some pictures..

i also wanted to just make a post with pictures i thought were worth more than a couple of seconds in a slideshow.. so here they are:
































"my" gecko..
it lives in our room.. note size..

a much needed update.

well, a lot has happened since the trip to mae chaem. i have now completed two whole weeks of class and work, went to a flower festival, and went to a youth hostel/orphanage for valentines day..
we also had a dance for valentines, went out for a friend's birthday, and just spent time enjoying the city on the weekends.
here's the best i can do in a brief update.. it will mostly be pictures since that seems to do a pretty good job of talking for me.. also, i have a blog that HAS to be updated at least once a week for class.. i've made a link to it on the right of this blog, so you can check that out for more in depth updates.. this one will be more personal ramblings..

the flower festival was the weekend after my first week of class/work. we got up relatively early.. for a saturday, anyway.. and took a songtao (red truck with inclosed but doorless back) to where the festival was. first we watched the parade.. it was full of beautiful, well-detailed flower covered floats (we'd actually seen one being built at a wat the night before), insanely good high school marching bands (one full of children dressed up as brightly colored animals) and just large groups of dressed up people walking.

then, we spent a good portion of the day walking around booths and sitting in a park.
the booths were a lot of food (from squid to bugs to "ice cream" that consisted of.. ice cream with jelly, bread, nuts, fruit, shaved ice, syrup, and condensed milk on top, to delicious fried bananas and sticky rice, of course), plants for sale, and other things like the dog rescue that one of our teachers is involved with. dogs are seen as pretty lowly here, so they take the strays in to feed and bathe them (they're pretty skinny and mangy). there was a carnival (mainly for little kids) with game booths and a few rides as well.

there's a crazy huge mall (at least compared to malls i'm used to seeing..) that we went to to look for uniform stuff... it's 5 levels.
the basement is full of clothing and food.. there's a big market full of fresh food and sit down places where you can eat it as it's made..
tons of clothing and jewelry stores fill the first and second floor. the third floor is mainly electronics. the top floor is.. a food court. every floor, though, has gellato and coffee stands, and there is robinson's department store, which has a good portion of space on the 1st to 4th floors..

i wrote a good entry about the hostel/orphanage in the other blog, so i won't go into too much detail about it here, though i will put up more pictures than i put there. it was really strange since it was christian, but it was a good experience. i just felt rather.. at odds.. having not known i was walking into jesus land before hand. it was kind of upsetting to see so many kids (all ages) living basically on their own. as far as we could tell, it's just a man and his wife who cares for them, and there are about 32 kids in the "family". we were told by the thai kids who went with us that their parents were back in another country.. it's a bit complicated, but the kids are safe here, but their parents wouldn't be.

i have some pictures from work.. i hope to update these more later. they're kind of random.. my camera was borrowed a few times, but i think they give a decent impression of where i'm working and who i'm working with.. it's a small organization, and it's very much a family. if i didn't put this in a previous entry, i work with adults with disabilities, called "artists" by the other employees, who weave to make a living. my supervisor told me that it is very difficult for people with disabilities to make a living in the culture, especially because it is seen as bad karma within buddhist beliefs.. he said it is likely that a family with someone with a disability in it will not be invited to a wedding because it is so looked down upon. from what i see in the markets, it seems that those who are blind or disabled in other ways use singing or playing instruments and basically begging for money as their only source of income, but this foundation has found a way to help improve the skills of these people to allow them to find other ways to an income, and they also work on the independence skills of the artists--such as cleaning up after themselves, cooking their own food, and understanding the impact of their actions.

and last, i'll put a slideshow of pictures from the dance/weekends..