Here's a link to pictures of the climbing/road/wedding trip to South Dakota and the mid east coast:

http://whitworth.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2016605&l=b0d5e&id=59401624

Y'all have a nice day

Here's a little news on my life since the last post. 

I did indeed travel through Malaysia and Vietnam. I taught for a month in the next term.  I came back to America.  I worked like crazy for 2 weeks.  I took a month long road trip, covering S Dakota, Virginia, DC, and N Carolina, along with many states in between.  I climbed and explored the Black Hills in Dakota, visited family and friends in VA, saw museums and monuments in DC (what else do you do?) and participated in a wedding in NC. 

I'm home now and since I'm moving back into my parents' house and all of my stuff has been packed away, I'm going through every single thing I own, packing again, filing, arranging, etc.  It is not fun.  I am trying to finish this mammoth task before I get a job but I am, half-heartedly, looking. 

That's most of the news for now.  If you want to see photos of my trip to Malaysia and Vietnam please follow this link: http://whitworth.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2012735&l=0e003&id=59401624

Hey y'all

Here I am, almost finished with this term.  My students have their final tests the last week of this month. 

I am briefly meeting a few friends in Chiang Mai (closest big city, they are teaching at a conference there) during the first week of March, then Kristen and I are heading for the beach towns on the southern coast.  We are also going to visit Bangkok and some old ruins in the south. 

April will find us flying to Kuala Lumpur to spend 2 weeks in Malaysia.  We're going to hike in the jungle, learn to shoot blow darts and get scuba dive certified.  We'll fly from KL to Hanoi for another 2 weeks in Vietnam.  It's going to be pretty exciting.  If anyone wants to join us, you're welcome.

This past weekend we had a memorable adventure, although we might wish to forget it.  We've done a lot of 1 day bike trips so we thought that it would be fun to go further and spend the night before heading back home.  We chose a waterfall only 34 kms away or so.  It should be an easy ride to make in half a day and we would see this beautiful waterfall and stay at a hilltribe village.  Fun.  The first 28 kms or so were cake.  We took it really easy and still made it in less than 2 hours.  (On one of our snack breaks, we were sitting by the river when 3 guys came and made a fire.  Then they threw a dead dog on the fire and started scraping all the hair off once it was burnt!  We've never seen any Thais eat dog, that we know of(!) so we think it must be some of the hill people.)  The last 6 kms weren't paved and went up and down 2 unbelievably steep mountains.  It took us over 3 hours.  We had 1 speed bicycles, so we just couldn't ride a lot of the uphill.  I think it was 50% grades in some places. I've never even seen a road so steep.  We were amazed that we were able to do it.  After all, we're not big exercisers!  Then we hiked to the waterfall.  And we still were able to ride/walk back the next day!  So, it turns out we are really tough! 

Here's a link to an album on facebook with some of the pictures from our time here.  http://whitworth.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2010464&l=19f45&id=59401624

Enjoy!

Merry Christmas

Well, this is my last week of teaching for a while.  We are off from the 22nd to the 2nd of January.  Kristen and I are attending a party (of mostly Filipino people) on Christmas Eve and probably going to midnight mass with them.  Then we are having a party on Christmas Day in our very small apartment.  On the 26th, we are going to the big town of the north, Chiang Mai, to see a big garden show with a bunch of other teachers.  We are going to stay there for a few days.  We are excited because there is a lot of stuff to see there and because they have things Chiang Rai doesn't--like McDonalds and movie theaters that show English language movies. 

You know my sister's blog I talked about earlier--yeah, she gave me a bass-ackward version.  It should be http://wherekristensgoing.blogspot.com/  So you can see those pictures if you want.  It has some of the same as I have up but there are more.

I'm pretty proud of myself because I've planned out my lessons for weeks after we start again and I've made some pretty great games.  I'm working on others.  These include a Jeopardy game--we'll play with my questions one week and then my students will have to bring in questions the next week--and a game of Memory--the matches will be between pictures and words.  Sometimes I impress myself with my cleverness.  OK, actually a lot of times! 

This week I taught my students "The 12 Days of Christmas".  It's great because it slowly builds and I can explain one line at a time.   It also repeats a lot so they can say the same thing a lot without getting super bored.  Some of my classes also got the Batman joke version of Jingle Bells. 

You're probably bored sick of hearing about my teaching.  Sorry.  Here's wishing you all a great Christmas!

Yesterday was a holiday in Thailand.  There are two funny things about this:

1.  We didn't have school but I still had to come to participate in "Teacher's Sport Day".  I ran the 3 legged race.  People asked if we had anything similar in the US!

2.  The holiday we were celebrating was Constitution Day.  So we were celebrating the constitution that was recently thrown out the window by a military coup. 

Besides a few random holidays (last week was the king's birthday--lots of ceremonies, businesses and schools closed), school has been falling into a fairly regular and decent pattern.  I am enjoying myself.  Of course, our schedule has changed a few times, which has thoroughly confused me, to give students time to practice for sport day.  Which is actually 3 days this week.  I know that people in the US often complain about the money and time given to athletics over academics.  They should see this place.  Sport day is probably the most important day of the school year.  It's like a field day between several schools.  We've shortened or skipped periods to make time for practice but, while athletics at school in America can help you get scholarships or something at least vaguely useful, this doesn't do anything for them.  It's pretty much just fun.  And lots of kids don't even participate except for cheering.  So, it's kind of weird.

Kristen and I found a falang (foreigner) grocery store and spent a lot of money.  On things like cheese and corn flakes.  You have no idea how lucky you are to find cheese everywhere!  And wine! 

I added a few photos of me in Thailand.  I hope you can find them--they're under my photos.  I was in a hurry, using another teacher's comp.  this one won't recognize my USB drive.  You can also go to my sister's blog: wherekristensgoing.blogspot.com  to see more pictures an read some of our letters home.