Wake me up when September ends

hey ya'll, Were back In Ngao, where we taught at the High school and...

Yes Mat, I know I got daily fourth for the toon . Pretty awesome huh? Thats better than what some front page cartoons get. ah well, It didn't quite have the right taste to make it to front page. But it was such a quick project it didn't really deserve to make it any higher.
(Lol, I spelt your name with one T, for old times sake... To rark you up. I mean, Its not as if your name hasn't been shortened already, why not shorten it a bit more.. Or even shorten it again. Your name is now M, and you are now eligible to join a secret service of some type.)

But yes anyway, back in ngao, but now our teams double the size and we no longer have Mark and Ema. Sniff. We'll miss you guys. Probably the best rollmodels ever. If you guys wanna meet Mark I suggest you go cause some havok and get arrested. He'll be the one visiting you when you call and say your having a domestic. If its not him the first time just call again. Luck of the draw and all that.

The Phili team reunited with us wednesday last week. They took the night train like we did. Except that this time the night train couldn't make it up the hill. So it rolled backwards for a while. Making a delay of a few hours. So im guessing they rolled backwards back to Bangkok or something. XD
The night before we were like, meh, I don't really care if we meet up again. But by the next day we were all fidgity, and every time a car went past the Juniper tree we would all look up quickly, and then drop our heads in dissappointment for the millionth time.
Its been good seeing everyone again.
At the moment we're all preparing for the english camp which starts tomorrow. 6 lessons tomorrow. 300 kids in total at the camp. 2 days. Now the two days part isn't so good. They had budget issues. But also I think the authorities caught wind of who we actually are, and so their limiting our capacity to work now.

So keep praying for our final days here in Thailand. Thankyou...

*Feverishly runs off to do a as of yet non existant news letter that was due this morning.*

Summer time and the living is busy

So we left our cushy teaching positions of paper pushing and brain press ups to the real deal. Manual labour, probably the first decent batch of hard work we have had all year. Finally, something that doesn't involve planning and reading. Although those are fun.


We mished it to Chang Rai, which shouldnt be confused with Chang Mai, which is where the Juniper tree is. Chang Rai is about as close as you can get to Burma without getting shot. In the space of about 5 minutes we made it into Burmese waters (I refuse to say we were in Burma, water just does not count, try starting a civilization on water. Waterworld being the exception, but thats cause they had nowhere else to go. So for the record I haven't been to burma, and neither has the rest of the team, so when the thailand team tells you we went to three countries in one day just slap them and say that water doesnt count.) three countries you say bemusedly? Yes, Laos was also right there, the three countries all meet at the fork in a river, which consequently runs through China as well. We spent about an hour on Laos, they seem to deal mostly in Vodka pickled snakes. I think its meant to improve how verile you are. Or how much a tourist is willing to pay for a poisones pest sitting in a bottle of vodka. No. I didn't buy one.

So on my birthday I got to visit two and a half countries. well, when I say visit for Thaialand I really mean spend three more weeks in. So in actual fact I got to visit 1.5 countries on my birthday. In fact I cant even legally say I even set foot on Laos. So I actually Visited .7 countries on my birthday... Ok thats just rediculious, Ill stop there.

My birthday was alright, although it was mostly spent in travel to Chang Rai. The team still managed to suprise me with an upside down cake.. It wasnt actually meant to be upside down, its just the way it came out after a few hours travel. But that didn't stop it from tasting alright. And over the day I got given a few bottles of death syrup (AKA, fizzy drink)

Also we got to visit the white palace. Its amazing, until you realize that in buddhist culture it all represents hell. Poetic and grotesque. Inside the main hall is a huge painting, which is still being worked on, its done in a traditional style, but interlaced into it is guns, starwars characters, bombs, Neo, Alien, sexual stuff, Predator, oil fields and other blatantly western things. And up the top are two eyes. If you look closely you can see George bush in one eye and Osama in the other. Haunting, but at least now I have a good excuse to not wear white.



Now I started talking about building, yea, I did that to. Lol. We spent most of the week helping to build a rabbit hutch. Its going to be used for a breeding program, The christian organization we were working with wants to make hilltribes self suffisient, and not having to rely upon drugs and prostitution. They are bringing over NZ rabbits, which are apparently very plump for eating, sorry Bex, they eat rabbits, not pet them and give them wack names. But Like most New Zealanders the wee jumpy things have problems with the weather, so they need a cooler shed than most other animals so they can multiply properly.

Man im tired of writing, Ill finish this later.

