P.P.S.

I've already met a cute British guy called Graeme. Super funny, and not bad looking. All around, I think I'll try to talk him in to going to Rayong with me. I could use some cute British guys around. Keep my morale up, you know.

I made it! I think.

Author's Note: this is pretty much word-for-word the email I just sent out to my parents, etc. I don't have the energy to write a whole new witty recap thing. You'll take your recycled news and YOU'LL LIKE IT. DON'T ARGUE WITH THE SWEATY JET-LAGGED PERSON!!!

Hello everyone! I made it to Bangkok in one piece, though I'm really not sure where I am or what day it is or what the hell is going on. I didn't realize being on an airplane for 22 hours could be so debilitating. Although on the long haul, to Taipei (which turned out to be 13 hours, for everyone who asked), I did get my own row of three seats so I got to lie down and also had 3 pillows and 3 blankets. LIVING LARGE. But now I'm here, in a chi-chi mall near my hotel. I was met at the airport by a very nice man named Tang who is basically leading me around on a leash at this point, I'm so brain-dead. Next we're going to the hotel and I am going to crash I don't care what you say about getting on the right time zone Mom. Sleep is what I need and sleep I will have. It's hot and crowded and I've probably never smelled so bad in my life, except for that one time and Emilie, you know what I mean.

Tomorrow I will "relax," which from the looks of things around here means I'm going to sleep until noon and then do some serious shopping. Julia, you would have had several heart attacks at the various airports. Visions of duty-free Coach and Versace and Mac, etc.

On Monday (in case you're confused, it is currently 5:30 on Saturday evening here) I will go to the ECC head office for my orientation. That seems to be a pretty perfunctory affair. Then I'll go to Rayong. I guess. Very unclear, but Masako, my main contact, is supposed to call me tomorrow night to give me all the details and answer my questions. Unfortunately, I don't think she'll be able to answer my most pressing question, which is WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING HERE?

My computer battery plunked out after one too many games of Solitaire on the plane, so who knows when I will get online again. That's what I get for bringing drug-store sleeping pills and not the good stuff.

Miss you guys already but not as much as I miss my bed. And Sid.

P.S. This is going to sound horribly racist, possibly, but it's so Asian here. I mean, it's just like in the movies with the honking and billboards and the food stalls. It's tripping me out, a little bit. But that could also be the spicy soup with meatballs that I had for lunch that was delicious until I bit into one of the meatballs and something crunched. I swear to god, there was this little hard thing in one of the meatballs. After that, not so delicious. But I'm too tired and overwhelmed and shy to be that hungry anyway.

I'm just gonna be honest here

I AM MOVING TO A FOREIGN COUNTRY, ALONE, TO DO A JOB I'VE NEVER DONE BEFORE. AM I FREAKING CRAZY??!!??

That said, I'm a curious mixture of excitement and pure dread on this, my last morning in Santa Cruz.

I Also Overuse Caps Lock

He's just begging for a caricature, isn't he? I mean, this picture makes me reeeaaaalllly wish I had cartoon-drawing skills. (To add to my nunchuck skills and computer skills. Gosh!)

Anyhoo, today is Begin Packing Day. Jack bought me this nifty backpack-duffle bag-rolling suitcase combo thingy, to add to my big traveling backpack from last year's Europe trip. I am determined that I will take only what can be fit in these two bags. Which, for a normal person, wouldn't be that much of a challenge, but no one ever accused me of being normal, especially in the clothing, shoe, or toiletry departments.

I've started doubting my English-language skills lately, which is funny because objectively, I think I have excellent language skills. But I keep thinking that maybe I overuse the commas, and will I scar my students' comma-usage forever? Or that the funny way I sometimes say "bathroom" will rub off on them and forever afterward my students will sound like a hick transplanted to Chicago whenever they need to use the toilet. And then, of course, I remind myself that I'm only going to be teaching these kids for nine months and I SHOULD BE SO LUCKY that they would remember a word that comes out of my mouth. The grammar in that last sentence was a little tricky, but you get the idea.

Overall, the anxiety of the last few days has passed, and I'm feeling pretty upbeat again. I know it's ornery of me, but I think all the well-wishing and "it's going to wonderful"-ing of my relatives the last few days made me feel worse. Probably because, as a rule, I don't trust anything a fundamentalist Christian step-grandmother says.

