The coming of my 23rd year... and Alex Weaver Visits Thailand!

Thursday, June 24^th came around.. and something magical happened. One of my best friends from college ALEX Weaver came to Chaiyaphum! He had been traveling through Thailand for the previous 4 ½ week and the time had come for him to make his final stop in my city. AND right in time for my birthday. Things really can’t get much better.
It was a long night waiting however, we watched a world cup game until around midnight, which is already extremely late for us to stay up on a school night, and then the alarm went off at 350am on the dot to go and get him from the bus station. Unfortunately, for us, we couldn’t figure out WHICH bus station he was at and rode around for the next hour confused, and half conscious. Luckily his bus was late anyways, and at 5 a.m he rolled into the station with us half passed out on the benches. We came back to our place and after the obvious catching up we had to do, we attempted to get in another 2 hours of sleep before it was time for Alex's first school day to BEGIN!
We headed to school, 3 deep on the motorbike and alex was brought into the world of crazy thai kids at Anbuan. All the kids were kind of in shock in staring and whispering wondering who the heck was this new guy. Only the director of the English department knew he was coming so all of our teachers were suddenly nicer than ever coming up to us wondering who he was. Everyone thought he looked Thai (“you same same me! ) and because he could speak English there was an instant TRUST level built with him. Basically… he stole our thunder, haha. All the teachers were telling me that he was going to help THEM with their classes instead of help me (and these are teachers I had never really even seen before) because he was so lovely they wanted their own time with him. A teacher we saw regularly instantly asked him to help her and give his advice about her son moving to America. What?!! It was true love with the Thais and Alex.

We began our 2 classes of the day with the 2^nd graders and things couldn’t have gotten much better. We taught them about emotions (I’m Happy, Sad, Angry, Hungry, Sick, Tired, Scared) with full on action movements and a rendition of “If your happy and you know it clap your hands” that left us all sweaty. The kids loved him though. When it came to grading paper time they actually specially REQUESTED (by refusing my pen) to have him give the check of approval. We had another class for the day later on and though generally these classes are my worst of the week, they truly put on a show and were on their best “let’s impress the new teacher” faces.. they even made me question my judgment of whether they actually WERE bad behaved usually (yeah.. until next week when Alex was no longer there).

Friday classes went just as good.. we actually had a canceled class because it was ANTI-DRUG day. This was a great insight for Alex for some true Thai entertainment. Little girls (and boys) caked in makeup, ridiculous costumes, and all day performances with Thai dancing and singing that never ended. The bizarre part was although this was supposed to be ANTI-drug day, we walked into to the gym to see all my 1^st grade students on stage in crazy outfits dancing together (like something in Grease) and celebrating. Once we looked closer we realized that they were actually dancing with massive cut-outs of syringes, pills alcohol bottles, and cigarettes so big it took two of them to handle it. ANNDD it was a really it was a really happy dance with these objects. Haha it was something straight out of “Summer Heights High”. The number ended with everyone falling dead to the ground, and was quickly followed with a number by more little kids with signs that had pictures of deformed babies and people on them. We left the gym to see coloring pages posted on boards of syringes, pills, etc. all surrounded by fire, also done by my 6 year old students. Hey… they don’t sugar coat anything here.

Our next two classes went great of course, with Alex as assistant entertainer we had an awesome time. The kids were all over him hugging, touching, playing weird made up games, and kept making him sing songs like the alphabet with them. We got tons of great videos and photos of them pretty much attacking him.

After resting up a bit from Alex's 2 day teaching extravaganza, it was time to show him more of the "farang" side of Chaiyaphum. We headed to one of our favorite restaurants here, the Suki Yaki place (or in English, all you can eat Korean BBQ). This is the Thai meal where you boil and grill your own meats and vegetables with egg and spices to make kind of a soup. For 89 baht (less than 3 dollars) you get all the meat you want PLUS Thai food buffet and delicious ice cream. After we were filled to capacity we headed out to one of the farang houses where we usually hang out, and stayed late into the night playing games. We took Alex out to some of the local bars in Chaiyaphum, which included a Karaoke spot, and a late night trip to eat at 7-11 (yes.. things really do never change) so all in all we had a good night.

Alex getting ATTACKED by someones pet squirrel at the night market.

We got up early to head to KHON KAEN a city about 2 hours away, where I would be celebrating my birthday! We went to a nice mall there and shopped around a bit since it was the eve of my birthday going all out and buying things like DORITOS (yes.. I've finally found them in Thailand!) and wine in the international market in the mall. We headed to a movie, something that is always a treat since we have a travel for it, and I got a fancy haircut at a nice salon. Basically the day was a big splurge. After the day in the mall we went to our rooms to get ready for dinner and going out for my birthday! We ate at an ammmmazing italitian restaurant called Pomodoro’s which had real Italian pizza. Seeing as pizza is one of my favorite things, and GOOD pizza is extremely rare in Thailand, this was nothing short of heaven. We each ate a whole pizza, and Felix and I ordered the same appetizer twice it was so good. It was all topped off with a massive tiramisu covered in whipped cream from my friends. I can't really express to you all how happy these comfort foods made me. After some curb-side farang group singing...(hmm possible video soon to follow) we all piled in taxis to head to a bar called Sunset. The bar was in the middle of nowhere, about 20 minutes outside of the city but we had heard good things about it. We weren’t disappointed, the bar was like a cabin/tree house, filled with lights and good music and literally surrounded by rice fields. Since it was world cup night we were pretty much the only ones there but we got a spot on a roof patio up in the trees and spend the rest of the night celebrating.

After we all headed home, and Alex hopped on a bus to Bangkok to leave this great country, my birthday was capped off with a wonderful meal from Felix. He cooked a MASSIVE schnitzel cordon bleu for me, a classic dish that we have made for special occasions in Thailand, like on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Followed by a chocolate birthday LOAF (he thought it was a brownie...) and 2 things of ice cream (he knows sweets are the way to my heart) the birthday weekend finally commenced.

SO obviously, I had a great 23rd birthday. Some of my favorite foods ate in huge proportions, wine, a new DO, my farang friends, Felix, and a best friend from home .. things here in Thailand couldn't have been much better.

THANKS GUYS!!!I'm 23 suuckkaas.