Elephants, once more

A few more pictures. Just a few!

Tusks!

Elephants painted these pictures.
Yes, elephants.

One more of Gus feeding the elephants.

Elephants bathing!

More elephant pictures

In addition to riding and feeding elephants (see the previous post), we also watched the elephants bathe in the river and hang out in the jungle. (Click to see bigger pictures.)

Be sure to look on the hillside above the barn!

They're so cute!

Elephants, elephants, elephants!!!

We rode an elephant today. :D We even got photographic evidence.

Proof!

Check out our tiny elephant. =:-o

The view from the back of our elephant.
The dude in the pink shirt was our driver.

An elephant waiting for its riders. Look at those tusks!!!

In addition to riding one, we also fed a bunch of them:

Original documentary footage of Gus feeding an elephant.

Eager elephants!

Run for your lives!!!
I guess a fence won't stop a hungry, determined elephant.
(Actually, I'm pretty sure the fence was designed
to keep people out, not elephants in.)

Aren't they cute!

More pictures to follow in the next post....

Songkran - Thai for "City-wide Water Fight"

The 13th to 15th of April is the traditional Thai New Year celebration, called Songkran. Thais in Chiang Mai celebrate in many ways. One way is to have a big parade in which each wat (temple) in town brings out its Buddha statue and walks it through the crowds before returning it to its home. Chiang Mai has over 300 wats, so it's quite a long parade! (As always, you can click on a picture to see a larger version.)

One of the many Buddha statues in the parade.
(Photo courtesy of my co-worker Carol)

Traditional drums.
(Photo courtesy of my co-worker Carol)

En route, each statue gets bathed with water, some applied by hand, some thrown from cups or bottles. From Wikipedia: "In many cities, such as Chiang Mai, the Buddha images from all of the city's important monasteries are paraded through the streets so that people can toss water at them, ritually 'bathing' the images, as they pass by on ornately decorated floats."

Crowds of people lining the parade route.
Note the streams of water flying toward the statue!
(Photo courtesy of my co-worker Carol)

This bathing of the Buddhas and ceremonially pouring small amounts of scented water on people's shoulders as a blessing devolved into this over the years:

This was the view from our balcony Sunday morning!
There were scores of pickup trucks with a dozen people (seriously!) in the back,
throwing water at everyone they passed.

Live footage of the mayhem!
Those girls with the buckets and hose were out there all day Sunday,
and they're back again today, drenching all passersby!

Ready for battle!
(Photo courtesy of my co-worker Carol)

Crowds along the moat. As you can see,
the street and all the people are soaking wet!
(Photo courtesy of my co-worker Carol)


In the morning, before we went down to the parade.
Notice the dry clothing.
(Photo courtesy of my co-worker Carol)


After. Not so dry anymore!
L to R: Gus, Angela, Rebecca, Andy (our driver), and Carol
(Photo courtesy of my co-worker Carol)

Week 3: Party!

The first week of classes went very well. The students are all hard-working and fun to teach and get to know.

Because Monday, April 7, was a government holiday and the university was closed, we held a party in my co-workers' condo. All of the students were invited (read: told to come), and they all showed up! We asked everyone - us included - to contribute their favorite food to the lunch. Here are a few pictures from the party:

Food

Students

Gus being brave and trying a bite of a mysterious dessert

Week 3: Neighborhood

I actually thought to take my camera along when we went for a walk on Sunday evening! Take a look:Some of the local flora, seen from the riverside promenade.

A temple just down the street from us.
There are several buildings on the temple grounds.
The rooftops sparkle in the light!

A dragon - obviously - alongside a temple staircase.

One of the local markets. This one is full of flowers.

A tuk-tuk, our favorite form of transportation here!

Week 2 (March 24 - 30)

(Note: I added a picture to last Saturday's post. Check it out!)

Work began this week. Classes won't begin until March 31, but there's plenty to do in the office to prepare for the term. My colleagues and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out class schedules, test schedules, vacation schedules, along with various procedures and protocols, how to find office supplies, and so on.