So, in conclusion. . . . . HOLY JESUS I AM GOING TO MISS THIS PUPPY!!!!

With fava beans and a nice Chianti

I went to Portland this weekend, to visit all the various members of the fam that live there. That includes my maternal grandmother, who turned 90 two weeks ago. She's still really healthy, but being 90, living for another year isn't guaranteed. So I thought at least a lunch would be nice, so I could see her for the last time in a looooong time, maybe forever. She's still a hilarious old lady (the only worthwhile kind). She requested Jack in the Box for lunch and told me, totally deadpan, that the reason her kids (my mom included) turned out so well is that she "beat them every Saturday night." Love that woman.

My sister Sophie, who is 11, is in a stage version of "Night of the Living Dead" that plays at 10:30 pm. Possibly one of the funniest things I have ever seen, and remember, I've been to a Christina Aguilera concert. Zombies in totally over-the-top latex wounds roam the audience, sitting on unsuspecting laps and crawling under the rows and generally drowning out the on-stage actors with screams and laughter. At the end, after the curtain call, all the zombies did the entire "Thriller" dance, and I nearly peed my pants. Luckily, Sophie didn't have to worry about being upstaged, because she got to lay on the stairs the whole time, acting sick, until the very end when she spontaneously eats her father's liver and stabs her mother in the neck with a butcher knife. She also tackles the male hero from behind and gives him a hicky. I think she had the best part in the whole thing. Except she looked just like the freaky little girl from The Ring, with dark hair everywhere and dark circles under her eyes, and that gave me some serious creeps.

Other than that, I didn't do a whole lot. My sisters (yes, there are TWO 11-year-olds) had a slumber party last night that reminded me why I've always said I'm not having children. I'd totally forgotten how all those adorable orphaned Chinese babies grow up into pre-adolescents.

Flew home today, and I'm fighting a totally unpleasant nausea caused by severe anxiety. I'm so nervous, people, you all have no freaking idea. They'll be lucky if I don't get off the plane and faint right there in the Bangkok airport. I'm excited, and interested, and more than a little proud of myself, but mostly I'm SCARED AS ALL HELL.

P.S. I totally forgot to talk about last Thursday night, officially known as Laura's Last Night Getting Drunk In Santa Cruz Probably, And You Better Be Sad Motherfucker. I got drunk. Lost my car keys, a lipgloss, and ALMOST lost my credit card TWICE. Good times. I saw this dude Pete that I dated for like, fifteen minutes, like, a year and a half ago. We didn't part on the greatest terms because even though we were JUST FRIENDS by this point, he got a new little girly who didn't like him having friends who just happened to be girls he'd dated. Anyway, Kelly and I went over to him and tried to be friendly and he was FRIGID. Didn't look at me for even a split second, and answered Kelly's questions in monosyllables (even when I was the one who asked them). This was especially immature of him, because he'd been friends with Kelly even before I dated him, and though she's my best friend, she had nothing to do with the whole no-longer-friends New Year's Eve debacle. (Too long and too stupid of a story to relate here.) But we got over it quickly, with the help of some free tequila shots and some $2 Jager shots. And no, I didn't do ANYTHING BAD, and Emilie, aren't you proud of me?

I wonder what would happen if you really did call whine-one-one

Things are moving along here. I've got my letter of invitation from the school in Rayong. I'm applying for my visa. I'm going to Portland to say good-bye to the father and the fam up there. I went to my last Neighborhood Night at the Seabright Brewery and got nicely drunk. (But not as drunk as LAST WEEK at Neighborhood Night, thank GOD.) I fended off annoying inquiries regarding a free place to stay to watch some muay thai fighting. (Not you, Craig. You can come stay anytime.)

I have the most comprehensive and anally-retentive packing list known to man. I'm putting Emilie's stickered work-out chart TO SHAME here. There are columns. There are keywords. There are cute little boxes for check-marking. Have you ever tried to MOVE with just a backpack and a small suitcase? More importantly, have you ever been obssessed with clothes and shoes and tried to pack for A YEAR in just a backpack and a small suitcase? Yeah, I didn't think so. Because if so, you would feel my pain. PLUS I have to pack up everything else I own, because my parents want to turn my room into a shrine when I leave. (Why does everyone laugh when I say that?)

Uh-oh, somebody call whine-one-one, Laura needs a waaah-mbulance.

Hot Chicks! Naked Chicks! All topless, all the time!!