Sorry for the lack of updating. Lets just say its a gauge of how busy/how much life I have at the moment. Im gonna try and split the updates into weeks. so heres the first.

week 7(?) we spent in Ngao. pronounced "now" which made for quite a few cheap jokes for the here and NOW. woa. that one still sucks. Ah well. Better luck next time huh.
Last I left off I was freaking out about teaching. Well it wasnt so bad. Because I got Jo. So she talked, I drew like a mad man on that board. Our first lesson was pretty hilarious. The board had scrawls all over it, and we were furiously rubbing out what we had just written up and woa.
One thing about schools in Thailand. In NZ we are coming to realize that the education system is more suited to females. Well Apparantly they realized this many years ago here in Thailand. In an average class there is usually about 3 guys in a class of 30 or 40. Two of those guys are most likely lady boys. Meaning they realized they were out numbered so they decided that if you cant beat them you may as well join them.

The Hostel we stayed with were really awesome. They are actually closely linked with the first hostel we stayed with in Bangkok. A lot of the guys from Bangkok actually started off at this one. Each night we would do a worship service. The hostel guys would just rock out. and all the songs would be uber awesome. Albet garage band sounding. But fun none the less. I got to learn a few songs. And we would jam out all the time. Since leaving I have been craving a guitar. Ah well. We'll be going back on our last week for english camp. So it should be swell to hang out with em all again.
On one of our last days we had an NZ birthday style day of games and stuff. I got to make the kiwi for pin the beak on the Kiwi. lol. but the best part was when we started a water fight, which then turned into a mudfight, because not long after the water fight started, the rain decided to have a go (And ultimatly won) and the mud also came along for the show. Although it felt like I was actually pelting Terresa and Grace with gravel rather than mud. Ah well. Its not cheating if they don't catch you.

the Primary goal

Last week we were hanging out in the Juniper tree. Nice resort place for burnt out missionaries, as it likes to be described. Its more like a private club, but thankfully their nice people, so the little gappers were aloud in. Oh yea, the train trip was aight. We had beds that popped out of the walls and stuff. It was awesome. Although the sleep was pretty bad. Bumping around and just in general not being able to sleep.



We have been hanging out with a primary school in chang Mai. Twas a fun place. Me and Jess got the little little ones. One the last day we took them to the Zoo. So much fun. I got designated leader of our small group, so they push me and Jo out into the Zoo with a hastely nabbed map to get a bunch of little kids. My basic leadership model was to look at the map thoughtfully for a while then point in the direction and say "PANDAAAAAAAA." where the kids would follow suit and go chasing off in the right direction. I was a bit gutted we didnt get to see the panda in the end. Ah well, we got to see a show with the seals. and another wildlife show. Where parrots climbed ladders and went down flying foxes and did in general, un birdy type things. Oh yea, there was an eagle who did two reggle swoops over the crowd then stollidly decided it didnt want to move any more, and just sat on its roost and eyed small childrens, uh, eyes?

J had his 20th on the 30th. We blind folded him and took him into town to have big icecream.. Then we went home and ate icecream.. Then we had icecream for breakfast.

Today we went to the school we were teaching at today, not knowing ANYTHING. We had little to no teaching plans laid out or anything. Thankfully God heard my prayer this morning and they let us skip out on our classes, Were going hard tomorrow though. Good thing, Jo and me are teaching together this time around and this morning she was just so wasted. No one slept good last night. I Swear we wandered into a bugtopia or something. Zac keeps finding massive spiders and I got a firefly in our room last night. I was so amazed, I had to wake the guys up "look look look look, check it out isnt it awesome!" And then Zac got a toad in his bag this morning, it jumped out while he was getting junk out.

ooooooooooooooh k, gotta go.

Summing up bangkok

You may notice that this post looks startelingly similiar to ones I have done over the course of our stay in Bangkok. You may even have an even more starteling revelation if you have been going to THIS website.



But if you havent thats ok. But for those of you who want a little more I have added a bit more personal stuff that I couldn't add to the more public version. And I promised a story of a guy giving me language advice and that is what Im going to do.



Im getting some printing done at this place near the Uni. and the elderly Thai gentleman serving me picks up a conversation with me when he finds out im from NZ etc. He speaks pretty good english. I apologise that I can't speak as good thai. He then goes "Find Thai girlfriend, best way to learn language... Of course it depends on mans ability to find girlfriend. Some aren't very good." I laugh and tell him Ill seriously take it under consideration. Me and Jay leave the place laughing to ourselves. How forward of him.



