My House Just Breathed a Sigh of Relief

So there was this holiday called Christmas recently.

I had been planning for about 2 months for this thing: buying floor mats, buying pillows, buying food, buying cups and plates, decorating the house, etc.

It actually made me happy to be home; I had been playing Christmas music since Halloween.

After planning 4 Christmas parties for the school (kids dressing up for the Santa relay race was the best!), I got to relax a bit once Alec got here. We had about 3 days to ourselves, and my biggest accomplishment during this time was learning how to make bread. Yes. Me. Bread. And it was delicious. We also found the closest thing to a Christmas tree that we could, and were pretty happy with the results. I had to second guess it though when Nathalie walked through the whole house and then asked, "So where's the tree?" She had walked right by it.

People started coming in on the 23rd, and I didn't stop moving until last Sunday, January 4th.

I was happy with a full house, but my full house was not happy with me. The total

damage over the past 2 weeks includes: several broken glasses (including ALL of my wine glasses),

broken plates, a broken chair, a smashed bathroom sink

, a blown fuse (which sparked and left my wall black, a broken DVD player, and most recently a broken computer (which had nothing to do with people being at my house). I would love to include pictures with this blog, but since the computer is in non-working mode, that's not possible.

On Christmas Day my assistant pricipal showed up at the house and loaded 17 people into the back of his truck, so we ended up going to the beach (about 5 km away) even though it had been raining that morning.

We made a huge Mexican food Christmas lunch with tortillas, guacamole, salsa, cheese, and beans. These things are not easy to come by.

I baked carrot cakes, peanut butter cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and chocolate cakes. Hooray for my mini-bake oven.

The day after Christmas, we rented a songtaew and drove an hour to the waterfalls, only to be told that it was too dangerous and we couldnt go in. We went anyways, no one got hurt, and it was beautiful.

On Saturday we went to Krabi and spent 3 days there.

I came home Monday night with horrible food poisoning

and spent the next day in bed barely moving.

I had thrown up twice at the bank in town, once

by the market, and only twice at home.

On Wednesday we headed to Ko Tao (Turtle Island), a small island

in the Gulf of Thailand. There were lots of foreigners traveling,

but we wanted to be there for New Year's Eve despite being told that all the hotels were booked up (we found one anyways). I spent that night on the beach with two friends, not drinking because I was still feeling sick from the food poisoning and the additional shaky boat ride over to the island.

On New Year's Day, Cat and Angie showed up after a 6 hour overnight boat ride from Chumpon where Angie threw up several times and ended up sleeping in the drunk catain's bed (Cat found her there). We decided to spend most of the day snorkeling, and when I got back the only thing I wanted to eat was noodles. Funny how living here makes me crave noodles and rice on a regular basis.

I got 2 massages in 2 days and drank many banana shakes.

Cat and I beat some dudes (Yes, dudes. Not men, dudes) at the pool table, and I had an amazing caesar salad with bacon. Twice.

We tried getting a boat off the island on Friday night only to be told that all the boats off the island were full until Monday. A forced extra 3 days of vacation? Yes, please.
But we checked again on Saturday and there was an extra boat leaving that afternoon.


On the boat, it is very important to go straight to the top, and sit outside. I learned this on the trip. If you are outside, there is less of a chance of vomiting. I only saw 2 people do it on the way back to Chumpon, but as we were getting of the boat, we had to walk through the bottom cabin. This is completely true: there were bags of vomit scattered all over the inside of the boat, and the stench smacked me in the face as I walked through. I had to concentrate very hard not to lose it myself at that point.

We were all pretty happy to get off the boat, but were stuck in Chumpon for the evening because once again, all transportation was full.
I caught a van the next morning and made it home by Sunday afternoon.
Called in sick to work on Monday with a fake case of diarrhea. Diarrhea will get you out of ANYTHING in this country. I use it as my ace in the hole, figuratively speaking, of course.

Now I'm home for the week, and leaving for Bangkok again on Sunday. I have 4 days of meetings, and my main goal is to buy a new laptop - pretty expensive on my 220 dollars a month salary.
Happy New Year!

I just thought Alec's New Year's Day moustache should get some credit.