the culprit

This is the hole that I fell into, except last night the water above it was at least 5 inches deeper and no one had been kind enough to stick the wooden ladder out of the top of it yet.

lesson to be learned: shuffle your feet...or just take a taxi <-- better option My street walking home from school today, looks more like a river

finally i'm professionally cleaned and covered up. It's not too bad, the wrapping around my leg is just to keep the bandaid on...tape doesn't like to stick to my leg.

i've joinned the Thailand bandage club.

Thanks to Alex's doctor kit: email to my dad:
dear dad,
i decided i should give you something to laugh/ shake your head about at work.well, its POURING rain outside and the streets are literally flooded over the sidewalk. In the street the water comes mid/high shin and on the side walk it is still multiple inches above my ankles. needless to say you can't actually see the ground. So I was just walking home and silly me thought it would be logical and safe to walk on the sidewalk. oooops I fell into an open man hole like thing with half my body, substantially scraping my right leg. people falling in manholes happens in the movies...THIS IS NOT SUPPOSED TO ACTUALLY HAPPEN IN REAL LIFE!!! Well, I'm now all bandaged up and i'll survive. but if i hadn't won it already i've now officially won the award for being the most ridiculously accident prone.
-love you dear daughter <3>And Desiree has written me my eulogy already: "Amanda- the girl with red hair, always had a break sprain or tear. From her shoulder to manhole, her body took the toll and now she is laying in the coffin there." -- perfect.
my track record, starting in December:
- dislocated shoulder #1
- IT band decided to rub against the bone in my knee -->10 weeks physical therapy
- shoulder dislocation #2
- shoulder dislocation #3
- got my toe stepped on so bad I lost my toe nail
- shoulder dislocation #4
- bashed my face in 4 wheeling:
- resulting in: huge goose egg, two black eyes, and swolen (almost broken) nose
- shoulder dislocation #5
- FINALLY shoulder surgery

....relatively injury free summer, could have been because I was in a sling, but oh yeah I was stung by a bee. Thailand's been good to me so far, I should have known better than to expect these 5 injury free weeks here to last too much longer. All that's left to do at this point is laugh about it.

some island nonsense...

This weekend a lot of us, 21 to be exact (and I know this because I handed out all the tickets, by the end of the trip when I had 3 tickets left I'd know exactly who didn't have them...I should have been a camp councilor), we decided to go to the Full Moon Party on Koh Phangan. Wednesday we got on a bus at 9pm, on a ferry at about 6 or 7am and ended up at Koh Tao an hour or so after that, mid thursday morning. The ride wasn't too bad because it was over night and I made myself a nice little bed in the aisle of the bus. It had its little entertainments too like Shelby waking up and telling us about her dream that she was doing a keg stand on the back of a Tuk Tuk and Oona's shampoo exploding all over Noah. Once on the island we all walked to the Sairee Cottage where we rented our rooms, took a nap, and got some lunch. At 3pm we rushed to the last ferry to take us over to Koh Phangan. That was when our Full Moon Party began. You had to have been there to have even a mild concept of the night but it consisted of the following: (events will sound more bizarre as the night goes on)

- Dinner
- wandered around and found FMP shirts and what not
- painted each other
- were constantly summonsed to varrious bucket stands
- we danced
- there were people jump roping with giant fire ropes along with fire limbo and slide that ended shooting you through a fire hoop (the last of the 3 is the only one I did, there was a very small chance of injury, which i thankfully avoided)
- it started raining
- my camera and phone were thankfully safe in a bungalow
- i went swimming, a few times
- about 4am found oona, janelle, noah and kenny
- oona decided she was going to sit on the sunrise to make it stop coming up
- janelle and oona were harassed by coconut man
- someone came swimming through the sand and attacked my legs
- things we found out when we all met at 7:30 for our ferry back:
- Alex sliced his foot open which was now wrapped in a plastic shopping bad
- Sarah took a nap on the beach next to an australian and woke up next to a pirate
- Jonas was down to his boxers and a pair of shorts he found on the beach with bug lotion and50 baht in the pocket
- here were at least 4 camera and 3 phone missing
- oh and on the way to the ferry kenny kept insisting that there should still be music playing everywhere

After diving Sunday morning

When it rains in Thailand I have the capability of evolving into a turtle.

We finally made it back to Koh Tao around 10am, and it was time for food and a nap. It was a really fun night...but I don't think I'll be repeating it any time soon. Friday was recovery day and I slept A LOT and went to a restaurant called Cabello or something like that and had an amazing western meal that involved a lot of cheese. Then I went back to my room and went to bed. Saturday I woke up and went for a run down the beach, it was amazing. About 25 minutes in it started raining pretty good so I went and sat under a cover for awhile and watched as this huge rainbow appeared. The rest of the day consisted of laying out at the beach, swimming in the ocean, and watching the boys play soccer on the beach....I know its a tough life, but someones gotta do it. I started a new book The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo, I've heard only positive things and I'm enjoying it so far. That night I went home to shower and ended up signing up for a dive for the next morning. The dive was amazing, I definitely need to get a little disposable under water camera or something. The Sunday afternoon we were on our way back to Rangsit. Definitely a good weekend.

my calves (calfs?) are in revolt

I finished my first hour long run today! I sprint, my sport consists of running 100 meters and jumping over things when they get in my way. I feel extremely accomplished about my run today (I usually call it quits and am satisfied with 20 minutes). To make things even better, I didn't feel like dying at the end of my run.

butttt, now my calves are in revolt. They are definitely going to making me pay for this, so what am I going to do about it....run again tomorrow. I think this is the begining of a beautiful new relationship with me and my legs. Probably a love/hate relationship.

