A day in the life.

"Woke up, got out of bed

Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup
And looking up, i noticed i was late..."

My day is split into basicly 3 parts. Before school, school, and after school. Each of these are again split into 3 parts, which can be spit into 3 more parts... Just kidding.

First I wake up, go figure. Usualy around 7am. After a little Yoga I Shower and eat some breakfast. Then the crazy ride to school the the busiest road in town. School starts at 9am and proceeds as follows:

• 9am. there is "yoga for thai massage" and it is a little simple so I don't go. Monday I will start yoga balance ball classes. These cost extra, allot extra, but will be super fun. I took a sample class and was the first person to ever stand on the ball in the first class. Damn I'm good.
  


• 10am. I arrive at to have a cup of tea and chat with friends.


• 10:15. Class starts. This week has been an exception, we start at 9am because we are doing "herbal hot compresses" at the spa instead of working at the school.



• 12 noon. Lunch! I usually go to a restaurant operated by a competing school and have high priced vegi Thai food for $.90 a meal. If I was cheap I could eat for $.30. Everyday I have a coffee at a very nice stand set off the road with my friend Benoit.
  


• 1pm. Back to work! Usualy we practice whatever we learned in the morning.


• 3pm. I usualy call it a day but I can stay and practice until 5 if I want. Some days I go play go, do yoga in the park, have a fruit smoothie, or whatever.

I spend the evenings hanging out with friends, studying Thai, internet or reading. I just started reading "the moral animal", check it out it's very good so far. For dinner I can eat any type of food I could want for half or better the price I would pay in the states. I have had the attitude of being on a sort of retreat so I usualy go to sleep around 11pm, or earlier.


I will post pictures tomorrow.

Motor bikes!

Today Mike and I woke up at "a good christan hour"(7am which "is certinaly not a good yogic hour") to take a trip to Hang Dong to visit the school at which he will be getting his CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults). I know a guy who goes there and he loves it. "It's the best place in the world to get your CELTA" and all that. Before leaving mike had to email asking for a better map, at least one that indicates north. Equipped with our new and improved map we rented a motorbike and we're off! Well the gas tank was on empty so not quite off yet. We head down what seems to be the right road, but the new map wasn't a great improvement and I feel unsure. Things are looking up when we see the Big C, the first real landmark on our map. We stop in to do a little shopping and I got some great pants and a shirt. Thais are small people, like me, so I was very pleased to have an enormous selection. I also picked up some citrus Listerine. If you have not tryed it you should, it is so far superior to mint I would not have guessed it was a related product. I digress, back to the main story! Oh, now it's raining. 30 minutes later I am wet and cold and lost. Six local Thais are looking at this stupid map scratching there heads, and we're late. Did I mention that the phone number they gave us was wrong so we could not call them? Finally, they tell us they think we went to far so we turn around. The sign at our turn is for wat tom doi (a temple) and must not be in english. So we creep along as Mike tries to read every sign, slowly, in Thai. A very nice looking construction laborer comes up as we are looking like idiots on the side of the road. He assuredly points and explains how to get there, and we think we understand enough of what he says. Just then the school calls and we tell them thanks for nothing, were on our way. A very unsure 3 minutes later we arrive. Now I am wet cold and hungry... I wait and try to use their very shoddy wifi connection as mike interviews. Then we take a tour of the incredibly beautiful grounds... then time to ride back.

After a wonderful meal at my favorite restaurant we lounge around a local coffee shop and critique the art...
Life is hard.

All and all a great day :)



"Security is mostly superstition. It does not exist
in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger in the long run is no safer that outright exposure.
Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing."
Helen Keller

Dragons Musicians and Hipos Oh My!

Thialand is a strange and magical place where mall magicly turns into a vendors market at sundown, the street turns into a venors market on saturday and sunday. You will always see vendors anyway because people love stuff! Stuff and food!


This is right outside the mall. I walk in and everything is normal and I walk out to this crazyness. That was after going to the mall several times in the day time to play Go. A little confused, and of course I can't just go up to a vendor and ask if this happens every day. As far as I can tell, yes, every day.


The kids garden in the middle of the mall, there is also what looks like a daycare on the 3rd floor.


The guy who sold me my cell phone. I bought it from him because he called me over and tryed to talk in english and taught me some Thai. His name is "Name" so we got some laughs from me being compleatly confused for the first half of the converstion.


I guess they like kids.


Skypoint 2 anyone? I enjoy watching the buildings go up. They don't use cement trucks or crains or any other senible construction mechs.


Thai girls... trouble.


Thai girls... cute.



Just outside downtown.


This is my faviorate place to go for smoothies! I get a watermellon, pineapple, passionfruit drink for $.60 almost everyday and the guy teaches me a little thai.


Class! Thats the head teacher up there. Nothing to exciting.


The heads teacher's wife (Left) and one of the students. The bunny ears are being applied by another teacher.


Boy is one of my faviorate teachers, he teaches me thai and we joke around.



