Hi all!

Here's another for your reading (if you desire) pleasure! It was great to hear all your updates too.

Where we left off...Friday

Again, Friday was a very interesting day at lecture. We spent the morning discussing the efforts to develop an HIV vaccine in Thailand, and then Thailand's experience with the Avian Flu. They served us lunch, as always and it was a delicious Tom Yum Gai (soup.) As a side note, we're being served at least lunch and two snacks daily. Our hosts at every site are incredibly hospitable, and lunch is usually something Thai, and then coffee (instant! which I'm getting used to) and a snack. Some of the snacks are a little foreign, but the effort is appreciated. However,lunch's deliciousness was slightly dampened by the parasite lecture that followed...which was GROSS. You do NOT want intestinal parasites.
Let's just say it made everyone a little paranoid abut some of the street foods we've been sampling. I know some people have been interesting in hearing about the food, and it's all been fabulous.One of the PA students here with us, from the University of Colorado, was actually raised in Thailand and speaks Thai, so has been helping navigate food choices. It's very helpful. Serving sizes are actually a reasonable size here, and I've had things ranging from the VERY VERY spicy to pretty tame.

After lecture, we headed to Hua Hin, a beach town about 200 km away from Bangkok for the weekend. This was a nice hotel, much improved from the Bangkok hotel, and was a nice change of pace. After arrival, we did a quick change and had dinner-which seemed expensive but still was very reasonable :) I had Paenang curry, which I know many of you know I'm obsessed with-and it was better than I could've hoped for.

We hit the town, but it's pretty mellow, with many many many many older German tourists, so we were some of the only people dancing at the bar we went to. We strolled around town, again, with many many German tourists, and then took a walk on the beach and crashed, pretty late

Saturday, or "The day Katie learns just how close we are to the equator"

Saturday was just what I had been needing...a free beach day! After a breakfast at our hotel, I and several of the other girls took the 20 foot stroll to the beach, paid for some chairs, and immediately began just chilling.

Or, baking, as it turned out. Let's just say the sun is intense here and my back can prove that to you.
I had a pedicure on the beach that maybe wasn't the most sterile thing ever, and I have beautiful toes and hope I don't live to regret it. I refused scraping, don't worry :)
Mango and a beer in the sun for lunch...a great day all around.

Then, as a large group, our Thai hostess, Noi, arranged for dinner at a beach restaurant. I wasn't prepared for just how beautiful it would be, but it was phenomenal, and the food was VERY fresh and delicious seafood and Thai specialities.

We headed back to the hotel for a swim in the ocean to see phosphorescence, algae that glows when you disrupt the water and make it seem as if you were swimming in fairy dust.

Sunday

Sunday we spent a couple of hours on the beach (erm...mostly in the shade this time for me) and then headed to Brandon, the aforementioned PA student's grandmother's house, which is in the same town. It was absolutely beautiful, she was a wonderful hostess, and we had a great day just swimming around in their pool before heading back to Bangkok for the week. The ride was quite uneventful in our lovely vans we're carted around in-they have surround sound and DVD players, so it made the 4ish hour drive pass quickly.

Monday...today!

We visited a Chinese traditional medicine hospital and learned about the theories before traditional eastern medicine practices, and saw some people getting acupuncture and cupping, which was very cool to see.

In the afternoon, we visited the biggest slum in Bangkok, called the Khlong Toei Slum, that's home to almost 200,000 people. We visited the foundation that works as advocates for the impoverished of Bangkok, and also is involved in efforts to help those effected by the 2004 tsunami. We walked through the streets of the slum, which was somewhat shocking in ways-although not necessarily as bad as you might think. However, it did make us feel bad about complaining about our hotel.

Then, about half of us took a very speedy elevator to the 83rd floor of the tallest building in Thailand, a hotel called Baiyoke Sky Tower. We had a cocktail (included with elevator price) and took in the view

You could see the whole city from the top, and it was a neat experience.

This is our last real week in Bangkok; we head to the north on Saturday.

Hope all is well! Photos to come soon I swear-for those of you on facebook, there may be some tagged of me you can check out that others have put up.

Love you

Katie

So Katie was going to blog for the first (maybe second) time ever about her trip to Thailand. Unfortunately, given that what she was trying to do was all in Thai, she couldn't get blogger to work and sent her update out as an email instead. I'm not exactly sure if anyone who may read this wasn't on that list...but if so, enjoy!