Because I like to keep you on your toes. . . . .



And because I hope those of you with breast implants don't turn out like this. . . . .



And because I have a serious aversion to beef jerky now. . . . .



And mostly, just because I can. . . . .

As demanded, a haiku of love to my big sis

Big boobs, bambi eyes
Preoccupied with kids' names
Expensive-taste girl

Loves books, manicures
Shops Gucci and Ross
Dirty jokes, nice cars

A contradiction
Good friend even when we fight
My sister, the best

I'm now leaving on the 28th. There, now I don't have to talk about it in the actual post.

I HAVE NO HAIR!!

Seriously. I'm bald. I got my hair cut on Thursday, and even though it has merely been reduced to "perfectly normal" from "frighteningly long and lifelike" IT FEELS LIKE I HAVE NO HAIR! Seriously, I run my hands through it (a step in the right direction, no?) and it, like, ENDS! I can reach the end of my hair! And it isn't trying to eat my face or latch onto inanimate objects or ANYTHING!

It's freaking me out a little.

And it's so light. It hardly weighs anything, and I didn't notice that my hair weighed a lot before. But it did, because now my head feels all naked and floaty. Quite an odd feeling, but I'm not sad I cut off all that hair. Yeah it was long and people liked it, but it's hair. So unless I contract some odd tropical virus in Thailand, it WILL grow back. Knowing my schizophrenic hair, in four months it will be twice as long and harboring plans of world domination.

My new laptop came today. Vuuurrryy exciting. Of course, I IMMEDIATELY installed Oregon Trail and played a trial game. I think it will serve my needs, although it's a little heavier than I would have expected (or liked). But that's okay. I could use the muscles. And the sound is good. A big plus.

I got an email reminding me that I haven't been posting daily photos like I said I was. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know you aren't really that interested in pictures of my dogs anyway. I'll post a ton more when I get where I'm going. In the meantime, STOP BOTHERING ME. I've got enough stuff to think about right now.

Like, oh I don't know, the little minor issue that I'M MOVING TO THAILAND.

Nothing minor about THIS panic attack

Freaking out. Freaking, freaking out. Got an email today from Masako, my i-to-i contact person in Thailand. Goes, "By the way, we need your passport number so the school can send you an invitation letter so you can apply for your O-B visa. It's best if you go to the Thai embassy to do that, however, you can post the application too. Please scan your passport information page and send it to me!"

Uh, what? No one ever discussed applications or Thai embassies or an O-B visa, whatever the hell that is, with me. I'M LEAVING NEXT WEEK, SMART PEOPLE, DO YOU REALLY THINK THERE IS TIME FOR POSTING LETTERS BACK AND FORTH TO THAILAND????

If it gets any longer, I'm going to need a whip and a chair

I am getting my hair cut today, and I'm having a minor panic attack about it. For anyone who hasn't encountered The Hair That Could Eat You Alive. . .well, let's just say it really could. Eat you alive, I mean. I have a lot of long, thick, crazy hair. My hair has a mind of it's own. Several minds, probably, and they all have multiple personality disorder. It's nearly to my waist and curly and thick and even though I complain endlessly about it, do I really want to chop it all off? Urrgghh, I don't know what to do. I'm specifically worried that if I cut it, it will spring up into an Afro-style bushy thing, which isn't in itself bad but with my chipmunk cheeks and round little face, it might make me look like a pumpkin head. Which isn't a good look.

In which I get so mushy and annoying, I want to throw rotten tomatoes at MYSELF

Holy Bejesus, I got drunk last night. I'm talking DRUNK. Drunk to the point of long nasty hangover today. Drunk to the point of not consuming anything but three pieces of bread and like, eleventeen glasses of water. That is what happens when you don't go out for a month or so, that long-cultivated tolerance just goes right down the toilet.

So huge, large, ENORMOUS props go out to Elisa, who dragged my slobbering drunk butt into her home and made me all comfy on the couch, complete with thoughtful garbage can for the not-so-off chance I would need to toss my cookies. Thank you girl, you are a good friend. And I kept my promise to not let you hook up with your ex-boyfriend, right? Maybe by overshooting my Jager-shot mark and rendering myself incapable of walking, instead of just being a good friend and talking you out of it, but the end result is what matters here.