The other Day it was raining hard out, and flooding in the streets just appeared out of nowhere. I was inside for this extraviganza but the others were wadding along the street to get to McDonalds at the time. In NZ we have such pussy rain compared to here in Thailand. In NZ it cant make up its mind, and its sorta sprinkles us with water. In Thailand the clouds are like "Alright, Im busting to take a leak." BOOM! Lightning,thunder, torential rain. You get soaked in Seconds.



The Crocodile poking is after the paragraph about the ancient city.



Hi everyone *puts hands together and bows slightly* Sawadi Khap from Izak Flash Man and Jay.

A lot has happened here in the past 2 weeks (?) wow time flies. We’ve been teaching English at the hostels we have been staying at in Bangkok. It’s been a learning curve for all of us. Trying to teach something that’s challenging, understandable and at the same time answering all the tricky questions they have been firing at us. “WE DON’T KNOW WHY ENGLISH BREAKS ITS OWN RULES. Sorry.”

There have been a few unfortunate misunderstandings within the groups. Which is a staple diet when the two parties come from separate cultures that can’t speak each others language very well. It seems as though if you pronounce someone’s name in a slightly different pitch or tone it becomes a completely different word, words that generally don’t bear repeating. Much to their amusement, and much to our embarrassment, and they never tell us what we said until one of them quietly takes us aside.

Church over here puts all us westerners to shame. 6 Hours of church. It starts about 9 in the morning with a bible study. Then jumping into a regular type service which we all know and love. Glory church (One of the few churches in Bangkok) has a very multicultural group with Thai, Korean, Americans, and the Occasional Oceanian. So during the sermon you will hear the whispering of translators all over the room. After the main service they have lunch together and then go hard for a few more hours with a sharing time. Their passion is revitalizing to see. Continue to pray that this energy will continue to flow out of the little hall and out into the community.

Josh and John turned up at the Beginning of the week. Josh is a gapper from last year who’s now a missionary in China. The group he works with can’t meet in groups in China, so they had to jump the border and do the conference in Thailand. Johns his mate who’s on a holiday. They were a good temporary addition to the team.

When we find the time in-between preparing classes Emma treats us with giant ice cream. Hah. I wish. But her, Mark, and Emma-lee do take us to some pretty rad places. For example the ancient city.It’s a park in the shape of Thailand. With real and replica buildings from around Thailand, placed in relation with where they would be in the real deal. So its as if Thailand was shrunk and the buildings stayed the same size. It still takes a bike to get around the whole place, and a couple of days to fully appreciate everything. Bikes are half the fun of the place. They have racks and racks of the run down little things. Hazards include, rust, wobbly wheels, seats designed for aliens and brakes (If your lucky enough to even have breaks) which slip. Jess and Beth, being the special children they are, decided to take a tandem. I was rather impressed with their actual skill in riding it. I’m not so sure about Josh’s skills though. He talked his way into riding shotgun with Jess on the back. They churned off ahead in what appeared to be an attempt at breaking the land speed record on a tandem bicycle. It was going good until they went over a bridge.. Half way over the bridge. From our point of view it looked as though they just disappeared. When I got close enough the bike and Jess were sprawled out over the ground. Josh was already on his feet, asking why no one was asking him whether HE was ok.


After that we traveled in our nice air conditioned Van to the Crocodile farm. They have a lot of crocs. Its more like a petting zoo than a farm. They have camels and leopards and tigers that you can sit on and take pictures with. The girls were inraptured with the baby monkey though. It had a nappy on and you could hold it. I have to say it was uber cute. While it was getting its picture taken with Jess it took a bit of a widdle though. The show with the crocodiles was rather stressful to watch. Girls screaming on either side of you every time the guy whipping his head out of a quickly decending pair of jaws can really get to you. People would throw money down for them. I don't know how the notes survived floating around in the water though. Some people thought they were funny by throwing the money amongst a huge pile of crocs so the man had to attempt to get it out of all of em.

Another treat was taking us to the red light district. Well, when I say treat, I don’t mean.. Digging myself a hole. We went and visited the Rahab missions house. They’re a group which work right at the gates of hell it seems. This is made immediately apparent by the directions we are given. ‘Just the place under the sign “Super Pussy” ’ Paul and Margaret MacGregor, Two awesome New Zealanders from Tauranga run the show. They help the woman that work in the area get out of the situation they are forced into. It’s an unfortunate epidemic in Thailand and it’s good to see that there are people with a heart to change things. They teach the girls alternate ways of earning money, making jewelry and such. Rahab also provides free education to the girls. Afterwards the girls (and us guys) chipped in by getting a bunch of the jewelry to take back home as gifts. Woops, maybe I shouldn’t have typed that.

