Visiting China and SCIS
Who would have thought we would ever be visiting China? How great it has been. Last minute we thought we would take advantage of our recruiting days off to visit our new home in Shanghai China. Let me just say we loved it. It was so good to get a feel for what the big city had to offer. Modern, clean, efficient are all ways to describe Shanghai.
It was great to see Don and Jane Macmillan, our former principals at ASK, and to hook up with our friends Eddie and Eva, whom we know from TTC in London. Our new school campus is incredible. Students and teachers will be making the move to the new campus within 2 weeks. So as you can imagine, everyone was quite busy. Very tech oriented and geared towards a learning environment. All we can do is make the appropriate arrangements and simply wait for fall of 2009 for the big move!
So hopefully this video can give you an idea of what life in Shanghai will be like. Unfortunately, I did not take very good footage this time around but it will do. The first half of this video will show you Shanghai. The second part will give you a tour of the new SCIS campus where Karin and I will both teach from. I have included small captions to explain what everything is. Again, SCIS will be making the move within 2 weeks to this new campus! It is incredible.
Cooking Thai …Traveling Thailand
The second day in Ao Nung was Girl’s Day! Tara and Karin took a Thai cooking class at the Krabi Thai Cookery School. There were a total of eight students in the class, and we were the only Americans in the bunch. There was a couple from Norway and Sweden, two older women from France and Italy, and a mother-daughter pair from Finland. It was cool to have so many different nationalities represented and that the only common language was English. Even our Thai teacher gave all of the instructions in English. Karin and Tara had a wonderful time cooking - and eating - the distinctly flavored Thai food. If you would like to try some of the recipes yourself, check out Karin’s Cooking page!
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Nothing but Monkey Business …Traveling Thailand
Ever have monkeys climb into your Kaiak before? Check out this short clip to see the fury little creatures as we paddle through Thailand!
Riding Dumbo …Traveling Thailand
We left Bangkok on Sunday and flew down to Karabi. This is in the southern part of Thailand on the Indian Ocean side. We were on the mainland near the more-popular tourist destination, the island of Pucket.
Another amazing this about Thailand is the cloud formations! I have never seen anything like it!! The two nervous flyers, Karin and Shawn, were sitting by the windows, and both about peed their pants! You know how most alien movies start with an airplane flying into a huge cloud, and it ends up colliding with the space ship? Well, that’s exactly what happened on our flight to Karabi (okay, so there wasn’t an alien space ship, but the cloud was definitely big enough to hide one!). The pilot did a good job of flying around the storm, but it was still a very rough flight and hard landing.
We took a taxi to the beach city of Ao Nung where we spent two nights. Our days were filled with all kinds of activities including riding elephants, going kayaking in a mangrove forest with monkeys, and hanging out on the beach. The nights were filled with more shopping (did we mention how cheap everything was?!?) and eating at amazing restaurants.
Oh! and don’t forget to ask us about how Karin almost ended up in jail!
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Our First Day in Bangkok …Traveling Thailand
We left Kuwait around 7:00 in the evening on Wednesday, March 22, and after a brief stop-over in Dubai, we arrived in Bangkok around 10:00 in the morning on Thursday.
This was our first time in an Asian country. It was hot, humid, crowded and absolutely amazing! The people were so friendly and helpful, and the architecture was so different from anything we had seen before. They drive on the left side of the road in Thailand, and Paulo kept getting car-sick in the cabs. Karin was fascinated by how much the fact that they drive on the other side of the road changed other things like elevators (the up elevator was on the left side too!), roundabouts (you went around counter-clockwise instead of clockwise), and walking on a crowed sidewalk (if you met someone head-on, you would veer to the left instead of the right).
We spent four days exploring Bangkok. Our hotel was about 15 minutes (by tuck-tuck) from the Shangri-La (where Tara was staying for the conference). We really didn’t do too many of the touristy things - we did not see the Royal Palace or the huge Chatachuck weekend market (there was a huge political protest the weekend we wanted to go with about 15,000 protesters!). I know it sounds horrible, but we spent most of our time shopping. Some of it was in the more touristy part of Bangkok: Kalsung Road (main backpacker hangout) for all kinds of stuff, a night market, and around the Shangri-La. But we did venture off the tourist-beaten path two of the days in search of music stores. Shawn found a small guitar for traveling, and Paulo got an electric mandolin. Karin was just enjoying seeing a different side of Bangkok and was excited about the perks: finding a Starbucks that had a Bangkok city mug (to match the ones we had from Kuwait, Saudi, and Jordan) and a Hello Kitty store (okay, it was actually just a little kiosk and most of the stuff there was actually knock-offs, but it was exciting none the less!).
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