The Flight

The flight was...long. Thanks to the pharmaceutical powers of Ambien though, I got about 6.5 hours of sleep on the 14 hour flight from San Fransisco to Taipei. It's odd waking up on a flight and being like, wow, I slept forever...8 more hours to go. Thanks to Gary though, I was in business class, so I don't have a ton to complain about. China Air was pretty nice and the flight was totally uneventful. Read, watched movies, ate semi-good food, drank champagne (but of course!!)

We arrived around noon, did a little bit of exploring around our hotel, which in basically a Bangkok suburb called Nonthanburi (about a 40 minute cab ride in traffic to downtown Bangkok.) Speaking of cabs, the experience feels life threatening every time I get in one, but I haven't even seen a single traffic accident. Cabbies (and everyone) just race aroun d here, and we get where we're going. Cabs are SO CHEAP. A 45 minutes ride has been around 150 baht, or 3 dollars, for 5 people.

The hotel is like, maybe 2 stars at best, but it's clean and will do the trick for awhile. It's weird getting used to a twin bed and no fluffy comforter though.

Day 1 aka "It's SO HOT HERE"

Although it's technically between the "cold season" and "hot season" the difference in temperature between here and Utah February was a bit of a shock to the system.

Most of the group had arrived at 2 in the morning, but thanks to the time change, everyone was up and ready to go by about 8. We took a river boat into town-it's basically like a bus system here-and went to two more tourist attractions. We visited two Wats, or Buddhist temples. The first was The temple of the emerald buddha, at the Grand Palace, which is a historical residence of the royal family. Very impressive and beautiful, but also VERY crowed since it was a Sunday. The second was the temple of the reclining buddha, which has a LARGE Buddha, and was also amzing. There will be pictures to substantiate this.

We then poked around, had what seemed like the best popsicle ever, and went back to the hotel for a quick nap before dinner at our Thai host's home, which was the most delicious homemade thai food you can imagine, and was a huge feast. She also had Thai dancers to entertain us.

Day 2-class begins

Monday began with being awoken very early to the sound of loud Thai pop music outside the hotel, which turned out to be a aerobics type class. Not cool. Ghazal, my roommate, has lent me some ear plugs now.

We then had a half day lecture on the structure of the Thai government's health programs, which provide universal care, and focus on health promotion. It's an interesting system.

Then, with all our free time, we headed to downtown Bangkok. We visited some malls, bought some DVDs (lets just say they don't seem entirely legal) and then headed back, so that we could get ready to hit the club.

We went to a fun cocktail bar and then a club in a club district called RCA. All the clubs are in RCA, and we went to one called Slim, which was running a promotion for 2 bottle of johnny walker black label for 2000 baht-and that included full table service. The Thais LOVE whiskey. I think we can thank the Vietnam War for that from what I understand. Very fun-and cheap. I spent 500 baht, about 15 dollars, for the evening-at a very nice club. It's affordable here, to say the least

Day 3-Class for real

We spent all day visiting a women's hospital and then having a lecture at the department of public health on basically women's services. Very interesting, and the public hospitals seem somewhat primitive to me as an American. BU they clearly provide good service.

We had a pretty mellow night since some people, not me (for real!), had consumed a bit too much the night before. Ghazal whacked her head pretty hard in the pool and had a serious goose egg-makes a good story :) So we played some Uno (the longest game ever, in fact) and hit the hay

Day 4

The morning started with a great lecture at the children's hospital on dengue fever, and included a tour. They certainly have no patient privacy laws here. We then had a lecture at the Thai FDA that was nearly impossible to understand. However, their English is clearly better than my thai (I have 2 phrases!)

Most of us went bowling at the alleys in the mall across from our hotel-very nice mall, nice alleys, which was real fun. They played Brittney Spears and Backstreet Boys ALL NIGHT which made me laugh.

Day 5

Can you tell I'm running out of energy on this email? I bet you are too.

We visited a Dengure Fever research lab today, and MAN those mosquitoes they test are HUUUUUUUUUUUUGE. I wore an insect shield shirt and was very glad I did.

And more lectures on malaria and dengue, and now here I am, getting ready for the evening.

I hope all is well with everyone. Please email me or feel free to call me.

I'm having a great time so far and seem adjusted to the time change as of now.

