Update

So I've been quite busy lately.  Saturday morning I actually saw bread for the first time since I left Canada.  I was the only one at breakfast and the kitchen set out 2 bread sandwiches I guess you could say,  basically a piece of bread rolled up, one with a piece of some sort of meat & one with a hotdog, with ketchup and then cheese ontop to stop in from unrolling.  It was from a local bakery, not sure if they did this just for me, but I've never seen them before here. That afternoon,  the people form NY arrived, so we all went on a bit of a tour of the Wat, then I took Justin on an extended tour as the other 4 were female and they are not allowed on some parts of the Wat.  Its been nice to have some more people to talk to, and they all are pretty easy to get along with.  We did some meditation, and then went to chanting later that night.  There are so many monks here now that they are overflowing out of the usual chanting are, so we have to sit outside.  Some monks asked Justin and I to come up closer to the front outside as many Wats don't get that many foreigners.  They also started taking our picture during chanting, not exactly sure why, they seemed to talk quite a bit among each other.  I guess I'm really going to have to break down and start to learn more Thai so I can actually know what they're saying.

On Monday, Justin and I went on the Alms walk, which is when the monks go walking around and the local people are waiting for them to give them rice and lots of other food.  The monks then say a blessing ( in Pali, just like chanting).  You would not believe the amount of food they get, people come in motorcycles and cars and just park on the side of the road to give.  Some people brought like multiple pales of goods.  It was quite interesting to see, and it also gave me a chance to see more of the local community around the Wat.  After breakfast, we were split into 2 groups, Nina, Jennifer, and Sharon (who will be teaching K & Grades 1-6) and Rosalba, Candice, Justin and I ( we be teaching 2 groups of students from K to Grade 9), and sent to different schools for tours as we beginning teaching on Tuesday.  We got a quick tour of the school and then Arnold ( The person who picked us up and works at the school) took us on a little tour around.  We went to the floating market, a couple other Wats, and then to a local restaurant for some food (which was really good).  I didn't really expect to be going around, so I didn't have my good camera so most of the pictures didn't turn out that well, but I'll definitely be going back to get some more pics.

My schedule for the next three weeks will now include teaching Grade 7-9 English from 8:30 -11:30 every morning, eating lunch at the school, and then coming back at around 1:00pm.  We started lesson planning on Monday afternoon, and I got a call from Arnold saying that there was no school on Tuesday as they were having some sort government testing.  So then I was told that I would be going with Nina, Jennifer, and Sharon to give a hand and see what thing were all about.

So Yesterday we went and taught which went quite smoothly.  We were teaching a kindergarten class (just over 30 student), a class that had grades 1-3 (just over 60 kids), and a class that had grades 4-6 (which was about 30+ kids i think, but I think some were missing as there was suppose to be around 60 also.  The kids were quite cute and lots were really shy.  We did a few songs like the hokey pokey & "head, shoulder, knees and toes", did some name and emotion exercises, and some musical chairs.  They kids really seemed to have a lot of fun and practice some English at the same time so I believe we did quite well.  We had dinner at the school which was really good and then came back to the Wat.  At the Wat, We did some more meditation and then some lesson planning for Wednesday.

Today,  I went to teach the Grade 7 - 9.  Everything went quite well, they student were still quite shy and we found out that we had the same class twice in the same day so we had to improvising. We got them to make some name tags with pictures of interests, got them talking and played a bunch of games.  They all seemed to have a lot of fun and were smiling the whole time.  Some of their name were so hard to pronounce and I think it'll take a while to learn them all.  We had some dinner there, which was delicious, and then they drove us home.  They kids were chasing the car as we were leaving and Arnold had to tell them in Thai to stop as I think they would have followed us all the way home. LOL.  When we got back we did some meditation and them worked on lesson plans for tomorrow.

Well,  I got to go.  If it seems like this is jumping from topic to topic its because I wrote this in multiple sittings..  I'll try an get some more pictures posted, hopefully some time this week, but I got to get them from some of the other teachers as I forgot to take some when we were teaching and forgot my camera a lot .

Some Food

So, since i been here its basically been either rice soup or fried rice for breakfast and then rice with fish, chicken, veggies and fruit for lunch.  Now that all the lay people are gone, I am in eating inside and not outside buffet style so the food has changed a bit.  Overall I can't say I've had a bad tasting meal yet, although half the stuff I still have no idea what it is.  Its hard to ask what it is when no one speaks English, and its probably best I don't know as I might not eat some of it if I did.  Some of the pics aren't the best quality as I felt out of place taking pictures of the food.

The Buffet line for Lay people

Again the buffet one, see the cart they bring the food out with :)

Everyone does their own dishes, there are sinks for dishes and dishes for cups.  Wash in first sink, 1st rinse in second, then final rinse in third.

Dishes then get set out to dry, there were a lot of sinks, like 8 rows of 3 

Breakfast - stir fry rice

Spice to add to the stir fry, don't add too much as it is smokin' hot.  Trust me.

Some Fruit in the market in Damnoen

Very odd looking fruit.

Rice Soup with some extra

Lunch in the VIP room.  Don't ask what it is as I have no idea.  I just sit down and eat.  Some chicken, veggies or some sort, and some sort of dark meat, Duck maybe.

Some fruit, both tasted like apples, but they call it something else

Mini Bananas, and are they ever good.

Never tried these, but they have odd seafood chips.  Haven't really seen potato chips.  I did try some seaweed type chips that were covered in some sort of sesame seeds and they were really good.

Some good old fashion coke.  12 Baht = $0.36 CAN

My New Haven

Well, on Wednesday I got to move into my place where I'll be staying for the time here and may I say its pretty nice.  It has a bedroom that has a bed with a thicker mattress but its still really hard (no pillow top, not really any difference to before, actually maybe harder), a Desk and a closet.. It also includes bathroom and shower, a little kitchen area, a living room partly enclosed and also a little covered dock with benches.  Included in all this is a fridge, a stove, and a washer machine.  I love the washer and it even plays a song when its finished (this startled me at first as I though someone was standing on the other side of the wall or something, cause what washer play music when it finished.  I spent the last couple few days meditating, cleaning it up a bit, and yesterday I headed to Damnoen again to get some supplies and explore a bit more.  It was a bit confusing as you really have to learn to read the pictures on items LOL and my iPhone came in handy to translate to the workers what I was looking for ( I didn't get much exploring done, but did find the superstore or wallmart of Damnoen).  During cleaning the first day, I found a little friend (the toad) hiding out and then today when I was finishing cleaning the outside there he was again chilling under the chair. I guess he'll be some quiet company.  There are also lots of little lizards around, including a larger one living somewhere above my bathroom.  He is pretty shy as he won't let me take his picture.  I had a meeting today with the director and teachers of 2 local school which was pretty silent on my side most of the conversation was in Thai :) and later tonight some chanting and a bit more meditation.  There are lots of monks here right now as there is an advance meditation retreat going on.  Pretty well all the lay people are gone except for two or three of us, I was actually the only one at breakfast and lunch today.  Tomorrow the 5 teachers from the US arrive and we begin some lesson planning, I guess the real work actually starts :)  Well Enjoy the pics.

He wasn't too happy to see me.

Bedroom

Bedroom

Kitchen

Dining Room, I guess

The Living Room

The Dock