I got a new toy :)

I came to Thailand with a Canon Powershot that I'd had for 3 years. I didn't use it much because I'd never taken the time to get to know it or really appreciate that it was handy. At the beginning of this year it decided to break, which was fine with me since I didn't use it much in the first place. Except after that I found myself wanting to take more pictures.
Then I got a tax rebate from Uncle Sam and dedicated myself to researching, pricing, and eventually buying a new camera. I settled on the Canon IXUS 65 which is better known in North America as an ELPH. It's got a 3 inch LCD, 6 megapixels, and 3x optical zoom. It's tiny and fast and does everything I need it to. I'm quite happy with my purchase and have resolved to take many many pictures in the next 8 months. Let's start with some from school.


Here's the cafeteria. It's usually much busier but this was after most of the kids had eaten and we were just chilling out. Prathom 1-3 eat in this canteen, along with their teachers. There's another one across campus for the rest of the school, but it's huge and noisy and I almost never venture over there.


This is the view outside of my classroom window. Under those baskets are some cheeky cocks. Or roosters, if you want to be less silly about it. They are cheeky though. They crow at all hours of the day, not just dawn! Occasionally there is a shirtless man in the yard who yells at them.

This is the large pile of planks complete with rusty nails that sits behind the Prathom 4 building. Right across from the playground. Yeah, just one of the things that would never happen at home. They've been there as long as I have.

On Fridays the kids wear traditional Lanna (Northern Thai) dress and that means they wear cute little kiddy sandals too. Usually they have black or white trainers. They take them off while in the classroom. This poses problems for me in my heels trying not to step on their bare feet.

My kids were very excited about my camera. I took dozens of shots of them, but this has the most of them in it and they're super cute. This is my Prathom 2 class that I teach 3 hours a day. They're little monkeys but generally very good kids. The one in the front on the right is Sahasawat. His nickname is Earth but my co-teacher and I just call him cartoon face.

Here's another shot of the canteen from the outside in the morning. Notice the extra close proximity to the washrooms on the right. Those are the kids' and when it gets really hot it's hard to walk by without retching. Mmmm.

Here's the kids out the front of our building at morning assembly. They stand for the national anthem, and another song (I think it's about the King) and then sit for 5-20 minutes listening to announcements.

This is what my classroom looks like sans students. The desk on the left is Som's (she's my co-teacher and her name means orange) and on the right is mine.

I paid a visit to Nomes on the third floor. She was hard at work preparing a last minute maths game. We tend to get a little slack on Fridays and do a lot of morning lesson planning...

And here's Som! Isn't she cute? She's wonderful.


I've taken loads more pictures but I think that'll do for now.
Recently I started dating a guy named Sean. He works at a private school in the city and has been here 14 months. He's from Liverpool, which is in England, Matthew. :p
Last weekend (on Canada Day) I went bamboo rafting with some of his friends but there are no pictures of that because it was pre-IXUS. It was a fun time though. It was more of a lazy floating down a river than white water style, but that made it easier to drink beer.
This weekend has been pretty laid back. I had some friends over on Friday and made Enchiladas Craig style. Garrett is back in the US for the month of July so it's just Nomes and I holding down the fort until he gets back. There's a lot less drama in the household as a result.
This week I missed being home for the 1st and the 4th of July. My friends think it's strange that I can identify with both holidays and that I tend to choose my nationality depending on the day. For some reason that doesn't seem so strange to me, but they like to laugh and shake their heads, saying "Oh... she's Canadian today."
I may have some visitors in October, which is very exciting. I've been thinking about all of the cool places to take them and things to do. Chiang Mai is full of fun touristy things to do that I haven't checked out yet, but they'll be much more fun with Jen, Julie, and Mama.

That's all for now. I should really go plan my lessons for the week, which will probably turn into me surfing facebook for the next hour. Tschuss!