Friday mornings we go to the park to do chi gung.


We wash are feet at least twice a day.


The sunday market! These are made of hair! Absolutely incredible for $3. I will be bringing back gifts :)



Anything on this table is $6 or less! I felt guilty this day when I saw whitey bargening for a necklace that would go for $60 in the states. The look on the womans face was 'I NEED to sell stuff'. He got it for $3.


There are alot of musicians set up in the middle of the street for the sunday market.


There are alot of oganizitions set up to raise money. Looking at these old folks I had to give them a few baht. I think I gave more money to the blind etc then I spent on food that day.

Chiang Mai and ITM

Chiang Mai has terrible pollution. It started out in my throat, moved to my head, then with the fever. I plan on being better by monday.

Besides that everything is great! The school is fun, the teachers are totally chill and the students are all very cool. The style of teaching is fairly rigid, following a routine that starts with the feet and ends with the head. After learning all of the positions you choose witch to use on each client. We wash our feet and hands alot. The teachers are hilarious, allways joking and teasing. I have such great feelings towards them but there english is preaty restricted to massage language so I don't really know them well. We have 28 students in my level, about half are staying for the whole course, the others are 2 weeks. So far I have managed to meet about 2/3's of the group and remember those names, this took effort and makes me proud.

On account of being sick I have not explored Chaing Mai itself as much as I would have liked. My second day here I did manage to get lost in the old city. After riding around for 3 hrs or so I had my bag stolen by a guy on a motor bike.

Well on to happier topics! There is an active Go club here in Chiang Mai! Well sort of active. I can't really figure out the hours but there is a shop in the mall. The manager is a hip looking fellow by the name of Vi (1 dan) and he speaks about as much english as I speak Thai.

A day at school and a trip to Chiang Mai

Among primary school children here in Nong Chang I am the coolest thing since marshmellow tacos! Ohh Yeah.

Today was 'feed the monks day' at the school today and guess who the honored guests were? The monks of course. But 2 rows behind the major, there I was, talking with Mike as the various peoples of various unknown positions talked for waaay tooo longgg... It was alright though, the business man siting in front of me was on his cell the entire time. No body pays attention to speeches here.



The highlights of the day were many. Now I know what its like to be a Beatle, 2000 kids screaming and grabing at me as I walk along. Girls giggling, pushing and shoving every where just to shake my hand. First we waited in line for a monk to fling water from the end of a bamboo at us. Then we had the honor of feeding the monks! Oh, and we ate, boy did we eat. Homemade ice cream, marshmellow tacos, pad thai, I don't know what it is soup... Then there was the food I decided not to try, lets start and stop with the hot dog pancakes.

The school itself is really quite interesting. From class organization to to what is expected of the children, Thailand is different. Thai's either have an innate sense of self responsibility no sense of responsibility for others. Even if it were not for the four story construction project in the center of the grounds I would expect some sort of reign on the children. Children wander the classrooms unattended and run in the halls while the teachers pass around whiskey and sit in the shade. Today is a free day for the children so I have not seen the classes in action but there are a few key differences to note. For the sake of brevity I will skip most of them. Most strikingly it has been explaned to me that classes are arranged by grade and intelligence. Mike and Ano always talk of class 1/1 or 3/6 this means 1st grade/smart class, and 3rd grade/dumb class.

Around 1700 hrs Mike and I when down to the "resort" of a swim. We ended up seeing a swiss fellow who had just gotten married and invited us over for dinner and a drink. Mike was looking for a way out of the deal because he is basically lame but we both Mike and I enjoyed ourselves in the end.

Later...

I finaly made it to Chiang Mai. Upon arival I was wisked away on the back of a scooter to a random hotel I choose on the spot. They were full but with little effort I found a nice little spot for 150 bhat a night ($4.50). It was a nice night, I had the best massage yet and met my first friend here in Chiang Mai. It's incredible the number of farang here. I would guess the part of town I am in is 75% white.

Today it is off to ITM for orientation day. I am looking forward to that.

I made it!

Holy Heck!

Sitting on the sky train with Mike Jones I said "It's cool not to know what the f is going on." "You can say the F word here." "Really?" At this point he just looked at me. "Ohhh!" And I laughed.

But let's back it up a bit.

Tampa-Atlanta

I arrived at the airport at 4am, said good by to my dad, and had my bags thoroughly searched because I did not know the 311 rule. Do you? My first hop to Atlanta is a short one only 2 hrs. A wonderful stroke of luck puts me next to the only empty seat on the plane. Across from that seat is a really cute, witty young woman headed off to see her brother and take a cruise.

Atlanta-Tokyo

Off to a good start, I have nice neighbours, 2 older Japanese women and all things seem to be going well. But, when I wake from my first nap feeling great I am told that we are heading back to Atlanta... We also have a thick white cloud coming out from the wing... After we circle Atlanta for 3o min or so they tell us that they have been dumping jet fuel so we can land and we would only stay for an hour before leaving again for Tokyo. The very nice man that I talked to to arrange my new itinerary to Bangkok also gave me a $400 voucher towards my next ticket.

