Calling all Spanish teachers #2

We all know what LOL stands for, but do you know what LSHMSFOAIDMT stands for? Well you should... add it to your repertoire for something more than a LOL.
 

Thanks to my co-worker Aimee, for the awesome find. :)

Calling all Spanish teachers #1

If you're a Spanish teacher, or if you know anything beyond 1st semester Spanish 1 grammar, you'll appreciate what I got a kick out of today...

Student tries to write: Elena studies a lot.
He writes: Elena estudia un mucho.

I laughed aloud.

Apple Invasion 2011

3 Macs & 1 i-phone. They just needed to be listening to their i-pods & contemplating buying an i-pad...

Before & After

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Nice new tabletop. "All the better to play games on, my dear," says Mike.

Lovely changes, wouldn't you say? I feel like our apartment feels a) more homey and b) more cheerful :)

Highlights from Alicante

After a few days in Madrid, we made our way to Alicante. Man, was it good to see more friends and introduce Mike to life in Alicante! Alicante was a little crazier than normal in that it was during a time of festival. Mike got a good taste of Spanish night life. He had to get used to staying up late and getting up practically in the afternoon.

Some of the things we saw and did in Alicante:

• Learned a lot of new Spanish words, as I was forced to speak in Spanish/translate a lot. Plus, my friends really helped push me to learn more.
• Ate a lot of good food
• Met up with lots of friends after 11 years
• Went to Hogueras events: mascleta & parades
• The beach
• Paella at Casa Domingo
• Castillo de Santa Bárbara
• Bodega: Francisco Gómez
• Reunion dinner at David & Natalia's flat
• Port
• MARQ: museo de arquelogía
• Looking at the different monuments created & visiting the Hogueras museum

I had remembered the Hogueras festival differently from 11 years ago so we had plans to leave in the middle of the festival, thus missing the last day of the festival when they burn all of the monuments. We had reservations to go to La Alhambra in Granada, so we ended up leaving mid-week, going to Granada, and then returning to Alicante to be present for the Cremada. I'm so glad that our plans were pretty flexible and that we could come back to experience the last night with friends.

** As always, you can click on the collage/pic to see a bigger version of it. :)**

Great friends

Paella at Casa Domingo

Hanging out before heading to the beach

At the beach. We introduced our friends to the art of jumping pictures. They had seen the one of us jumping on the beach in New Zealand and thought that was so cool, so wanted to do their own one in Alicante. :)

Castillo de Santa Bárbara

La Bodega

La Bodega. I love this series of pictures; they make me laugh every single freakin' time because Mike is showing us his booty practically the whole time. In his defense, he didn't know that a series of 9 pics was going to be taken and that we were only planning on doing a booty picture 1-2 times. Pobre Mike.

La bodega

A reunion of HS friends at David & Natalia's place. It had really been about 10 years since all of them had been together. Unfortunately, we were missing Silvia, who was in Madrid. :(

Late night/early morning shananigans.

Mike got to try horchata and hang out with David's little birdy. The other two pics are views from the great terraza that David & Natalia have.

Hogueras. They spend practically all year planning for this festival, all for it to end quite quickly. They create these huge monuments to enter in to a competition and then on the last night there's the cremada, where they burn them all.

The beginning of the cremada. This was the first hoguera to be burned. In the above collage, it was the one in the bottom left corner that looks like a palm tree.

This was Natalia's sector's hoguera.

It almost looks like riots. The people scream to be sprayed by the fire hoses to cool down.

Last night

Trying to get a good view and not get soaked by the fire hoses.

Last night... out dancing after the cremada

My love.

We had such a great time. Thanks for hosting us, David & Natalia!

Highlights from Madrid

So... we're here. :) I guess year 3 in Thailand has been marked with not as many firsts; therefore, not as many new blog posts. I still have yet to really update the blog with Spain pictures though. So as not to overwhelm myself (or my readers) I thought I'd kind of go city by city and give you the highlights and a few favorite pics or collages to give you a snapshot of things we did.

We started and ended our trip in Madrid, staying with my high school friend Silvia, her bf Alex and their ginormous dog, Munch. Poor Silvia picked us up from the airport (1.5 hours from her flat) bright and early in the morning, only to realize that our flight had been delayed 3 hours in Beijing... she was a champ about it though and was still smiling when we walked off the plane. How nice it is to arrive in a new place and be greeted by a friendly and familiar face. Silvia had requested the day off, so we were able to spend the day catching up with her. Throughout the rest of our time in Madrid, Silvia and Alex had to work at varying times, so we would go off and explore during their work hours, and then meet up with them later.

Some of the things we saw and did in Madrid:

• Tapas
• Palacio Real (outside)
• Plaza Mayor
• El oso y el árbol
• Mercardo de Miguel Hernández
• Met an Asian dude at a small grocery store & talked to him in Spanish to find out where to buy stamps (Mike found this rather hilarious that 2 Asians were speaking speaking Spanish to each other.)
• Rose Garden
• Teleférico
• El Retiro
• Estadio Bernabéo Tour
• El Prado Museum
• Ate asado at an Argentine restaurant (and though of you, Fernando & Kelly)
• Plaza de toros
• Rented a car before making our way to Alicante

** As always, you can click on the collage/pic to see a bigger version of it. :)**

Plaza de toros

Around Madrid

Rose Garden

El Retiro

Estadio

Around Madrid

Precious friends

Next stop: Alicante (where I did my study abroad my junior year of high school).

Things that...

