Engrish Post 2.2

If you aren't sure "begerry" is supposed to be "bakery." Not that I asked but I just know Thai Engrish well enough by now. Stop by this place for an apple joice or two.

"Please don't make the noisy" - is this a sexual reference? - that from Kristen. This from our hotel in Laos.

For some reason some of the best examples I've seen are beauty related. Unfortunately I only have one picture. A beauty shop that we have here in town is "Porn Beauty." It's too bad but the word in Thai means "blessing" or "happiness" but for some reason they chose to romanize it p-o-r-n. Additionally, while in Laos I saw a "Beauty Salorn" and a "Beauty Saloon." Wonder what it was like in there? "Assy Nail" is one that I see fairly regularly and I just love it. I had to get a picture of it.

Engrish Post 2.1

Well, after a long hiatus another Engrish brog is here!!

This is the packaging from one of Trea's toys. It's true, you can indeed develop intelligence with the muscil that this toy plays. Listen to muscil as often as you can! What's your favorite type of muscil?

From a menu:

This was taken at the zoo on our October trip. Welcome to the Honnbill Ganden. Take a stroll through the ganden.

This is one fine specimen of Engrish. Seems like some of the best examples come from China where someone just looked things up in a dictionary and pieced them together. This is from a set of a geometric rulers (protractor, angle ruler and ruler). "Needed the paterfamilias accompany, if the children haven't 3 years." I love it!!

This is Criminal!

So, after an extremely lengthy hiatus I will attempt to get all of you (the thousands of loyal fans) caught up on my exciting life. Time here has been passing by so quickly. Unlike most schools here in Thailand, our school has a two-week break over Christmas and New Years. They are able to do this because it is a private school and can do whatever they want. The reason that they do it is to accomodate the foreign teachers, many of whom like to go home and see family. There are EIGHT of us. I'm not complaining but it seems odd to change everything for a handful of people but whatever. Anyway, we went to Utah over the break to see family but more importantly to attend Kristen's younger brother's wedding. Due to the wedding we were fortunate enough to get some financial assistance from Kristen's parents, otherwise I don't think we would have made it back to the states quite yet. I am making really good money compared to most Thais but not nearly enough to fly home.

Our trip home was much to quick but was a much needed break for us. Chantrea was a great traveller, all things considered. Her worst leg was the first flight (one-hour) which was from Khon Kaen to Bangkok. There were about 20 minutes of complete meltdown (probably due to cabin pressure and ears that wouldn't pop). During those 20 minutes I thought, "What are we doing? This is going to be a disaster." As I said, that was the worst of it. She was restless and cried some but what kid her age wouldn't be. For a two-year-old she was wonderful!!

We arrived in Bangkok and had a about an hour and a half to claim our baggage and catch our next flight. We knew we would be cutting it close but it was absolutely insane. When we got to immigration the officer there informed me that were we to leave we would be invalidating our visas (which were good through the beginning of May). Kristen and I were both under the impression (obviouly incorrect) that we could leave and come back one time on our then current visas. He informed us that we could get reentry permits there at the airport which would allow us to keep our visas. Unfortunately, we didn't have any pictures, any cash, or any time to apply for those so we just left and figured that we'd get it figured out when we returned. More on this later.

Over the week of Christmas, Kristen's parents had rented a house in Salt Lake City in which the family could all stay together. It was close to the mouth of the canyon and was obviously a rental for skiers but it was perfect for us. We took turns on who cooked dinners. The house had a pool table and pinball machine in the basement, lots of televisions, and plenty of room to just hang out. Christmas was nice and the wedding was wonderful. It's pretty amazing that all of Kristen's siblings are now married in the temple. Trea remembered her cousins and had a great time with them. She impressed everyone with her Thai. They were always wondering what she was saying. Half the time she wasn't even speaking Thai. At one point her uncle Mark was repeating some of the words that he had learned from her and she corrected his tones. It's awesome. It was funny to see her with her older cousins. Their favorite movies are movies like Cars, and Cinderella. Trea -- she prefers Spiderman and U2 concerts. It's so weird. I think I figured out the other day what her first (and probably only) four syllable word is: "elevation" said like it's sung, "el-e-vay-shun."

One thing that made the trip really difficult was that she was up for 3-4 hours (more some nights) almost every night. She finally got just about on to Utah time a couple days before we headed back. Luckily, she readjusted to Thai time much quicker.

I'm really happy that we were able to visit my siblings and there families in Utah even though it was rather brief. We spent about three days with my grandma and it was great. My grandma is one of the greatest people ever! I just love sitting and talking with her. She is so interesting and has tons of stories to tell but even more impressive to me is that she is always learning something new. I feel really at peace at her place.

Interesting: While at my grandma's place the temperature never got above about 35 and then we back to Thailand and it was about 90.

