Wronka's on the Road

Reality

2010-05-14T08:16:00.000-07:00

Snap back to reality, back to reality...So the rap song echoes in our heads as we have now been home for three weeks and routine is slowly finding us. We would be lying if we said we weren't glad to be home, but we continually find ourselves wondering how 7 months could possibly have gone by so fast. It will take years to fully process what we experienced and thankfully we have plenty of friends and family willing to wade through our stories and thousands of pictures with us.

We are living in Old Town, a neighborhood just north of downtown, and are loving it. Besides a plethora of restaurants and bars, Lake Michigan is only ¼ mile away. We are both back to work at Mercy Home, Deb is working on plans to open a bakery there and employ our youth. Joe is now a project manager and leading youth on trips to Lake of the Ozarks, the Boundary Waters and an international trip to Ireland over the course of the summer. Work is keeping us busy, but we often sit back at night and reminisce about our travels. We miss many things about being on the road, namely having no schedule, agenda or meetings to attend. Wandering into unknown neighborhoods and interacting with people from another country are possible in Chicago, but it is not quite the same. We don't miss carrying all of our belongings on our back and we don't miss sleeping in different beds each night.

We miss seeing and being with each other for the better part of each day. It is very weird to part ways in the morning and not see each other until dinner. Spending the last 7 months together was one of the biggest blessings of the whole trip. We are proud to say that all of the souvenirs we purchased and shipped home made it back, wine from Italy, suits from Thailand and Vietnam along with t-shirts and other items from across Europe. Our house is soon going to be filled with pictures that we took from all over the world. The hardest part has been deciding which ones to frame.

A year ago we were eagerly awaiting to hear if we had been accepted into the teaching program and having no idea what we might be getting into. Well, we most definitely are happy that we got accepted and traveled as extensively as we did. It was certainly an incredible trip and one that we might try to replicate one day. We appreciate all those that followed us on the blog and supported us during our time away. This is the last post as our lives will get significantly less interesting each day. If you have ever considered traveling or know someone that is, have them give us a call.

It is most definitely true what Ferris Bueller said "if you don't take time to stop and smell the roses, life will pass you by." Well, get on with it. The world awaits!

Lots of love.

Deb and Joe

3 days and counting

2010-04-17T14:47:00.000-07:00

Our bags are getting heavier (souvenirs), our feet are sore and blistered, we've hiked mountains, trekked through rainforest, and swam in oceans and seas. We visited islands, war monuments, ruins and palaces from thousands of years ago and the list goes on. We've indulged in great food and excellent wine, we've slept in good beds, bad beds and down right awful beds. We've traveled by ferry, bus, train, and plane and cannot begin to count the mileage. Our clothes could use a good washing machine instead of a bathroom sink. We've met people from all over the world and made new friends from different walks of life and most importantly we've made memories to last a life time. Joe and I have been gone for nearly seven months now and have exactly 4 days remaining until we head home (unless the volcano says otherwise). Our time away has passed seemingly in a blink of an eye, but will stay with us forever.

No matter what anyone tells you 5 months living abroad and eight weeks of truly backpacking takes its toll on the body. Don't get us wrong, we have soaked in every minute of each country and that is probably why our feet are so sore. As we finish up the last days of our trip we are having mixed emotions about getting back home. On one side we are thrilled to see our friends and family, to have a place to live with more than just a backpack of clothes to choose from, to cook our own food, to sit back and relax without having an itinerary of where we are to be next, to begin working again with the Mercy Home kids, and to just feel at home. On the other hand, we are sad to see our time coming to an end. Being together on our travels around the world, to have a new adventure each day, to be exposed to so many different cultures, to meet such wonderful people, to have a new challenge to conquer will truly be missed.

We continue to count our blessings as we have traveled safe and especially for the support from friends and family. The road doesn't end here, just takes a turn and one day we hope to jump back on the travelers highway!

Germany

2010-04-14T13:12:00.000-07:00

We have departed Germany and are heading towards Paris as this post comes together. Our weekend in Munich was a blast as we enjoyed a night at the infamous Hofbrau Haus, a walking tour and a trip to the concentration camp at Dachau on Sunday.

Heading to the Augustiner Beer House on Friday night seemed like an appropriate way to kick off our time in Germany. 5 liters of beer, a few shots, 3 different kinds of meat (for Joe) and a huge plate of Spatzle later we were in good spirits. The brauhouse is setup for two things, drinking and eating. The singing, conversation with strangers and a giggling walk home were just a bonus for us. We met fellow travelers and a number of locals that night. Most of it was spent in conversation with two German guys who had been given a reprieve from their wives to have a night out on the town. They were most definitely taking advantage of this and gladly welcomed us to join them. Its a bit hard to recollect all that we talked about, but we found each of their business cards in our jackets the next morning and the pictures in our camera filled in a few of the blank spots. There was a brass band playing and Deb even got to chat with the trombone player who was more interested in sipping out of everyone's beer than he was playing his instrument. We got back to our hotel around 10:30 and it felt like 2 in the morning for us. The lesson we learned; our college years and the “abilities” we had then are long gone...

Saturday was spent nursing a headache and enjoying the many sites that Munich has to offer. We toured a number of churches, marketplaces and shops for a better part of the day. Joe finally got his wiener schnitzel as Deb enjoyed potato salad for dinner. A couple of pretzels and sweet treats fueled us as well for what turned out to be a day of serious city walking. Sunday morning we went to Dachau and took a sobering tour of the first concentration camp organized in Germany during WWII. It is hard to describe what one feels while walking around a place that's only purpose was to kill people. Germany has done a very good job of turning the camp into a place of remembrance and education. The memorial's to the victims are beautiful and we are very glad to have spent the better part of a day there.

We headed to a small town outside of Stuttgart on Sunday evening, where Joe's dad grew up, to visit his cousins. Uncle Helmuth and Aunt Marianne showed us around the area for two days. Stops included the old cities of Rothenburg, Esslingen, Ludwigsburg and Linden. It was good to meet more Wronka's and even a bit entertaining to listen to Joe try his best to speak German. His ability to order beer and pretzels is good, but it goes down hill from there...Anyway. We had a great time with the family and enjoyed some very good meals and sharing of stories. They wanted to see our pictures and may have regretted asking as we dropped about 4 megabytes of photos on them!

Germany was good to us and the best part was visiting with family that we rarely get to see. We want to get back to the northern part of the country at some point, but what we saw these past few days will be pretty hard to beat. The travel itinerary is getting short now, only Paris and London remain. One week from today we will be back in Chicago, hopefully we can find a way to slow time down!

Cinque Terre to Interlachen

2010-04-11T14:02:00.000-07:00

The Easter Bunny was able to find us in Italy and the present we received was great weather for our two days in Cinque Terre. Our time was short and we made every effort to explore this famously beautiful spot on the Italian Riviera. Cinque Terre or 5 Towns is a testament to human ingenuity as the local people have cultivated land, literally hanging over the sea, to grow some of the best wine grapes in the world. As a UNESCO World Heritage site the area receives many visitors, some making the 9km walk between the towns as we did and others using the train to venture into each of the 5 towns. Our hike was one of the best we have ever taken. If we were not admiring the postcardesque views of the Mediterranean from a cliff we were enjoying the tiered vineyards that rise straight up the mountainside. The trail is rugged in most parts and we were grateful that our blisters are now callouses and our lung capacity rivals that of Olympians. Even though the hike was fairly strenuous the views you are rewarded with are incomparable to anything we have seen. Lush, green vineyards rise up the mountainside and the ledge where the trail runs hangs precariously over the ultra-clear, aqua green sea below.

The first two legs of the walk are fairly easy and the trail was crowded in parts. Walking through the famed “Amore Alley” was interesting as the tradition is for two lovers to place a lock with their initials onto a fence looking over the sea, thus ensuring their love will never be broken. We decided an entrepreneur with a bolt cutter could have a steady stream of business as we witnessed a disenchanted “ex” trying to pry a lock off the fence. Having no lock and being pretty sure a marriage certificate stamped with blood (remember the fight) covered us for a few years we moved on.

A stroll through each of the towns helped disperse the crowds as people ducked into souvenir, wine or snack shops. Of course, we stopped into a Gelato shop to replenish our electrolytes. The next 3 legs got the lungs burning and the sweat pouring down. It was in the 4th town of Vernazza that we made “the purchase.” Throughout our stay in Italy we had enjoyed a glass or bottle of red wine with every meal, except breakfast, and were set on taking a few bottles home to enjoy on special occasions. Well, we found a “mom and pop” operation that welcomed us and our credit card warmly. A lengthy discussion and sample of the local wines led to “the purchase” of 12 bottles that will meet us home in about two weeks.

The day ended with an incredible dinner that included award winning stuffed mussels for Joe and pesto pasta for Deb, wine as well. Cinque Terrre was a great way to end our stay in Italy and the hike rewarded is with great pictures, laughs, wine, sore legs and most importantly, unforgettable memories.

Interlachen

A day long train ride from Cinque Terre got us to Interlachen, Switzerland and the heart of the Swiss Alps. We had just one and half days, but squeezed in a fair amount in the that time. Set between 2 lakes, hence the name, the city is cleanest of clean (pretty sure they comb the fringes of the grass) and the people are damn friendly. We wandered the town after arriving in the afternoon, stopping for coffee and watching the numerous adrenaline junkies jump out of airplanes and off the sides of hills only to land in the huge green field in the middle of town. Our dinner of fine wine, bread, cheese and Swiss chocolate at the lakeside will always be remembered. The full day we had was dedicated to tackling the 567 meter Harder Klum mountain. It was the hardest hike we have taken on this trip and our thighs will not soon let us forget it. The views from the top were awesome as the whole valley is spread before you like a miniature model. The fresh mountain air and a delicious picnic lunch was a fine way to celebrate our summit. Walking through town in the afternoon we were stocked up on and sampled the fine Swiss chocolate made locally. If you visit us in Chicago, you might just be privy to our stash if any remains by the time we get home. Our only regret from Switzerland is that we did not have more time there. Alas, we will just have to travel back again for some skiing and maybe even a skydive! We are on the way to Munich, Germany right now. Speeding through the Swiss countryside on a fast train is fine by us as our legs are in much need of a days rest.

Italy Part II - Florence

2010-04-06T13:38:00.000-07:00

Happy Easter!

Leaving Rome on Friday and traveling by a very fast, efficient train to Florence left us wondering why the US has not invested more in high speed trains. We digress...Florence is a jewel and we were more than happy to spend Easter weekend in the city that is home to the Duomo, David, the Uffizi and much more.

Florence is also the final resting place for 4,202 American soldiers, including my grandfather, who were killed in World War II. On April 21st, 1945 my grandpa was shot down and killed outside the city. He is buried at the American Military Cemetery in Florence. Deb and I had the honor to visit his grave on April 2nd which marked the 67th anniversary of his marriage to my grandmother. The cemetery is just outside the city and sits on the side of a beautiful wooded hill that overlooks a small river. It is quiet, incredibly well kept and run by a very friendly expatriate named Angelo. He was very interested in my grandfather's life and was helpful in our family's attempt to find the actual site of my grandpa's plane crash. American Military Cemetery's seem to be overlooked in many guidebooks (except Normandy), but in reality they are a really great place to visit as you are able to gain insight into history of a place, pay respect to those who defended our freedom and are Visiting his grave has been on my list of the things to do for many years and it will go down as one of the highlights of our trip.

Saturday was spent wandering aimlessly through the ancient streets of Florence, with a stop to see David completed by Michelangelo in 1504. Hands down the most impressive piece of art we have ever seen. Fueled by another delicious Italian pizza and red wine we continued on our way around the Duomo, up to Fort Belvieder (which is no longer open but is not marked anywhere to inform travelers of this), over the Ponte Vecchio and back again. Every corner brings a different church, a new alley to explore, a new gelato shop that is just waiting for Deb to taste test.

Sunday morning began with a lovely parade outside our hotel with Italians in traditional clothes, trumpets and drums galore. Next came fireworkers, a dove rocketed down the aisle, clapping and more fireworks were not a show we attended but the beginning of the Easter Sunday mass. It was quite the spectacle and unlike any other mass we have ever attended. The mass itself was beautiful inside the green and red marbled Cathedral. Unfortunately brunch is not a meal over here in Italy so we sat down to a traditional Italian meal for our Easter dinner together, which happened to be the best meal of our trip. Delicious homemade fettuccine for Deb and Spaghetti with mussels and a veal loin for Joe. Of course there was a stop at yet another Gelato shop to top of the delicious meal and to make-up for the lack of Easter candy. An Easter Sunday that will not soon be forgotten.

Tomorrow we head to Cinque Terre for a hike through the five villages before forging ahead to Switzerland on Wednesday. Our days are quickly dwindling before our eyes and although we are looking forward to being home, visiting with friends and family, and not living out of a backpack we are sad to see our time abroad coming to an end. Italy has been a magnificent stop along the road, one that has quickly won our hearts, and a place we hope to return to because seven days is not nearly enough.

Part I - Rome

2010-04-05T09:10:00.000-07:00

From fountains to fettuccine and everything between, we tried our best to do Rome and all that it has to offer. The city is amazing and should be added to your list of places to visit if you never have. We arrived on Monday and visited our first church (Catholic that is) since leaving home in October. St. John's in Laterno was beautiful and the history of the church is incredibly interesting. Of course we indulged in pasta, wine and the always delicious Gelato!

Tuesday was dedicated to all things Roman. Colisseum, the Forum, Palatine Hills, Circus Maximus, etc. The simple fact is that Rome dictated for a very long time how the world ran and the influence of this city is felt to this day in most everywhere. We enjoyed the cool spring weather as we tramped around, through and over all sorts of ancient sites. What we enjoyed most about Rome is that the city has found a harmony between its past and the future. Its not uncommon to find anicent ruins next door to a Apple Store or sitting on the Spanish steps watching people shop at Gucci.

Wednesday was spent at the Vatican and touring the many museum's and galleries that are housed on the grounds. A little known fact is that Vatican City is the world's smallest commonwealth. One would think that such a title means the place can be walked in total in a short time. That is not the case at all. We spent nearly 5 hours in the various museums, enjoying sculptures, paintings and religious relics and maybe saw ½ of all there is to see. St. Peter's Square and St. Peter's Cathedral awe inspiring and we spent a few hours just enjoying the two places. Finishing our tour in the Sistine Chapel was the proverbial icing on the cake.

Our one goal for Thursday was to secure tickets to mass that evening with the Pope. We arrived at the US Bishops office for visitors to the Vatican around 9am to try and garner tickets from the friendly nun who was in charge of distribution. We were prepared to pull our all of our “Catholic Cards” (eg. Lifelong Catholics, graduates of Catholic Universities, employees of a Catholic organization, Catholic Sunday school teachers) in order to get tickets that were in short supply. The simple act of opening a door for a stranger as we entered the office was all we really needed to do. As Joe began the “we are Catholic and need tickets” sales pitch, the woman we opened the door for turned and offered us two extra tickets she had. Tickets acquired! We are pretty sure we could have got tickets without the stranger's kindness as it turned out the nun was from Minnesota!

Anyway, with tickets in hand we enjoyed a morning coffee at the Trevi Fountain (a coin was thrown into it to ensure our return to Rome), gelatto on the Spanish Steps and an afternoon snack at the Pantheon as well as a stroll around the Piazza Novanna. Around 2pm we headed to St. Peter's to get in line for mass, but quickly found out that mass as at St. John's in Laterno and raced to get in line there. As the mass hour drew near the crowds got bigger and we soon found ourselves in a sea of people. When the gates opened it was impossible for us to even walk, we just got carried by the current of bodies to the door. Thankfully, we got into the church, no seat, but we were able to enjoy the beautiful Holy Thursday mass with the Pope. Another delicious dinner ended a near perfect day in Rome.

We departed Rome on Friday morning for Florence. Rome was spectacular and our sore feet can attest to all there is to do and see in the city.

Greece

2010-03-28T11:46:00.000-07:00

Yasa! Our week long exploration of Greece is over, but will not be forgotten. Our long journey home got off to a great start when we landed in Athens last Sunday. Exploring the city which brought us everything from Gyros to Democracy was a blast. Graffiti and roaming bands of youth selling knock off designer bags and purses was the only hint of lawlessness that we saw. The police presence in central Athens was very strong as protests continue on a daily basis because of the faltering economy, but nothing arose during our time there.