Tokyo

18 hours later I am at the wrong hotel with my new Thai friend, Chan, "like Jackie Chan". The Japanese are very kind people. The largest man there (they are also small people), told us in broken English to wait. He promptly arrived with a van to take us to our hotel. The Holiday Inn must be the cheapest hotel in Narita Tokyo, but standing next to a Holiday Inn in the states you would not belive that they were related! The free dinner was an aw sum 4 course meal served in a way that truly made me feel like a guest. My only complaint if you can call it that was that due to bad English. I could not get wireless Internet. They said they did not have it, but there were wi-fi hubs literally littering the hall ways and I could detect no less then 3 from in my room. They also said that the clock in my room was not an alarm. I managed to properly set it for 5:30 giving me an unsure accomplished feeling. I have always had the idea that electronics were so intuitive that not only are instructions unnecessary but so are markings and language, or I was deluded. I arranged a wake up call, just in case. Should I mention my free breakfast? Let me just say it was GREAT! New foods and all the leeches I could eat.

Tokyo-Bangkok

The Australians that I met on the way back to the airport were slightly envious that I had been switched to Singapore Air, apparently it is distinguished here in SE Asia. I soon found out why. The flight attendent on the other isle may have been the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. She moved with the grace I find disturbingly lacking in most Americans and had a sad peaceful look about her that distinguished her from the fake smiles of the other flight attendants. Oh, and the service was exceptional.

Bangkok!

They messed up my visa upon arrival, that sucks, but I was so done with being at airports I did not bother trying to get it fixed. That will probably cost both time and money. Mai phen rai(it's all good). Exactly 48 hours after arriving at TPA I met Mike at BKK. Did I want to spend the night in Bangkok? HELL YEAH!!! After my $1 meal, checking into our $6 hotel, and wandering the streets being accosted by people selling tickets to the "ping pong show" I had my first real Thai massage! OMG! Then my second. Even better!

Now I in nang chang?

The small town where people stare because I am white.

It is nice I have met my first few locals. Three young boys were yelling at me from a corner market so I stoped to say hello and drank some beer with them. I felt very happy. Mike rode by and told me that they were the sketchiest people he has yet met in nang chang. I wish I had taken there picture :(

Thank you all for being my friends. I hope you are all well!

XO!

I wasn't planing on posting again until I had arrived in Thailand but its 2:27 am and I need to kill and hour and a half before I go to the airport! So the great news! I am the first. Yes my friends, the very first... person I know... to use an XO! Isn't that incredible!
Of course you all know what an XO is right? No?

So this guy, Negroponte, had a dream. If every child in the world had a computer and internet education would run rampant and destroy the forces of ignorance and corruption that hold the masses in poverty and helplessness. And so was born One Laptop Per Child and the XO. So, how did I get one? Being the son of a major drug smuggler I can have anything I want! oops... I mean... Buy one get one free. To garner funds Negroponte is selling the XO for twice, yes folks thats it TWICE what it costs! and when my dad bought one some lucky kid in China, India, Africa, S. America? where are the starving kids nowadays? anyway some kid gets one.

Well that's all folks.

One Day Left!

The past week has been wonderful!

All week I spent as much time as possible with the people that mattered most to me. I feel very blessed to have so many great friends.

New years eve stands out, not only as one of the best nights of the week but as one of the greatest nights of the year, and the best new years ever. On new years eve I connected with two relatively new friends. David Zeits and I had met months before and although we often networked off each other we never spent much time together. I joked that between the two of us we knew everybody in Sarasota and before I left he needed to meet the other half. First, we went to the potluck the A.R.T. (Alliance for Responsible Transportation) and Jessica's Stand kids throw together on Mondays 5-7 for the homeless at Gillespie Park. We saw to many friends to name, among them Ben Sanchez who I had not seen for years. Then off to the Sufis. Gene is one of the best Cookes I know (badum chi) so I had to eat just a little more. David and Roth had made plans to meet and bike downtown. All was going according to the plan... (Muu Ah Haha) Although downtown was a little disappointing I did bump into a few friends. Just as the the countdown starts I see a beautiful woman looking at me, it's Michelle, just in time for a new years kiss. Rosa's party was aw sum, more great people. David and I were having a blast at his house and expecting some girls to show up. A knock on the door... It's Roth! I shouted with joy! Roth and I were outside when I told him that yoga was union and showed him a practice, he took to it immediately. After Roth had gone off to practice alone and discover some of the difficulties of an opening awareness he and I met back up to talk more. I was very happy to tell him all I knew and his fresh perspective pointed to many lessons I needed to learn. After Roth went home I talked with David and he taught me some of his practices and I thanked him humbly. It is amazing the double rolls we play, always student and teacher, master and servant.

I slept new years day.

I leave for Thailand tomorrow morning!

A perfect end to a perfect year.