We've now been back in Asia for two weeks. We got visas on arrival which are valid for 30 days. We then needed to go to Laos to try and get non-immigrant visas before those 30 days were up. I decided that since we had a school holiday on Tuesday of this past week we would go up on the weekend, apply on Monday, pick them up on Tuesday (it takes 24 hrs. to process) and could be back to teach on Wednesday -- I want to miss as little time as possible because I feel kind of guilty that it's our fault that we have to do all this. So, we had a nice trip to Laos and found Vientiane to be a very nice city. We enjoyed eating out. Because of the French colonization Laos has great breads (which Thailand does not) and you can find baguettes all over the place. We went out for Italian, Indian, French, and to a Scandinavian bakery. So, that was great but on the visa front we got hosed. Apparently Thailand passed a new law in December that requires that anyone applying for a non-immigrant visa to work in Thailand needs to submit a criminal record or background check. Of course, as with most Thai laws, this is completely stupid and nobody who needed to know about this did (ie the school). So, after a frustrating trip (and an extra day in Laos) we ended up getting 30-day tourist visas and are still trying to figure out how we're going to get everything settled.

I'm sure I had more to say but am hitting a wall after all of these ramblings. Anyway, I've been collecting some more Engrish gems to share with you and I'll be getting those up soon. Hope you like the new formatting but if you don't I don't care because I do and it's mine!

Zoo and More

Okay so, this post was actually written on the 28th of Oct. but I had saved it to my computer thinking that I would add to it. I completely forgot that it was there until just now. I'm up at 1:30 AM -- can't sleep. The Philippina teacher across the street has the chicken pox (undoubtedly caught them from Kristen's class -- they've had five or six kids get them) and I keep dreaming that I've got them. I've never had them so I really, really, really don't want them now. I'm going to try and go in to get a vaccine for them tomorrow. Anyway, here's the post.


Well, I did promise a post about our recent mini-vacation so here we go. As mentioned previously, over the semester break we took a mini-vacation to Korat. We would have loved to take a vacation to a more exotic place – beach or island but decided that we ought to take things a little slower and easier since Kristen is still recovering from her bout with morning sickness. Therefore we decided on Korat because if things weren’t going great we were just a 2 ½ hr. bus ride from home. The bus ride down was really nice. We went on a VIP bus. They served a small meal and the seats were really big and comfortable. While in Korat we splurged and stayed at a nicer place ($35/night). It was really sweet because we were on the ninth floor and had a corner room so we had these huge windows that opened out and looked over the city – although the skyline in Korat isn’t quite what it is in some cities :-).

The Mall in Korat is huge and we had a great time just walking around and seeing all the different shops. We ate a Sizzler which was another nice treat. The highlight of our trip was the zoo. I had a thoroughly enjoyable time. Trea had a lot of fun too although I’m still not sure if she enjoyed the animals or the small playground more. The funny thing about the zoo was that we were taking pictures of and looking at all the animals while most of the Thais were checking out Trea and some even wanted to take pictures of her. I guess that to them she’s kind of like an exotic animal. They had a couple of elephants (an adult and a baby) out along the sidewalk that you could feed sugarcane to or you could ride the adult. Anyway, we stopped to feed the elephants. This proved to be a hilarious event. Trea FREAKED OUT (FROKE OUT). Even watching daddy feed the elephant freaked her out. Kristen held Trea and tried to feed the elephants. I know it’s bad to get so much laughter out of your child freaking out but it was really funny!

We had decided to stop and see some ruins on the way back to Khon Kaen. Little did we know what this would involve. We had to take a 2 ½ hr ride on a non-air-conditioned bus packed with people and our child was tired and cranky. The ruins (Pi Mai) were nice but once you’ve been to Angkor Wat no other Khmer-style temple is going to really inspire awe. Fortunately, on the way back to Khon Kaen we had air-con on the bus but this time no seats (they were all full).

The ultrasound went well. The baby is doing well and appears to be healthy. Unfortunately, the baby was too small to determine the sex. So, we’ll just have to wait and see. Hopefully we can go and get another ultrasound done because I don’t like surprises. It won’t break the bank at $15.

Kristen and I purchased our first car together this past week. Last Friday, Nuansri’s son brought us a car at school to look at. It was a white European car (manufactured by VW but under a different name). It looked all right and we decided that we would think about it. After we went home and had been hanging around for about a half hour we got a “knock” at the door. Nuansri’s son had sent a friend of his over with his car that he was trying to sell – a 1992 dark blue Honda Civic. We liked the way it looked and took it for a test drive and were sold. So, we actually bought the car on Tuesday. I’ve only driven it a few times but it’s SO nice to have a car.

Also, I am now officially the elders quorum president of the Khon Kaen branch. I actually was a bit surprised by this. At first they told me that they were going to call me to be the pres. but then a while later they said that I was going to be one of the counselors so when I got interviewed again and was called to be the elders quorum pres. I was a bit shocked. I am excited to be serving but I’m really in the dark a lot here. I think that I’m going to have to get to know the missionaries really well.

