October 25, 2005

I'm listening to Kurt Elling right now. Ahhhhh....he takes me to a different place.

So where to begin. We've had a busy month being on vacation! YAY! It's been really nice to relax and enjoy being in Thailand. We took a cooking class a week or so ago and that was a blast. I learned to make 4 of my favorite dishes here. Som Tam (spicy papaya salad), Pad Thai (classic), Tom Yum(spicy seafood soup) and Keng Kiew Wan Kai(Green Chicken Curry)..oh my gosh..that's my favorite. It's soo good. The class was all tourists except for us. I was hoping to meet some people our age, but no luck.

Last weekend we went to Ayutthya, which is North of Bangkok around 2 hours. It's the old capital of the country and was the home of numerous wars between Thailand and Burma. There are ruins all over the city and it's just incredible! I think we saw 10 temples inside and out and saw a dozen more on the sides of roads. My favorite were the ruins that had fabulous stories about the construction. Like one was built by the Burmese to celebrate their victory but they only got to making the pedastal when the Thai fought and won another battle and then finished the temple with a Thai style chedi. There were a few temples that had been robbed in the 1960's so they were excavated and you could climb down to the bottom and see where the artifacts had been!

Well, that's all I have for now. There's too much to remember and Dave and I reserved a tennis court for 7pm. That's in 10..ahhh. I'll write more sooner than later.

October 13, 2005

Rainy Thailand.  It's noon and it's just pouring here.  Dave and I are stuck at work until the rain lightens up a bit.  I actually saw lightening strike outside my office across the street! 

We're officially on vacation but still somehow at the office. I'm trying to catch up on some missed practicing and Dave has been trying to receive a fedex package from his parents(see below).  Good times.

SAYOWE finished up last week and was a lot of fun.  I'm glad it's done but it was fun.  I had 12 horn players here from Thailand, Phillipines, and Vietnam.  We had a horn choir concert during the festival, which was my first concert conducting! AHH. I also played a mini recital at the beginning of the week.  More good times.

Oh, our big news of the week.  We purchased a microwave oven!!! Oh my gosh! I'm in heaven.  Before now we were relying on whatever restauarants were around..mostly Thai food.  But now, we can eat whatever we want! I'm so excited!  We're going to the grocery store today to get some yummy food to cook..starting with choclate chip cookies! YAY!

(Below) So Dave's parents sent us (upon request) a Halloween pacakge! It was so amazing of them but I guess since the box is really big and heavy, it is being held at customs.  We've been advised to have people write "religious materials" on any contents sheet but fedex realllly wanted to know what was in this box.  So we told them, religious materials.  That apparently wasn't detailed enough.  They wanted to know for what religion and what ceremony.  So we told them..halloween.  They were confused by this so Dave went on about how halloween is a celebration of Nov. 1, All-Soul's Day..very much a part of the christian religion.  He even said "part of the ceremony is eating candy!"  I was dying laughing as he was talking to the fedex people.  It looks like we will still have to pay a small tax but it was worth the trouble!!

It's still pouring so I'm going to get back to practicing.  We're so close on the wedding contract I can taste it.  I just want it to be final!!!

October 1, 2005

Holey Moley, I can't believe it's October! It's Saturday morning here in sunshine filled Thailand. Dave and I stayed up late watching a fantastic interview with Wynton Marsalis on BBC, while drinking a bottle of our favorite NY wine!! That's right..I had NY wine. I didn't find it here though. My friend Vicky was out last week and brought us a bottle. I haven't had Thai wine yet, but I think there's a reason why we haven't heard about Thai wine.

It was fun having a visitor out here. We did a bunch of touristy things, got ripped off by many a taxi cab driver and found many good Thai food restaurants courtesy of Lonely Planet. I love that book. Anyway, my favorite meal was at this Noodle Bar. They ended up trying to rip us off with our change but I caught them...twice..hahha. I had this soup that tasted like peanut butter. Oh my gosh...peanut butter soup is my new favorite food. YUMMY! Dave wasn't with us so I have an excuse to go back soon. We also went out to a nice Japanese meal with a student of mine. We were served Sake and like a UCLA college student, Dave takes a shot as we are all nicely sipping our sake. hahaha. Go Bruins! Oh wait, who's #1 in the nation right now? Oh right...

Vicky and I also had some massages. We tried to get certified in Thai massage but it takes longer than she was here for. So we just had 2 massages. One Thai massage that was soooo awesome and a foot massage that was hilarious. This spa has the chairs lined up so we could talk to the massage women while they were rubbing our feet. So they started asking us questions and wanted to learn my name. Leslie is reallllly hard to say here..so everyone calls me Beebe..they can say that. So for a solid 10 minutes I had 3 women trying to say over and over Leslie Beebe, Leslie Beebe. It was soo funny. My nickname for Vicky is Wicky and since there is no "V" in the Thai alphabet, all the women could get out was Wicky!!! It was classic.

I have a rehearsal to go to and SAYOWE starts today...then band and orchestra festival. It's going to be crazy and fun all in one!! I have some pics from this weekend that I'll put up after my rehearsal! YAY!