Merry Christmas!

I will be blogging soon about our school camping trip and Phuket, but for now Happy Holidays!

My 4's Class (10th Grade)

Catie's 5's class (11th Grade)

My 1's Class (7th Grade)

Koh Chang/Half Moon Party

Well this past weekend, Catie and I met up with some friends in Koh Chang. It's an island off of Trat which is in Southeast Thailand on the coast.  It took us about an 1 to get to Bangkok, then a 5 hour bus ride to Trat then another half hour ferry ride over, but we had friday off so leaving on thursday wasn't bad. We ended up getting to Koh Chang at 7am Friday morning. We spent all day friday beachside. The water was clear blue, you could see your feet even at about 100 yards out.  Friday night, we stayed near this bar right on the beach and a most of the CIEE program participants were there. It was nice to see everyone since we left orientation.

Saturday we got up and took a little hike to a waterfall pretty close by. It was really cool to see and the water was so fresh and felt so cold compared to the ocean which felt like a bath. The rest of the day we laid on the beach and relaxed. That night, we got some food and headed to a half moon party on the beach. They had a DJ on the beach with dancing and a fire show. Sunday, we woke up, got some breakfast and headed out as early as we could. It was quite a hike home, which ended with Catie and I having to take a cab from Bangkok to Suphanburi since there were no buses left. Overall, it was a very relaxing weekend and it's nice to see paradise once and a while.

Action Packed Weekend

Well the last weekend in November Catie and I had plans for an action packed weekend. Friday, we didn't do much because Saturday we had to wake up early to help judge a competition at another school close by. We finished around noon and a group of us from our EP program rented a minivan for our weekend activities.

Saturday, we left around 4:00pm and headed to Kanchanaburi. It was the reenactment of the WWII bombing of the bridge over the river kwai. We shopped for a bit then sat down, ate dinner, and watched the show. There were fireworks, and lights covering the bridge and a little show they put on although it was narrated in Thai so we didn't really know what was going on in the show part. After the show was over, we drove back to Suphanburi, which is only about an hour and a half to two hours away.

Sunday, we woke up around 7am and had a long day ahead of us. Our first stop was Lop Buri for the monkey festival. There is an ancient ruin in the middle of the town and most of the monkeys live and play there, but tons of them roam the streets. For the festival they had tables of food waiting for the monkey to feast. It was quite a sight. After the monkey feeding we headed to an ancient palace pretty close by. 

We got to roam around the grounds from building to building. It was a pretty interesting

 place.  After the palace we hoped in our van and headed to the sunflower fields. There were about 200,000 - 300,000 sunflowers and fields just covered the grounds. We walked around in them and bought some delicious sunflower seeds. 

Our last stop was the giant buddha in Suphanburi. The buddha is about 97m high which is about 320ft.  When you first walk in there are statues and scenes set up to portray hell. They are pretty descriptive and intense to walk through, but once you walk through them you come upon a giant sitting buddha. It was quite an exciting weekend.

Pictures

For all of my pictures from Thailand so far, the website is: http://picasaweb.google.com/annacunningham1 . You can copy and paste it the website address from under my user picture in About Me. And feel free to comment on pictures and blog posts!