Bye, Bye Thailand

Well....time sure did fly!  Grades turned in, paperwork done, meeting with boss man...check, check, check!  I am now sitting in my "dorm room" twiddling my thumbs and toes staring at 2 piles. The 1st pile is t-shirts, swimsuits, socks, undies, yoga pants. The second pile is soap, shampoo, bug spray, toothpaste, lotion, hand sanitizer, baby powder, a flashlight, batteries, Tylenol, sleeping medicine, hand washing detergent and other things I might need along the way.


I am excited, nervous, excited...I am about to embark on quite an adventure. I wonder how many times I will be asking my three favorite questions.

Where am I? How did I get here? What are we doing????

This morning my mom asked me to send her an itinerary of where we will be and when. I stuttered. You see I know what countries we will be in. City to city is kinda/sorta planned out...but nothing is set in stone because if we like a place we will stay longer, if we are not really feeling it we take the next bus, tuk tuk, boat, or train to the next city.


A real life backpacker. Rachel Ann Dietsch. Who would have ever thought.....


I am pretty excited for each and every leg of the trip.  We are starting off rustic, yet relaxing.  It might take 3 buses, a tuk tuk and a boat to get there.....but once we get to Don Det, LAOS also known as 4,000 islands we do nothing but lay in hammocks, trek, ride bikes around (no motors allowed) met the locals, read by the Mekong River and take boat rides on the river in search of this guy.......

This is the Irrawaddy River dolphin.....crossing my fingers to see a few of these guys!  The other "rustic" part of this portion of the trip....they only turn on electricity for 3 hours each night!!!! HAhahaha...oh boy. But I hear they have unbelievable banana pancakes!!!!!!!! River Dolphins...pancakes....who needs electricity!


We will then make our way North and make a few pit stops along the way to get visas for India and Vietnam in Vientiane (capital of Laos) , see some temples take in all we can! Then head further North to meet up with 3 more ladies in Vang Vieng where we will tube down the river, play on rope swings and maybe have some daytime drinking fun! I will be on the look out for water snakes.. the water is murky brown, so maybe they can just sneak by me so I don't have to have an over reaction.


We head out of LAOS on March 16th to Vietnam. By none other the a 24 hour bus. AH!!!!!!!!
Once we get there...if we ever get there.... we buy an open bus ticket so we get to pick the cities where we want to go explore. Then get on and off the bus when our "made on the spot" itinerary tells us too.  This will be great...if we love a city we stay as long as we want.....if we want out, we take the next bus outtta there! We have all done some research on cities so we have a good idea of some places we want to see.


April Fools day we head into Cambodia for a short and sweet adventure.  We have to be out of there April 5th so we can get into BKK, make it to immigration to get a single entry visa, then be at the airport to catch a flight to India.  Danielle, Brian and I are going in strong, holding hands and hoping not to shat our pants for the whole two weeks....I have a feeling we will be lucky if we make it out of there skid mark free.

April 8th we arrive in Kolkata where we will be for 2 days. There is lots to see and do...I am excited to go check out some of the places were Mother Teresa worked. I am sure it will be an eye opener and hard to see the poverty and sickness. This whole trip is probably going to turn my world upside down, but in a good way. 

We depart Kolkata for New Jalpaiguri, a major railway link to India's northeast.  By a night train...9 to 10 hours!!!(by then I am sure we will be used to long train/bus rides) Once we get there we get out of there!!!! We will be taking another long train ride.... 7 hours of swirling tracks on one of the last remaining "toy trains" in the world!  We will be surrounded by Indian's beautiful northern mountains...I promise to take lots of pictures!!!!! 

The three musketeers  then arrive in Darjeeling. We will be spending 2 days taking in some of the most chillaxed views on God's green earth.  Including all of the unique temples, churches, and monasteries. On Brian's list of "must-see sites" he has included the Himalayan Zoo Park, the Tibetan Refugee Center for some souvenirs, and some relaxed walks through the many gardens, pagodas, and mountainside paths.  

