During the first week of classes I gave my students an activity to do in class. They had to write stories in a group. Each person began their own story with 1-2 sentences and then passed it to the next person who added another 1-2 sentences. They seemed to have a lot of fun with the activity and some of them even came up with some very creative stories. I will be uploading a few of my favorite stories over the next few days starting with a two stories from Mimmim, Nut and, Tong. (I have left the stories exactly as they were written…lots of spelling and grammar mistakes).

Story 1:

(Mimmim)

Once upon a time at Rose garden have one beautiful Princess she name is Mimmin who is so pretty girl, everyone call she is Rose Princess. Animal in Rose garden all love her becus she love and care its.

(Nut)

She have a couple name is nice, he so ugly and very fat but Mimmim so love him, a lot becus he make a magic with her.

(Tong)

And one night mimmim Princess and her Prince married and kiss. One year later, mimmim Princess have one son and one daughter. Children is lovely and smart. Everyone so happy very much.

(Nut)

In the morning when she waked. It’s just a dream becuz she crazy.

Story 2 :

(Tong)

Once upon a time at cabin have a milkmaid. She is hard and free. She have son and daughter, we are happy family.

(Nut)

Once a night have a ugly demon come to her cabin, it want to eat her cow. So milkmaid can kill it becuz she is a wondergirl

(Mimmim)

After she killed, Her neighbor call she is Heroine of village.

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I know everyone has been hearing about the flooding in Thailand on the news. The floods are in the Northern part of Thailand (here's a map of the affected areas). The only affects to the Southern part of the country has been a disruption in transportation through Bangkok by train and bus. Deliveries to stores have also been slowed since most of the distribution centers are located in the north. Deliveries have not been stopped but there is a noticeable lack of popular products in stores.

So don't worry about me I'm not being swept away by the flood waters!

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So because of the massive floods in Northern Thailand I did not go to Suhkothai over the school break, like I had originally planned. Instead I stayed in Surat for most of the break. But, everything happens for a reason and because I stayed here I was able to meet Suzanne and go on a couple day trips with her over the long weekend. She was given use of her comapany's car for the weekend so the rain didn't stop us from exploring. With the help of the car and Suzanne's GPS (that mostly worked) we were able to have a very active weekend before the semester started up again.

The car!

Suzanne driving!

Driving out of town :)

The highway!

We started on Saturday with a day trip down to Khanom. We wanted to go to the beach...that plan was thwarted by the wind, rain, and nasty riptides. We walked on the beach for a bit, between rain showers, and then decided to try exploring a bit. First we stopped at a little temple which was slightly run down (I don't remember the name of it).

The beach :)

Temple number 1!

Then we decided to head to the nearby city Nakhon Si Thammarat. Once we got there we navigated through the awful traffic to Wat Phra Mahathat, which is one of the oldest temples in Southern Thailand. The temple was huge, compared to most of the temples in Southern Thailand. The main chedi, which we didn't get to walk around, was built year 12 and is on the back of the 1/4 baht coin (25 satang). The the actual temple was built in 1628 and houses a huge seated Buddha.

The Chedi

The temple

The stair railings for the temple

The Buddha

After walking around the temple grounds we discovered that we hadn't turned the headlights off...so the car was dead :( Luckily, the first person who stopped was able to give us a jump so we were quickly on our way home. On the way home we spotted a temple that was all lit up and seemed to be having a carnival of some sort. We did a U-turn and meandered through the stalls for a while.

The temple all lit up!

Strings on money in front of the temple

Cute kids on the carnival rides

Making some snack foods!

On Sunday, we had another adventure. We went to Ao Nang beach, Krabi for an overnight trip. We arrived right around dinner time, since we took off in the afternoon. We chowed down on some pizza, which was super cheap because it's low season for tourist in Krabi. Then we walked around and shopped for awhile before heading back to our room.

The Beach :)

Yummy Pizza!

Sunset from the pizza shop

Sunset on the left, rain clouds on the right!

On Monday, we spent most of the day relaxing in the shade at the beach and playing in the water. Before we left we had a fantastic lunch of amazing Indian food, again super discounted. On the way home we stopped at a reclining Buddha tucked away on the side of the highway and almost got lost in Krabi cause the GPS couldn't pick up a signal for a while.

And Jump!!!
(Thank god my camera has auto-shutter! We watched one girl
jump about 8 times before her boyfriend got the right shot)

Buddha on the side of the road

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So it's been FOREVER since I've updated this thing because there has been pretty much nothing worthwhile going on.

Last week I found out via facebook that there was a festival going on in town. The Chak Phra festival (which means "pulling of the Buddhist monks") is to celebrate Buddha's return to earth after a 3 month visit to heaven, where he delivered a sermon to his mother. According to various websites Surat Thani has the most impressive version of this festival, with floats on land and on the river, there were also boat races (but I missed them).

So on Thursday, I was supposed to meet up with a few people in town to go look at the floats but only one of them actually showed up. For 3 hours we walked through the huge festival market, tried some bugs, and then went to check out the dragon boat floats. All of the floats were beautiful! Most of them were hand-painted, a few were made out of carved wood, and my favorite was made out of seashells. Each float had a row of offering bowls attached to the side, where you make a donation of a couple baht, there were also piles of string blessing bracelets at each float.

Since some of my pictures turned out wonkey I decided to go back to the festival on Friday. On the way there I was almost killed by my students who freaked me out by incessantly honking their horn as the trunk in front of me suddenly hit their breaks. Luckily I didn't die...and once we got up to the stop light the students invited me to go with them to the festival.

Photos!

The bridge over the river
(I have no idea what the sign says)

Shadow puppets



The River Floats!

The Street Floats!!

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