My students in concert

Remember that one time that I became a theatre/choir teacher? Yeah. That time. Well, remember how choirs have concerts? Yeah. Those. Talk about a stressful event! My school's 2009-2010 Show Choir had their first concert a couple of weeks ago.

That's right- my very first choir concert. :) Turns out they are... kind of hard to put together. Who knew?? I think I'd like to go back to having someone else doing all of the hard work, and just showing up to sing. :) I was seriously freaking out. We NEVER had a rehearsal that went well. I think I was just hoping that nobody would show up to see it. Unfortunately THAT didn't happen.

The GOOD news, however, is that it actually ended up going really well. They actually remembered almost everything! It was quite a nerve-wracking evening. My parents and brother came a few hours early to help me get everything set and ready. I seriously owe them big time.




Here are a few pictures of us rehearsing before the audience got there. Only... I can't show you their faces, so yes they are blurred out. It's not just that they are ugly. At least not all of them.

This is my show choir!




Yeah... did someone say 120 students in the SHOW CHOIR??

Some of the girls in the girls' number:



The hellions- oh... how did that get... no, I meant the boys-



The hot choir director-




I have to say I was quite relieved to have the concert over with. Yesterday we did the concert for the school as an assembly in the middle of the day. It went... NOT good. Really, they still sounded decent (except in those two weeks they managed to forget most of the harmonies- making everything unison...) but their behavior was just... rough. And getting the assembly and the mics and the lights and the props and the music stands and the piano and the... on and on and on... all set up BY MYSELF in only 30 MINUTES right before the assembly left me ANYTHING but calm. I was sort of a basket case. That assembly was almost the death of me I think! But- I got through the show and finished the rest of my classes and the day was finally over. THEN my mom called. Yeah. I lost it. Yay for a mom that lets you bawl on the phone to her. :) Two of the teachers at the school told me they thought it was even better than the night concert, though! So, I don't know. :) I think I STARTED that assemly so frustrated that I may not be a fair judge!
This job never slows down, though, and now I'm just panicking about the Winter concert! Ah, Christmas... here we go...

Oh a happy note, the choir's uniforms finally came in the mail yesterday! So they will just look so darn cute for their Christmas concert. Yes my friends... bow ties and all. :)

School should be left to the daytime...

The bad news? The job isn't really getting any easier. Really? 13 year olds are just... 13 years old. The good news? I haven't had a school nightmare in a while! Yes- I do have school nightmares often. See- the really tricky thing is that I sleepwalk, so you combine sleepwalking with my obnoxious school nightmares and I've ended up with at least a little humor in my life. :)




Example 1- I was having this bad dream that I needed to teach something out of a textbook- but of course I couldn't find the right textbook. I was FREAKING out and seriously panicked, and I was looking EVERYWHERE and digging and looking, and finally I found it. THEN, in my dream, I realized that I didn't have enough of the textbooks for everyone in my class, so I started looking for MORE of them. Anyway. Just one of those obnoxious panicky sort of dreams. So I woke up, and found that I was holding a textbook, and had another one sitting next to me. No... no I don't keep these books right next to my bed. They were on the other side of the room. And no... no they weren't even on the TOP of the pile they were in. They were in the middle. So I guess, in my sleep, I had walked over and dug through my books and somehow had chosen those ones to take back with me. Sure. :)

Example 2- I fell asleep while writing lesson plans one night, and in my dream I was still writing one. I don't remember exactly what the dream was about, but for some reason I figured that I needed to be somewhere else to write them. I woke up when my computer hit the ground. Yes... yes. I FREAKING DROPPED MY COMPUTER IN MY SLEEP! This poor computer has been dropped so many times and it's never my fault! (I guess that is up for debate- I DID drop it... but I was asleep at the time... so...??) I decided I needed to move somewhere else, I picked up my computer, walked across the room, and dropped it. Love it.