"It's possible we might all fall in love in Darjeeling.  Very possible."  -Brian

Head back to New Jalapaiguri on a much quicker train than the Himalayan Railway and catch YET another train to Varanasi. The city of Shiva and the Hindhu heart of India, we'll walk along the holy Ganges seeing cremations, bathing, shitting, washing, and maybe even go for a quick dip/bath.  Although the city is incredibly dirty, it is considered a must-see to get a feel for the real India.  Stops could include the monkey temple, a hired river boat through the city, walks along the river ghats to see the huge Golden Temple. 

After Varanasi...what do you think we do..get on another...TRAIN to Agra to see the Taj Mahal!!!!!!!!!!! I mean....how cool!!!!  It is up in the air after that. We have some cities in mind but we have to see what we have time for before Brian sends off his two side kicks to Bali as he explores the southern half of the country solo. 

Bali, Bali, Bali. I will just post the link....here....http://www.vrbo.com/232066  This is where we will be staying. There will be anywhere from 6-8 of us in this house. I CAN NOT WAIT. Home cooked meals, wine night, game night, beach bumming, sleeping in, hiking up an active volcano at 2AM to watch the sunrise, private pool dips, A BATH, and a whole week in one place!!! Air out the backpack....find a laundry mat or something....throw away clothes that are just ruined from greasy, grimy, gopher guts....  

Danni and I rejoin up with our long lost ladies Erin and Emma.  Zach will fly in from somewhere I think maybe Bangkok? Brad comes in a kangaroo's pouch from Australia. Brads friends fly in from I don't know where...and we make a happy home for a week. Bring on Bali Baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!

May 1st we dip down to Singapore then Malaysia then Southern Thai Islands. I will be honest. I have no clue what I will be doing or the cities I will be in. I plan on talking to other travelers...going with the flow? Maybe?  Some research on a rainy afternoon at an internet cafe, somewhere???? hahha!  I will be with Erin and Zach and maybe some others we pick up along the way...soo folks. That is all I got!!! I am ready. I think. I can't believe this is about to be real life. Pinch me!?

I have a cute little red notebook with white polka dots also known as my "Journal". I promise I will write down everything and post the good stuff when I stumble upon an internet cafe and give the blog some love. 

Mother dearest no worrying about me. I promise I will take care of myself, only drink bottled water and call and email when I can. I promise no new tattoos....well at least not on my face :)

Papa Bear the chastity belt is on and locked tight. I got them for all the girls....their dads can thank me later. I will be safe, watch my surroundings, and try my hardest for you not to have to bail me out of some jail over here. 

Talk to ya in Laos. 

xo

Rach

Super Junior from erin griffis on Vimeo.

Good Morning!!!

Well what another great day of proctoring I have ahead of me today!  Lets see how many blog posts I can come up with this morning/afternoon. The past two days I have been spoiled. Only proctored in the morning for 3 hours. Double duty today. 9AM-12PM then 1PM-4PM. Thats a total of 6 hours. 6 hours to be eagle eye A. Rachel, 6 hours to facebook, blog, email, g chat, read, finish up a few grade sheets...maybe a silent skype session (you know who you are)....