I recently bought my friend Kelly, who loves gnomes (to the point of driving around in the middle of the night and "liberating" them from other people's lawns), a shirt that says "To Gnome Is To Love Me." With a picture of a gnome, natch. And this afternoon she got it in the mail and called me and nearly blew my brains out the side of my head with her Escalated Voice Syndrome thank-you. And immediately after, even though I was so hungover I was reduced to watching the True Hollywood Story of Christie Brinkley, I sat up and CRIED. I'm going to miss my friends so much!!! Kelly, you are always yelling in my ear and I can never borrow your clothes because your boobs are so big, but I love you. I love your crazy hair (just like mine!) and how you are incapable of taking a normal photograph. When I get homesick I will think about drinking Coors Light in your car outside the Alpha Psi cocktail, and wearing Elvis sunglasses, and your Napoleon Dynamite obsession, and almost marrying random Australians. And Emilie, even though you don't deign to read this very much (biaatch!), I love you too. I love that you put up with my European whoring and bad sense of direction for two months, and I love that you get so feisty when someone bugs you, and I love that we can't give you vodka because you'll probably punch someone out. I love how you love kids, and don't like makeup or jewelry but will drive 2 1/2 hours to get your hair done, and refuse to wear any shoes but flip-flops or cowboy boots. Don't forget, we are going to Oktoberfest in three years!! But this time, let's try to avoid the enormous ass-bruises. And Sarah, I'm so glad we reconnected lately. You've been my friend for a long, long time. I must have been a self-absorbed little snot in high school, but you stood by me. Hopefully, we'll continue to be good friends and someday you can represent me in my land-use litigation. Or, more likely, in my public-drunkeness trial.

Girls, I love you. Thank you for being my friend, and don't forget me when I'm 10,000 miles away and sweating profusely because the humidity is 1300 percent.

Wherefore art thou, AOL?

I just had a sickening, sickening realization: I have only ten days left of high-speed broadband internet access. What am I gonna do without endless LimeWire capabilities? How am I going to check Dooce and People.com thirteen times a day?

This is a serious problem, people.

You love me, you really love me!

Yay!! I have friends!! And they're coming to see me!! And we're gonna get drunk! Yaaaaay!! Sarah and Em, you better not back out. I need some Red Room time, I need some Jager time, I need some girl time. I need to speak as much English as humanly possible. Because. . .

Things are rolling, faster and faster. I'm buying a laptop, I'm learning Thai, I'm creating lesson plans. And I wake up every morning and go HOLY SHIT. Holy, holy Jesus who wears rubber bracelets and hates the Yankees, please tell me what in Satan's name I am doing!!! Did somebody put crack cocaine in my apple juice? (Which of course makes me go, OH MY GOD, they don't have apple juice in Thailand! How will I survive without apple juice? This is a baaaaad idea.)

And I don't think it is, really. A bad idea, I mean. I think probably it's a great idea. It's just that it's a hard idea. As in, this is going to be very, very hard. As in, I don't speak Thai, I've never taught anything before, I'm going to be by myself, I'm not 100% sure I like Thai food, and I know this sounds racist but what if I can't tell any of the Thai people apart?

But then I talk myself down. Like, yes it's going to very hard. Especially at first. But it'll only get easier from there. And think how cool you will feel coming back to the US speaking and cooking Thai. How many people can say that?

At the very least, you can get a cool lotus-flower tattoo.

I been busy, okay?

Today I have to drive over the hill to San Jose to pick up my little bro, Alex. This will mark the 5th and 6th times I drive over that bitch of a freeway in 3 days. 5th and 6th. Count 'em 1 2 3 4 5 6 times driving over highway 17 in 1 2 3 days. Blows.

I don't really feel like talking about why, right now. So just go here for the basic facts.

Today, however, I will most likely make a stop at the Mall of the Overspending. I shouldn't because I need to save money and what are they going to have at Nordstrom's that I'll need in Thailand? But I'm going to go shopping on this trip over the hill because by goshdarn I'VE EARNED IT.

Palm Springs was fun. I'm tan and I (was) relaxed, had lots of sister time. Driving home from Sacramento last night (click that link above for why), I was amazed Julia and I still had things to talk about, since we'd spent the last 57 hours together with nothing to do but read and/or talk. Most of that, it seemed like, in the car. I feel like I've been in the twilight zone for a week or so, and I never thought I'd be GLAD to get back to reality. (Or my own special little version of it, really.)