We also helped Paul and Margaret with the New Zealand night they had planned for their English class. Now this is an amazing coincidence. They didn’t know we would be coming to Thailand, and they had no control over the date of when the night would be held. Now what were the chances of us coming at a time which was so convenient for all of us? And on top of that, how could we have ever planned that was the same night Josh and John came. That’s an answer to prayer. Pauls prayer that Kiwis would come and help the program along and then our prayer that God would have full control over our program. Who needs to PLAN stuff when you got God on your side. I mean apart from the fact we wouldn’t know what’s going to happen next but oh well.

The girls have been connecting really well with the Thai girls in their dorms. Many a time have we heard stories of them staying up to the wee hours of the morning having a blasty blast. Or going to the night markets and “eye” shopping. Since there aren’t windows to look through. They have also done a lot of singing together, swapping lyrics with each other, so now our girls can sing the songs in both Thai and English.

Us guys on the other hand valued sleep a bit more. It was fun going to the stadium and playing soccer though. The guys are really into their soccer. I actually think it’s a national thing. When you head down to the stadium it’s full of make shift Soccer fields. There is little to no grass, but what they do have is a wide concrete expanse. It didn't feel weird at all, playing soccer on the landing of the huge steps up to the stadium, with a few chunks of concrete (Taken from the side of the road and used as goal posts) with no shirt on. You can just stand there and excrete water like a sieve… a sieve full of water. It’s amazing to see how hard out they get into their soccer.

One thing you learn about the Thai’s, “No half measures*”
Everythings an extreme. Luxurious condominiums stand looming over squatty brown shacks. People with pristine hair and unwrinkled brand labeled clothing push past small children begging on the side of the road. Temples are gilt with gold and intricate designs while the average wage is about 70baht a day. (about a $1.80)

In a few hours we will be getting onto the overnight train and chuff our way to Chaing Mai. So we now have a choice on whether or not we should do spelling corrections or we should go out and have fun.... WOOHOO! *Jumps away from the keyboard and runs down the road pretending to be in the music video.*

*No half measures is a sentence copyrighted by the CocaCola company. Don’t worry they wont sue us because I copyrighted the letter ‘A’ in both upper and lower case.

The forbiddens

Sorry, I got no time to post a proper update. But this is just to say, We have reached our last day in Bangkok. This afternoon we jump onto a night train and go steaming of to Chang Mai!

What to expect when I get more time:

The ancient city.

Crocodiles being poked with sticks.

Jess falling off a bike.

A store owner giving me advice on how to learn the language. "Find a Thai girlfriend."

Huge flooding on the way to McDonalds.

Teaching our students to become Infomurcial hosts.

And J dropping a heavy pot of Punch on his head.... No Im not going to do a bad joke about how it was a heavy hitter... Jeeze. I have my honour to think about.

Getting around.

Zac, Me, and Jo. woop woop.

Well Its been about a week since I last posted. I guess its time to lay some cards on the table. (Double or nothing)


I got a DS! Woohoo! For all of you who don't know what that is, well don't worry because you wont care if you do figure out what it is. I got it from this huge mall. Which I swear is dedicated souly to electronics. Us guys were prime targets. Everyone was screaming at us to buy games. Which I must admit were uber cheap. 4 bucks at most places. Ds games were about 2$. So I got ten. lol


We also went up the tallest tower In Bangkok, even way up 77 stories you couldn't see were bangkok ends. It just continues to spread out like a beautiful ulcer on the face of the planet.


Today me and Zac found a McDonalds. Their burgers actually look like the picture. Unlike in NZ, where it looks like they punched the burger before putting it into the box.


Over the week some of us have been assigned rolls. Jo was the leader, I was the prayer warrior, and Beth was head photographer. The prayer warrior basically does all the main praying for the team, before we go places, for people, for the start of the day. It was really good. I enjoyed it eminsly. Quite an experience initself. And whenever prayers are answered its like "WOOT! You totally actually wanna listen God, cheers so much."





Today is Kings birthday or something, so all the stores are closed, meaning we can't photocopy our teaching resources for tonight. Were so screwed, lol, Oh well. We have been making our class write stories, to help them work on their grammer and terminology. Its pretty fun to read their stories.