We toured the Acropolis and were amazed by the enormity of the different buildings. The Parthenon and surroundings temples are undergoing renovation, but this did not deter from the beauty of the place. A side trip to Hadrians Gate and the Parliament also impressed us. Ancients Agora's (marketplace) and numerous ruins dot the city were always fun to stop at and speculate what the function was. We also spent an afternoon at the Archeological Museum of Athens and walked out of there with a significant understanding the many people's and cultures that have shaped Greece over the centuries. We worked Athens over pretty good in two days, but definitely took some time to enjoy a peaceful park and lots of Greek food!

Life was moving so fast that we just had to head to an island to slow the trip down (poor us, right?). On Wednesday we took a ferry from Athens to the Santorini, better known as postcard island. If you have seen pictures of Greece you have probably seen Santorini. Bright white buildings, blue chapels dotted amongst them and a beautiful sea that surrounds it all. Well, the postcards are spot on in the landscape that they capture. This is one of the most beautiful places we have seen in our travels. The island was split up by a huge volcanic eruption a few centuries squared ago and a Caldera was formed. Basically the middle of the island sank into the ocean and you can walk around the ring. Its a spectacular site.

The island is just starting to wake up for the tourist crush that comes in April and we are glad to have been here during a quiet time. We stayed on far south of the island, home to the black and red sand beaches. One day was spent wandering the small towns and beaches near our hotel and just enjoying the quiet crash of the Aegean Sea. We also tackled two big hikes during our time. One was more of a climb up a 600 meter mountain that our hotel is at the base of. At the top is the ancient town of Thira or at least whats left of it. It was a great climb and having ruins and the top of the mountain to ourselves on a beautiful day was made all the better by the great loaf of cheese bread we had for lunch. The bread was purchased from a small bakery that we found our first night and literally have gone to everyday for treats of all sorts. One night we had Backlava and Cheesecake for dinner, no joke and no regrets!

Our other big walk was from the main town of Fira to the postcard perfect town of Oia. It was a 13km hike and took us all of 3 hours to do. It was the best hike we have done to date. We were tired, but grateful for the delicious Gyro and Mythos beers at the end and it was all topped off by a beautiful sunset over the crater of the volcano.

We decided and needed (blisters and sore calves) to take it easy our last day. Renting a 4 wheeler seemed like the best way to see the remaining parts of the island and drive around we did! It was a blast to visit some of the remote beaches and to cruise the roads of Santorini at blistering speed of 20mph. The day ended with our 5th gyro of the trip and another beautiful sunset that was hopefully captured appropriately in one of the 1,004 pictures we took!

We are off to Rome now and will be there until Friday. One thing is for certain, Greece has not seen the last of the Wronka's and our bet is that Italy will soon make that list as well!

SE Asia Takeaway

2010-03-24T06:55:00.000-07:00

This is the end my friends, well, not quite the end. It is the end of our time in SE Asia and trying to summarize our feelings, experiences, impressions, etc. is damn near impossible. Leaving Thailand over 3 weeks ago and traveling through Laos, Cambodia and most recently Vietnam was simply, incredible. We thought we would share with you some of what we will takeaway from our time in SE Asia.

Teaching English is harder than it seems. Teaching children is wonderful. Teaching children is tiring. Teaching children is inspiring. Buses are a great way to travel. 16 hours on a bus will make your mind unravel. Okay, no more rhymes...

Talking with the passenger next to you is always more interesting than listening to your iPod. Riding a moto-taxi in Bangkok is a great way to see your life flash before your eyes. Crossing the street in Bangkok and Saigon is like Frogger in real life. Sidewalks in SE Asia are for driving as well as walking. The locally brewed beer is always fresh. Everyone should SCUBA dive once in their life. Thai food is the most spicy in all of SE Asia. White rice is served at every meal and goes with everything. Anything can be eaten with chopsticks.

Sleeping on an island in the Mekong River is a good way to meet locals. The temples of Angkor Wat are much cooler in person and much cooler in the morning. Sunscreen haters will melt on beaches in Vietnam. Learning “thank you” in any language gets you a long way. Learning to say “beer please” will get you a good laugh and beer to boot.

A smile needs no translation. Good people are everywhere. Every family, everywhere, has “that” relative. A unfamiliar smell for you might be another person's favorite dish. Anything grilled and on a stick is good. Soda can be drunk from a plastic bag. Don't knock Karaoke until you have tried it.

Gummy worms and beef jerky are staple foods on some trips. Pointing at another person's dish in a restaurant is the best way to order. The longer the line at a food stall, the better the food. Sunsets never get old. Walking a city is the best way to see it. Not all airports are the same and that goes for restrooms as well.

Our accent is funny. Asking for directions is the best way to get lost. Asking for directions is the best way to meet a local. Sleeper trains do not always mean you get sleep. Missing your stop is a blessing in disguise. Black snow is not so cool when it gets in your beer. Sugarcane trucks are freight trains on four wheels. Bugs in a room are better than geckos in your pants. Hangovers suck wherever you are.

“Yes, no, okay?” is a legitimate answer to questions in Thailand. Bargaining with toothless women is half the fun of buying a souvenir. Impoverished people are the richest in spirit. Traveling with your spouse brings untold rewards to a marriage. You find yourself and each other on the road. A good laugh is the easiest way to say “I'm sorry.”

War devastates families, countries and the environment. The survivors pick up the pieces and move ahead with grace and strength. The spirit of a country resides in the people. A mother or father's love is all children want. A significant distance and time away really does make the heart ache for friends and family.

SE Asia will never be just a trip we took or a region we visited. It was home for us and will live within us forever. The above are just a few of the takeaways we easily recalled while sitting in three airports on our way to Europe। Many more will surface in the days and years to come, but we wanted to share a few so you know what this time has meant to us.

We arrived in Athens after 24+ hours of travel. Our bed is rock hard and there is a pigeon sitting on our window sill looking quite suspicious in our opinion. Stay tuned for the updates from Europe.

The Bus Ride

2010-03-17T09:20:00.001-07:00

Painted on the side of the bus were the words Express Sleeper Bus. Two-thirds of this advertisement were false. Express it was not, sleeping was for a select few and yes it was a bus. Our trip from Hoi An to Nha Trang was supposed to take 12 hours, departing at 6pm and arriving in the seaside town at 6am.

As the bus pulled out of Hoi An something was different we thought. Maybe it was the tiny seat/beds that were not made with giants like us in mind. Or maybe it was the fact that no one checked our tickets. It was also strange that there was no toilet on board and unfortunately we did not realize this until two bottles of water and two cans of soda were consumed. Just as the empty water bottle started looking like a port-a-potty the luck of the Irish kicked in and we stopped for a break. Sprinting to the the toilet was an easy task, but when I opened the door I was greeted by 10 chickens roosting happily on the floor and on the sink. Yep, they kept chickens in the restroom, needless to say I passed on the chicken fried rice they were serving at the restaurant. Thankfully there was another toilet not being used by any other barnyard animals.

The bus quickly grew quiet as most people settled in for the night. Struggling to find a comfortable position on seats that measured about 18 inches wide and 5 feet long was an ugly display of athleticism on our part. Of course the Vietnamese guy in front of us was snoring almost immediately and jealous rage set in around 11pm as he never woke once to the many bumps and frequent stops the express bus seemed to be making. We have grown used to buses stopping to pick up and drop off locals who only ride for a few miles and it didn't really seem odd to me when we stopped again at about 1:15am. It got interesting at about 1:20am when I realized we were not moving again and in fact the bus was not even running. I looked out the window to see a sign the simply read garage, uh oh. The driver and his assistant were outside the bus looking at the front left tire and after a few minutes a very tired looking gentlemen emerged from the house connected to the garage. He brought with him a jack and torque wrench, unless you drive in NASCAR this is not a good sign.

As the bus was jacked up and the wheel removed most of the people got off to either smoke or just get some fresh air. I, along with most of the other men on the bus gathered around the mechanic as he removed the tire and inspected under the bus. Having no expertise in the area of bus repair there was little I could do to help, so I did the next best thing and did play by play with the English guy next to me. Saying things like, “that is a torque wrench, those are lug-nuts and the hubcap looks ok” was about the extent. When the Englishmen heard me say “hubcap” he laughed and said we call that a “tire shield in England”. Then and there I thanked our forefathers for winning back 1776 because I will be damned if I ever called a hubcap a “tire shield”.

Anyway, it seemed that removing the wheel and looking under the bus solved the issue that brought us to a halt because around 1:45am the bus was back on the road. At 1:47am the bus was stopped outside another garage and in an almost exact replay the driver and his assistant were back out to the wheel and a even more tired looking guy was emerging from his house. This time he woke up his wife to help him carry out the jack and the torque wrench. As the men gathered to watch the repairs and continue novice speculation the guy next to me was Vietnamese and he started to talk about the problem, I think. His gestures did not make it any clearer to me about what had happened, but I nodded in agreement nonetheless. I even offered up my idea that maybe the flux capacitor was broken and he nodded in agreement. Broken vehicles can bring just about anyone together and I think if Obama and Kim Jung Il , Iran's Ahmadinejad and maybe Castro all took a road trip the world could get better much quicker.

Thankfully, mechanic number two had the solution and we got on the road a little after 2:15am. Arriving in Nha Trang only an hour late was fine by us because it meant we could get off the Express Sleeper Bus. St. Patricks Day was celebrated with little fanfare here, but we enjoyed a few beers on the beach to honor the day. We are going to give SCUBA diving a try tomorrow, hopefully the green beer from tonight will not affect the dive tomorrow!

Hue Vietnam

2010-03-12T02:54:00.000-08:00

Our last stop in the grand tour of SE Asia is Vietnam. We started in the middle of the country, Hue (pronounced “way”) on Wednesday. Arriving to 60 degree weather was a shock to our systems as its been nearly 6 months since we have felt anything less than 75. This is not a complaint, we are fully aware that winter is still right outside many of our readers doors. Anyway, Hue was great. I am an avid reader of Vietnam War history and to finally visit some of the places I have read so much about has been a treat. Deb has been a trooper about it all, getting into the history as much, if not more, than me. We toured the Citadel and the Imperial City in Hue on our first day. Both places saw heavy fighting and still show some signs of the war today. Our second day was spent on a tour that had stops at Khe Sahn firebase, Doc Mieu base, the Rockpile, Camp Carol and the Vinh Moc tunnels on the China Sea. Going into the tunnels was an adventure as they were designed for people about 6 inches shorter than us. During the war there military dropped six tons of bombs per person in the city of Vinh Moc, the tunnels were built by the civilian population so they would not have to abandon their home. The ingenuity and impressive engineering skills of the people was not lost on us as we descended nearly 30 meters under the earth. It was a very cool, very insightful experience.

We also crossed the former north/south border and like any good visitor, had our picture taken straddling the two sides. I will not bore you with any more war history. However, it is worth noting that for the amount bombs dropped and the shear devastation that America inflicted on the mainly civilian population, the people of each place could not have been more welcoming. We were greeted warmly and without the slightest hint of animosity by the Vietnamese people who, in my opinion, have every right to hold a grudge against Americans. We enjoyed our tour with the very knowledgeable Mr. Duy and our fearless driver Thinh who got us from the Laotian boarder to the South China Sea and back to Hue without a scratch!

Our time in Hue and the previous week in Cambodia wore us out. So, we are taking a bit of a vacation from I guess you could say, vacation. How spoiled are we, right? We are now in Hoi An, a beautiful little city nestled a few miles from the South China Sea. We arrived on Saturday and immediately hit the beach, today was the same and tomorrow won't be any different. It is great here, the water is refreshing, the beer is always cold and everyone is always smiling. We have not been total bums in Hoi An. Deb is getting a business suit made by a local tailor for a very good price and the simple act of choosing who to buy from was an adventure in of itself. We have enjoyed two really nice dinner's in the Old Town area of the city. There are no cars allowed in the area and the streets are lit with many different colored lanterns that go hand in hand with gentle music that escapes from many of the restaurants. Its been a nice little break from traveling trail. We jump back into the mix on Tuesday when we head for the city of Nha Trang. Although, we are on the beach and have snorkeling and fishing tours planned...Maybe the vacation from the vacation will continues until we head to Europe.

2010-03-09T03:00:00.000-08:00

Cambodia won us over, no question about it. Like an underdog in your favorite movie, the country is making a comeback after the horrors of the Khmer Rouge years. We have met numerous people that recall with ease the pain of those years. Their children and grandchildren are working tirelessly to get Cambodia back on track. There is contrast to be found at every corner. Internet cafes are situated next to stalls of chickens and pigs. Giant cranes tower over bamboo shacks that date back to the great Angkor empire. Roads made for ox-cart travel are now overrun with scooters, semi trucks and buses carrying tourists and locals alike. The Cambodian's we have met are optimistic about their future, however, they are still stunted from the genocide of nearly 3 million people during the reign of Pol Pot.

Our best experience so far in this country has come from a surprising source. Many would vote that the great temples of Angkor Wat or the haunting grounds of the Killing Fields were their favorites. The Cambodian people top our list. We have been blessed to meet a number of smart, energetic and truly friendly residents along the way. Joe spent the better part of a 5 hour bus ride talking with a man whose father had been killed by the Khmer Rouge. The conversation ranged from his personal story to the history and future of the country. No where in our travels have we met people so willing to share their feelings about a tragic period in their countries history. Our lunch time conversation with young men working at our guesthouse shed light on the hopes and worries of the 20 something generation. Meeting with Joe's friend from Ireland who now works as a lawyer at an NGO in Phenom Penh allowed us to quiz another western about the development plans for Cambodia. It has been the conversations with people that have really brought Cambodia's past and present to life for us.

The temples of Angkor Wat were awesome. Rising out of the jungle and surrounded by incredible pools of water, the whole complex is overwhelming in its enormity. Lucky for us, we had 3 days to play Indiana Jones. The most amazing part of all the temples is ingenuity the ancient people had. Massive amounts of stone were carved from the surrounding hills and used to build magnificent temples that would be considered skyscrapers in many cities today. The intricate carvings on the walls that depict ancient life rival any photograph one could have taken. The temples might be abandoned, but they are far from dead.

Phenom Penh has seen the worst of the worst in rulers. Pol Pot's twisted vision of a socialist utopia resulted in the slaughter of millions. Less than 30 years ago that city was a ghost town. Today, the city is bursting at the seams with growth. Businesses, restaurants, schools, etc. are establishing themselves in the very places people once fled. Our tour of the S-21 prision complex brought to life the brutal tactics employed by the Khmer Rouge. A dinner at a local restaurant that employs at-risk youth showed us the that Cambodian's are unwilling to be pulled back to those terrible days. Their collective optimism is moving the city forward and making it easy for traveler's like us to say this our favorite place yet.

Southern Laos and Siem Reap

2010-03-05T06:08:00.000-08:00

Over 4 months ago we left the states to journey around the world. Our travels brought us to the south island of New Zealand and then the work, more like incredible experience, began in Thailand. Last Friday marked the end of our time as teachers at Anuban Dan Chang. It was a sad goodbye, but it also was the start of our journey, albeit long, home. Today, we are in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Home to the largest religious building in the world, Angkor Wat. Before we arrived here we spent 3 days in Laos, specifically the Si Phon Don islands.

Laos was spectacularly beautiful. The people are infectiously nice and loved the idea of westerners visiting their country. We had the opportunity to drive from the Thai border to southern Laos in the back of a pickup truck with a few other travellers and 6 Laotian people. The journey to Si Phon Don was about 4 hours and along the way the Laotian people gave us a sample of local foods, all unknown to us but very good nonetheless. Arriving on the island of Don Dhet which rests in the middle of the mammoth Mekong river at sunset was breathtaking. We enjoyed some wonderful food, mainly fish and fresh fruit each day. The Mekong river is the lifeline for the people of these islands. It is their highway, their grocery store, shower and source of entertainment. We partook in a bit of everything. A local guide brought us on tour of the river and we were able to spot a few of the very rare Irrawidy Dolphins, less than two dozen of these fresh water dolphins exist in this part of the world. Biking and walking around two neighboring islands was a very rewarding second day and it was topped off by a stop at some impressive waterfalls. Beyond the natural beauty Laos, there is a sense among the people that life is too short to worry about the little things. Family is most important and enjoying the company of whoever happens to be around is a priority everywhere we went. The French colonized Laos and some of their influence can still be felt, mainly in the architecture and copious amounts of baguettes! We most definitely did not budget for enough time in Laos and hope to return one day.