Example 3- I was dreaming that I was correcting papers (which really- I do ALL THE FREAKING TIME so that wasn't much of a stretch) and I guess I had some never-ending pile that was giving me major stress because of some unnameable deadline. You know. Anyway. I woke up, and I was "correcting" the back of the package of my new razor. I don't know where I put that before I went to bed, but somehow I had found it and I was holding it in my left hand and in my right hand I was holding an imaginary pencil... and I was circling things. I actually laughed out loud after I woke up to THAT one. :)

BUT the good news is that I haven't had one of these dreams in almost two weeks! My subconscious is either learning to deal with this better... or it's at least hiding it from... me... better. Either way. :)

School, school, and more school

Wow. What a lame post to leave up for over a month. I have been so dang busy, I haven't had time to do ANYTHING- including blog.

Why have I been so busy? Because- for those of you who don't actually know- I got a job!

I teach middle school. Yup. That's the truth. I work at a MIDDLE SCHOOL. It has been quite a roller coaster. That is for dang sure. I teach both choir and theatre. So there you go... all those years in college absolutely STRESSING over whether I should graduate in choral education or theatre education... very worthwhile. Glad I invested so many hours and tears into making that decision. Story of my life!!

I was offered the job ONE WEEK before school started. ONE WEEK!!! For those of you that don't know tons about the teaching profession- that's definitely not the preferred method. FYI. Not only was it only one week (okay... it was really like one week and two days), but I was also in North Carolina visiting my sister when I got the phone call! (Yeah- haven't blogged about that one, either. I had so much dang fun. Her kids are the cutest kids in the world... and no... that couldn't possibly be a biased opinion. Hopefully I'll be able to blog about that sometime soon. I make no promises.) I got back to Utah late on Monday the 17th of August and school started the following Monday. Tuesday I went and saw my classroom for the first time- stayed for about an hour, took a tour of the school (it's a brand new building. It's really gorgeous.) and had no idea what I really needed to do. The whole rest of the week I had meetings. I had a little time in my room on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. My brother Brian came one day (I think it was... Friday, maybe?) and helped me alphabetize my choral library for HOURS. I've probably spent about 25 hours organizing that music and I'm STILL not done. Brian was a life saver. Anyway. So in all that time I had very little time to do anything like, oh I don't know... write lesson plans! So I've been pretty much taking things one day at a time.

We've been in school for 4 weeks now. Midterms are next week and I CAN'T BELIEVE IT! Every day goes by so slowly... I never thought we'd hit midterms. :) So, how is it going, you might want to know? (If you don't want to know, then just humor me.) It's hard. I won't lie. It's really hard. I work ALL. THE. TIME. All the time. I usually leave for work between 6:30 and 7:00 in the morning and I stay at school until somewhere between 6-8. Then I get home and grade papers for a few hours. Everyday. Then I go to bed at about midnight, get up at 5:30ish and start again. I thought weekends would give me a little sanity, but here is how all three of my weekends have gone: Saturday I get to sleep in- which means I usually week up at about 8:00... yeah... sleeping in has reeeeeally changed. :) I start grading papers/writing lesson plans at about 9:00- and I finish at about midnight. Then I go to bed, get up on Sunday- go to church- come home and grade papers/write lesson plans until about midnight. I REEEEEEAAAALLY wish I was exaggerating. I'm not! Not even a little! Some nights I'm even up until about 2:00. Man. Today (Saturday) I quit working at about 10:00. I've got a nasty cold and decided I had had enough with the working.

Ya know- it's funny. Brian pointed out to me that I can know I've entered a new time in my life when I'm actually GRATEFUL that I'm sick over the weekend instead of during the week. :)

Anyway- I did my student teaching in a high school and I have been SHOCKED at the differences between high schoolers and middle schoolers. I can't believe how much younger they are. I didn't expect the difference to be as drastic as it acutally is. I've definitely got bundles of funny stories already. That will have to be a post for another day, though.

Since I've got so much free time- I decided I needed more on my plate. So- I'll be moving soon! Right now I'm living at my parents' house, and a lot of the week I stay at my aunt and uncle- Art and Katherine's house. They live in Sandy. So everyday I commute either half an hour or an hour each way. But two of my high school friends, Francine and Julena, and I are moving to Salt Lake in a couple of weeks. The house we're going to rent is pretty close to my school- I'm excited about that.

