Pictures!!

Pictures are here! Photographs. Photos. Pics. Snapshots. Candids. I say po-tay-toe, you say. . .I dunno, whatever you say. But I have pictures! And there are more on the way! Try to restrain your excitement!

P.S. Big ups to my homie parents in CA for sending me my camera cord. You da bomb.

Laura's Learned-the-Hard-Way Guide to Eating in Thailand

Trust me on this one, people. If I'd had one of these when I arrived here, I'd have saved many a poor defenseless taste bud.

-When Thai people say "Can you eat Thai food?" or "Do you like Thai food?" what they really mean is "How do you feel about setting fire to your tongue?"

-If a Thai person says something is not spicy at all, that means it's spicier than most American food, but if you've eaten plenty of Mexican, you should be okay. Your tongue will definitely tingle, but not in a bad way.

-"A little spicy" is about the same as Hot salsa at home. Meaning, a jug or two of water and some bread or rice is probably advisable.

-Plain old "spicy" means prepare to have your face slowly melt off.

-"Very spicy" means. . .well, I suppose I don't really need a tongue.

-Yes, those really are cockroaches and grasshoppers deep-fried and served in little paper bags like they're salt-water taffy.

-If it looks like chicken and smells like chicken, DON'T eat it. It's probably an insect or horse or dog or similar not-very-appetizing kind of animal.

-Get used to having your dinner make google-eyes at you, because they don't do fish steak. You get the whole fish or nothing at all.

Although I'm well on my way to being able to yell in Thai, too.

Happy Boxing Day everybody! I spent this Christmas weekend the way every Christmas should be spent; in bed with too much food and too much tv. I was actually only depressed for about 7.4 minutes on Christmas Eve, and that was because I finished the parmesan goldfish my girl Kelly had sent me (I luuuurrrvvv you Kelly Bo Belly!). It was a pleasant surprise how well I dealt with my first Christmas away from my fam and friends and, most traumatic of all, my Sid. It's amazing what blueberry cheesecake ice cream and reruns of Speed can do for the soul.

Today is the 1st anniversary of the tsunami, and though I'm far away from the areas that were really damaged, many Thai people were affected and almost everyone knows someone who was affected. It's carved into the consciousness of Thais already, I've found, especially those who live in a coastal area and understand how closely coastal Thais are linked to the sea. The loss of fishermen's livelihoods continues to have an enormous impact on many small coastal villages in the south of Thailand. If you'd like to make a donation through the Red Cross to the thousands of people in southern Thailand who are still trying to recover from the devastation, click here. Not to go all mushy on you, but Thailand has welcomed me with open arms. It's only because of the care and generosity of Thai people that I've been able to live here and teach here without going completely insane. (I mean, I'm well on my way, but they've kept me from that final, irrevocable step to true insanity.)

Okay, enough of doing the right thing. Back to what I do best; sarcasm, cynicism, self-deprecation.

I was especially tired this morning. Probably a sugar overdose from my hedonistic weekend. (Oh man, how sad that I describe lying in bed and eating junk food as "hedonistic." I remember a time when a weekend only earned the title of hedonistic if it involved brightly colored drinks, pretending to be Russian in order to use the men's bathroom, falling down stairs or off a table, and screaming fights with strangers. How the mighty have fallen.) So I put an extra spoonful of the powdered Demon shit, i.e. instant Nescafe, in my cup this morning and now my hands are shaking so badly it's kind of freaking me out. I'm energetic though! Which is good, because I have Prathom 1 in a few minutes and those kids are nothing if not energetic. I can hold their attention for about 5.3 seconds and that's only through the sheer novelty of being yelled at in English instead of Thai.

This post just ooozes good holiday cheer, not unlike a freshly ripped-off scab

It has been brought to my attention that my last post was a little, uh, dark. Morbid, maybe. That wasn't because I was feeling morbid or dark. That's just my special brand of sarcasm, maybe a weensy bit too subtle for you Philistines. (Is that how you spell Philistines?)

