showing the driver all he did was say "no look" and circle up and down the same wrong street four times. It was pretty frustrating and also the 2nd time I've been lost within the last three days. But, it was interesting.

Random Thai Brownies

The food here is really amazing! I love the way it's spicy, but some of the noodles and rice isn't really that great. There's such exotic fruit over here that I've never seen before. I'll remember to take pictures of it tomorrow morning at breakfast. Oh! I really enjoy the Thai tea, it's made out of milk and some tea thing lol. 

Anyways, I'm running out of things to say so I'll write more soon. I miss everyone so much! I have a free texting app on my iPod so feel free to text me whenever. 239-941-9515 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting            239-941-9515      end_of_the_skype_highlighting

-Britany