Wow- this is a really boring post. I would go back and make it more interesting... but I don't want to. I hope it makes sense and doesn't sound too much like I'm hopped up on cold medicine! Congratulations if you made it all the way through it. :)

Look alike?

Any So You Think You Can Dance watchers out there??

I have had FIVE different people tell me (at different times!) that one of the dancers on that show reminds them of me. Her name is Jeanine. They say we look a lot alike and that we have similar mannerisms. I think it's probably just because we're both such good dancers. :)

I don't really see it, but... whatever! I found a couple of pictures of her, and quickly looked through my iphoto program to see if I had any pictures that looked similar. This is what I came up with:

So. I don't know. Maybe it's not as much in still photos and just in mannerisms? Do I really look like her? Thoughts?

Probably I'm going to need to know what I did to tick July off.

I've finally realized something. The gods of the month of July hate me. I don't know why, but for the past few years, July has been out to get me. Don't get me wrong- occasionally something good happens. My family came home from Thailand on the 1st. That pretty much rocked. Notice, however- it was the first day of July. I think it was just trying to give me a false sense of security.

It has been one crazy long month. I'd give you a bit of a recap of my month, but... I don't want to. :) Besides, it would be nothing but an obnoxious venting post. (Which is something I'm trying to avoid, since this post isn't already obnoxious!)

On top of all the other great things July has brought, I've also got my birthday. Yes that's right. My birthday was a couple of days ago. You may ask if I'm really listing that as a negative, and my answer would have to be YES! I WANT to like my birthday. I've TRIED to like my birthday. It's just not do-able. I like other people's birthdays. Not mine. How old am I now? Twenty... one. 21, give or take.

Right now I'm just holding my breath and crossing my fingers, hoping I make it to August 1st.

And to the gods of the month of July: What are the odds we can work something out for next year???

Wahoo!

I have a new nephew! This picture (stolen lovingly from my sister's blog... hope you don't mind, Linds) is of my sister Lindsay and her new baby, Miles. I'm way excited! Only... they live in North Carolina, so I don't even get to see him super soon. Dang. They are coming to Utah in a few weeks, though, and I might even get to go out there before that. We'll see. Anyway. If you want more info or more pictures- check out my sister's blog. Love ya, Linds, and congrats again!!

Thanks for everything.

For the past few years my family has lived all over the world. Lindsay and her family have lived in North Carolina for... I don't even know how long. 5 years, maybe? My parents and Amber have lived in Thailand for three years. Brian lived in Illinois/Germany/Austria/Thailand for three years. Me? I've been in Utah. (Yes, I did go to Thailand for a bit, but I'm just talking majority here.) Sometimes being far apart has been no big deal, and sometimes it has been really tough. Last week was one of those weeks. Thank heavens Brian lives in Utah again. It would have been impossible without him. My amazing Grandma, Clara Dodge, passed away last week. She was 93 years old, and was one of the most remarkable people I've had the privilege of knowing.

I really wasn't planning on posting about it because I'm not a good writer, and could never do justice to what I want to say... but I keep thinking about her and how lucky I am to have had her in my life. I can only hope that someday I can be a bit more like her. The funeral on Monday went very well. It was very bitter-sweet to discuss and relive memories. My Grandparents have 8 kids (my dad being the youngest) so my extended family is quite large. There are something like 40 grand kids, and so far there are 59 great-grand kids (with 6 more coming in the near future). Although it was sad and hard to say good-bye to her, at least we have the knowledge that it isn't final. At least we know we can see her again.

She lived an amazing life. The gospel was always her number one priority and temple work was one of her passions. She has done more than 200 sessions in the temple each year for something like the last 20 years, and I'm sure right now she is simply carrying on the work she was doing in life... only in different ways.

Somehow the timing of this made the distance between my family feel a bit bigger. I'm grateful that the funeral was able to be broadcast on the internet so that my parents and sisters were able to see it. I wish I had the words to communicate how amazing my grandma was, but since I know that I don't... I'll just leave it at this-

I love you, Grandma, and thanks. Thanks for being such an amazing person and example. I'll miss you.