I'm actually have a very lovely Christmas season, here where it's SUNNY and LOVELY.

Merry Christmas everybody!

My favorite is the one where Santa's really a vampire who sucks the blood from little children, but they kill him by putting stakes in the fireplace

Christmas is this weekend, in case you didn't know (hey, it's possible), and since this will be the first one I've spent away from my family, never mind in a foreign, non-Christian country, I've been warming up my depression engine all week. I've got the tub of chocolate ice cream ready in the freezer, some escapist DVD's (Brad Pitt in a skirt can make anything better), and a book that I've never read but has a shirtless man on the cover so you know it's going to be good. I doubt I will leave my room all weekend. The fam is sending presents but who knows whenI'll actually get them, considering the mail is brought round by bicycle and the receptionists at my apartment building turn abruptly deaf and dumb in the presence of English. And considering most branches of my family have the procrastination gene in inordinate amounts.

Which, yes, they've passed on to me. SO IT'S NONE OF IT'S MY FAULT, IS IT?

Christmas isn't celebrated here, really, but it's acknowledged in a half-hearted way, mainly at Tesco and the like. (Tesco is the local corporate we-have-everything store. It's like the bastard child of Wal-Mart and Sears. I'm sure they chortle with glee at any excuse to take people's money.) Oh, and the lobby of my apartment building has a fake tree that plays the most horrible electronic rendition of "Jingle Bells" I could imagine in my worst nightmares. I've taken to ordering my coffee in my room so my ears won't explode. (I call it coffee, the menu calls it coffee, but really it's instant Nescafe, a nightmare even without the exploding ears. I need two creams (also instant) and a pound of sugar to make it palatable, which of course causes me to both go in to insulin shock and jitter uncontrollably for the rest of the day.)

Speaking of nightmares, several of the other teachers suggested I show the kids a Christmas-themed movie. I was SO tempted to show "The Nightmare Before Christmas," or one of those horror ones where Santa's evil and hacks everybody up with a candy cane, you have no idea. The image of little children shrieking in fright and having night terrors for the rest of their lives wherein elves in curl-toed shoes strangle them with colorful ribbons was sooooo tempting. But the conscientious side of me (it's small, but it's there) won out and I settled for coloring and carols and cheesy stuff like that. It's odd to teach about Christmas in a Buddhist country, but it seems expected of me. I just avoid Jesus and religious stuff like that, which is easy because I've been avoiding Jesus my entire life.

I also have few taste buds left as they've all been burned off by the forklift-loads of chili they put in, well, everything

If my two months in Thailand have taught me one thing (and really I think they've taught me more like 18.75 gajillion things), it's that humans, and myself in particular, are infinitely adaptable. When I first arrived in Rayong I gazed with horror upon the everyone-for-themselves-and-helmets-be-damned style of traffic, in particular the motorbike taxi drivers who seem to have an uncanny but not infallible sense of just how wide the space between two speeding semi trucks is. It was quite staggeringly frightening to watch them weave and speed and turn and cavalierly ignore what few traffic laws there are. I took it for granted that I would never entrust my valuable and low-pain-thresholded limbs to that form of transportation, no matter how convenient or prevalent it may be.

Seven weeks later, and I quite frequently and unconcernedly take motorbike taxis, often sitting sidesaddle on the back without holding on, my arms full of groceries and talking on my cell phone as if I've been doing it all my life.

He's got almost as many piercings as I do now, too

Speaking of fugly, I had a nice long email from my brother Bo this morning. If you've met Bo you know he is about as talkative as a house plant, and half as forthcoming. Getting more than three words out of him requires pliers and a strong stomach. If you want those words to have more than one syllable you might as well bring in the Armed Forces and maybe one of those giant off-shore oil drilling things while you're at it. So it was LOVELY as well as surprising to get a (relatively) verbose communique off Chile boy. He's been having girl problems, which is both surprising and not at all surprising. Not surprising because he's a good-looking boy. He takes after his sister in that regard (you know, tall, blonde, tan, long eyelashes. . .). But surprising because, well, Bo has never put enough words together (in my presence) to ask a girl out, much less say anything that might cause drama.