Heading to Cambodia on Tuesday was a test of patience and endurance. We knew it would be a long trip as the roads in Laos and Cambodia are in pretty bad shape. The expected time of travel from Laos to Siem Reap was about 14 hours. 16 long, long hours later we arrived here. The bus stopped a number of times for no apparent reason and without explanation. Thankfully, we brought good books and a fully charged iPod to get us through the journey. Siem Reap is simply amazing. Consider this. Less than 15 years ago the country was on complete lock down by the vicious Khmer Rouge. Over 2 million people were murdered during their reign of terror and the country's growth ground to a halt in 20+ years of Khmer Rouge rule. Much to their credit, the Cambodian's are working very hard to catch up to their regional neighbors today. Judging by the accommodation we are in and the superb facilities at Angkor Wat and surrounding temples, the country is quickly getting back on it's feet. We have spent two full days touring the city and the temples. It is nearly impossible to describe the enormity of Angkor Wat proper. You can see it from space is the best description we have come across yet. A third day of visiting the complex will maybe allow us to say we saw half of all the grounds. Built over the course of 5 centuries the temples are remarkable in their design and workmanship. We thought it would get a bit redundant to see temple after temple, we were wrong. Watching the sunset last night from the top of a auxiliary temple was stunning.

Today, we visited Tonle Sap lake and were able to get a first hand glimpse at the community that literally lives on the water. Floating homes, schools and stores make up this small city. Unfortunately, they are very poor and much to our disappointment the money we paid for the tour of the lake does not go to the people. It is one of the many communities that are yet to fully benefit from the tourism boom hitting other parts of the country. We gave a few dollars to the children working at a small store in the hope they could buy food for the day. It is days like this that allow us to fully appreciate the many, many blessing we have in life. Our day also included a visit to the Cambodia Landmine Museum. Built by a former soldier who has now dedicated his life to the safe removal of the estimated 2 million mines still littering the Cambodian countryside. It was very interesting and sobering at the same time. We hope the few souvenirs purchased helps the 30 plus orphans that reside on the backside of the museum. Our days are filled with wonders and we look forward to many more to come. Tomorrow we will begin the day before dawn to see sunrise over Angkor Wat. Sunday we hit the road again to head to Phnom Penh. It is hard to imagine we have so much more to see!

Farewell to Thailand

2010-02-24T19:36:00.001-08:00

So long, farewell, auf wiedersehn, goodbye. We are down to one last day of teaching and it is hard to believe our time is nearing an end in Thailand. The children have been presenting us with small gifts all week, ranging from homemade cards to flowers and the most sentimental of all, a small key chain from a second grader who literally had nothing to give. She removed it from her backpack where it had been all year and with much care placed it in a folded piece of paper that simply said “miss you goodbye” and gave it to us. That simple gesture might just be the best way to sum up our time here. It is the small things that have made our experience amazing. Our morning bike ride that is punctuated by shouts of “good morning teacha” from students on the back of scooters or pickup trucks will be missed dearly when we are sitting in gridlock back in Chicago. Quick games of paper, rock, scissors throughout the day with many students might be the best form of communication for everyone, forget e-mail and Facebook. Walking in the blazing sun to get ice cream with our students is surely going be missed by Deb. Our time in the classroom, the reason we moved across the world, will never be forgotten.

We have had dinner with a different group of friends every night this week and each relationship has been a blessing for us. Meeting other foreign teachers from China, England, New Zealand, Ghana,

the Phillipines and Burma was not in the plans, but we sure are grateful we met them. Their perspective and more importantly, their friendship has made our time here even more amazing.

We lived in Thailand. It was not a tour or a vacation, but our home for nearly 5 months. It was home because of the people. The vendors at the market, the owner of our favorite coffee shop that treated us to many dinners and friends who helped us navigate the bus system. The children and the teachers at school made it more than just work. It is the people we were surrounded by that made it home. Our travels in the coming weeks will be no less than spectacular, but they will be just that, travels. We lived in Thailand and know that Thailand will live within us forever.

It would be impossible for us to account for all the adventures we had. The big ones like New Year's Eve on Phi Phi island or visiting the ancient ruins in Ayyuthaya are most easily recalled. The first trip on a long tail boat or a tuk-tuk ride in Bangkok will remembered with great laughter. It will be the little adventures that bring a small smile to our face and should you happen to see it, ask us. Reliving the time a little guy was arm wrestling me while I typed an e-mail might not sound like an adventure to you, but it was to me. Deb singing 5 little monkeys 5 times straight with 45 students won't be turned into a major motion picture, but it will be one of the most replayed memories of her time here. It will be the key chain moments that will stay with us for years to come.

Saying goodbye is the best way to measure how much an experience or someone has meant to you and this will be one of our hardest goodbyes' ever.

2010-02-19T00:11:00.000-08:00

One week and counting. Soon we will be hitting the road and finishing up our travels around the world! Inciting a jealous rage is not the point of this post. If you are in the area while we are there it would be great to meet up. Ok, maybe we are rubbing it in a bit...
THAILAND (2/27 & 2/28)
Ubon Ratchanburi
LAOS (3/1 – 3/3)
Pakse
Don Khong
CAMBODIA (3/4 – 3/7)
Siem Reap
Phnom Penh
VIETNAM (3/8 – 3/21)
Hue
Hoi An
Nha Trang
Ho Chi Minh City
GREECE (3/22 – 3/29)
Athens
Santorini
ITALY (3/29 - 4/7)
Rome
Florence
Cinque Terre
SWITZERLAND (4/7 – 4/9)
Interlachen
GERMANY (4/9 – 4/13)
Munich
Stutggart
FRANCE (4/14 – 4/18)
Paris
Normandy
ENGLAND (4/19 -21)
London
AMERICA – April 21st
Return to Chicago!

2010-02-15T22:06:00.000-08:00

Amazing Thailand! We spent our weekend at one of thee, if not the, most beautiful place we have visited in our time here. Sangkhlaburi is near the border with Burma (Myanmar, for you fans of military dictatorships) and is is a hidden gem in our opinion. Situated on a giant reservoir and ringed by mountains in three directions it picturesque and then some. We arrived early on Saturday morning after an arduous bus ride up, down, around and through innumerable mountain passes. Thankfully we just finished a unit on prepositions...Anyway, the beauty of the town is found not only in the natural surroundings but also in the people that live there. Two groups make up the majority of the population, the Mon and the Karen people from neighboring Burma. Most eek out a living as fishermen, farmers or working in one the guesthouses that ring the lake. Friendly as a Minnesotan at a fish fry, the local welcomed us into their shops, homes and even their fishing boat!

We stayed a nice guesthouse on the shore of the reservoir and our first order of business after checking into our room was to jump in for a refreshing swim. It was supposed to be a quick swim, but the combination of the cool water, hot sun and beautiful surrounding made it last the afternoon. After soaking it up until the evening we arranged for a local Mon man to take us out fishing. It was something Joe has been waiting to do for a long time. We hopped in a canoe, Deb sat in the middle armed with a camera and smile. Joe was up front and had been given the lone fishing pole with the lone lure. It was quite the site as the pole was designed for deep sea fishing and lure for catching small bass and the reel was on backwards, but we made a go of it. Paddling around the reservoir at sunset was worth the trip alone, but having the opportunity to fish in Thailand with a local put the icing on the sundae. It was beautiful and even though we caught only the net of another fisherman (Joe's casting ability was a bit suspect) we had a great time. The Mon guide was all too happy for the business and a bit perplexed Joe could not pull a fish out of the reservoir that feeds an entire town.

Sunday we went to the Burmese border via the small town of Three Pagodas Pass. Simply spectacular. The town is more like a horseshoe of vendors that straddle the border, the front of their store is Thailand and walking out the back door gets you into Burma. Officially, the border is closed. The guards on either side of the crossing did not seem to mind when we slipped behind the gate to snap a few pictures and stake our claim as official visitors to the country. We did not press our luck in venturing further as we knew that Bill Clinton was out of service in terms of rescuing citizens from dictatorships। The vendors were extremely nice people and were successful in gaining some business from our group. Joe made it a memorable Valentine's day as he successfully negotiated a price reduction in a beautiful turquoise bracelet for Deb. Candy hearts were the best Deb could come up with in रेतुर्न

All in all it was a great weekend and one of the most memorable we have had. Our time is short now, two weeks to go. We said goodbye to our group of fellow teachers on Sunday and will most likely not see them until we return to the States. Countless memories have been made and it appears that even more are in the making as we set forth in a few weeks for the rest of our travels around the world.

The DC...Again.

2010-02-07T19:03:00.001-08:00

Our past weekend was nice and quiet, which, after our week at school was welcomed. Its not that school week was overly crazy, but it did hold a number of surprises for us. We learned that we are going to be teaching three extra classes a week for the remainder of our time here. Not a big deal, but we only have 15 days of actual teaching left. This new change came from a classic VIM where Joe and a few fellow teachers expressed that classroom discipline was the reason the children were not progressing as quickly as some would like. 40+ students who use our class time as play time isn't necesarily the perfect scenario for conversational English to take place. No big deal, we will give it a whirl for our remaining weeks and see if halving our class size has any affect on the students English abilities.

As for the weekend, we decided to stay in the DC in order to plan the remainder of our trip around the world. A fellow teacher offered to take us around our province to see some of the sights we hadn't been to. The morning was set to begin at 9:30am and working on what we know from Thailand, "Thai Time" surely meant we wouldn't leave until 10 or even 10:30. Much to our suprise at 9am we had a knock on the door by two of our fourth grade youth to take us on our little tour of Suphan Buri. After a quick run through of Sam Chuck, the 100 year old Chinese Market and a bite of noodles for breakfast we were off on a boat tour of the river that connects Sam Chuck to Bangkok. One hundred years ago this river was used as the main mode of transportation as there were not yet roads, but today is no longer used for this and few reside on the riverside. The boat was similar to the buses here and appeared to be as old as the market, we soon realized the floor boards heat up just like on buses and we suspected a fire was imminent. Thankfully we weren't on the boat for to long as we jumped off to get a tour of a temple by two young Thai boys who were happy to have some tourists coming through. We were off again to a Buffalo Village where Joe was able to ride a buffalo, okay, he didn't actually ride but he did sit on the buffallo and got a picture to boot.

Sunday was spent in our school office surfing the web to find the best ways to cross the borders between Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam without too much hassel or being scammed। We finally purchased our Eurorail pass which must mean our time in Thailand is truley coming to an end. As we begin to wrap up our teaching and begin to pack up the few belongings we are taking with us for our backpacking adventure I begin to realize how much Thailand and it's beautiful people have grown on us. We may be leaving with a few meager pocessions but the impact of Thailand will follow us where ever we go। The impending goodbyes to the kids, school and our many new friends is definitely going to be harder than we ever would have imagined when we first arrived five short months ago... But, we hope that this is just the beginning of many worldly advevntures for the Wronka Family.

Bangkok III

2010-02-01T21:42:00.000-08:00

The “cool” season is over apparently. Our run of low 80s and minimal humidity has ended. Back to the 90s or higher and instantaneous saturation of clothes humidity. Its a Minnesota thing to discuss the weather when you are: A. avoiding a controversial subject B. have nothing to say, but want to remain polite C. doing recon for an upcoming fishing trip. I (no we on this one) wish it was for reason C that I bring up the weather, but no fishing trips are in sight. We will go with option C and a bit of D for this one. Option D is when a blog needs to be written, but no harrowing, humorous or enlightening subjects are available. See this. I just killed a quarter page in an explanation of why this blog post might be a bit lackluster or disappointing to some. Another sentence, wow am I good at this...

We traveled to Bangkok this past weekend to give the big city another chance. I had a girlfriend in the 10th grade give me another “chance” after we broke up because I failed to drop enough coinage on our first date. Who knew that a Crave Case from White Castle and a trip to buddy's basement for two hours of Nintendo 64 (Bond-Goldeneye) wasn't romantic? Anyway, this second go with Bangkok worked out much better than the second date, an hour of ice skating in sub-zero temperatures and her paying for hot chocolate from a gas station ensured my pager never blew up with her number. Again, with the dodging of the main point. Maybe I am a Republican, err, I mean a politician deep down...

Bangkok is impressive in it's ability to lure a traveler into thinking one will cover a lot of ground and see many sights in a few days. Our plans called for a two hour journey to the city from Dan Chang, with a planned ETA of 6pm on Friday night. Leaving the DC at 4pm was all good, but when the van stopped in front of the local rice paddy for 25 minutes in what we think was the driver's attempt to ensure rice was actually growing, we knew there was trouble looming. Traffic into the city was brutal, no one was moving, even the motorcycles that speed between lanes were slowed to a snail's pace because all lanes, even the ditch were backed up. We made the drop off point at 7 and took a harrowing ride on a motorcycle taxi to our hotel. Sitting on the back of a scooter that speeds between cars is a good way to reflect on life. Deb's knee took paint off a local bus and I wet myself a little when we caught air after hitting a bump in the road. It was the quickest and albeit terrifying, easiest way to get us across the city. We grabbed dinner and drinks with some friends before calling it a night.

Saturday we had every intention of seeing as many sights as possible since we had not been back to Bangkok since November. A mix of scorching temperatures, mass congestion and an appalling lack of directional awareness on my part led to only a few of our planned destinations being reached. We saw Wat Arun, built on the banks of the Phraya River, it is very big. The ascent to the top is similar to Mount Everest we think, but well worth the burning of calories when you see the view. Boasting a 360 look of downtown Bangkok you get a real good understanding of why it takes so long to get places. We enjoyed the cool breeze on the top and even got a couple Pulitzer quality shots of two monks visiting the temple. Our Paparazzi tactics did not phase them in the least, must take all the zen they can muster when idiots like me are chasing them around the temple with a camera.

We also visited an amulet market, on display were about 2 million of very similar looking Buddha or related objects that the Thai's are always buying in hopes of increasing their luck. We did not invest in anything but did enjoy the different sales pitches of the vendors. Our favorite, “buy now and live to tell about it.”

Completely wiped out from our trek across the city and feeling a bit embarrassed we could only muster two main attractions in a day we consoled ourselves with a little snack at a German restaurant. I enjoyed a Bittburger (best German beer ever) and a liverwurst sandwich. Deb went with the classic Pomme Frites and Heineken. Our evening was topped off with a nice Indian dinner and some more soda's with a couple of other fellow teachers.

Sunday we mustered our remaining strength and visited the largest market in Bangkok (many say the world). It was enormous, swallowing up entire city blocks the place is a black hole and should be investigated immediately by NASA. We walked for over two hours and maybe covered an 1/8th of it. A few purchases were made and I declared victory when we found the exit many people said did not exist. There is little more we can remember about the market, I think some of the vendors are born, raised and die there without ever stepping out of the place. B-I-G.

Monday marked the beginning of our last month of teaching। Its hard to believe we are closing in on our last days, but something tells us there is a whole lot more in store before we leave. There are enough weekends left to travel and enough days left to teach that we should be able to keep the blog intact, if not, well...There is always the weather.

VIM for the VIP

2010-01-25T19:55:00.001-08:00

Oh the outrage! How can we have neglected the blog for nearly two weeks? Mai Pen Rai. No worries in Thai. No excuse, no reason, just never got around to it, I guess. Anyway, that's our story and we are sticking to it, unless a better reason comes forth.

The previous two weekends have been pretty quiet. We went back to our favorite little oasis, Kanchanaburi, and spent a couple of days by the pool. Last weekend we stayed in Dan Chang or the DC as Deb refers to it. On Sunday we headed over to Sam Chuk and the 100 year old Chinese market where we shopped for a few souvenirs to distribute amongst family and friends on our return. On Tuesday the school asked us to stick around for a very important meeting and dinner with visiting teachers from all over Thailand, it would take place Friday night. Lucky they added the dinner part or we would have been outta the DC in no time.

“VIM's” or very important meetings are pretty common place in Thailand and usually have littlereason to be. So when our principal asked us to spend Friday evening at the VIM and dinner, we were not too excited. It was Wednesday when we began to notice some significant changes were being made around the school, landscaping and cobweb removal topping the list over curriculum development and actual learning. Image is everything here. The students spent most of their day's cleaning rooms, planting trees and even laying sod on the barren patch of dirt around our office. We wondered if the King was coming, he did not. Flowers, plants and rock gardens sprung up around campus in no time. Why? Because a group of 25 teachers from around the country were coming for a VIM and dinner, of course! On the big day, Friday, the school was a frenzy of last second shaping up and then believe it or not, the announcement came over the loud speaker that dismissal time would be moved up to avoid the campus being dirtied. How to impress teachers in Thailand? Remove the students early and leave no trace of their presence or capabilities as students for anyone to see. It all made sense when the group arrived at our school at 7pm in the pitch black of night. I am sure it was the language barrier that kept me from hearing all the comments about the beautiful plants, flowers, rock gardens and lack of cobwebs coming from the VIP's for the VIM...Sorry for the brute force sarcasm, but really?