Baby steps... baby steps.

Alright, so a lot of you know that my parents come home in a month... and the rest of you? do now. The project at hand, therefore, is getting their home livable!

When my parents left they rented out their house, and we shoved EVERYTHING THEY OWN into three of the bedrooms in our house. Let me just tell you... dang. Those rooms... S.T.U.F.F.E.D. Our favorite way to explain it is this: ever played Tetris? Getting the furniture in those rooms was like the biggest real-life game of Tetris ever. Things were stacked to the ceiling. So. After the renters moved out... the next step was to get those rooms unpacked! Brian and I had a group of our guy friends (and Whit. :) ) come and help us get everything out. It was INSANE. It took us something like 7 hours to get everything out of the three rooms. That, however, was only the start!





One of the bedrooms (Lindsay's) had a little surprise for us. Ever heard of a little thing called "water damage"?? I have. Heard of it, I mean. And now- I get to DEAL with it! Wahoo!! Everything was going pretty well until I lifted a box on the floor, which resulted in both of my arms being COVERED in black mold. Yeah... that's probably gross. A year and a half ago the ceiling in my dad's office upstairs colapsed under the weight of the snow, and... NOW I'm thinking it MAY have affected the room beneath it, too. None of the walls or the ceiling show any damage, but the carpet through the ENTIRE room is full of mold. Unfortunately... there was furniture sitting on the carpet. Lots of furniture. There is mold growing up the legs/sides of several pieces of it. Tables, tvs, mattresses. Cool. That box I mentioned? It was a box of my high school things... and the stuff inside it was so gross! I had a few plaques in there, and they DOUBLED in thickness because there is so much mold inside the wood. Ugh. Good thing I've been graduated for a long time and just don't care about that stuff as much anymore.

Everyone left at about 8:30 pm, and then Brian and I realized that the moldy furniture had been taken around the house. Greaaaaaaat. So Brian and I went around and took all the moldy furniture that we could lift and put it BACK into the moldy room. The really big furniture got blankets put underneath them.

Here are some pics. I won't put them all up... I'll spare you that. :) It was hard to get good pics of it cause the mold wouldn't show up in the camera.









So now... we have to try and save the moldy stuff. (Not the mattresses. Those are gonners, man.) We've got to get someone in the house to rip the carpet out, and then check the insides of the walls.

Other than that, the house looks like a disaster zone! The furniture and boxes are no longer crammed into the three rooms, but distributed across the entire house! (It's actually progress... a TON of progress, but it sure looks like a step backwards!)


We went from this:







To THIS...






Good heavens. Still. Progress... I just have to keep telling myself that...

Too late??

Warning:  this post is about American Idol.  So all of you who are sick of the American Idol hype... turn back now.

I'm way excited for the finale this week!  However.  I'll be honest.  I don't particularly care who wins.  THAT'S RIGHT, I DID JUST SAY THAT!  I like Adam.  So sue me.  I know he screams too much.  I realize that.  He does have freakin' amazing skills, though.  I think Kris has a great voice, but I've never particularly cared about him either way.  Kris is humble... Adam knows he's great.  There are ups and downs to both, so whatever.  Not that it really matters, though.  I think Adam has it in the bag.

ANYWAY.  The real point of this post is that I want to know if any of you remember Ricky Braddy.  He was one of the wildcard options and didn't make it to the top 13.  HE WAS FREAKIN' AMAZING and I'll never forgive the judges for picking Jasmine Murray and Megan Joy (?!!?!?!) over him.  Although, even if he had been picked- he probably wouldn't have made it very far, since AI gave him absolutely zero screen time during Hollywood Week.

If you want to see him- just go to this website.  The contestants get better and better as the season goes on, so if he was this good during the Top 36, imagine where he'd be now.  That's all.  Over and out.

Think it's too late for me to vote for him now??

I have a love/hate relationship with technology.

Ready for some amazing news?  All of my technology has ganged up against me.   Let me introduce you to my technological things.

