koh tao pictures

i added in pictures to the previous blogs about my vacation. just scroll down. there are also some on the previous page.
here's the link to the entire album of koh tao (with a bunch that aren't on my blog) on facebook.
and you can click here to see the album of the grand palace in bangkok. it is so pretty.

give it to someone special

it is so hot in taiwan. uncomfortably hot. it's like when you have a sunburn and you feel heat radiating from your skin. only one more month though!

i'm just floating on a cloud now. a month seems like such a short time, so i'm just enjoying the everyday things. this afternoon i went over to bobo's for chinese and then stayed to play with the girls. jaime was singing 'last christmas' and joyce would sing, but all she knew was 'last christmas, i gave you my heart.. blah blah blah dah dah .. SPECIAL'. she sung it at the top of her lungs in the car with her own madeup words at least 6 times on the way to pick up lunch. and she was extra lovey dovey and wanted to be picked up every 2 seconds and taiwanese people on the street were giving us the funniest looks.

i was thrilled to see my babies tonight and they're two of my favorites so they were equally excited to see me. they wanted to know all about thailand and some of them got hair cuts that they wanted to show me, and we just got back into our groove. it was nice. my little boys let me hug them without even really pretending to run away and scott just came and leaned against me while we were reading without me even doing anything. working with kids really is so much fun on the good days.

tea lady, stamp man, grandpa (i haven't mentioned it in months and months, but there's this little corner store right across from the school and we call it grandma's because this old woman is always behind the counter, but in the morning, it's her husband with parkinsons who continually hits himself with a long rod) and the cleaning lady all said long time no see to me today, so it was sweet that they noticed that i was gone and came back.

tonight as i was walking back from dinner and ice cream with tess and katie, i saw alex inside the coffee shop, so i went to say hi to him.
alex: welcome back, did you have fun on your vacation?
me: yeah, i had a lot of fun
fanny: how strange that the foreigners are speaking chinese to each other

thailand adventures

i haven't finished uploading/editing all of my photos from thailand yet and my eyes are fighting to stay open, so i'll go through and add them to posts on the right days tomorrow and put up a link to some facebook albums.

for nowww i'll leave you with these..
steve has lots of moves.
iced tea peach!
emil was being extra weird the last night. i think he needed some TLC.
emil, jane and jeff
jane, me, emil, dawn, leila, keith
steve, ashley and jeff

so much fun!

one night in bangkok

this keyboard leaves something to be desired. maybe it's a ploy to get me to pay for more time on the internet. slow going.

well this morning we left koh tao in the rain on a giant boat. 2 hours later we got on a bus for 7 and a half hours. it was amazing how all of that sitting around exhausted us by the time we moseyed over to koh san road in bangkok. it's super busy here, i think a lot of people must be heading home tomorrow since it's sunday. i guess it's busy here all the time though.

dawn, keith and i spent the evening shopping and people watching. i found a few things for jeff and matt and a few things for myself. i lost the battle for a necklace because the vendor wasn't willing to come down 10 batt (30 cents). haggling is no fun when you're super tired.

i've spent most of the day in a haze of DC excitement. it feels like i'm dreaming. really it just feels like a huge weight has been lifted and i know that it will just be awesome. i'm really excited. we get to help out at random social functions and attend a weekly lecture series headed by various 'senior white house staff' members which will be awesome.

5 minutes left on my timer! taiwan tomorrow. i'm excited to sleep in my own bed and have my own computer and see everyone.

ecstatic, excited, thrilled

i'm going to the white house in september!! i got the internship!
whew. i'm all trembly and excited. i just read the email, called my mom, dad and gram. my internet connection is too crap to actually talk to any of them for very long, but yayyyyy!!!

today was just perfect all along.
slept in late, had chili chicken soup for brunch, followed by some time on the beach with my favorite girls, then for an oil massage which made us all smell like macaroons, then a pedicure, then a brownie with ice cream on the beach, then delicious indian dinner with perfect company and lots of pictures, then drinks on the beach, then drinks off the beach, then white house internship email to come home to!it was sad to say goodbye to everyone though. we've had such a nice vacation. i can't think of a better way to have spent the last two weeks. we made new friends who were tons of fun. i got to see leila, derek and emil again when i thought i'd never see them. i got a chance to get to know steve, who is super sweet and lovely. it was great.
i am so excited about DC!!
now i need to work on finding [cheap] housing in DC. anyone with connections, feel free to start working on this right now.

peach tea

a couple of random things.
- a dog walked off with my leather flip flop :( at least that's our best guess as to what happened to it. they weren't super easy to walk in anyway, so i hope whichever dog nabbed it is enjoying it.
- dawn and i are thinking about going to hong kong for our birthdays in september. one of the girls who's joined our group, jane, is living there and she has a pull-out couch that we're welcome/planning to use
- they have peach liptons iced tea here in cans at 7-11 and it is so yummy. it tastes like those peach candies that come in the white box. the jelly ones. and 7-11 has "toasties" which are white bread sandwiches, put into a sandwich maker and sealed shut and grilled on both sides. ham and cheese toasties are my fav.
time for bed. we had to swim 200 or so meters to the boat after chris slightly miscalculated where the boat was and my legs are talking to me. the silver sands resident dog just curled up under my legs. one more day in koh tao! ..maybe my classes won't notice if i just stay.

tropical island band

i'm drinking out of a coconut while looking at the ocean. i think i've hit vacation nirvana. i've been dreaming about crispy duck on thin pancakes with plum sauce and we had some last night. then dawn and i had a candle-lit evening glass of wine on the beach, sitting in puffy bean bag chairs and looking at the ocean. it was heavenly.

this morning everyone but leila went diving and it was a bunch of fun. another early morning. keith, dawn, steve, jane and i were all in the same group when we went diving so it was nice. we saw a bazillion fish.. i bet if i look, i can find pictures.. first we were at red rock. it was a little tiny island and the bottom was all rocks covered in giiiiant coral.
next we went to japanese gardens. it was mostly one kind of coral and pretty flat, but there was a diving boat that sunk a few weeks ago that we got to swim around. it was covered in a thin layer of seaweedy stuff.

this website isn't affiliated with us at all, but that's what it looks like. it's on this island somewhere. i guess i'll be posting my own pictures soon enough.

i had a smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel for lunch that was super lovely. now it's time to check out on the beach for a few hours before massages. buy a ticket!