Eye of the Storm

Well, this happens to be the second version of this post. I’m an idiot and didn’t save a post I was working on and here I am typing it all over again. My lack of posting lately is a result of things being very busy around here. The last day of first semester was the 29th of September. I had to try to finish as much of the material as possible and put together semester exams for my classes. I made it through but with more than a little stress. The past two weeks have been semester break. As a foreign teacher I get the time off. The Thai teachers have to go in to work. It’s laid back and they can dress down but they have to go to work. We’re down to our last three days before we go back. Last week we took a small trip down to Korat (about two hours south of here) for a couple of days just to get out of town. I’ll post about our trip separately. This week has been just running errands and taking care of things around the house. We’ve been taking Trea to nursery this week just so she can stick with the routine and we can get some stuff done. I’ve been able to get a lot of little things done that have been on the backburner forever. We have done some car shopping over the past few days and hope to be able to get a car in the next week or so. Used cars here are so expensive (relatively)!!

We had a coup a few weeks back. Most of you probably heard or read about it. In fact, most of you probably heard more about it than we did. The international media made a huge deal of it. Most of the Thai’s were pretty much like, “whatever.” It’s kind of been something that happens here every 10-15 years. Most of the people were actually pretty happy that the PM was ousted. Things may have been different in Bangkok for a few days but here we had a government mandated school closure for one day but otherwise EVERYTHING stayed the same. I don’t want to get too much into the politics of it all but I’ll just explain very briefly what I understand. The PM was found to be making some shady (perhaps not illegal) business deals that got his family out of paying a lot of money in Thai taxes. The majority of the people wanted him to step down and he said that he would but he didn’t. Without any legal way of getting him out of power they waited until he was out of the country and staged a coup.

School starts up tomorrow (it’s now Sunday) and I’m not excited about going back. I’m always like this after long breaks. Work is just never something I want to go back to. I know a lot of people get some satisfaction out of work and I guess that I do get some (and I know that I should get more) but the fact of the matter is if I were independently wealthy I think I would be a bum and not hold a job. I just like hanging out too much.

Let me talk about the kid some. I’m sure most of you haven’t heard enough. She’s getting to be really demanding. Lately she’s started saying some funny things. About a week ago she was looking at Kristen’s wallet and saw a picture of Kristen’s grandmother. Kristen told her that it was “great grandma.” Trea already has trouble saying “grandma” but when she says great grandma it comes out as “Grape Mama.” It’s so funny!

Also I have to report that I’m very pleased that my daughter can say “MASH” and occasionally requests it. She doesn’t understand it but sometimes just asks for it. Even cooler is the fact that she will ask to see U2. She does this by saying, “watch hello, hello?” again and again; “hello, hello” being a reference to “Vertigo.” She also says “Bono” but it comes out more like, “Bonman.”

Something else that she picked up from Kristen – when I come home and walk in the door she yells from upstairs, “John?” because that’s what her mom always does to make sure that it’s me walking in the door. Yes, at least once Kristen has had someone else just walk in. It’s really funny to hear your two-year-old yelling out your first name. I don’t even think she realizes that it’s my name, it’s just something that mommy does when daddy walks in the door so she does it too.

Over a month ago when we went on our first date and left Trea to be babysat by her nursery teacher we came home to find her with three additional stuffed toys. Teacher Jaw (it rhymes with “cow”) said that she could just keep them for a while and return them to the nursery later. Anyway, one stuffed toy is a blue doll, one is pink, and the other is a baby. So she has named these dolls: one is T. Jaw, one is T. John, and the baby is Trea. T. John happens to be the pink one!! Another instance where I don’t think she realizes that T. John is daddy but it’s pretty funny to think that this is me in doll form.



It’s now Saturday morning (1:45 AM) and I can’t sleep so I’m posting a bit more. Obviously this post was to be posted a while ago but wasn’t. So far school is going well. I took Monday off because Trea was sick and so only had to teach four days and next Monday is a holiday and then Friday is an all-day student sport day. So we have another short week next week – only three days of teaching. I’ve been told by the other teachers that second semester here just flies by because there are quite a few holidays and students have a lot of stuff going on – practicing for year-end shows and what-not.

Kristen and I finally found a car that we like. It will be our first time buying a car together. It’s kind of funny how you do things here because you tell a few people that you’re looking for a car and pretty soon everyone at the school has heard that you’re looking for a car and is on the lookout for you. We asked the head secretary if her husband (he’s retired) could keep an eye out for us because we’ve heard that he’s pretty good at finding good cars at good prices. So, what does she do? Her son’s been out patrolling used car places looking for us and then brings cars by the school for us to look at – it’s crazy. Anyway, on Monday we are buying a 1992 Honda Civic. It’s dark blue with gray, leather interior. We are SO excited to finally have a car.

In other news Kristen also found a great OB/GYN here. It’s been a great week for us. The doctor speaks really good English and is really progressive thinking (for Thailand) and will allow her to do natural childbirth (a rarity in Thailand) and basically do what she wants to do. She’s so relieved and happy to have a doctor finally. Tomorrow morning we are going in for the ultrasound. I’m excited. I’m really hoping for a boy – either that or a monkey. But of course, I’ll be happy with another girl too.