Oh and to top it off, I saw an elephant casually walking down the main street. Taxi, taxi, motor bike, motor bike, elephant? I wish I would have had my camera.

So this weekend was really good. Thursday and Friday I went to an island, Koh Sichang, with Lori, Janelle, Shelby and Sarah. It was a lot of fun. Thursday we left in the morning and got there early afternoon. We finally found a place to settle in and then we set off to find some food. Starving we wandered into the first resturant looking place we found and got wonderful meal, then we set off to wander around for a bit. We ended up at a bar, resturant, kareoke place where we met like 15 guys from the Thai Navy. They were really fun to hang out with and thankfully spoke pretty good english. We did some kareoke, "All the small thing" and "Boom boom boom boom" were out big debutes. There was also this adorable little thai girl (Sarah thinks her name was Pancake) who kept coming over and playing with us. The night ended and like 6 of the guys walked us home where Lori had definitely passed out leaving Sarah locked out of the room. Nothing we did could wake her up so we stuffed 4 of us into the one room for the night. Friday morning we woke up, found a resturant that had American breakfast and the sweetest older man who was really helpful. He let us leave our bags with him for the day and we rented motor bikes from him for only 200 B for the day. Janelle took a spill early on, and mine little fall came a little later (but she definitely took the cake on the more disasterous fall). We rode around, the island was beautiful and we found a little beach with a ton of sea glass that I spend at leave 20 minutes collecting. I don't know why but I just love sea glass. Then we went to a little market and were on our way home again. Only fault: my knee decided to become good friends with the asphault...it left a pretty substantial scab across my knee and some bruises but if this is the worst of my injuries so far, i've not nothing to complain about. It was a lovely short little trip.

Saturday I ran errands and slept, then Sunday I made my own way to church for the first time (I've gotten a ride most of the way the other few times). The bus from the school to Bangkok wasn't running so...taxi to Mo Chit station, Skytrain to Asok, then my usual 15 or 20 minute walk down Sukumvit 21 to church. Afterwards I went home with the Gailey's, a wonderful family that has partially adopted me. It consisted of lunch, the movie "The Ultimate Gift," which I loved, a field trip to feed these ridiculous looking fish, dinner, game of 5 crowns, and it ended with desert. I was there until about 8pm when their driver took me home. It was definitely the most enjoyable Sunday by far.

Weekend Pictures

some randoms

Earlier in the week we went to a play, production, musical thing in Bangkok, it was all about the different Thai cultures and beliefs. It was amazing, definitely recomend seeing it for anyone who visits. This is a picture of us on the way home from that. About halfway back we all got into the isle of the bus and danced the rest of the way home. The bus driver didn't say a word to us about it....only in Thailand. Janelle, Me & Micah after discovering I'm not a fan of Korean food...we got this strange not really ice cream but kind of stuff. It was like milky shaved ice with flavor. I really have no idea how to describe it. It was alright, I'll stick with classic ice cream from now on though.

At a little restraunt overlooking Khaosan Road.
Some pictures I stole from Alex, they look amazing.

We went to Fugi, a sushi place in Future Park. SOOOOO GOOD!

My first adventure on a tuk tuk through Bangkok. We ended up at a market that didn't open for another 5 hours so we wandered aimlessly for awhile and then stopped to eat at a resturant where absolutely no english was spoken. We ordered, none of us ended up getting what we thought we ordered but it worked out that it all tasted pretty good anyways.

Kanchanburi, or something like that?

Ok there are SO MANY other good pictures from this trip I just need to locate them from other people. I didn't take out my camera much because so many other people had theres but when I find the good one's I'll post them. So we all went to Kanchanburi? or something like that. The first day we floated down the river on a barge and stopped at a temple. Then we ate lunch. It was a nice creak after the 2 1/2 hour drive.

Afterwards we went to see and swim at waterfalls. There were 7 levels, I only went to 5 because I stopped to swim at a few of them. The one in the picture below was the 2nd level i think, you were able to swim to and behind the waterfall. At another one there was a natural water slide and the last one we were at it was just deep enough to jump off a rock into the water. There were a lot of fish in the swimming holes that liked to nibble on your legs so that was entertaining too.

we found puppies, and of course had to play with them.

We stayed the night there at a hotel on what we were told was a military base. Heidi, Jessica and I took a walk before dinner and we walked around a golf course and came to this marsh land like thing, it was really pretty. That night was really fun, there are a lot of pictures from that night I'm sure will never be seen by the public eye.

The next day we rode elephants and went floating down the river.

he was 73 years old

Ayutthaya

Ayutthaya was the old capitol of Siam and was really badly destroyed, and this is what was left of one of the temples. It was really intersting to just wander around in the ruins

This is a reclined Buddha which we were told means that it is a significant temple, i think that's what they said? Our tour guide says a lot of things. Mainly repeatedly telling us exactly where and when to meet, about "chop/short pants" and that we need to take off our "chew" (shoe).

It was a long day....

This is on our campus:

After Chris' birthday we decided to have a lazy day at the pool