Speaking of office supplies, I've discovered, much to my dismay, that Thailand doesn't know about the glories of 3-ring binders. Instead, they have monstrously huge 2-ring binders and 2-hole punchers. I tried to conform; I honestly did. But after a few days of using the unwieldy, Goliath-sized binder, I gave up and reverted to my trusty 3-ring binder that I lugged from the States. The difficult part of all this is that I now have to individually manually punch all three holes for each sheet of paper. Also, the printer paper here is A4 size, so the paper sticks out of the top and bottom of the American-sized binder, just a little. Just enough to make all the pages a little ragged. :)

On the more entertaining side of life, Gus and I attended a cooking class on Sunday! It was a one-day Thai cooking class. There were 11 of us students, and the class was taught by a Thai chef who now teaches cooking classes pretty much every day. The class was a lot of fun!

Angela being schooled by the chef

Gus cooking pad thai.
Look at all that smoke! (Yes, that's how it's supposed to work.)

Mmmm.... Chicken with cashews!

Gus with his bowl of chicken in coconut milk soup

Delicious sweet-and-sour veggie stirfry.

Sunday, March 23

We moved into our condo today! The check-in process was surprisingly simple: We walked in, the desk boy said "3C?" and we nodded (even though we had no idea if our condo was, in fact, 3C), and he handed us our keys. We then walked the 6 blocks back to our guest house, the lady there found us a big taxi, we loaded in all of our luggage, rode back to the condo, and moved in!

In the afternoon, we went to the north side of town to the hotel where Rebecca (director of International Studies and Programs department at UNT, the department which houses IELI) and Carol (IELI assistant director) were staying, although Carol hadn't arrived yet. Rebecca was already there, so the three of us went to Tesco and bought most of the basic household goods that we need. The condo comes furnished, but it did not have things like linens, hangars, pots & pans, dishes, etc. So we bought what we needed there. Back at the condo, we showed Rebecca around and divvied up the spoils (some of what we bought was for the other condo).

Our condo doesn't have an oven, and at first I was sad that I would have to go 9 months without banana bread (that's pretty much the only thing I ever used the oven for!). But at Tesco, I found banana bread at the Tesco bakery! What joy! It's delicious, too. :)

Thailand doesn't seem to believe in flat sheets. Our sheet set (and all of those we looked at yesterday) has a fitted sheet, two pillow cases, and a bolster case. We even asked a Tesco worker if any sets came with two sheets, and she laughed at us and said, "No, only one!"

Pictures of the condo:

Kitchen (though you probably already guessed that)

Living room area

Master bedroom viewed from the hallway

Master bedroom from the other direction - looking toward the hallway

The view toward the west from the balcony off the second bedroom

Saturday, March 22

Breakfast today was at a small cafe near our hotel. I had the most fantastic banana pancakes! Three pancakes, fruit, granola, and tea for $2. After breakfast we went to the northwest side of town to the biggest mall around. It's huge!! We wandered around there most of the morning, bought swimsuits to use in our new pool, then went to see 10,000 B.C. The movie was lame, but the tickets cost just $3 each and our concessions - popcorn, pop, and water - cost just $1. :)

After the movie, we ate lunch at a food court located in a supermarket on the basement level of the mall. The food court had only Thai food. I had some noodle concoction (quite delicious!), Gus had chicken fried rice and a bowl of soup, and we each had a Diet Coke. The total cost: $3.

Here's a lovely picture of Gus at the food court. Check out the menu board above his head:

Extra intestines! Who WOULDN'T want extras?!

Friday, March 21

We forced ourselves to stay awake by going out and wandering around until 8:30 pm. By that time, we were both ready to shut down completely - it was getting hard to put one foot in front of the other. :) So we went to sleep by 8:45pm and woke up at 5:45am - we got 9 hours of sleep at the proper-ish times!

We went to Tesco! Tesco (the British version of Super Target) is about a mile or so from here. It has pretty much everything one could need in setting up a house, including a lot of food. We didn't get much on this trip, but we were able to see what is available. Once we get moved in, we'll certainly be going to Tesco regularly.

Thursday, March 20

Although our condo won't be available to move into until Sunday, we went to check it out on today. We stopped by the condo front desk unannounced, and when we told the lady that we'd be moving in on Sunday, she said, "Oh, are you from the University of North Texas?" :) When I said yes, she took us upstairs to look around our future home. It is very nice! Beautiful condo with great views across the city. The condo building has an outdoor, rooftop hottub and pool overlooking the river and old town. The condo itself has a master bedroom, another bedroom, two baths, a kitchen and dining area, and two balconies. There is no living room, but I don't care. The master bedroom (which Gus and I will claim) is enormous.Went to Tesco.