Dog Love

As many of you know, I have been volunteering every week at the soi dog shelter since we arrived in Phuket in April. It has been a really great experience and I continue to enjoy going out each week to walk and hang out with all these lovely dogs.

What you might not have known, is that we have been thinking about adopting one of the little guys for some time now! It is impossible to see them every week without falling in love.

After much deliberation (it is pretty hard to choose from almost 200 dogs) we have decided on this one!

 He is medium-sized and has nice thick fur, perfect for coming home with us in October when Canada starts to get cold! It might be a bit of a change for him, but I think he'll really enjoy the cooler temperatures (most of the dogs here don't look like they enjoy the heat too much)!

 He is a really sweet calm boy. When the other dogs are climbing all over you to get their turn to be petted or walked, he will wait on the sidelines until there's a space and then snuggle in to have you all to himself.

 We can't wait for everyone to meet him!!!

We haven't decided on a name yet. He has a name here at the shelter but the dogs don't really know their names and we don't really like it... I am still processing the fact that we are actually going to be bringing this little guy home with us in just a little while! Sooooo excited!

Canadians in Thailand -Shane's first blog post!

Recently the two of us have been fortunate enough to have friends and family come to visit us here in Thailand. Our house has had quite the revolving door. We had my brother Nick in July, my friends Nathan, Suds and Hammy in August, and soon Hannah’s brother Tim in September. We love Thailand and are thrilled to share it with whoever is willing to make the trip half way around the world. It is hilarious to see the shock, delight and amazement on our friends' and families' faces when they see things that have for us become daily life: wild driving, delicious food, beautiful beaches, street dogs and chickens among many other things.

Here are a few pictures from our adventures with Nathan, Suds and Hammy.

Riding a Song Tao on the way to Krabi

Exploring sea caves on Rayleigh
As not much of a sea cave explorer myself, I stayed and watched the boats... this turned out to be a good idea as the tide started coming in and the boats tried to escape.





The boys extremely excited to be renting scooters. Thai roads had never been more dangerous.
I don't have anything to say about this picture, I'm still trying to repress these memories.





Suds and me conducting a fire show
To all of you who are wondering "who gave Shane and suds fire???!" I think that the guy was a little drunk. Also there weren't too many people around so I suppose he figured any damage would be to themselves rather than others? 

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Beach bar on Ton Sai where the boys spent the night despite having already purchasing a room.
Shane doesn't mention that this is a picture of Suds and Nathan taking a shot of rum which had a snake and a scorpion in it. The very chill Thai bartender keeps it on the bar to attract the kind of people who want to drink things filled with snakes and scorpions. The cat was just along for the ride. 

 Deep sea fishing where we caught 6 tuna and 2 mahi mahi.
Well, other people mostly caught fish. Shane and I mostly tried not to be sick... I was more successful than Shane. Seasickness cures offered to us by our friends were "beer and cigarettes".

To those of you who can’t make it half way around the world we are glad to have you all as readers so we can share Thailand through our blog posts.
You should probably just come out though... seriously.

Kids will be cats...

Today was not one of my finest days as a teacher. It was the first day back to school for my grade 2s after a week of holidays (not sure why they had a week off... I still had to go to work). This class is rowdy at the best of times, and after a week of freedom they were absolutely out of control. By the end of the class I was totally out of ideas as to how to shut them up, after taking away half of their team points and refusing to let them play any games unless they behaved better.

We were doing a cutting and pasting activity. At the end of the class when I asked the kids to clean up, they sort of did, but brought me one gluestick without a lid. This was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. I only have 6 gluesticks for my whole class, so to lose one would really be a pain. "Nobody is going for lunch until we find that lid!" I bellowed. About 3 kids started looking for the lid, and the rest of the class dissolved into a game of "cats".

This is what it felt like. In this scene, I am off to the side losing my mind while the kids crawl around on the floor meowing and getting in cat fights. I hate cats at the best of times. At one point, one kid came and rubbed her head on my leg, meowing like some kind of feline demon. All I wanted was a gluestick lid. Why wouldn't they just find the damn gluestick lid? SOMEBODY COME AND MAKE THESE ANIMALS FIND THE GLUESTICK LID! After abandoning the search and ordering the kids back to their desks before lunch, I finally found the lid. One of my students was pretending it was a cat toy and batting it around the classroom. At this point my head blew up. I tried to enthusiastically thank the kid who brought me the lid, but I really wanted to turn into some kind of hulk teacher "YOU WON'T LIKE ME WHEN I'M MAD!!!" and sentence them all to some terrible punishment.

This is how it probably really played out. Teacher was freaking out at the front of the room, but didn't seem to be asking anyone to do anything specific. Cats sounded like a fun game. Hey, cats was a fun game! Let's see if teacher wants to play cats, maybe it will cheer her up and she will stop yelling...

Thai Street Food Extravaganza... Part 1?

One thing that we really DON'T miss about home is the VERY limited street food. Back home, you can get a sausage. That's it. In Thailand you can get just about everything...

We have been hoping to do a post about Thai street food for a while, but we just haven't had the camera with us during those quick street food runs! Tonight we decided to do dinner, street-food style.

 Mmmmmm fried chicken. Fried chicken in Thailand is SO GOOD with its thin crispy batter. This was fried in a BIG wok full of oil, over a propane burner on the side of the road. Perfection!

 Quartered tiny pineapples. At about 1/4 (or less) the size of regular pineapple, they are sweet and delicious; with none of the sour-ness in regular sized pineapple. These were for dessert.

 Noodle soup in a bag. One bag has the noodles, kale and bean sprouts and the other has broth and various meat (this time it was fish... not as good, we prefer chicken or pork soups).

 Steamed pork shumai, these are little dumplings filled with spiced pork. The bamboo stick is so you can eat them while walking down the street.

 A pork bun. This one was pork and preserved egg but our favourite is red pork. It is a rice-dough bun filled with spiced pork (or other delicious fillings). We often have red pork buns as breakfast on weekends.

 Dinner! Thailand gives out more than its fair share of plastic bags... what else are you going to serve take-away soup in?

 Here's the soup in a bowl.

Here is the chicken, pork bun and pork shumai on a plate :)

Hopefully we'll remember to take the camera out for some more pictures soon!