Needless to say, the evening was pleasant. There was not VIM or even a trace of actual school business being discussed. Our children did a wonderful job putting on 3 Thai cultural dances for the guests and in serving dinner to everyone. Deb and I sat on the floor, everyone was, and tried to avoid the odor of my feet seeping up from under the table. We were not really noticed and would have escaped, but the maniac with the microphone asked us to say a few words. A few words is all we got buddy...So in our broken Thai we said hello, thanked them for coming to our school and asked if anyone saw the new sod. No one did.

We have a pretty standard week ahead of us. Teaching and paper-rock-scissors games will occupy the majority of our time. The weekend plans call for a trip to Bangkok for some touring and possibly an adventure to a floating market.

Re-reading this I realize the bitter pill I swallowed while watching the Vikings throw away a trip to the Superbowl has now affected the blog. I apologize for this and assure you that future blog posts will be more in tune with our readers desires. Like me suffering, oh wait, did I mention there is another VIM this afternoon?

Thai Immigration versus Chicago DMV

2010-01-14T01:12:00.000-08:00

Here it is. Deb and I were told on Tuesday that we would need to go to immigration and get our work permit and VISA extension on Wednesday. No worries, could a Thai immigration office be any worse than the Chicago DMV? Yes. Much worse.

If I had the ability to TWEET on my phone, it would have looked like this.

Wednesday

7:30a.m. Arranged pick up time. Coordinator was emphatic Tuesday night we be ready at this time.

8:00a.m. Coordinator picks us up and apologizes for being so early, did we miss something?

8:18a.m. Nearly dissolve a dog on the highway as we near warp speed in a pickup truck designed for slow going in the jungle. Our coordinator comments about the need for more traffic safety and driving instruction. Hello Kettle.

9:25a.m. Arrive at the District Administrative and Bureaucracy building (this is not made up) and immediately regret not bringing a camera to pose near the sign. Questions begin to arise as to whether the Chicago DMV might have some competition.

9:31a.m. Summit a massive staircase instead of taking the elevator that was obviously made for circus clown midgets. You know something is small when only 3 Thai people can fit in it. I mean, this is the country that on any given road you can see 3-5 people on a Vespa scooter with room to spare.

9:35a.m. Ascertain that we are in correct place from giant flow chart that depicts everyone's position in the building, from the District Manager to the elderly lady selling noodles in the lobby. We find our appropriate room and are beckoned to a desk by a friendly enough looking woman. At this point the Chi-town DMV is crushing the competition as there are not even numbers being called out and most people are smiling.

9:39a.m. All hell breaks loose in the office as the one and apparently only fax machine runs out of ink. Friendly looking woman (lets call her Janis) gets game face on and goes to join the 23 other people huddled around the fax. If ever a time for camera phone, this is it! I imagine the conversation was like this. “Tom, you call Jeff from IS and tell him to bring up ink.” “Screw that Janis, I am a man, I got this.” Janis returns to us and hands us a stack of forms, asks for our passports and then kicks Tom as she walks to copier.

9:59a.m. Janis returns from copier, kicking Tom on the way. Still no ink for the fax machine, but the consensus decision seems to be that if you shake the old ink cartridge enough, it will magically refill. Not a chance folks, I have been where you are, shaking just increases chance of wardrobe wrecking.

10:08a.m. Janis informs us that our forms are complete and the necessary copies have been made. She just needs to get one more signature, stamp our work permit and we are set. The DMV has no rival it seems.

10:11a.m. Janis returns with a smile on her face and like any good government employee, she blames the following on her leader. “Sorry, we cannot stamp because rule has changed. You must get Visa extension within in 4 days of expiration not the 5 days that it used to be. Please go to Ayyuthaya (85 kilometers away) and get Super District Commander General to sign temporary work permit.” That was the condensed version. With that, the fax machine became the center of attention again as it made a beeping sound when someone turned it on. Chicago DMV is up a field goal at this point.

11:45a.m. Arrive in Ayyuthaya and enter mini-mart of bureaucracy. Janis' twin sister greeted us at the door and asked us what we needed. Taking our forms and making good time getting through them was promising. Then 12pm flashed across the clock and the table we were sitting at quickly transformed into a buffet line. Janis II told us curtly that it was now the lunch hour and we would have to come back at 1pm. Not really wanting to get between a government employee and their federally mandated lunch break we left the office without the needed stamp and an hour to kill. Its a tie ball game now Chicago DMV.

12:15p.m. Pizza Hut in Ayyuthaya will make it all better, right? Right! The first thing that has gone our way today comes in the form of a small pan pizza with extra cheese. Life is good.

1:15p.m. Back to the fiefdom that Janis II is obviously the ice queen of. Our process starts over again, apparently lunch erases any memory of past visitors to the office. Seriously, every form she had already looked at was scrutinized again, most of the forms listed our birthday and former addresses, riveting... DMV is now down a touchdown.

2:00p.m. 8 people have been completely processed since we arrived here the second time. It smells like fish in here and the secretary is starting to pass out coffee cups to the employees. I spy a cake in the back and pray that we are not shuffled out the door for an inter-office birthday party.

2:30p.m. The coffee is being poured and Janis II looks ready to burn our paperwork to avoid missing the cake that is also being dolled out. Thankfully, our coordinator graciously asks her to keep working or maybe she threatened her with a severe scalding if Janis II does not finish, as the discussion was in Thai we dont know what was said.Janis II completes our forms, two stamps and a signature in just under 3 hours. WTF! DMV is total Junior Varsity.

2:45pm Traffic! I swear to God if its those damn elephants or a procession of monks, its going to get nasty. Of course! Why wouldn't every driver in the city slow down to look at the freshly painted “Welcome To Ayyuthaya” sign being unveiled, its not everyday you can smell new paint! DRIVE!

4:00pm Arrive back at the District Administrative and Bureaucracy building and scamper up the steps to make sure we catch the first Janis before she bails on the day. Not only is Janis there, but the whole damn office is now sitting around a table for the end of the day staff meeting or more likely they are reviewing the game tape from the fax machine SNAFU in the morning. Either way, we are welcomed like the plague in Europe. It literally took 5 minutes and a best of 5 in Rock, Paper, Scissors to decide who would help us.

4:45pm 6 copies of all forms are made and then stamped 8 times by two people, 3 others are called out of the meeting to review the forms and sign, a candle is lit and I am pretty sure we need to give a DNA sample now. Oh wait, they just want 1500 baht. Paid.

4:47pm Slowly backing out of the office in hopes that by staying big...oh wait that is for bears, run!

5:30pm Stunned, shocked, discombobulated and maybe a bit punch drunk with bureaucracy we hurtle back home. But wait, one more stop.

6:50pm Our coordinator dropped us off an hour ago at a restaurant and still has not returned. Her last word, “surprise!” I promise a swift and painful end if I do not get home in the next 20 minutes.

8:08pm Coordinator returns, orders us dinner. Silence ensues for next two hours...

10:00pm Home. Work permit in hand and with enough stamps and signatures to ratify the drilling of of ANWR.

This has been a presentation of our life in Thailand. Consider it a Christmas present.

Teaching

2010-01-09T22:32:00.000-08:00

Here is an update on the teaching side of things. We experience the joys and frustrations of being a foreign language teacher everyday. The mornings are our favorite, as we enter the school grounds on our bicycles and are greeted by hundreds of student screeching “good morning teacher Deb and Joe” or “shake hand” or better yet “rock, paper, scissors”. We equate our attraction with the students to that of a Liger (you know, a tiger and lion cross breed),they exist, but until you see one in person it never really seems real. Many of our students have never seen white people in person, therefore they feel the need to shake our hands to ensure we are not a figment of their imagination. Needless to say, we go through lots of hand sanitizer as most of the kids leave a pile of dirt or the bird bath they are playing to run over and touch us...Joy!

Our time in the classroom continues to be some of funniest experiences we have had, as well as, some of our most frustrating. We are now 8 weeks out from the last day of school and the “books” we were given to teach from have been completed. (“books” are the quasi form of curriculum we can follow, if we so choose). We are now on a constant hunt for worksheets, games and activities to do with the kids yet have no curriculum to base these searches on. I never thought I had it in me, but I have officially found my “scary” voice in attempts to get the students attention when their noise reaches that of a jet airplane. Although it isn't as scary as Joe's I think I do a pretty good job.

The kids continue to amaze us though as they practice their English skills with us outside the classroom. We often have visitors in our office looking to get a little one-on-one tutoring session in between classes. Often pointing to objects in the office in search of the English word, or asking to see pictures of our friends, family and city in the states. Our nightly run to the market for dinner usually results in a few students or kids from other schools saying hello and the really brave ones asking how we are.

This week there is an outside chance that we will be making a border run, not to Taco Bell, but to Laos for our passports to stay valid. Our work permits have not been cleared yet and in order to remain “legal” we need to get another 90 day stamp. So, teaching may take a backseat as we have to travel to two distant towns in hopes of receiving our work permits and then on to immigration to extend our 90 day stay....If not Laos here we come!

We are already in the beginning stages of planning for our travels through Southeast Asia in March and our month in Europe in April. The past three months have been filled with incredible experiences and memories to last us multiple lifetimes. We are blessed with another three months of travel and look forward to whatever awaits us!

New Year 2010

2010-01-04T20:23:00.000-08:00

If you did not make a resolution this New Year or want to switch from the normal“I am going to lose ten pounds” that usually lasts until SuperBowl Sunday, resolve to take a trip somewhere beautiful or somewhere you have always wanted to visit. We stuck to our 09' resolution and were rewarded beyond our imagination! There it was, glimmering on the horizon, a beacon for those seeking the ultimate New Year party. A two hour ferry from the port city of Phuket brought us to Phi Phi Island and it did not disappoint. We arrived on the 30th and could not have asked for a more spectacular setting to ring in the New Year. Phi Phi (pronounced Pee-Pee) is postcard beautiful with white sand beaches and crystal clear water that is always the perfect temperature supplied by the Andaman Sea. Our last days of 09' and the first few of the new decade were filled with swimming, snorkeling, wandering and general revelry.New Years eve was F-U-N, fun, fun, fun! We started the evening with a great dinner at a Seafood restaurant that is located right on the water and specializes in seafood. It was win-win for the both of us. We were joined at dinner by 8 friends who are also teaching here and made the trek south. By the time dinner ended and our billed was paid, we had put a good dent into the evening. Making the move to an Irish pub for a “bucket” was next. A “bucket” is a sand pal that is filled with ice and your choice of adult beverage and a mixer, total price $3. A couple of those guys put everyone in good spirits and the party moved onto the beach at a bar called Bora Bora. At this point the night gets a bit hazy for Joe, but Deb documented most of it with the camera and pictures do not lie. Basically it went down like this. There were fire dancers everywhere on the beach, people juggling, jump roping and even spitting fire could be found all around. Then the ring of fire came out and for the highly confident party goers you were welcome to jump through it. Joe did, three times.

As the clock ticked toward midnight, the tide began to come in further and soon we were dancing in the waves. Dancing soon gave way to swimming under a full-moon and when the clock struck 12 the fireworks exploded all over the island and we enjoyed the show while floating on our backs. The hip-hop and classic rap blaring over the speakers carried us deep into the first morning of 2010.

We spent New Years Day recouping in the morning and then went on snorkeling tour and sunset cruise in the afternoon. Phi Phi is close to a number of other islands and we were able to snorkel, visit the famed “The Beach” movie setting and even see a native group of people that live in a giant cave on one island. The cruise ended as

we silently drifted in the ocean watching a beautiful sunset.

On our last day we hired a long-tail boat taxi to take us to Bamboo Island. It was hands down the most beautiful beach either of us have ever seen. We spent the day relaxing in the sun and snorkeling in the aqua green water. It was a great way to wrap up

our trip to and to celebrate the New Year. Our suggestion to anyone looking for a spring break destination, winter getaway or just a vacation is that you head to Phi Phi Island in Thailand, a breathtaking place that will not disappoint. We hope everyone had a wonderful New Year and are now settling for remainder of

the winter. We officially crossed our half-way mark as teachers today, only 8 weeks to get the little critters speaking English. Better get to work! Happy New Year.

Christmas Review

2009-12-27T23:18:00.000-08:00

If Santa found us, he surely found you and hopefully treated you well. Christmas in Thailand is slowly winding down, but never fear, the New Year is almost here! Our Christmas was definitely one we will remember and here is why. Friday afternoon was the all school Christmas show and it was expected to be done in English. We were told about this on Thursday. The scramble was on to coordinate with the other English teachers to come up with a show for the students and faculty. Thankfully, a few of the veteran teachers veteran had gone thru this before and a plan was quickly developed. My role was easy, be Santa Claus, hand out candy and make the crowds merry. Deb was asked to be an angel, not much work was needed on her part to make that happen, however, the wings, wand and little crown were icing on the cake. The Santa costume was made out of wool, how that material is even allowed in this country is beyond me. It was 90 degrees and humid and I was sweating before I even got the beard and eyebrows glued to my face. Yes, they took Elmer's glue and pasted cotton balls to my face to finish off the costume. This was some sort of sick hazing I suspect because they gave me a pillow that looked like it was used as a goat's bed to stuff under my shirt as a big belly. I entered the outdoor pavilion where the show was held at a snail's pace, fearful I would pass out from heat stroke. Deb was merrily tapping children on the head with her wand and skipping to and fro because the angel costume was a pair of wings and a crown. Things got worse for Santa as the cotton balls began sliding off my face as I poured sweat. Soon a child handed me my left eyebrow and then the beard peeled off, it was a colossal costume failure. Oh well, theater was never my bit. Never before was I so thankful to hear the final bell of the day ring, meaning the weekend was on and Santa was no longer needed at the school.

We headed to Suphanburi which is about one hour south of us. The plan called for a gathering ofwesterners at a local restaurant that is operated by a Dutchman and his Thai wife. They made a simple, but scrumptious meal of mashed sweet potatoes and pork meatballs. There was caroling, much drinking and story telling and I am pretty sure a few people were playing a game of Twister, but we never made it to that side of the room. Christmas in Thailand

came to a close sometime in the wee hours of the 26th for us and it could not have been better!

The rest of the weekend was pretty low key as we spent all day Saturday at a hotel pool. Lounging about and recovery from the revelry of the night before. Joe got a Thai massage as Deb soaked in sun and good book. Thai massage is actually pretty demanding on the body as it is more reflexology than soothing deep tissue. I would have never suspected the middle aged, 4 foot 9 inch Thai woman, assigned as my masseuse to make me yelp as much as I did. She literally threw me onto the ground, put me into a series of wrestling moves for an hour and never heeded my pleas to be gentle. She pulled every mu

scle in directions I know they are not supposed to go and worked over my feet with her elbow to the point my eyes were watering. Thinking that I would be a hunchback when she finished I resisted a bit when she flipped me onto my stomach to work on the back. Bad decision. A quick shot to an unknown pressure point ended my revolt. As the session ended I thought life in a wheelchair surely awaited me, but she sprung me to my feet in a final display of superhuman strength at patted my bottom saying “you feel much better now, yes?” She was right, my muscles felt great, the knots in my back were gone and I think I am two inches taller.

Its a short week for us, teaching only two days before heading to the sandy beaches of Phi Phi island on Wednesday. Christmas was great and the New Year and new decade is shaping up tobe pretty awesome as well. We agreed that this is the first time in either of our lives we really stuck to a New Year resolution and we are sure glad that we resolved to see the world together! Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas from Thailand

2009-12-23T21:49:00.000-08:00

Believe it or not, it is snowing in Thailand! “Black Snow” or literally ashes from the burning of sugarcane fields has been silently falling for the past couple of days now. Most sugarcane farmers employ the tactic to speed the harvest of their crop. The ashes are not hot, usually drifting miles before falling, and do not really accumulate. Initially we thought it would help remind us of home, but nothing beats a good solid Chicago snowstorm in December. There is no catching ash on your tongue, making ashmen or having an ashball fight, but alas...

We have to work both the 24th and the 25th, but will head to Suphanburi and celebrate with some fellow teachers on the night of the 25th. The plan is for a run into Bangkok on the 26th to find a turkey or at least some pizza and maybe a bit of shopping. Regardless of where you are in this world Christmas season should be celebrated accordingly if you dig the birth of Christ and the associated festivities. We are going to have a scaled down version here, but be assured there are a few presents

to go under our tree as Santa found us! A recent package included homemade cookies and candy. Christmas has been saved! Thank you Mrs. Goggin.

