Term 1 Is Over

I don't think anyone over here can believe that we are officially on vacation for the next 4 weeks... and that we get paid that whole time! For me it's even harder to believe that this means we have not only been living in Thailand for 5 months already, but that we've finished teaching an entire semester too. We survived :) and luckily we have confirmed that we both love teaching, phew!!

Friday morning Nick had his first ever parent teacher interviews where his students came in with their parents, received their report card 1 at a time and discussed it together with Nicks thai teacher, T. Ann. Since he's too lazy to be writing any blog posts I can only explain this from his very short account to me. He loved seeing students again after almost 2 weeks without  classes and for the most part everything went smoothly even with T. Ann having to translate for about half of the parents. I thought it was weird that they waited until after all final grades to even meet the parents in the first place, but now going into term 2 at least that contact has been made. Nick also mentioned that many of the moms could have easily been sisters to his 10 year old students...

While Nick was up early and sitting in meetings all morning I strolled into my last day at 8:30, sat on my computer browsing travel blogs about Vietnam until 11 and then just like that I came home and was on vacation! (The last 2 weeks have essentially been work weeks for teachers and we also have a week without students at the beginning of term 2, so to put it mildly, there was not much do actually do!)

To celebrate our afternoon (and month) off we hit up a coffee shop, this time a new one that we had never been to before. Hands down we have found the best macaroons in NST. (not pictured since we ate them too fast) Since we were caught in the rain I had a hot tea and I was surprised to find they also had a selection of black tea which I haven't seen at other shops either. Tea makes me happy :)

Here is my very artsy picture of the newest shop:

So now we have 4 days until we head to the airport around dinner time on Tuesday. Our big plans involve sleeping in, cleaning the house, packing, planning and maybe squeezing a waterfall trip somewhere into all that. 4 days and counting... Vietnam here we come!

Weekends in NST

I'm sure a lot of people assume that we do little to no real work over here... and that's a fair assumption based on the pictures we post, but who wants to see picture of us working?! I can assure you that they would not be very fun to browse. So yes we work, Monday-Friday, every week! But what about the weekends? Yes, we have been trying to make the most of our time over here by using our weekends as best we can to explore this country so please don't hate me when I say that travelling every weekend can be exhausting! I would say we try to do something exciting 2 weekends out of every month and the other 2 are spent around town, relaxing, catching up on chores and doing errands, exciting I know! We have always posted pictures of our long weekend trips to exotic islands and even our overnight adventures to local beaches, but we haven't really talked about what we do when we stick around town, so that is what this blog post will be about.

Friday nights are usually very laid back since Nick and I both had "gate duty" Friday mornings meaning we are at school before 7am to stand by the gate and Wai all students and staff as they come in, by 4:15 when we get home we are both exhausted. Last Friday we joined Nicks coworkers at a local expat dive bar called Jamaica Bar for some end of term, celebratory drinks. This place is basically a couple of huts, plastic chairs and tables, a pool table and a makeshift bar and kitchen. When we got there, Bam (the owner), was passed out in the shade so we helped ourselves to some beers and ciders. Some people are known to stick around here until the wee hours in the morning but I can't say it's my favourite place to hang out, a big part of that is the relentless mosquitos and no where to escape them. Nick and I usually go out to eat on Fridays (again too tired to be bothered to cook at home) and usually watch a movie or netflix on our projector.

Saturday and Sundays: We try to wake up relatively early at least one day on the weekend so that we can check out one of the markets. Some of our more dedicated friends will be there and home by 8am so avoid the crazy heat, but unfortunately I just can't wrap my head around waking up that early on a weekend so instead we get there by 9ish and suffer the extreme heat as we walk through the narrow maze of alleys. I still don't think we've seen the entire Morning Market. It starts off on the road side with some fresh produce, meat, fish and stuff like that. There are a few carts where you can get cold drinks (in plastic bags with a straw) and fresh snacks, but thats not really what you find at the morning market. The farther you walk into the maze you start to see less food and more clothes. This market is like heaven to thrift store shoppers. You can find entire shops for used jeans, shoes, hats, dresses, blouses... you name it and you can find it here. I'm still trying to figure out what size I wear in thai clothes, much like back home it seems to change based on the type of clothes and the brand, so I do more browsing than buying here since changerooms dont exactly exist in the middle of the market. I am determined to find a pair of overall shorts before coming home and bringing them back into style in Canada... Thai women pull them off but they also mostly all wear size 00, so I'll keep looking!

