Exploring with my Students

In order to get to know my communities and students better I started taking day trips on the weekends. I invite anyone who wants to come and let them pick the place we will go. The first couple of times they only wanted to go to my house. Eventually they thought of "the waterfall in the mountains". They told me it was very far but I was game. On Saturday morning I stoped by the market and picked up some grilled chicken and rode out to my small village where 7 girls were waiting for me.




The road to the "waterfall in the mountains". It was flat like this for awhile, then hilly.








We had to ditch the bikes and walk into the bamboo forest for awhile.














We walked forever and I was starting to think there wasn't really a waterfall but then we came across it!








The girls on top of the waterfall.










After swimming we had some sticky rice, grilled chicken and guava.





We had a really fun time at the waterfall so much in fact that one weekend when Stoney visited we went back. This time my co-teacher and another teacher from the school came with us.


The water was a little lower this time but I almost died when 3 of my students decided to hold me under water. Seriously I was seconds away from death.
















Some of the boys caught these little tiny fishes and then started a camp fire to cook them. The lovely lady in the white shirt is my co-teacher Cruu Ning!
















A few weeks ago the students told me they have a new place to take me, I couldn't figure out what they were saying but they promised me it was a "Sacred Place".


To get there most of the students had to double up on bikes. It is a very cute process. When they come to a hill the one on back jumps off and pushes.










The stick is to scare away the dogs that chase bikes.







We arrived and it looked sacred enough but I soon found out that we were just here to swing on the really really big vines.




















Nan, one of my 6 grade girls. Her grandmother brings me sticky rice every Monday and Tuesday. She told me I was like her daughter.













After swinging the students wanted to go to a noodle stand. The noodles were only 10 Baht!!













This was my bowl. I ordered no blood but got it anyway. It was supper yummy. (The noodles not the blood, I gave the blood to one of my students.)







Bok Bak, Grade 5

I have tried to find the noodle stand again but can't. It is like a secret noodle stand.

My House

In April all of us new volunteers left our wonderful home stay families and moved to our permanent sites. Most volunteers stayed with a new host family at their sites for a month but not me.
My counterparts helped me move into this house the first day I moved there.









So my house has 3 rooms. A living room, a bedroom and a bathroom, the kitchen is just in the hallway. This is the bedroom. During the hot season i started sleeping in the living room because the bedroom was too hot to sleep in with no window and just one little fan. Then during the rainy season my house became a mold breeding ground but most of it was in my bedroom so I have closed off this room and moved my mattress out to the living room full time.




Here is my living room. This is my favorite room because it has two ceiling fans and tile floor. The pictures on the wall are of a Buddha and King Rama 5 ( 5 was my favorite one). My house had 3 pictures of the king and one of Buddha when I moved in. I now sleep in this room because of the mold situation.




My "Kitchen". Really it is just a hallway but we added a refrigerator, a gas stove and a cabinet.

I have to do my dishes and laundry outside in buckets. The water is brown and the mosquitoes feast on me but it is very quaint and exactly what I pictured when I signed up for the Peace Corps.


My bathroom is H U G E. This picture really doesn't do it justice but it is larger than a bathroom needs to be. You can barely see it but it does have a shower head so I don't have to take bucket showers but there is no water heater so my showers are always freezing. The black bucket next to the toilet is what you fill up to flush.
On my front patio I have this table. I usually eat my meals here and drink my coffee here in the morning. These are my students one Saturday they visited.



A post about my house would not be complete without including the scorpions. As of September I have had 15 of these little pests in my house. This one is the biggest and was already dead when I found him.
And the newest addition to my house is my little kitty Beesly being held by the love of my life Mein. I got the kitty from one of Stoney's neighbors and she makes life better. Mein is a little boy who lives down the street from me. He was afraid of me for the first month or so but now he will come over to my house to color. I love him.

My Birthday

While living with my host family in Singbury I turned another year older and 2 days before the big day I mentioned my birthday was coming up. They wanted to celebrate it in style so they invited all the other volunteers from my Tambon to my house and we had a party. If you notice it says Lake instead of Kate. They told me this was a mistake. I forgave them because they threw me a BIRTHDAY PARTY!!



My Birthday Cake

My Aunt Warawan and my pal Catherine. She didn't live in my Tambon but my family had met her so of course she was invited!! They are cooking Moo ga tot.

Singing "Happy Birthday"


Good times were had by all. I didn't end up with too many pictures from this night but was really touched they wanted to throw me a party.

My Host Family

After a week of living in Thailand at a hotel in Singbury, Peace Corps called us in for interviews for our home-stay placement. They asked us all kinds of questions about squat toilets and privacy which made me more scared to move into a strangers house. On the day we met our future home stay family my Ma came to pick me up and was very quiet. Soon we were saying goodbye to our friends and driving off with our families. When I saw my house I was pretty sure I had won the home-stay lottery. The house was beautiful, no squat toilets and no bucket showers!! Then I met the rest of the family and I knew I was lucky. My family was wonderful and were so forgiving when I made my many mistakes with the language.





June and Jane. It took me ages to figure out which one was which. Of course they were extreamly shy of me when I first got there but we started playing English games every night and they warmed up. They still call me weekly to make sure I am doing ok.






I wanted a family photo of us to give to my family as a present before I left so one morning before I biked into town we took a million pictures with all the combinations of the family we could make. BUT we never got one photo of all of us. Missing from this one is my brother Joe, he is the father of the young girls.

Notice how beautiful the house is. I was very lucky, most volunteers got placed in the traditional Thai style houses.



This is an elephant I saw walking down my street one day. It is loaded with stuff the gentlemen were selling. They asked me if i wanted a ride and I really really did but my cousin told them no.







So in my Tambon (village) we had 8 or so volunteers. And 3 of us were placed with one family that had 3 houses, so we ended up doing a lot of things together. The three of us are here, Jackie in the blue dress, Alex the tall white guy and me the tall white girl. We are surrounded by some of our families.


The last week we were there all the families of our Tambon got together to throw us a going away party. We ate a lot of good food and sang some kareoke.



P.Tim and me at the party. She is my older sister and was amazingly patient with me during my stay. She was always helping me with my Thai homework. Thought I still don't believe it she tells me she is 40.

And here is my Pa. He is old enough to be my grandfather and we didn't have many conversations because my Thai was/is difficult to understand but he is a very good Pa, and so cute!