The children at school have helped decorate our office with pictures and banners celebrating the season. We fully expect to say “Merry Christmas” 1,000 times on Friday as the kids are only to eager to use their newest learned English phrase. This is our second Christmas as Mr. and Mrs. Wronka

and its probably going to be one of our most remembered, this point has not been lost on us. We have been blessed with an incredible

trip so far and can only pray that 2010 will be as wonderful as 2009. Thank you to all our family and friends for the support and

love you have provided us. You will be toasted numerous times this side of the world in the coming days and we hope you will do the same for us!

Merry Christmas!

Deb and Joe

Everyday Life

2009-12-18T01:02:00.000-08:00

We are planning to stay in Dan Chang for the weekend, it will be only the second time we have done so since arriving back in October. Our travels of recent and a long week of work have worn us out. Kicking it with the local's for the weekend will be nice, we hope.

If you are living vicariously thru our travels this may not give youmuch of a fix. Give it a try though. The idea here is give you a look at our home and the town we live in. Hopefully the pictures answer outstanding questions as words can only capture so much.

Our campground/home is located about fifteen minutes (by bicycle) outside of the town of Dan Chang. Its like living in a highway motel without the highway nearby, we are in the jungle. Its one bedroom. The campground has a dining hall that we can eat at if we choose. Since we are the only permanent residents along with a young woman from China, the menu is short and not very big. In fact, Deb has a choice of two items and Joe can get three

different dishes. It should be quiet we thought, being out of town and in the jungle. Not true, the dogs bark all night long and as the sun comes up the local temple begins prayers over the loudspeakers that are found on every light pole in the area. Its a bit strange, but we are slowly getting used to it.
The bike ride to work is always a blast, especially when the giant trucks that are overloaded with sugarcane come barreling past at 60mph. There is a fairly good chance we are going to take a stalk of cane off the head at some point.

Teaching continues to be an adventure and one that we are usually prepared for. It has been difficult to make significant language strides with the kids as the classrooms are overflowing with them. Most of our classes have about 40 students and the desks are so packed together that we cannot walk the aisles. It makes it difficult to help two children who glued their arms together, seriously, it happened.

Classes are rarely quiet as the children use their time with the foreign teachers to catch up on the latetest school gossip or play a game of Pokemon cards. We have given up on complete silence in the class and tend to operate on a “louder than those of you talking voice”, to get our lesson across. The children are not to blame though as we have attended a number of professional meetings where it is not uncommon for adults to hold conversations or pick up the phone when someone of authority is speaking. The Thai culture loves noise, that is the only conclusion we can draw.

All in all, the days go by fairly fast and its hard to believe we have been here for two months now. We will be spending Christmas Eve and Christmas Day working and then taking a 4 day vacation to the island of Phi Phi. Watch the movie “The Beach” and that is where we are hanging out.

Hopefully this post has answered some of the questions you may have about our day to day here in Thailand. If not, email us and we will get you an hour by hour log of our activities sent to you ASAP.

Chiang Mai

2009-12-13T19:35:00.000-08:00

WHEW! That was some weekend we had. It was long, which after the strenuous week of we had (see previous post) was well deserved...OK, probably not well deserved.

Anyway, we jumped on an overnight bus in Bangkok and headed to Chiang Mai, in the far northwest of the Thailand. My record of not wearing a long sleeve shirt since October came to an end as the AC on the bus was set to just above freezing and I buckled much to Deb's delight about an hour into the ride. My record of not wearing socks since October 16th still stands!

We arrived around 8am on Thursday morning after a restless night of trying to sleep on a bus that was traversing the southern tip of the Himalaya's. We started the day with a shot of coffee at Starbucks. Then we headed to...Oh! Should I address the fact that we found a Starbucks? Well, we did and to be quite honest it was a bit refreshing to sit on a plush leather sofa with John Mayer crooning Christmas carols and sipping a Venti coffee after being bounced around for 9 hours. After the caffeine kick and my fill of “rockin' around the Christmas Tree” we explored the old city of Chiang Mai. Situated near the Laos border and fairly close to China as well, Chiang Mai was an ancient hub for merchants on the famed “Silk Road.” There is a good balance of the ancient and the modern in the city. Surrounded by mountains that are perpetually shrouded in haze the city was and still is an oasis for travelers.

We visited a number of temples and markets, walking about 6 miles in the day made for two hungry kids. Chiang Mai has its fair share of western food restaurants and we settled on an Italian place run by who else, but a Canadian born Brazilian guy and his Thai wife. The food was decent, but the ambiance was better. The night ended early as our full stomach's and sore feet demanded a good sleep.

Outside the city, still residing in the mountains, are tribes of indigenous peoples' that continue to live as they did hundreds or even thousands of years ago. Unfortunately, few of the tribes have been able to avoid the trappings of the today and the tourism industry has not helped them retain their ancient heritage. We decided against taking a tour into their villages partly because of the exploitation and partly because of the exorbitant cost.

Friday was another day of wandering the city and we were amply rewarded for the loose agenda. First we found a great burger place called Mike's ("Converting Vegetarians since 1976") and enjoyed a greasy burger for breakfast. Leaving Mike's we were called into an tailor shop by the owner. An hour and some confidential measurements later, I am the proud owner of two new suits and dress shirts. All hand made, the suits were ready 24 hours later.

Thinking our day could not get much better we dropped into a temple and to our surprise we found a producing beautiful paintings. We got a great deal from the woman and will be bringing home two paintings of Thailand.

We then headed into Chinatown and returned with our Christmas tree. We chopped it down, for real. Ok, in my mind we walked thru the woods, searching for the perfect Fraiser Fur. In reality we squeezed our way into a small shop that was filled wall to wall with stuff and pulled down a foot tall, plastic Christmas tree.

No need to tie it to the roof, it almost fits in our pocket.

Saturday was the only day we had made plans for and it will benefit everyone, we hope. We took a Thai cooking class for the day. It was most fun preparing 6 dishes from scratch and being able to enjoy them with other participant's who came from all over the world. The instructors brought us to a local market and helped us choose the ingredients we would use for the dishes. We have a new found appreciation for the effort the Thai's put into preparing their food! Hopefully, we will be able to show off our new skills and some of the recipes with you.

Leaving Chiang Mai was not easy as the city thoroughly impressed us, but we will be back. The work week is upon us again and it will be a true work week, we think. One never really knows what's around the corner in Thailand!

Koh Si Chang

2009-12-08T19:06:00.000-08:00

We have an excuse. I swear. The blog was not updated for the last week because of festivals, island getaways and more! Our apologies if the lack of entries caused any discomfort or displeasure.

Last week was busy. Monday night was the beginning of another festival in Dan Chang. It was celebrating the locally grown mushrooms (eating kind, not tripping) that are only

found in this region of the world. A huge concert, lots of food and games kicked off the week of festivities. We attended the concert and although we could not understand any of the songs, it still made for an enjoyable evening. Wednesday and Thursday were all things festival as Deb and I worked with 2 of our students to lead a tour through Dan Chang in English. The Tourism Authority of Thailand visited Dan Chang again. The highlight from the tour goes to the chubby 5 year old boy taking a bath outside his home, naked as the day he was born, who stood up as our tour train passed by and tinkled his little bladder out for all to see! Hysterical.

Friday we left for the island of Si Chang in the Gulf of Thailand. After 6 hours of bus travel and an hour ferry ride, we arrived. It was worth it. The

island is small and rocky, not your typical Thai island. It was perfect for us though, after a long week of classes and late nights at the festival all we wanted was to sit on a beach. We did just that. For 2 days, we drank cheap beer, ate cheaper food and swam for free. A few games of sand soccer were played with some local kids, no mercy was shown for the foreigners, and a couple of naps are the only details worth sharing. We did come across a restaurant serving whole wheat pancakes for breakfast and spaghetti for dinner, icing on the cake if you ask me.

We had Monday off from school this week (Father’s Day in Thailand) and also have Thursday and Friday off. Yesterday we were judging another English competition in Sam Chuc, so no class for us. Today, all of my classes were cancelled because the children were still at the competition and Deb only has one class to teach. So, if you are keeping score at home, Joe teaching English this week = 0 and Deb = 1. It is a tough life at the top. I heard there was snow in Minnesota and Chicago, we are leaving tonight for Chiang Mai where the temperature is supposed to dip way down to 66, oh my!

Lopburi

2009-11-29T22:06:00.000-08:00

It is a safe bet that most readers of the blog are satiated. Dare I say, full? It is our hope that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend and although you cannot imagine eating another piece of turkey or one more slice of pie, do it for us.
We enjoyed the non-holiday weekend in Lopburi, however, there was a celebration of sorts. Lopburi is southeast of Dan Chang and as is common in Thailand, home to ancient ruins and abandoned temples. The main temple in town (Phra Phrang Sam Yod) is home to a troop on macaques or in layman terms, monkeys. These rambunctious animals are everywhere in the city, but mainly stick to scaling the temple walls and the occasional tourist's body! The citizens of Lopburi believe the monkeys are descendants from an ancient god and treat them very well. Sunday was the start of a week long festival honoring the fury little frolickers. The townspeople bring massive amounts of food to the temple for the macaques to enjoy, cakes, candy and soda were devoured by the troop within seconds of it being placed on the temple steps. It was quite a sight to watch a monkey crack open a Coke, grab a Doritos and look out at the crowd like we were the odd ones.

We have decided a few themes are emerging on the trip. Notably, the friendly and very helpful Thai people, the amazing sites and food and strangely enough, our encounters with the local wildlife. It was the cheeky Kia in New Zealand that stole our windshield wiper, the invading insects that greeted us in Dan Chang, the gecko in my pants in Kanchanburi and the tiger cubs nipping our heels in Sam Chuk we will remember fondly. Lopburi will go down in our animal adventures as well. Per usual, I was the victim or as Deb says “her entertainment” when Curious George's cousin jumped on my back and snatched the sunscreen from a pocket on our camera bag. Yes, I screamed like a school girl again...Revenge was mine this time, or so I thought, as the mischievous macaque was not pleased when he realized the small tube of Banana Boat SPF 15 was not the delicacy he hoped for. I laughed, his buddy jumped on me, trying to snatch our camera from my hands. Again, school girl screams from me, laughter from Deb and a monkey is spun round and round while grasping the strap of our camera. I realized he was smiling, enjoying the free ride I was providing. Only when I stopped trying to shake him loose did he jumped off and scamper away to hassle another tourist. I must admit, monkey's are one of my favorite animals so the PTSD from it will not last long...

Having our fill of monkey's and huge crowds we hopped into a cab and headed out of town to visit some enormous sunflower fields. Literally stretching for miles, the fields are incredibly beautiful. The sunflowers are giant and the vendors selling the seeds are plentiful. We had a leisurely walk in the fields, snapping many pictures along the way. A small mountain range rings the fields and we ventured up a road to visit a Buddhist temple. It was a beautiful, peaceful setting and our visit was made all the better when a worker invited us to purchase a “care package” for the resident monks. Similar to a family putting candy, clothes, hygiene supplies and other essentials into a package for a student away at college, these buckets of supplies went to the monks. Presenting an elder monk with the donation was an honor and he gave us a blessing before we left. The day ended with a good Vietnamese/Thai meal and some drinks outside with a few friends from the group.
We are back in class today and the town is preparing for a mushroom festival that starts tomorrow. One would never suspect that there could be so many festivals and events in a country, as usual Thailand has proved it can be so!

Happy Thanksgiving

2009-11-25T23:25:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving! Our version of Turkey Day will be a bit different than years past. No turkey, mashed potato's, stuffing or cardamon bread for us, but no worries we have gummy bears and beef jerky thanks to an early Christmas present from the Ritzema family! The day is not at a loss in anyway. We have been able to share the meaning and traditions of Thanksgiving with the kids and staff here in Thailand. In fact, having so many conversations about the day has given us the opportunity to reflect on what we are truly grateful for. Family, friends at home and here, the experiences we have had and will have, as well as, sharing this incredible experience with each other top our list this year.

We had a quasi Thanksgiving dinner with some other teachers last night, it reminded me more of a United Nations meeting, though. There were people from China, England, Scotland, Germany, New Zealand and Ghana around the table. The food was good, plenty of laughs and drinks were had, and it will go down in the Wronka family annals as a truly Thai Thanksgiving!

The children enjoyed a few activities centered around Thanksgiving, it seems their favorite was the coloring in of the turkey, although we had to remind a few it was a turkey and not a peacock! Their art work now adorns the wall of our office and in some of their classrooms. A few of the more confident kids have been wishing us a Happy Thanksgiving morning and “enjoy mash turkey potato's” was a greeting I received early today. We will miss the football, the belly ache, the nap and the leftovers and mostly miss sharing the day with family and friends. Enjoy an extra slice of pie, scoop of stuffing in our honor and feel free to blame us when eyebrows are raised at the amount you have eaten.
Happy Thanksgiving!

Dan Chang 6

2009-11-22T20:42:00.000-08:00

We had just got into a routine last week when bright and early on Monday morning we were summoned to the Museum of Local Wisdom at Anuban Dan Chang (this is no joke, the place really exists) to help prepare a few of the children to give a tour in English for some visitors. The visitors turned out to be employees from the Ministry of Tourism in Thailand.

They were scouting the local area for the potential to market as a tourist destination. I believed we had helped the children prepare as much as possible when the director of our school asked us to stick around and join the group for the day. We were most definitely the token westerners'. It would not surprise us if our picture ends up in a "Visit Thailand" brochure down the road. All in all it was a good, strange, but good day. We had a semi-private tour of such attractions as the Suphanburi College of Agriculture and Technology as well as the Kasieo reservoir and dam, sure to be hits with any honeymooning couple...

On Wednesday our school hosted a English language competition against three other schools in the area. We dominated them all, like the Minnesota Vikings! The range and scope of skills varied, but at the end of the day, Anuban Dan Chang was winner. Apparently we have now moved on to the region contest in December. A few of the kids Deb and I teach competed and they won, no need to thank us I told them, just make sure a few extra baht get put in my wallet!

This past weekend we stayed in Dan Chang, kind of. On Saturday, we went with the family of girl's we are tutoring to visit an aquarium, zoo and 100 year old market. We had lunch at a small restaurant overlooking miles of rice paddy and sugarcane fields. Being in the company of the family was a privilege and enlightening. They take very good care of each other and as their guests for the day, we were first in line for everything, including going into the tiger cage! That's right, they sent us into a cage full of tigers! they sent us into a cage full of tigers!Okay, they were tiger cubs and we enthusiastically went in. It was amazing! We were able to feed, hold, pet, wrestle and run with tiger cubs, thankfully mother (6ft long, 400 lbs) was in another cage.

Tigers' in Thailand are being hunted to extinction and unfortunately only a few hundred remain in the wild. It was a much better weekend for animal encounters than last weekend!

Visiting the 100 year old market in Sam Chuk was pretty incredible, many of the buildings and even vendors themselves are 100 years old, for real. Wandering through the narrow streets that are crammed with vendors hocking every imaginable

item or food was surreal. The aroma of food being prepared was constant and so was my hunger, thankfully many of the vendors have samples of their delicacies available and I grazed my way thru much of the market, usually having very little idea of what I was eating.

I did come across a friendly woman who insisted I try some of her “home brew” and much to my and later Deb's delight, it was was delicious. Called Kosato, it is made from sticky rice, and the flavor is similar to Saki. For .75 cents we purchased a bottle and enjoyed it later in the evening.

Sunday was spent walking around Dan Chang, doing a bit of grocery shopping and preparing for the week ahead. The temperature is cooling here and thus the constant sweating is subsiding on my part, much to my students delight! This weekend we will head for Lopburi and the Monkey Festival! As a fans of Curious George books, Deb and I are pretty excited about this one.

Kanchanaburi

2009-11-17T20:10:00.000-08:00

Thailand did it again. Our weekend in Kanchanaburi, hereinafter referred to as K-Town, was most excellent. We arrived around 7 in the evening after a bus ride from Dan Chang that took us through some serious back-country. We are quickly realizing that the best way to see Thailand at it's core is to take the local buses. This means you never reach a speed of more than 37mph, stops to pick up and let off passengers are completely arbitrary and the electric fans that substitute for air-conditioning work for less than 1/3 of the trip. Its cheap and slow, but gets you there...eventually. Our accommodation for the weekend was the Pong Phen Guesthouse, great rooms and a very friendly, hospitable family running the place.We took in a late dinner after a shower and beer, hence my first showerbeer of the trip was had!