I'm ashamed to admit that we still buy most of our produce at the grocery store and not the market, but thats due to the convenience of buying all of our groceries together (milk, yogurt, juice, etc. which you can't get at the market). We tend to buy groceries a few times a week in the evenings after work since having a bike instead of a car limits you to one errand at a time. We often forget about this limitation when we try to run more than one errand at once, anytime you are buying something it has to be the last stop or else you are carrying your purchases with you wherever you go.

Another weekly routine that we try and uphold even when we go out of town is to go on a coffee shop date. There are about 4 coffee shops in town that we love and rotate between (there are hundreds more that we keep saying we are going to try but its hard to break away from something you know is so good!) I love the variety of cold drinks you can get here that are not coffee! If you are a coffee and tea drinker you'll have a harder time picking something. Nick usually goes for some type of ice cappuccino (caramel, hazelnut, mocha...) and lately I've been obsessed with iced green tea. I originally replaced my Thai Tea obsession (creamy bright orange tea with sugar and condensed milk) since I assumed green tea was a healthier option... until I recently watched them make my drink the other day saw them pour in a very unhealthy amount of condensed milk, so basically i just changed from orange to green tea, both are delicious. Many of the coffee shops in town sell all kinds of cakes and cupcakes and pastries that look so good and unfortunately that we can't eat. BUT a few of them have macaroons which are naturally gluten free so they have become a guilty pleasure (and splurge) when we go to these shops, the earl grey tea and rose flavour are sooo good.

They turned an old shipping container into a super cool, vintage inspired coffee shop. 

I swear I don't just like them because everything comes in mason jars...

Bank Bakery

Bank Bakery Macaroons :)

Finally we indulge in weekly Sunday afternoon massages at our favourite massage parlour. We rotate between getting foot massages, thai massages and full body oil massages. At first we saved this as monthly occurrences until we finally just gave in knowing that once we move back home this will become a treat we'll get maybe every year if not less often, so why not!

Other things we get up to around town: Sometimes we'll work out on the weekend depending what other plans we have, there are a few classes I like to go to Saturday morning or Saturday night and Nick's Muay Thai gym is open as well. We've hosted a few movie nights at our place too and more recently NFL night when a couple people came over to watch the Cowboys game :) Sometimes we go out to the other end of town for errands at the Tesco Lotus or Makro since we can get things there that we can't get closer to us, last week we got corn soft shell tacos and frozen berries! It's the little things.

Sticking around town may sound boring when there are so many amazing places we could be near by, but it feels really nice to sleep in, relax and explore more of this town without worrying about packing, the cat or the expense of going away. Other than doing laundry, dishes, sweeping, mopping, etc. which we have to keep on top of every week in our house (sometimes it feels more like a barn than a house) we still manage to enjoy staying around NST :)

Surprise! We still have a blog!

I could start off this post by dwelling on the fact that it has been almost 3 months to the day that we last posted anything on our blog... but I won't.

Time goes by when you're having fun I guess.

As we are reaching the end of the school term, getting nearer to our first big vacation, and finally feeling like we are actually settled in our town, what better time to get back on the bandwagon.

Let's recap the last few months in some super quick highlights (I'll admit I had to use my own facebook albums to remember what we've done... it still feels like a whirlwind!)