Miss you and love you all!

Katie

These are pictures from Paul's 30th birthday. His birthday was last weekend. I have been really bad about posting anything, and I will try to be better. No promises though. I don't owe you anything.

We went to PFChangs for dinner and then to Poplar Street Pub for drinks. I quite enjoyed Poplar Street and would like to spend more time there.

Unfortunately I was never able to get the picture that Paul requested for his birthday. It was of a rather large guy (with a mullet if memory serves) in a sweatshirt that had "the C word" on it (the actual word...yeah, the bad one) in 12" high letters. I got too scared to ask to take his picture.



This is the only picture I have where Paul is smiling and/or not making a face at the camera. I was really excited about this one.

Christmas came!

It's been a long time coming, but we finally put new floors in our kitchen. We chose Marmoleum for our floors, a flooring material made from linseed oil and wood flour. It's a similar mixture to original linoleum used a long time ago, but much better than the vinyl flooring that has been common for the last 30 years. Anyway, we are pleased with our new floors.

Election day is like Christmas, Hanukkah and Flag day all rolled into one. It's like the leap year of exercising your rights. It's like that last scene in Groundhog Day where Bill Murray finally escapes reliving the same day over and over again, in that you have a chance to make a difference and change the course of your life from the past x amount of years... Okay so that last one was a bit of a stretch, but still, voting is important. I hope you voted for my guy, but if not, that's okay too...just go vote today!

Thanks for everyone who dressed up and made my birthday party lots of fun. There were a bunch of really good costumes...also some conscientious objectors to costumes...but they were put in their place. This is shaping up into an annual event, so mark your calenders! Some weekend around the 26th of October it will be happening again.

Here are some pictures of some of the great costumes from the party. Sorry if you're not in here, but I didn't get pictures (or they were too drunk) of everyone.

Me as Dr. Horrible...if you don't know what that is, go here. You can't go wrong with super villian-ry, Neil Patrick Harris and a musical blog...

One cute pregnant pumpkin.

ein Maus.

A Future Farmer of America and a bicycle mechanic...

My cousin and her friend (who came sans-costume but were treated to our stash).

Couple of Gypsies.

Unfortunately you can't really get a great look at Katie's costume since she was sitting down, but she was a Guitar Hero, complete with wireless guitar, cape and spandex!

This was Marcus's penance for showing up without a costume...he had to be little red riding hood. If he comes without a costume next year, I think he will have to be an avid Yankees fan...

Also in this picture is one of my favorites, Aura as a toddler - those are not only legit footy pajamas that she found (that she can fit in!) but she also drove to the party like that. Awesome.

Beer pong table, Hula girl, and a Cat.

Our holy family.

And our resident conspiracy theorist.

All in all great showing guys! Thanks a lot!

So this past weekend was my Dad's surprise 60th birthday party, though his birthday isn't for another 2 weeks. It was the only weekend that worked and also made him more surprised. Gina, Katie and I planned pretty much everything, with Gina mostly handling the invites, Katie workin' out the food and location, and me being the Emcee. Everything went off without a hitch and my dad, who is notoriously un-foolable, was totally shocked. Awesome. Here are some pictures from the weekend! If I get permission, I might post some of the video that I made with pictures of my dad with sweet hair and sweeter shirts...but that will be later.

The reveal

Bunch of friends from Maryland (and Minnesota...)

Me, my Uncle John and my Dad

The kids and Dad.

What a punk.

Aww, aren't we cute?

My mom was having a good time.

These were the die-hards at the end of the evening. Way to go guys, you can still party!

The in-laws enjoying themselves.

My dad and his best friend since high school.

I was angry with my sister because she was mean...

But then she had to go and do something cute.

So we were in Boise this past weekend, and were mostly unprepared for the very cold and very snow. All in all it was a really fun weekend. So fun, infact, that I barely took my camera out. So everyone will just have to trust me when I say that there was a lot of drinking and a lot of good times.

This picture was right when we got in to the outlying areas of Boise. It will have to do as a good summation of our trip.

Boise: I'd probably go back. At least I wouldn't fight it?

The people have spoken! And they have said that their favorite CANstruction sculpture was....the Michael Phelps.

BUT! The judges also spoke and they said that our ribbon was the best overall. In addition we also won awards for best structural as well as most cans. 3 out of 5 awards is not too shabby. Way to go team.