Then a few of our fellow teachers joined us later in the evening which soon became early in the morning and before we knew it the bar was closed and I had a nice, peaceful, easy feeling. Saturday morning was less than an nice, peaceful, easy feeling for my stomach, but the refreshing waterfalls

and pools of Erawan National Park was the quick cure. The park is about an 1 ½ hours from K -Town and is one of the most popular in Thailand. Home to wildlife of all sorts, including tigers and monkeys, the park is best known for the seven tiers of waterfalls you can hike along, eventually leading you to the top of a mountain stream that is the beginning of the falls.

Our Irish friends, Gerry and Noni McAndrew, accompanied us on the trek to the top. Stopping at each of the separate falls to take pictures, swim and relax was a great way to spend a Saturday. There were fish in many of the pools that were a bit too eager to nibble at your toes and other appendages if you didn't keep moving. I found the trick was to sit directly in the waterfall, like a grizzly bear, to avoid being a living buffet for the fish. We were blown away at the fairy tale like appearance of the waterfalls, the pictures do not do justice to the beauty of the park. You must visit.

We treated ourselves to a dinner of pizza and steak. I had the filamion (that is how the restaurant spelled it) and Deb went with a cheese and pineapple pizza, not too shabby a meal for $14, beers included. It was an early night for us as the trek, the heat and the big meal wore us out.

Before departing K-Town on Sunday we stopped at a museum dedicated to the history of the Burma-Thailand railroad, aka The Death RailRoad. Built during World War II by prisoners of war and native Thai people, the construction and maltreatment by Japanese guards led to the death of 200,000.

The museum was very detailed and we were thoroughly impressed with it, again, you must visit if ever in K-Town. We also walked through a cemetery filled with the remains of allied POW's who died while building the railroad. It was a grim reminder of the sacrifices so many made during World War II. The local Thai community keeps the cemetery in immaculate condition, not a blade of grass too long or any noticeable aging of the headstones, truly a fitting homage to those who did not survive.

Our bus ride home was fascinating, we passed through small hamlets, rice paddies, jungle and farm fields. Each locale had a distinct smell, some very pleasant and others were reminiscent of my athletic days when the locker room was filled with 150 hockey and football players.

Deb's highlight of the ride home and my trauma filled, nightmare scenario lived out, worse than you can imagine ordeal occurred. As I sat quietly and calmly in seat 13c on the number 325 bus to Dan Chang I was attacked. At first I thought it was the heat, sweat dripping down my leg has not been uncommon and when I went to wipe it off, there was not sweat, but a lump!

As fear invaded every bone in my body I slowly applied pressure to the lump on my upper-inner thigh and much to my horror, it moved...Ice cold sweat began pouring down my face as my mind raced with thoughts of a scorpion, centipede or worst of all a pit viper attached on my upper-inner thigh. I elbowed Deb and said in shaky voice that there is something up my pants and its moving, she told me not to be inappropriate. When I assured her it was not my juvenile humor coming out, she got a littler more interested.

A small gecko, little more than 3 inches long had crawled up my pants at some point. When our eyes met, mine and the gecko that is, pandemonium ensued, I screamed like a school girl when asked to homecoming by the captain of the football team and the gecko hightailed it off my leg to the safety of the floor and God only knows where. Needless to say, every Thai person on the bus who witnessed my sad little display did the only thing they knew how, they laughed. The mother and child in front of us moved to another seat and Deb just rolled about, laughing with them all. Long story short, I am wearing rubber bands around my ankles from now on and I do not care how bad of a fashion statement that is. No more geckos in this guys trousers!

Dan Chang 5

2009-11-12T19:17:00.000-08:00

Another day, another Thai baht in the ol' bank account. We will wrap up our work week in a few short hours and then jump on a bus to the jungle town of Kanchanaburi. It was a very hot and humid week here, temperatures in the 90's most of the day with 80% humidity were the norm. I sweated so much in one class the children offered me their water, in America the children would be rooting for heat stroke to overcome the teacher and get a free pass for that class. I think we have won some of the children over with our antics, mainly mine. I have started to only give high-fives to the kids when they run up to us looking to touch the exotic “teacha Daab and teacha Doe”. I have witnessed a number of awkward high-five attempts from one student to another, lets just say some eyes have been poked and the phrase “high-five” comes out more like “ha-freev”! I appreciate the attempts though. Deb is much better working the crowds than I am, her blonde hair is the envy of most of the little girl's and I suspect a few teachers as well.

The highlight of the week for both of us came on Tuesday when we were perusing the aisles of the local pirated DVD store. The owner of the store asked us to sit and look at the 100 or so English DVD's she had available. She then asked us about why we were in Dan Chang and upon learning that we were English teachers she began negotiating with us to tutor her daughter, Lyn and her friend JJ. It caught us a bit off guard and we settled on a wage that is below market value, but the experience thus far has been great. On Wednesday we held our first tutoring session with Lyn & JJ and afterward JJ's famil

y invited us to dinner with them at a local restaurant. They took very good care of us, their older daughter speaks very good English and helped translate the conversation for the evening. Much of their perception about America is based off of movies and other media which do not give an accurate portrayal as they were shocked to learn Deb and I worked at a placed that cared for homeless and abused children. We further smashed their notion of the “great and good, USA” when we told them that there is not health insurance for many American's. Maybe by the time we get home, that statement will no longer be accurate. Politics aside, the night was great as we learned much about Thai culture and truly felt welcomed by a local Thai family. They have offered to show us around town more,

even take me fishing with their grandma, although they warned me that she drinks a lot when she fishes. I will heed their warning, bring a six pack for her and one for me, no worries granny!

Other highlights of the week included watching a performance of Thai dance and storytelling at our school. It was a big event and much of the town turned out fo

r it. We are glad to have attended even if we could not understand much of the show, plus I got BBQ chicken on a stick for $1, in fact I got 2. Deb had boiled peanuts and an orange soda, the new dinner of champions I believe......I am playing a daily game of ping-pong with a 1st grader named Mun and he kills me every time and yes I am trying to beat him...

Deb found another dish at the campsite she can eat, that makes 3 now...I have a six pack of beer in the fridge...We found a jar of JIF Creamy peanut butter, life is a-ok!

Have a wonderful weekend and look for an update early next week about our travel in Kanchanaburi.

Ayyutthaya

2009-11-08T22:44:00.000-08:00

Deciding where to visit on our first weekend in Thailand was not simple, but we chose well. Our choice of the ancient capital of Thailand, Ayutthaya, was most excellent. Arriving in the city known as The Venice of Asia because it is surrounded by rivers, you cross into it via water taxi, was beautiful. It was sacked by the Burmese after a 400 year reign as the region's trading hub and the capital was moved to Bangkok where it remains today. Ayutthaya (i-yoo-tee-a) is still a bustling city and has done a remarkable job of ensuring the many Wats (Buddhist Temples) are properly cared for. A number of the Wats are still being used by the monks and have been in continuous use for hundreds of years. Our tour around the city brought us to many of them and they are quite impressive. Images of the Buddha are everywhere, mainly in stone sculpture or bronze statues that have gold leaf covering their entire outside. There is an air of peacefulness in एंड around each of the Wats, similar to when you tour a church in the west.

We were fortunate enough to witness a number of Buddhist traditions, including the draping of cloth over Buddha images, people offering prayers and receiving blessings from the monks. Some of the Wat's are 3 or 4 stories tall and are an awesome feat of engineering when one considers how long ago they were built. We were able to walk around, on, over and we even went under one! It was a workout making it to the top of some and when we stumbled upon a greasy spoon restaurant serving real American hamburgers, we just had to stop on treat ourselves. The burger I enjoyed was delicious and the woman who ran the place has never been to the states, but thought tourists might like a taste of home and boy was she right. We literally ate all of her remaining burger patties (there were 9 people in our group), she closed the place after we left to find more meat. Deb enjoyed a cheese sandwich and fries, which was bliss for her vegetarian diet as cheese is a hard to find commodity over here.

We topped our day off with dinner at a local market where you sit down and shout your order to the vendors that surround the tables, its a free for all and of course delicious! After dinner, we purchased some suds and took an hour long boat ride around the city. Many of the Wat's are lit up at night and it was relaxing way to end a long day of trekking around. Sunday morning we hired a couple of Tuk-Tuk's to drive us out to a floating market and to visit another Wat. Riding in a Tuk-Tuk is like visiting your local amusement park and jumping on the most adrenaline pumping ride there is. These guys make NASCAR look slow and hold nothing back even when male passengers voices raise to soprano level as they zip between trucks packed with livestock and sugar cane. Every time your ride is over you swear you'll never do it again, but there is no cheaper, faster or more entertaining way to get around town!

Our weekend adventure is over, but the adventure that is teaching has begun again! Off to Where the Wild Things Are, we have found them, here in Anuban Dan Chang, grades 1-5!

TGIF

2009-11-05T22:07:00.000-08:00

TGIF friends, family and well wishers! Its the end of our first full week in Dan Chang and things have wrapped up nicely. We are planning a weekend trip to the ancient capital of Thailand, Ayyuttaya. More next week on that excurision. After waiting for a few days we were given our final teaching schedule, so the planning and strategizing has begun. We are each teaching 15 hours, mainly English for Joe and Math for Deb. The students English skills are varied, but most are struggling to pick up their second language. It has been a trip to work with them on pronounciation and sentence structure. The best part of the week was having the kids create nametags for us. In Thailand most names are quite long and even for native speakers can twist the tongue. So, everyone has a nickname, given by their father. Our top 5 favorite nicknames we have had in class this week are: Man-U (as in the English soccer team Manchester United), Punch, Ice, Beam and Bam. Along with other classics like Bim and Book, the school is crawling with kids who have no idea the the chuckle we get from their nicknames.

Each of the classes averages about 40-45 kids and we now sympathize with any teacher who loses their voice. We find ourselves speaking more than we would like, but the plan is to eventually have the kids doing the majority of the speaking, we will see and report back to you.

Dogs, dogs, everywhere there are dogs! The town, school, whole dang country is full of packs of stray dogs. They are the favorite animal of the King, so no one is going to call the pound, more likely to call the local butcher...Sticking with the topic of animals for a bit, Deb and I hosted a small gathering of creatures last night in our bedroom. This was not a planned party, but Gary the gecko, his cousin Greg, Billy the Beattle and Marty the giant moth all made an appearance in our room in a 15 minute span. It was pretty entertaining until we realized that when we shut off the lights they could go anywhere, needless to say the blankets were tucked in tightly...Have a wonderful weekend and look for an update on Monday about our trip to Ayyuttaya.

The Other Side of Life

2009-11-03T21:27:00.000-08:00

Up to this point our blog has been focused primarily on highlighting the activities, sights, and experiences we have had thus far in our travels. Joe and I decided to depart from this style for an installment focused on our, uh-oh, here comes the F word...Feelings. In writing numerous emails to friends and family as well as keeping a journal it turns out we are feeling many emotions on any given day and maybe some of the more inquisitive, soap opera type readers, might want in on our ego, id and the other guy...

We seem to encounter the same 3 emotions in a given day, so taking a page from SportsCenter, here are our top 3...

Confusion-For Joe this has always been a daily part of life (lefty loosey, righty tighty, etc). But its been intensified for the both of us considering the language barrier that exists here. We have a few, very basic Thai phrases in our pocket. Unfortunately, Thai is a tonal language (see previous posts for full-on description) and even when we think we know what we are saying it comes across to our Thai compatriots as complete gibberish. So we revert to Thai-glish, you know, speaking slowly and raising our voice in hopes this will allow them to comprehend. It does not. We frequently are given the following answer to inquiries of any nature, “no, yes, okay” they speak slowly and get louder as they go thru the 3 English words they know. The Thai language does not use the Roman alphabet, this makes it impossible to even try and figure out where you are, bathrooms are especially hard as they have not made the great leap to using figures of men and women yet outside the toilets.

Chaos-There is a common phrase used here, Thai Time, basically it means it will happen when it happens. No worries mate, hakuna matada, chill out, etc...For two pretty organized individuals who like to have a little idea of what is coming around the corner this has been a hard concept to subscribe to. Example, we have been at the school for a week now and have no formal teaching schedule, nor any idea of what classes or grades we will be teaching. Also, the structure of the day is like that of a 3 ring circus, children run wildly around the buildings at all times, even after the wind chime sounds for the beginning of another class period. We watch the same 4 boys play-fight for 45 minutes in the morning and then they come back for round two in the afternoon, all of this occurs 3 feet from a classroom door. We are going to video tape it and sell it on pay-per-view as a Friday Night Fight.

Minimalism-Getting philosophic now, right? We are loving and disliking this emotion. Dislikes include the minimal choice of food we have to eat at our cabin's mess hall. The cooks are not easy to communicate with (see feeling 1) and over the weekend we had 3 meals to select from for 3 days. No heels or hair straightener for Deb have been a source of some grumbling, but Joe is a whiner of epic proportions when college football highlights fail to download from the web. We love the minimal material possessions we have. Having no TV or internet at the campground has been great for us. Lots of Cribbage, laughs, reflection time and naps are had. Spontaneous dance parties are becoming more and more common as the shuffle feature on iTunes finds awesome hits like Whoop There It Is and anything Jefferson Starship gets Joe out on floor.

Of course our days are filled with many small wonders, having hundreds of little people run up to you each morning and say “hello teacher” makes a person feel pretty good. The reality is this is beyond a travel adventure, its a job, a opportunity to enrich the lives of young people and to enrich our own lives. Experiencing a completely different culture than the one we lived in for 28 years on a daily basis reminds us of the great opportunity we have been given. Spending this time with each other, knowing that one day when our hair is silver or not there at all, we will have memories of confusion, chaos and minimalism to make us smile...

Dan Chang 3-Loi Krathong

2009-11-02T18:58:00.000-08:00

Loi Krathong (Loy-Cratoong) is here and everybody's full of cheer! The big festival celebrating water came to and end yesterday with an incredible finale. The whole town, school included was decorated for the Monday celebration. As foreign teachers were expected to sing a song, what we were not expecting is that it would be sung in front of about 5,000 people. It was the closest we will ever get to winning a singing contest, losing one in my case. The whole celebration had the flavor of a county fair, complete with games, tons of food and lots of people watching, unfortunately, mullets are not a style to be found in Thailand.

We were received warmly by the crowd and even the children seemed to like our simple song. The kids performed some really great routines and their costumes were quite intricate and impressive. Deb and I were able to sail a Krathong (small banana leaf boat) down the local river for good luck and answers to our prayers. The party lasted well into the night, we heard the last fireworks around 2am. Needless to say, school is pretty quiet today, the kids are hungover from the copious amounts of sugar they ingested and the teachers are plain tired from preparing for such an event. I am bright eyed and ready, Deb is more of Pink eye and ready. That's right, Deb came down with Pink Eye on Friday evening, but a trip to the doctor and $2 worth of antibiotics later, she is feeling better. We spent the better part of the weekend around our cabin as we didn't want to spread the sickness to anyone else.

Our teaching assignments still have not come down, we are in a bit of a holding pattern still. We are starting to feel like firefighters, waiting for the call to run and teach English at a moments notice. The bummer is that there is no brass pole to slide down when the alarm rings.

Dan Chang 2

2009-10-29T21:21:00.000-07:00

We are officially teachers! Today, we were asked to teach two classes for a sick co-worker. We are finding out that Thai culture is more reactive than proactive, the sick teacher is our neighbor here at the campground, but we were not asked to teach until 9:15am, class started at 9am. We had a flight of stairs to determine our lesson place for the day. You can sympathize with us a bit when you imagine being summoned to teach your first class without any prior idea of where the students are in their curriculum and ability level. In fact, we still are not real sure of the grade we taught this morning, they were around 8-10, we think...Anyway, we were able to co-teach the class which made things a bit easier and lessons were learned on both sides. We hope the students will remember the words to Itsy, Bitsy Spider and maybe that our names are Deb and Joe and not Daab and Gogh. I learned that I cannot write a straight sentence on a chalkboard, everything angled down like it was about to fall off the board. Deb learned that even her loud voice was not enough to gain complete listening ears from 35 Thai students. The kids absolutely do not sit still, talking to others is as common as breathing and I am pretty sure the group of boys in the back were shooting a game of craps, maybe it was Pokemon...