AnyHOO, things sound active and scandalous in Valdivia, Chile. I'm the TEENIEST bit jealous because my life of late has become about as scandalous as an episode of Golden Girls, and yes I totally just stole that reference to Golden Girls from Go Fug Yourself. I work, I eat, I sleep. I bitch and moan about unpronounceable names and expensive laundry services. I conceive wildly ambitious teaching ideas only to have them shot down by more experienced teachers with a not-so-surreptitious rolling of the eyes and snorting of the nose.

Oops, I'm complaining again. Sorry.

Plus I was in an internet cafe at the time. Man was THAT embarrassing.

The only website that can make me snort Sprite out my nose, and I mean that as a compliment: Go Fug Yourself

See how much I'm NOT complaining?

I got to talk to the parental units this weekend and it was GREAT. Not only was it GREAT, it was GRRRRRREAT. Hearing their voices for the first time in almost two months reminded me that there are people in the world who love me and miss me and think that I'm great and all I'm trying to do here is great. (You love me, you really love me!) Better for energy level and general morale than crack cocaine.

Speaking of crack, my sink and shower are backing up and I can't seem to find a Thai translation for "plumber." They need plumbers here, surely? Any assistance would be appreciated.

The past week or so have been a VAST improvement over the first two weeks of school. By about the middle of the second week I was thisclose to chucking in the whole thing and hitchhiking back to California, to fall gratefully into my (soft, oh so soft) own bed and also headfirst into a heaping plate of fettuccine Alfredo. Oh how I miss pasta.

But I stuck it out because Mama said there'd be days like this. That's a song, for those of you who don't like Oldies or don't have compulsive singers in the family. And I'm really glad I did. I'm learning so much and so quickly, it's kind of shocking. It's like your most interesting subject in school. You know how you always had that one class that you actually paid attention to, because you were just fascinated by the stuff? That's what it feels like.

I'm so, so sorry

Yes, I know, two posts, one day. What a loser, etc etc.

I just wanted to note, since I am too lazy to go back and edit it, that I am ETERNALLY SORRY for my grammar error two posts ago. I said "too" when I should have said "to" and it isn't that anybody has pointed it out or anything, I'm just that kind of nerd and it's embarrassing me so I have to point it out so you ALL know that I'm that kind of nerd.

You know, to atone.

Speaking of which, friend Graeme and I have been playing a game in which we try to think up big and/or difficult words the other might not be able to define, and I WON!!!

Beat his ass. And he's got 11, ALMOST 12, years on me.

Get Thee Behind Me, Karen Ziglar!!!

Someone is out to get me. Someone is trying to drive me insane (not that I need the help but, you know, literary license). I swear, the entire world is one big conspiracy against me and my sanity and my self-respect and my image of myself. Here I am, in Thailand, trying to be a good teacher and a good person and all of that other stuff your mother and Oprah have always said you should be, and "they're" messing with me!

No, I don't know who "they" are, specifically, but if I HAD to guess I'd say a former cult leader from Aptos High School with bouffant hair and an ill-advised preference for smocks with coordinated scarves, perhaps with her oddly identical daughters, fresh from the tanning booth, heel-stretching behind her.

How? How, you say? Well I'll just tell you. I'm just trying to be a teacher here. Teaching, going to the beach, drinking. It's a quiet life. I'm not bothering anyone. And they're trying to turn me into that person I still have nightmares about. . . .a CHEERLEADING COACH! IN THAILAND!!

Honestly, now, wasn't four obsessive years of my life enough? Now I'm the newly appointed coach of a cheerleading team at Wat Khot school, Rayong, Thailand. I don't know how this happened. I'm just minding my own business at school today, thinking about where I could buy fish-shaped stickers, and the next thing I know. . . .WHAMMO! I can't get out of the cult, even in Thailand. IN THAILAND, FOR HELL'S SAKE! OY!!!!!