... make me laugh/smile:

• Q: If your name is on the board, what does that mean?
• A: You have make-up work to do or Mrs. Karly needs to talk to you about something.
• Student's answer: Mrs. Karly misses you a lot and wants to see you.
• Student wants to say "Never mind" and comes up with: "Nunca mente"and "Nunca cabeza"
• Student asks if the same word for oil (on the face) is petroleum.

...I love:

• Homemade Cinnamon Raisin bread by one of the parents at the school
• Ukulele lessons
• Thailand rainy season thunderstorms in the middle of the night
• Dear friendships
• Hearing my students speak in Spanish when it's not even Spanish class and saying, "It's so fun!"
• Having a student ask me, "Why was the quiz so hard? You should make it easier." Then telling him that I could be a hard teacher, push him, and have him learn a lot, or I could be an easier teacher, give him an easy A, and he probably wouldn't learn very much. When given the option, he said he'd rather have me be a harder teacher with an added comment of "Besides, Spanish class is so fun even when it's hard." ::sigh:: THIS is why I teach.

... I could do without:

• Waves of homesickness
• Spending my weekend correcting papers
• Having a class (or even a day) when your lesson plans blow up in your face and everything you planned goes nothing like how you envisioned (successfully).

... I wish happened magically without any of my help:

• New blog posts
• Learning Thai
• Correcting papers

I might be biased...

...but I think he's pretty stinkin' cute.

Welcome to the world, Bennett Davidson Aust!

Signs of life...

So.......... it's been like a month and a half since my last post.

[Sigh]. My excuse is that I know I should post pictures from Spain, but I just have no motivation to go through a bazillion pictures and wait for blogger to laboriously upload them at a snail's pace. My second excuse is that school is in full swing again. At the start of every school year, I always forget how time-consuming and tiring it is to be a teacher. I was just telling Mike the other day, "I forgot how dumpy our apartment gets when we are working & coaching full time again." It's easy to come home, dump our things on the counter or couch, and do nothing really productive since we've expended all our energy on our students during the day. Already in the past 2.5 weeks of school, I've gone to bed at 8PM several nights... and I FORCED myself to stay away that long; I could have easily gone to bed at 7PM if I had allowed myself to do so.

So here's a quick synopsis of the past month and a half:

• Got back to Bkk after an amazing trip to Spain
• Had 2 weeks of freedom before school meetings began on Aug. 1
• Did a lot of work setting up my new classroom
• Mike was busy taking a class, trying to get as much finished before the start of the school year
• A lot of new teachers this year... which has been fun, but also a hard adjustment since they have replaced the positions of a lot of our dear friends that have left ICS.
• School started Aug. 9
• Had a three-day weekend for the Queen's birthday and went to Koh Samed with our great friends, Grant and Carolyn
• Roof started leaking in our apartment, just as the rainy season started ramping up.
• BTS skytrain FINALLY opened and comes all the way out to Bangna now (Wahoo!! We've only been waiting 1.5 years!!)
• Roof finally got fixed... yay for no more loud dripping sounds & holes in our ceiling.
• Became Uncle Mike & Auntie Karly to Bennett Davidson Aust (Thanks Ben & Emily)
• Found out that my brother Pete & gf Sarah will be our X-mas 2012 visitors

Prayer Requests

• Health: Mike's a bit under the weather right now. I don't think I ever went back and blogged about why he was wearing a boot during our trip to Vietnam either... Mike was wearing the boot because he was having trouble with his foot, namely his toe. The Dr. thought it would do him some good to stay off his foot for several weeks, which actually didn't help the problem at all because in the end he was diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis. Arthritis... quite the news/diagnosis for a young, otherwise healthy, extremely athletic person to swallow, but he's been a champ and has been taking it in stride. Psoriatic arthritis affects tendons and joints particularly in the hands, feet, and lower back, which explains all the years of low back pain for which no MRI could ever detect cause. It's actually an autoimmune disease, which means that his body's immune system works against him and actually attacks his tissue, instead of efficiently attacking infections. So basically when he gets sick, his immune system goes into overdrive to ward off infection, but ends up attacking his tissue even more too. Because of the psoriatic arthritis, his white blood cell count is naturally lower, which also means that he is more likely to get sick, which results in his bad immune system kicking in and... well, as you can see, it's a viscous cycle.
• Contentment: It's hard to be away from MN with new changes to the family... we certainly would love to be an uncle and auntie that can hold their new little nephew.
• Peace & Rest: The school year & sports season is always a crazy-busy time. Pray that we would find down-time to bask in His goodness even during these busy times.
• Light: That we would be Jesus' hands and feet here in Thailand; that our students and the people of Thailand would know His love and their need for a Savior.
• Friendships: That new friendships would be formed with new teachers & that older ones would be strengthened despite distance and time.

It's been a whirl-o-wind month and a half... well, it's actually been a whirl-o-wind past 2 years here in Thailand! God has been so gracious to us & we can't wait to see all the amazing things He has in store for us this year in Thailand and at ICS. Thanks for your support & prayers.

Spain Sneak Peak...

I'm overwhelmed by how many awesome pictures from our trip to Spain I have to choose from!

Here are a few collages to appease our parents readers. More pictures and details to come...

**Remember that you can click on the collage to see a bigger version of it!

Awesome "Feria de Toros" that we got to go to in Pamplona during San Fermín (The Running of the Bulls)

Some of my favorite pictures of us during the trip. The guy in the red sweatshirt in the second picture is Txema. He was so kind and helpful, and became a dear friend to us during a short time in Pamplona.

Some of the amazing food that we got to experience in Spain and Portugal.