First:  my camera.

A Nikon Coolpix something or other.  Purchased in 2005.  Notice anything wrong with it?  Let me help you out.  The battery door is held together with duct tape!  Lucky for me, my awesome roommate Jenny gave me colored duct tape once upon a time, but still.  The duct tape resulted from it being dropped on the ground early in 2006 during one rockin' spring break trip.  It hasn't really given me anymore problems... until now.  About 6 months ago, it made a decision.  No more pictures outdoors.  Oh.  Okay.  Not like anyone ever needs to take pictures OUTSIDE!!  Anything taken outdoors just turns out super washed out and really ugly.  Great.

Second:  my phone.

A Samsung never-made-to-last-more-than-a-few-months.  Purchased in 2007.  Really... I mean 'purchased' in the loosest of terms because it was the free phone that came with the plan.  This is actually my second one.  The first one was dropped into the ocean in March of 2007 on... you guessed it... spring break.  The cons of this phone?  Well... it was the FREE PHONE THAT CAME WITH MY PHONE PLAN IN 2007!  What I mean by that... is that it works really well.  It's cute trick is that it likes to reset itself all of the time.  Sometimes I hear it resetting itself in the other room, but it's favorite time?  Whenever I'm texting.  Neat.  The other day I was in the middle of a text when it decided to reset itself, and somehow, it managed to take all the texts I had gotten in the previous 2 days, and delete them in the process.  Impressive.

Third:  my computer.

A cute Macbook.  Purchased in 2007.  I love this computer!  Except.  Except for it's... new friendship with my phone.  My computer worked perfectly, until... you guessed it.  It was dropped.  This sad event happened when I was sprinting through the airport trying to catch a layover after visiting my sister in NC in 2008.  My trustworthy backpack broke open and dumped it onto the hard airport floor!  Here are a couple of pictures of the damage.  

Here is the corner where it landed.  That part can't shut, and some... mechanics... inside are bent up, too.

There are three of these chips, but I  thought one picture would suffice.  Two of them (this one included) are along the bottom, below the keyboard, and one is up above the screen.

Since that... it has developed a few new habits.  Mostly it just makes funny noises occasionally.  I decided not to get it fixed because I found out how much it would cost.  Ouch.  It's a just-get-a-new-one sort of a cost.  Every so often it finds new noises to make, and always surprises me.  I can handle weird noises.  That's okay.  Chirp, whirr, gaffffunk, crank, and sigh all you want.  It's all been manageable, until this last Wednesday night.  Somehow my phone managed to teach my computer that cute little resetting trick.  Now, it does it all the time.  Wednesday night it reset itself 4 times in the hour I was trying to use it.  Lucky for me, it's only done it once while I've been writing this post.  Wonderful.  It's so cute when electronics work together.

So now what?  I can't buy new stuff right now, but as you can see... it's sort of time!!  Maybe I'll just find an Amish community and join them.  They don't have these problems.

Hmmm...

Well... I did it!  I finally chopped my hair off.  It's nothing like I expected it to be.  I'm not sure how I feel about it, cause I always feel like I made a huge mistake when I walk out of a salon.  Generally because I really hate how stylists actually style my hair.  It's pulled half-way up because it was... very fluffy earlier.  No thanks.  Maybe I'll post photos of it down if I like it when it's down.  If not... it'll never be down. :)

I tried to get some pics of the back so you could see the color.  They weren't terribly successful, but here they are, anyway.

So... there you are.  Done and done.  :)

One year older... and wiser??

Now... I realize that usually this song/phrase is reserved for people having birthdays, but... technically I am one year older than I was... last year.  And what is significant about one year ago in my life?  

                  GRADUATION

 

Graduation.  The day when- quite suddenly- one is expected to be an adult.  I have a lot of friends that graduated either this weekend or last weekend, and it's made me think a lot.  Looking back a year... where did I think I'd be now?

After I graduated I started the ever-dreaded job search.  After interviewing a few places, I decided that I wanted to take a year off, so I backed out of all of them.  So.  I did it.  I took a year off.