After that we were asked to teach at 11:20am, class started at 11, see the pattern? This time we knew the grade, 3rd. Reviewing game tape from our earlier foray into the classroom, we started immediately with a quiz about parts of the body. Focusing specifically on the ears, eyes and nose we hoped the lesson of listen and look would stick, it did a little, but then Deb busted out 5 Little Monkeys and the room sounded like a Metallica concert was about to start. I will record and definitely release an album of Thai children singing nursery rhymes, they loved it! Especially when we put in place hand gestures and the jumping on the bed part of the song looked more like a bar when the song Jump Around is played, kids were moshing each other and a few heads were literally bumped! Needless to say, we are minor celebrities after that act, it was stellar.

We then spent the afternoon in an outdoor auditorium watching the children practice for the Loi Krathong festival that will occur this weekend and wrap up on Monday evening with a huge entertainment show put on by the students. Loi Krathong celebrates water and all it brings to the land. The children sing songs, perform dances and have made banana leaf boats to be floated down the local river. Deb and I along with the other foreign teachers are signing a song named Loi Krathong, coincidentally, in front of everyone on Monday night. When we practiced today in front of the children I thought I heard a faint chant of 5Little Monkeys, 5 Little Monkeys, they wanted an encore I believe. Maybe, just maybe, they will get one!

Common questions from home have included, how are you? the kids?your place? and the typical Minnesota question, how is the weather? Continually saying its hot and humid does not do it justice, hot and humid is a constant. I knew it was a hot country when I started noticing that all the cars here have only blue on the inside air temperature gauge, you turn it from light blue to dark blue, there are no heaters in the cars here, no joke. I am developing a rating for the different types of hot and humid. Like today for instance, it was about 85, with 85% humidity, that is bearable. Yesterday was 90 and humid with a boiling sun that baked the lint between my toes to a crisp. That is hotter than...

It needs refining, but you get the point. The classrooms do not have AC, but staff at the school are quick to point out that they are equipped with fans. That should make it better, right? Wrong. Next time its 85 and sunny near you turn on your car and put the heat on with blower going at you, welcome to Dan Chang.

Heat, bugs and language barrier aside, this country, the town and and people are beautiful. We have been treated to a number of spectacular sunsets and wonderful hospitality from the Thai people. It is this we came for and are most definitely receiving.

Dan Chang 1

2009-10-28T22:38:00.000-07:00

Good people of Chicago, Kentucky, Minnesota and other concerned citizens of the great U.S.A, we have arrived! Late Tuesday night we rolled into Dan Chang, Suphanburi, Thailand. Our orientation ended after a 2 night trip to Kanchanburi with the other teachers in our group. We rode an elephant, a pretty awesome animal and as you can see from the pictures I was in complete control of Walter (we named him that in memory of Wally, our campervan from New Zealand). Our day also included a bamboo rafting trip down the River Kwai and yes, we also visited the famed Bridge Over the River Kwai, it was nothing like the movie. Over 100,000 P.O.W's died building the Thai-Burma railway and the construction of the bridge alone caused over 12,000 deaths because of disease and maltreatment from their Japanese captors. Unfortunately, the area around the bridge is very touristy and not much attention is paid by visitors as to the significant loss of life the bridge caused.
On a happier note, I found chips over here that turned my tongue blue! I have no idea what they are called, the bag looked interesting and I gave them a try. Kinda of a cross between BBQ and salsa flavored, not too bad. We drove back to Bangkok and were immediately picked up by Saci and Dick, they drove us 2 hours north by northwest (another famous movie) to Dan Chang and took us to dinner. We then tried our best to settle into our “cabin”.

You will maybe remember that there was a discussion last week as to whether we were camping or in a cabin, its both. We are in a cabin in a campground. The first evening was spent removing the assorted spiders, bugs and other creepy crawly's that called our new home their home. It is not big, one room about 14 by 14, with a bed, fridge, table and t.v. That gets 8 channels of riveting Thai t.v. We have unplugged the television so Deb can plug her hair dryer in, we cannot understand the shows anyway and because Most Extreme Elimination Challenge is not showing here, I have no use for it. We are also the proud renters of a wet room, what is a wet room you ask? There is a sink, western style toilet (you cannot put tp down it though) and a shower head coming out of a wall with a drain in the middle of the floor. You turn on the shower and everything in the whole room gets wet, there are no curtains, doors, etc. its a free for all. Anyway, the first shower was quite nice as Deb could not yell at me for peeing in the shower because our shower has a toilet in it!
Yesterday we went to Anuban Dan Chang school for orientation and meeting with students and other key members of the campus. The school is K-6 and there are kids everywhere! Its like an anthill, children just pour out of buildings and then disappear into another or they chase each other around outside until a lovely wind chime type sound comes over the loud speakers and they dive into a classroom for an hour. We were brought around to 5 or 6 classrooms and in each one the entire class would stand up and in their very best English voice say “gooooooooooooooooooooooood moaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaainnnnnnnng teacha”, nicest welcome ever! Also, we were repeatedly quizzed on our age and where we were from from boldest of students. Deb was a hit with the girls because of her blonde hair and the boys were fans for the right reasons as well. Again, it made me smile as I heard a number of the little buggers mention how tall the farang (foreigner) was! Joe Wronka considered tall, can you believe it?
We are still a bit clueless about what classes we are teaching or even our schedule for work. The big concern from the staff here for us is whether or not we will be able to memorize the words for a song that we will be singing as part of a festival on Monday. Oh will they regret inviting me anywhere near a microphone...

Our orientation day ended with Deb and I getting a set of wheels for our time here. We even got to pick out the make and model. For a couple thousand Thai Baht we scored brand new bikes! Deb is rocking a fire engine red one and I went with black to ensure my masculinity is never questioned over here. Riding home was an adventure, not because we haven't ridden a bike in 10 years, but because of the vehicles that had little consideration for the foreigners cruising on the side of the road. We had a surprise waiting for us when we arrived back at he cabin, a refrigerator! Not stocked with beer, but you cannot have it all, all the time...

Bangkok 2

2009-10-24T09:37:00.000-07:00

We are done with orientation in Bangkok and will head out of the city tomorrow for a 2 night excursion to Kanchanaburi, about 2 hours from here. The plan is to visit a Thai orphanage, ride elephants thru the jungle and take a bamboo rafting trip down the local river. It will be a full 2 days and we are looking forward to getting out of the city for awhile.
The past few days have been packed full of trainings on Thai language, culture and preparing to teach English for 5 months. Learning survival Thai has been the hardest part hands down. To give you a taste of what we are trying to learn, get this. The Thai language has 44 consonants, 22 vowels, 5 tones and 21 separate sounds! For example, the word “mai” which can mean “not, new, not?, wood, or burn” is tricky because the tone with which the word is said determines the meaning. So, mai mai mai mai mai, can mean “new wood doesn't burn, does it?” if said with different tones. Basically, if you are not born and raised here, mastering Thai is nearly impossible. However, we have picked up a few key phrases to avoid being completely helpless, but we have a long way to go. We have found that taxi cab drivers and the wait staff at restaurants are the best teachers as they love to exchange Thai lessons for English lessons and everyone has a great laugh.

We got to visit the Grand Palace a few days ago. Thailand has a king and this is the home away from home for the royal family. It is absolutely incredible, the grounds are immaculate and the architecture is very impressive. Built in 1782 by King Rama V, it reminds me of the Palace of Versailles in France, but in an very eastern sense. Look at the pictures, everything is covered in gold leaf and the pillars are tiled with beautiful stones and gems. Inside the palace are a number of temples and one of the most famous is The Emerald Buddha temple. We were able to go inside and sit quietly gazing up at the extraordinary Buddha made out of jade, it was mistaken as emeralds when first discovered because of the brilliant blue/green color. The walls and ceilings of the temple are painted with numerous scenes from previous Thai dynasties and the detail rivals that of the Sistine chapel in Rome in my opinion.

The other night we had a welcome dinner and were able to meet with the school coordinator that will be our point person at the school we are teaching at. Her name is Sasi (sauce-e) and she is married to a American gentleman named Dick who also came with her. Sasi did not speak much English, but Dick was quite helpful in bridging the language barrier. He filled us in on the school and our living arrangements, which should be quite interesting to see. Sasi kept saying that we “camping living”, but Dick cleared it up saying we were living in cabins in a campground, we don't know what to expect! He also warned us about the pack of wild dogs that lives outside the campground, now its getting interesting! All in all though, we are still excited to go and will be sure to buy dog biscuits to pay the toll I suspect the mutts will charge us to pass-by.

The last two nights we ventured into the ex-Pat (westerners now living in Thailand) quarter of Bangkok. It was interesting to meet a few of the ex-Pats and get their perspective about living here. We had pizza and pasta tonight as our stomachs were asking for a night off from the spicy Thai food we have been eating for the past week. A walk thru the markets is always fun and I tried my hand at bartering with a couple of vendors. Thai people love a good bartering session and actually hold much espect for those that can do it well. I was able to get a vendor laughing, slapping my back and eventually cutting the price in half for a soccer jersey I wanted, she told me I was “A-ok number 1 deal man”, by far the best report card I have ever received!

The heat and smell of the country is hard to imagine, but tonight it dawned on me that describing it might be accomplished with this analogy. It is like putting on a sweater, winter coat and snow pants and then sitting in a sauna for 30 minutes while someone cooks a steak on a diesel engine that is leaking urine. Vivid, huh? Needless to say, leaving Bangkok for the jungle doesn't seem so bad even if there are 20 some poisonous snakes in the country!

We will update after we get settled in our “cabin”in the town of Dan Chang!

Bangkok Intro

2009-10-21T07:56:00.000-07:00

Sawatdee! We have been in the Land of Smiles since the 18th and are slowly starting to settle into the new surroundings. It was a 12 hour flight from New Zealand to Bangkok and I am pretty sure we are done traveling on airplanes for awhile after that trek, also the fact that the Thai government has our passports for the next 60 days. This is part of working in Thailand, they take your passport for 2 months of processing your work visa and by the time you get it back its only valid for another 45 days and the process starts over again. Bureaucracy of finest brand in our opinion, but oh well!

Our first outing into the big city of Bangkok (7million people reside here) was full on. Like any good tourist visiting the Thai capital we started our day in...Chinatown. Yes, here we are in Thailand and our first stop is the bustling Chinese quarter of town, but it was truly worth the trip as we were thrown into a netherworld of gold shops, food vendors, clothing and shoes stores with the same brands you are buying at Macy's and Target. Only here the price is about ¼th what you are paying the states, send us a list of your clothing needs and chances are we can secure it for you. It was incredible walking down the sidewalks, but calling it a sidewalk will conjure up the wrong image for you so let me describe it. There is a road, about 4 lanes wide, but anyone with anything wheeled is using this road and every square inch is being used, trust me. Next to the road is a slightly elevated piece of concrete that even if stripped bare of the stalls and food vendors might resemble the sidewalks you see in the states. However, when they built the sidewalk they failed to remove the trees and bushes, so adding to the mix is foliage that for the average Thai person is of no concern because the branches are 5 feet 5 inches tall, but for my towering height of 5'8 and Deb's circus like height of 5'9 the branches become spears destined to remove a retina or worse. Negotiating these streets is made even more challenging as there are most definitely not any kind of emission standards on vehicles, clouds of exhaust fumes hang in the air like storm clouds and then disappear after 1,000 people walk thru them and breath it in. Our lungs are officially clogged again after having them cleaned out in the fresh and pure New Zealand air.

After going to Chinatown and the infinite markets, we headed to the temple or Wat (pronounced Whaat) Po. It was a beautiful and peaceful place in the middle of the controlled chaos of downtown Bangkok. Buddhism is the major religion in Thailand and monks are held in the highest of regards here, every man is expected at some point in their life to become a monk. Usually they do this around 18 or 19 and for about 3-6 months, although some much younger boys join temples even earlier in life. Friendly as can be, the monks live on the generosity of other and are often seen receiving donations of money, food and drink on the street from citizens and tourists alike.

Karma, the stuff of sayings like, “what goes around comes around” and “you reap what you sow” is a also a major part of Thai culture. People here are extremely superstitious and believe that what you do today can affect your eternal well being. That being said not all Thai's seem worried about doing wrong and we can attest to that. Being a day of firsts for us we decided to take a Tuk-Tuk (took-took), three wheeled cab, to a temple with two other teachers. The driver was a friendly enough guy and seemed to know exactly where we wanted to go. Well, after a couple of near accidents and near wetting of pants (traffic laws absolutely do not exist here, kill or be killed is the only rule) on my part we arrived in PatPong, the red light district of Bangkok. Miles from our destination the driver insisted we pay and get out, having royal shafted the Farangs (white people) out of 200 baht or about $6 and stuck us in the middle of pleasure land. We didn't stick around long enough to see the underbelly of this district, but what we did see was enough to let us know that late night Cinemax ain't got nothing on PatPong!

We took a cab to Wat Tamrit and toured this temple for about an hour before eating great food from a street vendor. The food here is extremely good, but SPICY! I mean it literally makes your tongue swell up and trachea shrink. Good stuff though! We also took a water taxi up the Chao (river) Phraya to see the Wat Arun at sunset, beautiful site and we will head back for the full on tour later this week.

Our first day of orientation was too much and not enough at the same time. Too much information on Thai culture and language and not enough time to take it all in. We still have 6 more days, but something tells me that we will be shooting from the hip much of the time teaching. The rest of this week is going to be orientation and some sight seeing tours of the city and surrounding area. There are about 85 other teachers with us preparing for their tour of duty in Thailand. I have already met 7 other Minnesotans which has been fun, but Deb and I are finding out fast that being 28 means we are the elders of the group. In Thailand the elders pay for everything when in a group, part of this culture we are rebelling against though! It has been a great few days here and we are excited to be embarking on this part of our trip.

New Zealand Finale

2009-10-19T02:47:00.000-07:00

We departed New Zealand on the 18th after spending our last day touring the city of Christchurch, doing some much needed laundry and catching up on emails. Oh yeah, we lost $4 in the Christchurch Casino playing penny slots, its a tough life at the top. In short, New Zealand was more than we had imagined it would be. The beauty of the country was seared into our minds and the warmth of the people will stay in our hearts for years to come. Our last days on the south island were fast and furious.

After leaving Queenstown we headed north to Wanaka and got there by crossing over the Crown Moutain Range on highway 6a, the steepest road we had encountered on the whole island. As Deb snapped pictures out the window I was negotiating hairpin turns and watching for rock slides. The view from the top was spectacular as we could see for miles in all directions, well worth the white knuckle driving it took to get there! Cruising into the town of Wanaka we stopped along the lake that was coincidentally named Wanaka as well, creativity reigns in this region...We found the hike we were in need of at Mount Iron, a 543 meter monster that had our legs burning pretty good when we made the summit.
Again, as usual, the views were breathtaking and well worth the carbs we burned to get there. All around us the signs of spring were evident, baby sheep everywhere! Seriously, they are worse than rabbits. Hawks, birds and blooming flower trees made the valley look like a painting and the walk down was hardly noticed as we were entranced with the views.

We drove from Wanaka along the coast of the Tasman Sea, at this point on the island there is no land between NZ and Antarctica, another fact that I have stored away for random trivia night when we get back home. The island is home to numerous ecosystems and within an hour of leaving the mountainous terrain of Wanaka we were cruising by the coast and it felt like we were driving out in California along the Pacific. We made a few stops to snap pictures and build a Wronka road marker on the side of the road that thousands of other folks had done previous to us. At one point we stopped to watch locals White Bait fishing in the pools formed by the high tide. A friendly Aussie couple allowed me to sample their morning catch, it was fantastic! Like Walleye with some salt, so says the Bobby flay in me. White Bait are really small, like 2 or 3 inches and are netted along the shore. It is considered a delicacy and many of the people fishing would go on to sell there haul for about $150 per kg.

I thought of using our socks to catch some and finance the trip, but the smell emanating from them was not good bait in my book.

Arriving in the town of Fox Glacier (named after the local ice sheet we would soon tour)we found a nice campervan site for the evening and settled into some dinner and most importantly the opportunity for me to get my barbeque on! I grilled myself up a nice NZ porterhouse, it was delicious and perfect. Deb enjoyed rice and canned beets, like a filet mignon for vegetarians I guess...We woke up to rain and lots of it, we decided to forgo the guided hike on the glacier and do some self exploring. For those that have not seen a glacier up close, you must! Walking out to Fox Glacier was awesome, we literally crawled, jumped and scampered our way within 100 feet of it before rope barriers (Darwin downers in my book) kept us from actually touching the glacier. It was enormous, having carved out the entire valley for thousands of years and currently receding into the mountain it shows the awesome strength these massive ice cubes have. We were pretty well soaked at this point,

(Fox Glacier) but happy we made the trip so we hopped back in Wally and drove to Franz Josef glacier where we made a similar trek to the base of that behemoth wall of ice and rock. Thoroughly impressed with mother nature again we hit the road for Hari Hari.

