I know I'm being a deliquant again. I started this update the day I got back and haven't had time to finish it until now. I apologize for the incompleteness and the poor writing. I'll do better next time. I promise!
Thailand is AWESOME!! And so is Chinese New Years!! I love holidays!!
It's Chinese New Years right now, in case you weren't aware, and this week specifically is the New Years week. Can I just say, when the Chinese party, they P-A-R-T-Y! There have been constant fireworks for the past 5 days and there doesn't seem to be any signs of slowing. It's great right now because this is the first time I've seen the Chinese excited about something. You see, when I say fireworks, you probably think of some lovely organized display set in a big park with people sitting around oohing and ahhhing. But no, that's so North American. See in China, people set up huge tents and sell fireworks to anyone passing by and then throughout the evening there are speratic bursts of explosions between dusk and the wee hours of the morning as people in varying states of intoxication set the fireworks off as part of their holiday celebrations. The thing is these are powerful fireworks and some sound so close they shake the foundation of our apartment building!! Crazy, no?! So anyways, it sounds like canons going off right outside my window. It's very cool right now, I'm loving it, it's such a different experience here. You rarely see the Chinese so worked up about something. The decorations around Clifford are gorgeous. I'll take some pictures and put them up. This is so much bigger than Christmas!
Thailand. The trip got off to a great start as we entered the country illegally. That's right, I was temporarily an illegal alien in a foreign country. Oh the crazy things I'm doing this year! See we had two flights. First we flew from Guangzhou to Bangkok. When we got to Bangkok (the natural and logical place to clear customs) they assured us our bags were checked through to Krabi (our final destination) and that we'd go through customs there. With raised eyebrows and a suspicious feeling we eventually accepted this answer and boarded our domestic flight from Bangkok to Krabi. When we arrived in Krabi we found ourselves in an airport half the size of Winnipeg. We followed all the other people from our flight down to the baggage claim, picked up our bags, continued following the crowd and saw them walking right out of the airport. This gave us cause to stop, turn around and look at each other in utter confusion. Where was customs? No one stamped our passports, this was not right. So we went back to the baggage claim area, searching for an airport employee. After much searching (the airport was DEAD quiet) we found a guy and practically had to beg him to find someone to permit us to legally enter the country. It turned out the Thai system for clearing customs includes a guy in a bright Hawaiian print shirt looking for people whose names he has written sheets of dot-matrix computer paper. When he finds you, your name gets crossed off the paper with a pencil, not even a pen, and then you get your passport stamped and you've cleared Thailand customs. Needless to say, it all felt incredibly shady! But we got stamped and that's all that mattered. Our hotel was beautiful. We stayed on Aonang Beach in Krabi, but took some day trips to a neighbouring beach called Railey Beach. The pictures will speak for themselves. It really was paradise! We rode elephants in the jungle one day and got stung by jellyfish while swimming. That makes two jellyfish stings in one year for me, I'm starting to think I should avoid the ocean. The shopping was great on the beaches, but then we headed back to Bangkok for a few days and the shopping there was even better! There are whole pedestian streets full of shops and kiosks. I bought so much stuff it was insane! I've never shopped like that before! And then we came home just in time to have a farewell party for one of the teachers who was leaving to move back home. She won't be back this second semester, just a little too homesick. So we had a big send off night for her. She was living with me for the past two weeks because she had to move out of her apartment earlier. She left Thursday morning. I spent two days lazing around at home, doing a little bit of lesson planning. Saturday I went to Hong Kong for the day to buy piano books, and I almost bought a piano too. We'll see, I may still get it. And tomorrow we're back to school. We have two prep days before the kids come back though, so that's nice. It's a good ease back into work that way. Holidays, one of the many perks to living in China. It's been a good New Years.