NOW WHAT??

That is a question that I, unfortunately, can't answer.  I'm currently staying with my aunt and uncle in Sandy.  Art and Katherine have been soooo amazingly nice for letting me crash at their house.  I've once again begun the job search game, but I'm not really sure what will come of it.

Did any of you know that this economy isn't doing so well?   Cause yeah... it's not.  Love the job market.

But I have decided one thing-  I'm going to do my best to stop stressing about the future!  I'll do everything that I can to figure things out, but after that... I'm just going to try to relax.  Things will work out, right?  Now the trick is I just have to keep telling myself that. 

And now... somebody we could all use a little more of in our lives:

The endings

This is a long post.  I warn you.  At first I thought I should cut it down, but... this is the closest thing I have to a journal and I wanted to document some of this stuff.  Plus, I love these stories!  And if it's more info than you want... you don't have to read it.  :)  *She says, as she laughs gaily, knowing her biggest fans would never DREAM of leaving one of her posts unread.*

As you may have surmised from my last post, I am indeed back in Utah.  THAT, however, is not really what I want to post about.  :)  Basically I just want to fill you in on my last two weeks in Thailand.

Okay... do you people like monkeys?  Because guess what?  I heart them.  There is a city in Thailand called Lop Buri, and it is FULL of monkeys!  The monkeys and the people all just sort of live with together.  In this picture you can see how there are monkeys climbing all around, and the people just sort of leave them alone.

There is one main park where monkeys like to hang out.  In this park there are ruins of an old temple, and the monkeys run, and jump, and climb ALL OVER them.  They are so funny and so smart, though.  The also sit and wait by the road for the traffic to back up.  When the traffic stops, they jump into the backs of all the pickup trucks and steal whatever is in them.  It's great to watch.  They also cross the road and climb all over the buildings and things.  Really, the people just ignore them!  It's amazing.

We bought little bags of sunflower seeds to give to the monkeys.  Sometimes they scare me, though!  They KNOW you have food, and basically think it's their right to have it... so... they do what they need to do to get it!  They'll jump all over you, and try to pry your fingers open with their little hands.  They ARE wild animals, though, so they'll bite, too, which really isn't as cute.  :)  It's not so bad when they don't break skin... but who  knows what diseases they have, so all in all... probably just best not to get bit.  :)

Our last trip in Thailand was to the south.  We went to Krabi and Phuket.  Krabi is a coastal city, and Phuket is a little island just off the west coast.  Krabi was our first stop.  It was SO beautiful.  It's amazing that places like it even EXIST!  Unfortunately, I still haven't gotten the pictures off of Whitney's camera, so you'll have to put up with just mine.  I might post more pics when I get them.  The first day we got there, we just drove around to see the scenery, and found a hotel, and just sort of relaxed.  The next day was not NEARLY as relaxing.  Dad, Amber, and Brian decided they wanted to go Scuba Diving.  The rest of us aren't certified to dive, so we passed on that.  :)  Mom decided that she wanted a relaxing/shopping/foot massage kind of a day, and Whitney and I wanted to go kayaking.  So... we all did just that.

Kayaking was SO amazing!  It was a TON of work, though.  (I guess technically they weren't real kayaks.  More like... a cross between a kayak and a canoe.  Moving on.)  Our kayaking group consisted of one Australian kid named  Ross... or Russ... couldn't ever quite figure it out, one German couple named Sven and Yvonne (Of course they were named Sven and Yvonne.  Just... of course.  LOVE it.), our guide, David, and us.  To start off, we all got into our kayaks and headed down river.  It was so nice.  Whit and I were wanting to get some serious rowing in, but our guide kept telling us to slow down and let the river do most of the work.  We tried.  It was hard.  We took some winding little river paths around, and saw AMAZING scenery.  One of the coolest things was that we got to go through caves.  Ooooooooo.  :)  We paddled up to these little caves and the entrances were so short!  I was a little scared, cause I'm claustrophobic and I was worried I would freak out, but it ended up being okay.