On the recommendation of a friend who traveled the island a few years ago we stopped in at Wildside Backpackers that is run by Dan and Kathy, a pure New Zealand family. They were not open yet for the season, but remembering our friends Blake and Erika they opened up their home to us. I also think it helped we were absolutely drenched from our walk to the glaciers, they thought we had driven a motorcycle thru the rain, that is how wet we looked. Giving us warm tea, a hot fire and good conversation we felt right at home with this lovely couple. They have two kids, 2 year old Shea and 1 month old Dylan to look after as well as their business which is an operation without rival. They live completely off the grid, the only electricity they use comes in the form of three lights in their house and the power comes from a diesel generator out back. Dan is an expert craftsman although he claims the ubiquitous title of “jack of all trades, master of none”, fitting for sure! They grow, hunt or trade with others in the area for all of their food and recycle just about anything into useful items. Dan's carpentry skills are out of this world and we got a personal taste as they put us up in a beautiful cottage that was just finished. A wood burning stove kept us warm throughout the night and heated our shower water. The floor was lined with animal skin to keep the feet warm and the bed must have been stuffed with a couple of geese because that thing was comfortable! Dan took us out to some natural hot springs for an afternoon soak. We dug our own personal hot tub on the banks of the Wanghuni River and enjoyed the thermal bath thoroughly. After getting the classic NZ spa treatment Dan and I went out to the coast for some White Bait fishing, it was a top 10 lifetime experience for me. We drove thru, I will say that again, we drove thru the river to get out to the Tasman Sea as the sun was setting for a couple of hours of White Baiting. For a first timer I think I did pretty good on my 4 passes down the shore with the net. We caught and later enjoyed a delicious dinner of about 200 White Bait. It was an amazing afternoon and made all the better by the company I shared it with.

Departing Hari Hari in the morning we made our way to Arthurs Pass for our last night on the road. Stopping in the seaside town of Hokitika we enjoyed a long walk on the beach in search of the elusive and very valuable Jade stone. We picked up anything that looked green or was on that part of the color wheel only to have our dreams of being rich dashed when a local told us that Serpentine is very similar to Jade and that our stash was made up completely of the stuff. Penniless in the sense that we had no Jade to sell local dealers we soothed our hurt pride with an ice cream cone on the way out town. Arriving in Arthurs Pass for our last night we realized the campervan options were pretty limited and opted to freedom camp down by the river. Yes, I made numerous Chris Farley jokes the whole evening about living in a van down by the river. Deb's amusement level was at an all-time low after the 30th

comment and Farley would have been embarrassed as well. That evening we had visitors in the form the Kea, a parrot looking bird that scientists claim is the smartest animal in the world. I won't argue that point, but I will say that it can also be put in the running for the most annoying animal in the world. Shortly after arriving, we pulled out the chairs and set up the propane stove to boil water for pasta and tea. The birds (think Hitchcock movie now) literally went after anything we pulled out, the bag of pasta, tea bags, a spoon and most maddening to me, my beer bottle. It took everything in me not to peg one of the little bastards with a rock, but I figured Deb would not appreciate Kea on the BBQ on the last night. We finished dinner, took a walk along the river which was swollen with snow melt from the nearby mountains and called it a night as the sandflies, a cousin of the mosquito, came out in battalions and ravaged our ankles and necks. Sitting in the van at 8:30pm and playing cribbage was a good way to end our trip, especially since I was winning, but alas the good times came to an end when the Kea I called “Hoppy” because he had a broken leg and hopped on the good one alighted on the hood of Wally. Old Hoppy began to chew and peck at our windshield wiper and before I could scare him off with a slam of my fist on the window he successfully ripped the wiper blade in two. The drive home the next day was made a bit more interesting as it rained the whole way, we had one working wiper and there were no stores to buy a new one. Kea's are smart and vengeful animals, beware!

So, the trip to NZ was a huge success and we will most definitely be back as the time we had was not enough to explore it all! We recommend your next international adventure be in New Zealand as it will surely knock your socks off or at least a windshield wiper...

We arrived in Bangkok late last night, after a 12 hour flight from NZ. Today was about sleep and getting prepped for the coming week of orientation. We are staying at the Louis Tavern Hotel about 25km from central Bangkok. A short walk around the area led to lots of strange looks from the locals and a sobering moment for us as we realized we are now the minority. Its going to be great though, there have been plenty of laughs already, just ask us one day about our taxi ride from the airport to here! More to come on our time here as we open up another round of adventures in the coming months!

New Zealand Part Deux

2009-10-12T02:11:00.000-07:00

Back for more are you?

Day 3
Sunday funday held most true this week. We got the adrenaline pumps cranked up as we journeyed via bus to the white water rafting spot on the Shotover river. The bus ride alone was terrifying, the road up the mountain was a goat path until last

week I think and I am pretty sure our bus driver had been been up for the past 3 days drinking, he smelled like it at least. We got on the

river in a 15ft raft with two Aussie women and a French guy that got a new name because our rafting guide didn't like Fredrick, we called him Freddie or Kruger. KC was our guide and he is personified every stereotype one would have of a a whitewater guide in New Zealand. Outrageous, but full of knowledge about the history of the river as well as rafting itself, KC took us on a “SWEET AS” (Kiwi for totally awesome) 2 hour ride down grade 4 and 5 rapids. The highlight at the end was a straight drop out of tunnel into water about 15ft below, had it not been for Deb's incredible forearm strength I would have been swimming the last ½ mile outside the raft. She totally Hasselhoffed me!

We grabbed dinner that night in town (Pog Mahonies, thanks Blake for the tip) and slept easy knowing the rapids were behind us.

(Joe wishes he could catch trout this big!)

Day 4

Monday morning came pretty quick as we stayed up later than we expected chatting with an Aussie family parked next to our campervan at the Holiday Park Motor Camp. Very nice people with three kids and loads of stories about their family adventures. Anyway, it was a mad dash out the door as we had to cover 171km to get to Manoupori, home of Doubtful Sound and the Manoupori power station. We booked ourselves on an all day tour of the sound and power station which is an incredible feat of engineering.

Doubtful Sound is the cousin of the much more popular Milford Sound, but its actually 3x bigger and only hosts two tours a day compared to Milfords 50 or 60, we literally had the place to ourselves and 65 of our new friends. Deb and I braved the initial crossing of Lake Manoupori on top of the boat, it was blowing about 30mph winds, but the pictures we snapped were well worth the raw fingers and nose. After crossing the lake we hopped a bus for a short ride over a mountain to the actual Doubtful Sound, so named because Captain Cook did not think it was much more than a small harbor when he explored the region on his famous voyage. It is the closest one can come to stepping back to the times of Gawanda (not Gandolf), the ancient landmass, when all the continents were touching. Spectacular mountains rising up out of the water formed huge valleys were home to all sorts of animals and birds. This is where my mind will go everytime I read my favorite book Where the Wild Things Are. The day ended with our trip into Moordoor and me returning the ring of power I found while at Lake Tepako. Actually, it was the Manoupori power station, which, is an awesome example of human ingenuity, strength and general get'r done attitude. The details of how it works, its cool history and construction can be found with a simple Google search, but our highlight was when the bus we were on went underneath the mountain 2km to see the actual power station. There in the depths I threw the Ring of Power into the great chasm and saved mankind or we took a brief tour way down in the mountain and got a crash course in hydro-electric power. It was like a whole day of just science class and we are blessed to have had it!

So, the epic blog entry is complete. Lesson learned on waiting so long to update, expect it more frequently, but no promises as New Zealand comes first!

(Joe & Deb on Doubtful Sound)

New Zealand Part 1

2009-10-12T01:58:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the lack of info coming out of NZ, but as you will read we have been pretty much tied up by the most excellent country of New Zealand. I broke down the update in 2 parts so you can leave room for dessert if the first two days fills you up.

Day 1

The Places You Will Go...To be quite honest, New Zealand was not a place either of us thought we would ever visit in our lifetimes and so far we are terribly pleased with our decision to go south of “down under.” We arrived in Christchurch on the south island of the country after 30+ hours of traveling, which, as you can imagine was a hard on the body and a bit on the mind. A quick breakdown of that portions of the trip reads like this. Chicago to Los Angeles to Fiji to Auckland to Christchurch. We got into LA in time to watch the best team in baseball win the American League Central against the hated Tigers (sorry Natalie) at the beloved Homer Dome. As I write this I am pretty sure they are 2 games down to the much more hated Yankees...The flight to Fiji was uneventful as we slept and read most of the way, in flight entertainment was out of order for those of us stuck in economy class. I had a pleasant if not a bit of a confessional conversation with a woman of Indian decent for 10 plus hours, I am pretty sure she is in therapy somewhere after listening to me. Deb slept happily as I had a new listening friend for that long...

Getting into Fiji was great as we were ready to be off of a plane if only for 3 hours. The weather in Fiji at the time was about 85 and sunny, there were reports of snow in New Zealand, but I passed it off as crazy Fijian weatherman trying hype up a slow news day. I was wrong, Fijian weatherman actually report the realtime weather, no speculation. Not that Al Roker or name your favorite weatherman lies to us, but it seems more times than not they have no clue as to the weather the next day. Anyway, flying into Auckland was like Christmas Eve, we could see

bits and pieces of what looked like a beautiful country below us, but the clouds never unveiled much and left us wondering what the land looked like (Dan Greene-the land is the present and the clouds are wrapping paper, we didn't know what was inside). After getting into rain soaked Christchurch and jumping a cab to Stonehurst Accommodation we were pretty well knackered. We grabbed a quick bite at Winnie Bagoes. Great pizza, better beer. Tired, full and not on an

airplane made for an easy nights sleep.The following morning was a day of firsts for us. We first found out that the weatherman in Fiji was not lying as the snow he told us about the day before was most definitely falling across the southern island and our plans to head west out of Christchurch were not possible. Before dealing with that issue we had to collect the campervan. Wally as the van (see pic) is affectionately called was waiting for us in downtown Christchurch a

friendly man name Gris Gris helped us get setup, by help us I mean he went thru a 10 point checklist, swiped my credit card, let me kick the tires, told me he did not have maps and said going to the west coast might be a bit of trouble. By this time the credit card cleared, he dropped the keys in my hand and said “remember, stay left. Good luck”. Keys in hand we picked up Wally from the garage below and after a few laps around a city block we were on the road to Lake Tepako.

(Deb and Wally)

The drive south was fine, getting out of the city was the hardest part and I am semi proud to say that I ran my first NZ red light

, got honked at the first time in another country and am pretty sure that a youth group saw me say the F word to a fellow driver, classy as usual says Deb...We headed south thru rain, snow and some sleet and arrived in the mid afternoon at the Lake Tepako Motor Inn. We parked about 75 yards from the stunning blue/green lake (see pic) I have ever seen. Lake Tepako is surrounded by mountains on 3 sides, snow peaked still and

absolutely beautiful. This is where some of Lord of the Rings was

filmed or so said the local information board. We got our hike on almost immediately, tackling the 1000 meter Mount John, it felt good to walk and the weather was clearing so we made the summit in little under 2 hours with plenty of picture stops along the way. There is an observatory on the top, but we opted to enjoy the view from a small bench on top.

Back down at the bottom we made dinner and then suffered thru a bitterly cold night in the back of Wally as the heater was not working and my expert RV repair skills were not what I thought they would be. More snuggle time with Deb is all I was looking for anyway:) I cannot put into words the beauty of Lake Tepako or the country itself. At every turn there is another “do you see that” or “WOW” site to be seen, needless to say staying on the road has not been the top priority.

(On top of Mount John)

Day 2

We did another hike on Saturday morning around the peninsula of the lake. This one took about two hours and was highlighted by our lunch on the beach after we slid down 50ft banks from the walkway above, not part of the trail, but when in Rome...After the walk we jumped in Wally and cruised south to Queenstown, the adventure capital of the world. The weather had cleared at this point and the drive in was easy. Queenstown has the look of a small Swiss town, but the excitement of Vegas. And then you meet the locals and realize that Minnesota's international partner in nice is Queenstown.

Launch

2009-10-06T11:00:00.000-07:00

Today we depart the USA at 3:10pm from Chicago O'Hare, tomorrow does not exist for us as we cross the international dateline on our way to ChristChurch New Zealand arriving there on Thursday the 8th. I wonder who we ask for that day of our life back, email us if you know...

The past week has been a smoreguss board (that is Minnesotan for a "mixture") of emotions, activities and experiences. Our last day of work was Thursday and it was a incredibly fast day filled with lots of laughs, hugs, tributes (good for Deb and more like roastings for Joe) and tears. The Mercy Home family has been incredibly good to us over the years and we were given a truly heartfelt and loving goodbye. And then there was the sign on my office door from a certain White Sox fan who is feeling low as he watches the TWINS head for the playoffs. The sign had a picture of a tombstone with the words "Gone and Soon to Be Forgotten" like I said, more of a roasting goodbye for Joe.

We packed up our apartment and with the help of three strong men, Deb as a forewoman we made the move out in less than 3 hours. Thanks Ron, Rob and Steve! It was bittersweet packing up number 518, but the adventure that awaits is pretty good reason to get out the storage boxes.

You can get a sense of what we are taking on the trip by looking at the picture, a brief description comes down to this. Deb has a 75 liter pack and a Vera Bradley "purse" which in my opinion is a broad interpretation of the word "purse" as it comes across as more of a duffel bag from my male perspective. Joe has a 85 liter pack and a 35 liter daypack. We each have 2 pairs of shoes, assorted multi purpose clothes and Deb's gotta have it item is her all purpose scarf/wrap that can also be turned in a turban should she need it. My gotta have it item is Gold Bond, enough said.

Joe's Deb's

We arrive in Christchurch on the south island of New Zealand and will spend 9 days cruising in an campervan (think conversion van with a mattress in the back, classy, right?) Our hope is update everyone at least once on the trip, but no promises.

Finally, Deb said I had to admit to the first "trip incident" which I dispute because we have not technically started travelling yet, feel free to weigh with you opinion after you read this. I lost my drivers license somewhere between Friday evening and yesterday. Its somewhere in Chicago, so I feel confident in my defense. Anyway, I got a new one this morning and am all set to drive on the left in New Zealand, it is the left, right?

Well, here we go, the last Dunkin Donuts coffee is going down smooth, the butterflies are reaching a crescendo and there is nothing to do but walk down the concourse and get on the big bird. Look to hear from us in New Zealand. Auf Wiedersehn!

Countdown

2009-09-22T19:39:00.000-07:00

14 days from today Deb and I are going to leave the States and start our around the world travels! We are starting with an RV trip around the south island of New Zealand. We then move to Thailand to teach English, after teaching we will travel thru SouthEast Asia and then backpack thru Europe before coming back to the States in May. Yep, thats our Outlook calendar for the next few months, don't try to schedule a meeting cause we be busy!

I envision our travels will be a combination The Goonies, Lord of Rings, The King and I and the books Hatchet, Call of the Wild, Sidartha and my all time favorite Where the Wild Things Are.

Deb's vision:Rick Steves (You Tube him if you don't know who he is) teams up with Food Network and Travel Channel to produce a mini-series that will win world-wide acclaim for capturing the essence of so many countries in so little time...

The safe (read:right) bet is Deb's vision but on a budget. I know some of you are rooting for Max, Frodo and Sloth to befriend us along the way and maybe, just maybe, we come to find Middle Earth and that island Where the Wild things really are...

WHY? Well, we looked at travelling for a whole year, but soon realized that our experience as volunteers at Mercy Home for Boys and Girls was life changing and we wanted to have a similar experience as a married couple. So, the search was on and we settled on a CIEE (Council on International Education Exchange) program which will provide us the opportunity to teach English to elementary school kids in Thailand and best of all it gave us a reason to move across the world!

We hope to share with all of you (friends, family, well-wishers, Joey O'Malley supporters,etc.) our experiences, pictures and stories from abroad on this blog. We will attempt to update it as much as possible, but do not know what our internet options will be in Thailand, yet!

For now, please forward this on to others that might enjoy following us on our little adventure and be sure to pray for a safe journey. 14 days, oh my!