Little Munchkins

Sorry it's been so long since our last blog...It's the end of the first term, and we've been up to our necks in marking, assessing, giving exams, and making tiny, little check marks in tiny, little boxes on report cards. So we thought we should let you see a little of what/who we're so busy assessing!





















This is from "Miss Haylie's" circle time in the morning with one of her 2 Kindergarten classes. One of the most important lessons to learn about teaching in Thailand is the power of the sticker in a 5-year-old's life!



This is the class conquering some of the essential phrases to learning a second language. Such as"My favorite animal is..." :)

Fire Show at Kho Samed

Stu's fire show!
WooHoo!














Haylie's fire show!
YEAH! Alright!











Their fire show! Woooooo.

Aphawa

The floating market! Literally :) Anything you could think of to eat (and a lot that you wouldn't think of) is for sale here.



Cool lady cruisin' down the river, doing her thing.
















We ended up taking a boat tour with some Thai friends. It was all about looking at as many fireflies as possible in one night.
It's a good thing we got this smiley pic before we actually started to realize how much of our lives would be spent in this boat. I think we saw every firefly in Thailand though....twice.







A fine example of things Stu might try, but Haylie wouldn't kiss him for at least a week.







ummmm...?????...yeah

The Death Railway

It's actually not even named "The Death Railway" because of tourist casualties these days. We didn't know anything about it before coming here, but who wouldn't want to look into something with such an intriguing name???


It was built by Allied POW's and Asian forced labor during WWII. The Japanese military was in a big rush to make a supply route from Thailand to Burma. Over 120,000 people died building it over the course of just under 2 years because of extremely harsh working conditions and treatment from the guards.
This is "Hell Fire Pass". It was towards the end of construction and they had round the clock work with 16-18 hour shifts.







Only a small stretch of the railway is maintained for passenger transit. We went on it. On ..."The Death Railway"...






A lot of you are probably familiar with the book/movie called "The Bridge Over the River Kwai". It was part of "The Death Railway", and, after the Allies destroyed it during the war, the Japanese gave a new bridge as a gesture to Thailand.
This is what it looks like when Stu and Haylie stand by the bridge over the River Kwai.

Fresh Market

We've gotten use to a lot of "strange" things in Thailand, but every once in a while something will really strike us as just plain bizarre. This is a typical scene in one of the fresh markets around here.