I just want to know, seriously now, HOW DID THEY KNOW???

I can't even write. THAILAND. CHEERLEADING. CHEERLEADING. THAILAND.

Happy Birthday, King Thingamijigiewhatsit

Monday was a big holiday around these here parts. It was King Bhumitolph-or-something-equally-unpronounceable's birthday, so everything was closed, there were fireworks and feasts and general merrymaking, mostly because I DIDN'T HAVE TO WORK!!! Oh, the joy. Happy birthday indeed.

The King is actually a pretty interesting dude. There's a picture of him in every room of every building, he's so adored here. In addition to owning the largest diamond in the world (it's roughly 5 lbs. I tried to find something to compare that too when I realized I have no freaking idea what 5 lbs feels like.), he has been in power for 60 years, since the ripe old age of 19. When his father (also King) died, the country was all asunder and generals in the army were staging various coups and plays for power and all those things stupid men do. If it were women we'd sit down, turn on Oprah, and have a nice chat about who should run the country. Anyway, King Whats-his-face had lived and learned in Switzerland since the ripe old age of 6. At 19 he rushed back to Thailand, barely able to speak Thai because he'd been away so long, and managed to wrestle the government away from said power-hungry generals.

So, celebrating his birthday seems okay to me.

Especially because we took the opportunity to make a day trip to Pattaya. That's this touristy sort of place about an hour and a half away. It really seemed like a place you'd enjoy a little more at night, if you catch my drift and I think you do, but we had a perfectly nice time. We even went to this zoo-ish place and I got my picture taken with an enormous Bengal tiger who growled quite loudly when I touched him. To quote Kathy Griffin, I'm not saying I shit myself, but I only had maybe 5 or 10 seconds to play with.

However, I obviously survived, only to watch the cheesiest crocodile show Steve Irwin could have imagined in his wildest baby-walking dreams. Complete with the Star Wars theme music and red silk ninja headbands. I was totally enthralled.

Back at school today and yesterday, of course. Today in Prathom 5 we played my own personal bastardized version of musical chairs and now several 11-year-olds are missing teeth, eyes, even a limb or two. It was a massacre out there. But you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, right? Nobody said learning English was going to be easy.

P.S.

And oh yeah, I almost forgot. I WANT MY CAMERA CORD!!

Just be glad I didn't start quoting the actual lyrics

Oh, we didn't like that last post did we? No, not at all. I thought about going into all the gory details but I really didn't feel like it. And if nothing else, one good thing about living in Thailand is that no one in California can make me do anything I don't feel like doing.

Not actually that big of a deal. Really. It was just that I was in the process of learning, in that painful, slow, head-banging-into-a-brick-wall way that I have that (MAJOR CYNICISM ALERT) you really cannot depend on anyone but yourself. It's a mistake to assume anyone is always there for you. Okay, I lie. I can always depend on my mommy and my sister and my girls, but they aren't here, are they?

No, they most certainly are not.

So I made that mistake, obviously. And it sucked, and it still sucks, but I learned my lesson and MAN do I feel better. It's awful to feel alone, especially when you think you aren't alone, when you think you've got someone totally in your corner, and then it turns out that someone really has lots of baggage, a self-absorption problem, and serious issues with TOTAL STUPIDITY. And if that's a little cryptic I'm sorry, but that's just the way it has to be.

But I'm over it. I've played "I Will Survive," "Stronger," and "Fighter" 1.7 bajillion times each, had several good cries along with at least two episodes of throwing things (at the wall, not a person. I'm not, like, out of control or anything), and I've come out the other side smarter, stronger, etc etc blah blah blu. It sucks, but it's also a great feeling remembering that I can handle all this alone. That I will be fine, no matter what.

Alone, shmalone. I'm so freaking fantastic, who would WANT anyone else?

Boys Ssuuuuuuuuuuuuccckk!!!!!!