We paddled into the opening of the first cave, and it immediately got pretty dark.  You could barely see the outlines of the path.  It was so cool.  It was filled with all of these stalactites and stalagmites, and we had to negotiate the kayak around the bigger and longer ones.

It all looked sort of like a movie set, just because I've never seen caves like that in real life.  They were so beautiful!  After we got out of the other side of the cave, we ended up in a gorgeous little lagoon.  We were completely surrounded by walls of green jungle-life.

I can't even tell you how pretty it was.  We stayed there for a little while, then headed out, back through the cave.  After a little while, we got to another cave.  It was dark when we got inside, but after only a few more seconds, it was PITCH black.  And lucky for Whit and me, we were the last kayak, so we lost the guides flashlight pretty darn quickly.  We couldn't see a thing!!

 We kind of freaked out for a minute because we couldn't figure out where we were going.  The paths were so skinny that we couldn't really even get our paddles into the water without hitting the walls and stalactites/stalagmites, and we couldn't see anything, so we couldn't figure out how to move, or even were to go.  It was freaky.  We figured out that I could take a picture, and it would give us a second of light.  Finally we made our way out.  After that we saw another cave, and another couple of lagoons.  Everything was amazing.  We also went through this little maze of trees.  I don't know what kind they were, but these plants completely surrounded us and all we had was a little pathway through them.  They were like tunnels we went through because the plants were like walls on the side and they covered us above like a ceiling.  There were a few winding paths, and they were super hard to get through, and at one point we kind of lost our group.

We finally got to another cave that we got out of our kayaks to explore.  It was awesome.  The entire floor was made up of fossils and seashells because years and years and years before, the water had been super high.  Our guide then pointed out to us several hieroglyphics that had been painted THREE-THOUSAND YEARS AGO!  Freak.

The amazing thing is that they let us in that cave, and let us see the hieroglyphics, and let us touch the stalactites/stalagmites and everything.  In America you'd be taken to the entrance of the cave and then shown pictures of what was inside.  After we got back in the kayaks, we headed back to the starting point.  Problem?  UPSTREAM.  Whit and I paddled for all we were worth.  I'm not kidding.  We didn't stop paddling once, but we were barely moving!  The other two kayaks were steadily pulling away from us, and eventually- we couldn't see them at all.  After a LONG time of rowing as hard as we could, we finally realized we had no idea if they had stayed on the main river or if they had taken another path.  We didn't see them for forever.  We thought we might be in a wee bit of trouble, but our only option was to keep on going.  Finally we rounded a corner and saw the place to dock the kayaks in the far, far distance.  When I say that our arms were giving out... I mean- OUR ARMS WERE GIVING OUT.  It hurt sooooo bad!!  The other two kayaks got back probably more than TWENTY MINUTES before we did.  We were dying.  And they just sat and watched us coming.  Slowly.  Coming.  Slowly.  When we finally pulled up they, of course, made fun of us a bit, and then said that it wasn't a good idea to have a kayak without a man in it.  Yeah... well, cool.  Anyway, it was still a blast and I freakin' loved it.

The next day we went on a little... snorkeling expedition.  It was so beautiful!  We got on a speed boat and headed out into the open sea.  Yo Ho.  Our first stop was "The Beach."

 Evidently there is a movie called "The Beach."  Don't know much about it, except for the fact that it was filmed in one of the most beautiful places ever.  Oh, and Leonardo DiCaprio was in it.  Those are the facts.  We went to a couple of amazing snorkeling spots after that.

I seriously love snorkeling.  There were tons of bright, tropical fish swimming all over the place!  At lunch they brought Brian a special plate of spaghetti noodles without nut oil (he has a fatal allergy to nuts, FYI), but they brought him TONS!  We felt bad wasting them, so we stuck handfuls of extra spaghetti noodles into my bag.  :)  On our next stop, however, we made an A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. discovery.  SPAGHETTI NOODLES ARE THE BEST SNORKELING FOOD, EVER!  We put the noodles in the pockets of our swimming shorts, and fed them to the fish.  We would hold out a noodle, and DOZENS of fish would come fight for it.  It was a blast.  Sometimes the fish couldn't figure out which was food, though- the noodle or your hand.  Brian got bit pretty hard.  Ha.  :)

So basically, this speed boat took us around to different beaches and snorkeling spots and such.  It was such a fun day!  Really tiring, though.  That sun can definitely wear you out!  I need to get myself an ocean.