I need to throw a party before I leave, don't you think? I think I need some serious partying with the Tripod.

P.S. Later; Adding something on here. YES I plan to keep up this blog whilst in Thailand. That's sort of the point. See that title up there? Guess where I got the "Thai" part!
P.P.S Don't you love the word "whilst"? Makes me feel all British-ish.

Holy Hell, I'm Moving to Thailand!!!

Holy motherfucking shit, I heard from i-to-i and I've got my placement in Thailand. (Sorry about the profanity, but those are the best words to express what I'm thinking. Because my entire generation is lazy, stupid, educated mainly by television, video games, and popular music, and has no respect for the English language. Oh, and we're fat.)

Anyhoo!! I'm going to live in Rayong, a beach town roughly 100 miles southeast of Bangkok. It's not all resort-y like the southern peninsula, but they've got their share of hotels. Stoked they're putting me at the beach! They want me in Bangkok (hopefully someday I will learn to say, think, and write Bangkok without giggling) on Oct. 23. Otherwise known as FREAKING SOON!!

Don't know age or fluency of my future students yet. You can bet I'll be having nightmares of teenagers who have never taken English before. TEFL, brace yourself.

I'm all a-tizzy. I think I need to go to Palm Springs for a few days to decompress. Like the rich snot socialite that I am. Just kidding. Except I really am going to Palm Springs for a few days. More posts and details when I get back. Til then, I only have this to say;

HOLY RUSTED METAL, BATMAN! I'M MOVING TO THAILAND!!

Aaaarrrggghhh. . .ya free Saturday night?

Speaking of pirates. . .Sunday I joined the Raider Nation, eyepatch and all. Beating the Cowboys 19-13 was just icing on the really fun, slightly frightening black-and-silver cake. This here is John, my step-dad's good friend since they went to high school together, back in the Stone Age. He's wearing #75 in honor of John Vella, another high school friend of theirs who played on the Raiders' offensive line for a decade or so, back in the '70's and '80's (i.e., the Stone Age). He came over and had a chat, and nearly blinded me with the bling of his Superbowl ring. Only thing I regret about being a girl is that I will never get a Superbowl ring.

It was a great game, and not because I got two free Coors Lights. Okay, not ONLY because I got two free Coors Lights. My favorite part was Dallas' last possession of the game. They had the ball on the Raiders' 5, roughly 2 minutes left in the game, and the score is 19-13. A very, very uncomfortable score and field position. And that kick-ass Raiders defense stopped the Cowboys cold, FOUR TIMES. On the fourth down when the carrier got downed at about the 1, or maybe the .5, I nearly gave myself an aneurysm from screaming. Beer, nachos and football: what more could a girl want? Oh, that's right: an eyepatch!

The game was made doubly exciting by these two facts; one, I hate the Cowboys for some mysterious cosmic reason not actually based on fact, always will. And two, no team has ever come back from 0-4 to make the Playoffs, but 1-3? Totally doable.

See all my pictures from the game here.

Read about the game from someone who knows a lot more about football than I do here.

And don't worry Sarah; I'll always be a Niner fan. It's just that they played in Mexico City this week- that's a little farther away than Oakland. Oh, and they suck. I'm a little disappointed in Alex Smith.

There's a proven correlation between global warming and the number of pirates in the world, you know.

Okay, okay, I know this is the third post in one day and you're probably thinking "Lo, this whole computer-geek, random-post thing was cute at first but it's GETTING OLD." And you have every right to think that, but listen you, this website needs to be spread around the world because IT MADE ME LAUGH UNTIL ORGANIC MARTINELLI'S APPLE JUICE CAME OUT MY NOSE, AND I DON'T JUST GO AROUND WASTING DELICIOUS MARTINELLI'S APPLE JUICE FOR ANY OLD WEBSITE!!!

I have been touched by His Noodly Appendage and I am willing to shed marinara sauce for The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. For Pastafarians everywhere, Ramen!

P.S.

P.S. There are a lot of really, truly horrible blogs on this site. I'm sorry if I offend anyone here, but. . . .actually, I'm not sorry at all. It's your own damn fault if you start blogs about ceiling fans and how to be a jerk. I mean, come on.
P.P.S. I can't believe I actually just linked to those Blogs That Suck. Does that make me an accessory after the fact?

Listen up, bitches!!

And that's all I have to say right now.