June: After our long weekend in Krabi and Railay we had to wait almost 2 months before our next long weekend. I know, it's a hard life. In anticipation for the end of July we kept ourselves busy with over night and single day trips. Mid June we went to a waterfall overnight with 2 other couples, Scott and Stephen work with Nick in Pratom, and Sarah, Sara, Ciara and Rob all work in Kinderland with me. (There are 5 sarahs on staff) It was about an hour trip on our bikes and we stayed in cute little cabins that were equipped with AC, tvs, fridges, hot water, all very unexpected! This was a nice little getaway where we just ate and played cards by a waterfall :)

July: July was an interesting month. I had a parade, my birthday, a trip to Bangkok, and long weekend in Koh Samui to look forward to. The highlight ended up being something I never in a million years expected: my mom and dana just showing up at dinner one night to our favourite restaurant. Although I had zero time to plan, it ended up being a great 2 weeks of showing them our town, exploring bangkok and hanging out on some great beaches. Nick and I definitely want to go back to Bangkok. The Chatachuk market alone was an awesome time and eating mexican food for the first time in a few months was delicious.

At the end of July we had to say goodbye to two of our new friends as they were heading back to Ireland. Our long weekend in Samui was spent mostly with a big group of friends celebrating Rob and Ciaras last trip. We did an awesome boat tour of some islands that ended with a climb even more brutal than the Tiger Temple in Krabi and then explored the island on our own (stopping at a few of the international schools just to check them out...) We were also introduced to a super cool little beach bar that is owned by a former teacher at our school who, with her Thai husband, built the bar from clay and sand with their own hands. It was an awesome place to chill out and watch the sunset on our last night. It was super sad to say goodbye to Rob and Ciara and made us realize how hard the end of this year will be! Whether we resign at our school or not there will be so many of our friends moving on to new things, it's going to be rough!

August: For Nicks birthday we went back to Railay just the two of us so that he could do some rock climbing. We splurged on our hotel for one night by staying right on Railay and Nick got to do a full day of climbing in some pretty amazing places. It was nice to travel back to somewhere we've already been since we knew how to get around, where to eat and what to do. The rest of this month is a bit of a blur. August at school was a bit of a grind to get through since september is only review and exams! Students and teachers could both definitely feel the term coming to an end.

Oh and did I mention the frogs? In Kindergarten each grade has to pick a topic and then talk about nothing else but that topic for 2 straight weeks. In K2 we decided on frogs. For 2 straight weeks we read about frogs, sung about frogs, coloured frogs, built frogs, talked about frogs, visited a frog farm, raised frogs and finally, yep, we ate frogs.

So now what?

September is already flying by. I can't even believe it's September already! On facebook I've been seeing all of my teacher's college friends posting about getting on supply lists, the lucky few starting LTO's and lots of awesome stories of settling into the UK. And here I am administering midterm exams on Monday morning after teaching half the year already! (Don't even get me started on the fact that I am orally examining 4 year olds, individually, in 3 different subject areas, and then giving them grades and report cards!) Nick has already written his midterm exam and has one more week of review before his students write their exams. After all of this we have a teacher work week with no students to get all reports sorted out, prep for term 2 and clean our classrooms.

Then it's travel time!!!

A brief itinerary of where we will be:

We fly out of Bangkok on September 30th to Hanoi, Vietnam where we will stay until Oct. 4th.

Oct. 4-6: Halong Bay, Vietnam

Oct. 6-10: Hoi An, Vietnam

Oct. 10-14: Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam

Oct. 14-18: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Oct. 18-21: Singapore

Then we fly Singapore, Bangkok, NST and have a few days to get ready for term 2 to start.

We head back to work on Oct. 26.

We will post again with more info of day to day life, what we get up to on weekends when we stay in town, and most importantly a little update on the incredible food that is making my clothes start to fit just a little bit tighter... (that might have a little something to do with the fact that I learned how to bake cookies in my frying pan as well...)

And we'll definitely be updating as we travel around SEA in October!

We promise, please believe us.