Last night we were bored silly. After my power nap, uh  3 1/2 hours....Emma, Erin and I did not know what to do with ourselves. So here is how we spent the evening feeling like freshmen at DePaul again to be quite honest. Running around the dorm rooms acting like anything but 24, 25 and 26 year old young ladies.
-facebook stocked
-watched Catfish. If you have not seen this documentary. SEE it. It is a mind blower.
-Learned the "Sorry Sorry" dance. After we practiced we ran down to Brains room, asked sweetly for 3 ties. We then dressed in collared shirts, ties, black pants....and yes. Video taped our rendition of Sorry, Sorry by Super Junior.  That will be up for your viewing as soon as the editing is complete.
- Dinner at the mall... while putting bets on if we would see the Russian gym boys. These are exchange students, from Russia, who are JACKED. I mean these 2 kids are huge. We saw them, of course, as we do every night getting their after gym snack. Got to get that protein boys!
- Looked at a website for what to do when you are bored.......-see who can hold the longest note, blink your eyes really fast then close them and see what kind of shapes and colors you see, try not to think about penguins.....we were desperate folks. stir crazy? cabin fever?
-We got an email saying we had to see Human Resourses ASAP in the morning about housing......so that was a good hour conversation guessing what they were trying to pull. We are pretty sure they are trying to kick us out of our 5th floor, double bed, 2 closet, balcony included room for a downgrade to the 3rd floor. Just when it was starting to feel like home!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fast forward to this morning. I went down to the over priced cafe to get coffee and eggs, ham and toast. Well  I got a surprise this morning with my breakfast. Right next to the small salad topped with "salad cream" which is just mayo squirted on 2 leaves of lettuce. To the right of my egg was well....a hot dog. Cooked and just thrown on my plate like jimmy's sausage links.... it was just your average hot dog wiener. I moved it aside cursing myself for not bringing my camera everywhere I go. Soo I skipped the hot dog and the salad creamed leaves....downed my americano and off to proctoring I went.

Here I sit..looking over the final...English 1 Academic....this same final I will be grading in 24 hours. I have 2 of my students in the room with me and all the other ones are in the room next door. I am sending them good grammar vibes....

11 hours total of proctoring left
4 hours of grading the finals
3 shots to get in my left arm so I stay disease free
The next three months of traveling.....priceless

sorry teacher I had to poo poo

A lady walks around and watches our class for us while we take a bathroom break. Here is how exciting mine was.


This girl from my test room was coming out of the stall and I asked if she had any tissue and she said. "Sorry teacher....I had to poo poo"....then started explaining to me what she ate yesterday to make her have to take a poo poo during the final. I think she thought I was trying to bust her for cheating. Kids do that here. They go to the bathroom where they have hidden notes or they try to use their phones in the stall. I just needed some tissue...I don't want to use the ass water gun!!!!! Remember when they don't put toilet paper in the bathrooms here in Thailand!? 


So there is my only proctoring story for the day. Some of the other teachers have kids passed out....I mean kids, these are your FINALS! wake up!!!


Oh wait, I did do a little dance for A. Zach!  I tried to get him to smile cause he looked like he was going to kill someone as I was walking by his room. Instead of a smile I got a wink. Mission accomplished. Then I got embarrassed because 2 of the students were looking at me.....no dancing during finals A. Rachel!


"I was going up to this girl, thinking I was going to bust her for cheating. To find out, she was just passed out"
"I am seriously jealous of the kid sleeping through(and thus failing) his stats final....new low?"
"They must have heard about my reputation as a cold-blooded cheater hunter"
"riddle me this what do you do when a student is weeping?"
"No more drinking and proctoring"...."speaking of does anyone have a Leo I can borrow for the next hour and a half"

a little to much andale andale, arriba arriba

Well, here I sit. In finals. I am making sure none of these kiddies try to cheat on a STAT 2 test.  Last night was, well, delicious. Chicken, cheese, veggie quesadilla with a side of black beans and guacamole! I WAS IN HEAVEN. I had to pinch myself to make sure it was real life and not a dream. I don't think I said two words while there was food on my plate!!! We had live music.....I can not confirm or deny that I was on stage singing The Joker. We had some whiskey sodas and draft beer and just when I said ok, I have had my fill of Mexican food and I have had my fill of whiskey sodas....what does dear old Benji pull out of the bag?????????  The fixings for White Russians. LOW FAT White Russians at that.  It's like when you give a mouse a cookie...you give Rachel a White Russian....what does she want to do? Well I just wanted to call my dad! And say DAD!!!! I am having a White Russian in Thailand, where are you!? Sad to say, no one had their cell phones with international calling plans....and I lost my 2nd cell phone out here so I was left to have two White Russians, one for me and one for papa bear....thats like our thing. Night caps of STELLA, CAPTAINS, maybe a Car bomb or two and when we are at Shoes in Chicago...White Russians.