After all the fun in Krabi, we headed to Phuket.  My parents had a senior missionary conference down there.  On Sunday we went to Phuket's cute little branch.  Well... actually they don't have a branch.  They have a "group".  They meet in a hotel.  There are like 5 members.  It's awesome.  The rest of the time we just sort of hung out and swam at the beach and played with the monkeys at the beach and such.  One day we decided to go to this snorkeling beach we had heard about.  There didn't seem to be any good snorkeling, but when we looked to the left (where the beach looked like it ended) there were tons of huge rocks, and we thought if we could climb over them- we might find good snorkeling.  Oh. My. Word.  It took FOREVER to climb around these giant boulders... and they just kept going!!  It was way hot, and we basically just baked out in the sun while we climbed.  Finally we got to a tiny beach that was like... 15 feet long or so.  It was way cute, but again- not any good snorkeling spots.  There was this cute little Thai girl there (she was like 10) who became immediately attached to Whitney.  Her name was Bio.  They hung out for a while (she didn't speak any English) but they had tons of fun anyway and she tried to teach Whit Thai words.  She was cute.  Whit (through charades) told Bio we were going to go snorkeling, so she ran and found her mom and asked if she could come with us.  Oh.  Okay.  So, she gestured for us to follow her, and showed us a tiny pathway that connected the beach we were on to the beach we had come from.  That's right.  It was like a 20 foot path that basically just cut off the corner with all the rocks- yeah, the ones that took us 45 minutes to hike around!  It was funny.  Bio showed us where to snorkel, but it turned out that she was afraid of deep water, which is super odd for Thai kids!  We swam out a little ways, and then Bio got nervous, so she climbed onto Whitney's back.  The problem with that?  She made Whitney sink, so Whit couldn't use her snorkel cause she was too deep!  Whit found a rock to stand on, but we really couldn't communicate the problem to Bio.  She just sort of stood there smiling, and we had no idea how to get her back to shore without drowning Whit.  Hmmm.  It took a while, but we finally managed to drag/swim/putter our way back to the shore.  :)

One night we were eating dinner at a cute little sort-of-outdoor restaurant when this CRAZY storm hit.  That is one thing I'm really going to miss about Thailand.  The rain storms are so... just incredible.  And I love the rain- so dang much.  It was an unbelievable rainstorm and the thunder/lightening were unbelievable!  It was seriously deafening and just kept going and going and going.  We ran out into the road and just jumped around in the rain.  We were soaked, but it was so warm and beautiful!  That lasted until lightening flashed ridiculously close.  :)  We went back into the restaurant and waited there for a little while, but finally decided just to go for it, and we headed back to the hotel- yes, walking.  Even though the rain was still really heavy, the lightening seemed to have moved on, so we decided that probably meant we needed to go swimming in the ocean in the rain in the dark!  By now it was pretty late, so it was way dark.  We ran out into the ocean, and the water- was SO WARM!  Like, it was way warmer than the air.  It was so dang fun.  I thought Whit was going to pass out though, she was so nervous that we were going to be killed by lightening.  :)  It was great.  I really loved Phuket.

A few nights before we flew home, we had dinner with a member of the Royal Family.  Crazy, eh?  I think she is the previous King's granddaughter.  Anyway, she and her son came over for dinner.  It was interesting to watch her.  Everything, down to the way she carried herself just seemed very regal.  Her son is mentally handicapped, and one of his favorite things to do is to sing.  After dinner, we all gathered around the piano and sang a few songs.  It was pretty cool.

I guess that about wraps up Thailand.  Well... there is no way to really explain the experiences I had over there, but it wraps up some of the fun stories, anyway.  It is such an amazing country.  Anyway... time to be American again, I guess.  :)