Dude.

It's too much work to write about everything in detail from the last approximately 6 months, so this entry will be short and sweet (I hope).

Some photos from our apartment

In March, Kat and I were offered a one-month position at an international school in Bangkok. It paid well for Thailand, but we weren't given any materials or curriculum. We got there and they told us to "just have fun with them." The other problem was that we were teaching for 7 hours a day, and then we were expected to eat lunch with the kids, and watch them on all their breaks. Our first day I didn't have the chance to pee once. We complained, so they gave us a raise and let the kids have a computer class here and there so we only ended up teaching 6 hours a day. The nice part was each Friday they had a field trip where we didn't have to teach, and they were usually pretty fun. The kids were super cute too.

Keyboard class

Field trip to crocodile farm

Field trip to dinosaur museum

Making salt-dough volcanoes

Groups competed to see who could make a mummy the fastest

A visit from spiderman

Getting ready to add vinegar and baking soda

Greek dancing (according to Kat)

Diet Coke and Mentos is kind of educational, right?

 After Bangkok we had 2 weeks off, so we spent all our hard-earned cash playing on Koh Mak and Koh Chang, a couple islands just a few hours from Bangkok. We'd been there before so we didn't take a lot of pictures. Awesome place to unwind after our month of crying ourselves to sleep every night.

Our bungalow on the beach

This exact photo is in our copy of The Lonely Planet

Kat's cousin Kristina and her husband Alex came to Thailand in March before we went to Bangkok. They came to Chiang Mai for a few days and we were able to do a bunch of fun things around town. We were also able to spend a night in Chiang Dao. It was a lot of fun to see them again (I hadn't seen them since our wedding reception in Germany). They're super nice and friendly, and we really enjoyed spending a few days with them.

Driving to Chiang Dao

Elephant camp

Chiang Dao Temple

Through our school, we got free season passes to The Night Safari in Chiang Mai. It's kind of a zoo that only opens at night. They take you on an open tram through the animal enclosures and you get to see a lot of the animals up close. Karen and Teancum did it while they were here, but we had never actually done it until recently. It's fun and a lot of the animals come right up to the bus, which was actually a little intimidating at times.

With the rainy season come the bugs. They get flooded out of their rocks and holes and try to find somewhere dry to curl up for the night, which often means in your house. Kat found a big and very pretty huntsman spider in between some sheets of poster board in the school. We took it home and took some photos of it. On the same day, there was a 3 foot long snake in one of the classrooms that one of the teachers killed. We also found a big, black scorpion walking around in our parking garage a while ago, and now we have a new pet. :)

Teaching has been crazy. I started at the same school as Kat in May teaching English to 9th-11th graders. It was fun some days, and not so fun other days. One of the science teachers here quit for another job in another city, and they asked if I'd be interested in filling the position. I said yes, so now I'm teaching science to 1st-3rd graders. They're cute, but a lot more work than high school students. In May, Kat started teaching English to 4th graders, but a position to teach English in 1st grade opened, so she took that. She's enjoying it although she's also really busy with it.

We had a long weekend last week and we took a beautiful drive through the mountains to a city called Pang Mappa. It's an area that's FULL of caves. (Jared, when are you coming out?) The first person to do the majority of the exploration there is an Australian named John Spies. He owns a guesthouse we stayed at called Cave Lodge. He runs tours of everything in the area and has been there exploring for over 30 years. Really interesting and relaxing place to hang out for a few days.

This ultra-jibbly caterpillar stung me when I accidentally touched it

Frog eggs

Water buffalo

Tham Lod Cave

Giant orb-weaver

Skink

Auf Wiedersehen.

Kat's birthday cake