But now...my head hurts.....2 more hours then I get to go crawl back into bed and take a power nap, watch some movies and try to get motivated to go to the gym and work off the nacho cheese and beer....I totally forgot all about that thing called a swimsuit and that place called Bali....

Thinking about writing a cookbook...

The cookbook will mainly have recipes with cornflakes involved. Today is going to be one of those great Tuesdays. It started out with my new invention of strawberry yogurt, bananas, and topped with...none other then CORNFLAKES!!! I am listening to my new homemade with love and care CD from Rach while getting ready for a morning of proctoring a 3 hour final.  


Tonights special event....end of the semester teacher party. But this is not any kind of party, it's a taco party. MY FIRST MEXICAN MEAL. Thats right all you can eat tacos, chips and salsa. 

!!!andale andale, arriba arriba!!!

Taking it out on my BLOGgggg

Alright. I am going to be honest here. I have been lacking in the blogging. I have really fallen in love with writing and telling stories and putting up pictures. I love thinking I am clever or I love when I sit here and get to write about the funny things that happened over the weekend, or the week, or the last hour.  I love when I put random things up that I know most people probably don't find funny/interesting/amusing....but thats only cause you were not actually there to see or here the things being said.( I mean that in a nice way) But that is me being selfish so when this year is over I have these posts to look back on and laugh about and remember what a great time I had over here.I do love it. But its hit me...what I like to call a funk. A funkuty funk. SO here is the feelings I have had this past week/weekend.

I have been feeling.... lonely,sad, on the brink of tears or if not in them, stressed, guilty, anxious, bummed.

