fon tok = rain

last night i fell in love with this big giant tractor with flood lights lighting up the rice paddy behind my house. how is it that a big giant tractor with flood lights is so romantic and rustic and mysterious in a thai rice paddy? i dont know. but it lulled me to sleep alllll night.

and

at three i was woken up by the delicious pattering of tropical rainstorm on the ceramic roof. the morning was ethereal.  every color was instantly more vibrant (i love how rain does this) and the lush jungly hills were half hidden in fog and everything was clean and fresh and (dare i say) COOL. i was so twitterpated with the weather that (without thinking straight about my fitness level) i decided on going for a run. down the cattle path, rice paddies and watter buffalo on one side, jurassic park mountains on the other, everything made 2049234 times more beautiful with the rain.

 (now of course its cleared up and scorching everything alive)

(abicycling to school with bag of longans for breakfast)

adventure: orphanage

i have had a serious lack of photo taking and also of blog posting! which is a bad, bad thing because every day is chock full (is that the saying) of foreign, eye-opening, vivacious experiences and i want to remember every second.

this past weekend we all went up to an orphanage in the mountains. most of the kids are deaf and come from the hill tribes to live at this farm. they wake up at 6 in the morning, work on the farm, go to school and then work. they can play with rocks for hours, eat sunwarmed fruit right of the trees and are the sweetest, most hardworking children i have ever seen. seriously. it was amazing (and deathly) to be up there in 100 degrees digging a trench of some sort. i have completely forgotten what life would be like with
1. any conscious effort put into my appearance
2. no sweat
and im loving it to pieces.

and unfortunately i took zero pictures. nice, margo.
its back to working this week!

clouds

sometimes i get worried ill never feel as alive as i do here

every inch of this country has a pulse

adventure: fourth of july weekend

which included

a 16km two day jungle trek hike of death (also beauty) through this:

 being skillfully and shirtlessly lead by this (this being rambo of the hill tribes):

who did amazingly manly jungle machete things like this :

and we slept here:

and ate this (this being fry ri in banana leaf):

and just you wait for pictures of the HIGHLIGHT of the jungle trip. no seriously. dreams came true. and not just my dream of being shown the secrets of tropical jungle by a bare chested thai named rambo. just wait.

and as an afterthought, we decided we should squeeze a little america into our fantastic fourth of july weekend. thailand graced us with a firework and american flags in our sundaes.

thank you thailand.

adventure: cock fight

i was lying like a vegetable in bed (actually productivity was present , i finished jurassic park AND three muskateers) and nikon yelled up through my screen 'mahko, we have something to get, yes?' this actually meant 'margo, wrap up your flesh wound, get on my motorcycle, bring your gas mask, we're going to a cock fight'
no. for real.

it was smokey, 99% male, barbaric. i was jammed between sweaty, yelling, betting thais. i may or may not have enjoyed every second, was at the edge of my seat and had to stop my self from jumping up and yelling 'ONE HUNDRED BAHT!' i may become a regular. and also get cancer from second hand smoke.

i know youre all dying to know. the yellow headed one won. and nikon lost a hundred baht

adventure: hospital, market

trip to horrifying thai hospital this morning = antibiotics, pain reliever and thing to put on my mountainous volcano of an infection = 4 dollars.  

SCORE

now lets go to the market-

i was just coming to the conclusion, towards the end of my market walk, that this was just packed full of colorful things that no one needs or wants until i ran across these treasures.
i need one. i want one. its a rabbit in a tank top.

rong rian

three days a week im here attempting to instill any knowledge of the english language into these braided little heads. mostly that = me running around making animal noises and them screaming, yelling and occasionally yelling "CAT" or "MONKEY". very ocassionally. but never tiger. they never get tiger. i thought there were tigers all over thailand? i have to be very selective with the words i teach them, which i figured out when i tried to explain 'dishwasher'. but the school lunches are phenomenal. i dont know who told the principal that an 18 and a 20 (huzzah!) year old know how to teach english. she probably thinks i am a failure. and these kids probably think im a monkey. and before i leave, if nothing else, they will know 'tiger'.

(as soon as i brought out the camera, there was no hope of any teaching. sorry brynna)