I think about what has caused these feeling and here are some things I have linked them too
-I am so lucky to have skype. I get to see my mom or my dad or one if not more of my girlfriends on a daily basis if I want or need.  But this has also made me miss them even more sometimes.Even when I lived in Chicago I did not actually get to SEE mom and dad as much as I get to see them NOW when I am HALFWAY across the world.
-I miss being able to fly home and watch Luke play hockey
-I miss having a cell phone that works...or that I don't have to refill every other day with BHAT because it ran out. SO really I miss the family plan cause I was still on it and papa bear was fronting the bill. UH time to take on my own cell phone bill.. wah wah I know I sound like a little almost 25 year old brat that got to stay on the family plan....branching off that..... I was on the family plan so I could harass my mother at all hours. Which I did. Every morning I talked to her on the way to work, from work, when I was bored, when I had something exciting/useless/something to complain about/something to brag about.....if my phone was ringing or I was making a phone call most of them were to my mom/from my mom. So I miss being able to have someone to call just to tell pointless things to that happen everyday to someone that cares or at least will listen to me cause thats her mother duty.
-I miss my studio and all my clothes that I left behind that I SO could have used over here
-I miss my G6. however, I don't miss car insurance, parking tickets, digging it out of the snow, oil changes, trying to find a parking spot on my street, parking meters or traffic.
-I miss whole food salads
-I miss wine. I miss red wine. White wine. Wine, wine oh yea.....WINE
-I miss KASHI crackers/bars
-Going grocery shopping and being able to read the labels
-I hate all the pictures taken of me out here. The food has to much sodium, I have no clue what is in 1/2 the things I eat, my clothes don't fit right, my cheeks are getting puffy...because of this I go to the gym EVERY SINGLE DAY, I drink SO MUCH WATER I pee at least twice and hour, I stopped drinking beer, I only sip on vodka waters and sometimes whiskey/diet cokes if I have a drink
-I miss fresh veggies that are not DRENCHED in OIL or fried
-I miss unsalted ANYTHING. Everything has WAY to much sugar or WAY to much salt
-I miss my gym that did not just have skinny Asian boys( nothing against Asian men here.....I am just 5x the size of some of them) working out checking out their abs and hogging the weights and smelling like nasty BO. -Or having to wait for the one elliptical or one of the 3 treadmills from the 1800 to be free from one of the students in jean shorts and flats walking at 3.1 miles per hour with make-up and hair curled
-I miss draft beer
-My dreams are SO crazy out here I can not even get into them. I have never had dreams like I have dreams out here. They are so real and sometimes they throw off my day because I wonder what dreams really are, do they have meaning and if so what in the hell do they mean
-I miss WGN morning news. However, I do feel smarter from watching BBC World News and CNN everyday
-I want my pillows and down blankets from home
-I miss hot baths, coffee shops, starbucks, my big computer screen
-I am sick of not being able to communicate with people about SIMPLE things....i am trying my best to learn the language
-I am getting tired of throwing mini fits inside myself when my soup comes out with WHOLE PARTS of the CHICKEN inside of it...you know, bones, liver...sick, gross, I puke in my mouth...and when a friend says..."its not gross rachel it is just different." I want to scream even more.
-A big reason I left to come here is because I was sick of working ALL the time just to be able to live....pay bills, loans, eat, drink(only on Sunday Funday of course) but I realize I was spoiled. I had a pay check 2x a month, good insurance, English speaking doctors, cash in my pockets from my weekend bar jobs. I am learning to budget with my once a month pay check and no extra cash.....let me tell you LEARNING experiencey
-Grading convo classes and academic classes but not really knowing what to do because we can't get a real answer from anyone in the offices.....
-planning a 3 month vacation on a budget and knowing I will only have 1 back pack to live out of. I am excited yes. I am doing something not alot of people get to do but daaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnngggggggggggggg its stressfull thinking about and booking and buying and planning and making sure everybody is happy......plane tickets, train tickets, bus tickets, how much money a visa costs for each county, how much lodging will cost, figuring out the places to see, making sure we have enough special pills for the 9-24 hour bus rides, do I have enough undies to last me, can I find the right detergent so I can wash my clothes in buckets and sinks, how and where to get my shots so I don't fall very ill in INDIA, there are lists and lists that I have made.

Thank you blog. I feel better. I am sure there are other things, but thats all for now.
everything will work out.
everything happens for a reason
I tend to over react
I hope I look at this post and laugh in 24 hours
I am about to travel Asia and see parts of the world I thought I would never see
I am lucky and happy and healthy
I have amazing friends over here that have gone through this, will go through it and without them I don't know what I would do
I have a roof over my head
I have parents who let me cry like a baby over skype then make sure I am OK and tell me everything I need and want to here
I have food to eat....even if it is cornflakes its ok.....because I love cornflakes
I have my pink blanket.

ANDDDD now ladies and gentleman proof of things over here that saved my last week and weekend.....

It's a purse....it's a bag....

 It's a piece of CLOTH tied up to look like a bag with pretty hair bows for decorations!!!! Inside this nifty little wrap job was two cartoon notebooks!!! THANKS KIDS! (present form some former students)

Remember me telling you about how I gathered all the things to make my favorite breakfast....well here is a visual. Oatmeal, bananas and cinnamon.. whoever wifes me up will be lucky to have me in the kitchen in the mornings.....

Tonight. I got a package. It changed my world, life, outlook on the day. Rachel sent me a Valentines day package with everything perfect. Beef Jerky, stickers, mixed CD, a scarf, a love note, lip gloss, tampons, a body scrubber thing for the shower, candies, starbucks instant coffee, green tea, peeps.....thank you thank you thank you. I cried and I laughed all at the same time. PERFECT RACH!!!!!!!!!!! you are just the bestest.

Alright. Sweet dreams for me.....nothing but happy thoughts this week. It takes to much energy not to be happy. Ready, set....positive attitude starting now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!