Been a while

Hey there, it's been a while huh.  

I started this blog because I wanted to be able to document my travels and put photos up of my time in Thailand.  Sadly, that time is long over :( (ok, I might be acting just a bit melodramatic, it's only been about 2 months, but it feels like a lifetime already!) 

So naturally, I forgot about this here bloggy after I got home cause I got busy with heading off to school, and all of the wonderful, fun, time consuming activities that school brings :) *please have heard the extreme amount of sarcasm there*.  cough cough HOMEWORK! cough

However, I refuse to let Chemistry ruin my life! Though it may have caused the eating-of-the-entire-cake-and-reeses-bag incident, I am on the mend and determined to do better! And eat better, good gravy my stomach!

Speaking of eating better, I recently came back to the idea that I had a couple weeks after getting home to turn this blog into a food blog instead of just letting it die.  so here it is, the new and improved Charlotte's Food Blog! Thanks to my new roommates who are avid bloggers for getting me inspired again :)

Basically a lot of what I am going to be doing is trying Pinterest recipes to see if any of these recipes that thousands of people are pinning are actually any good or if they are just all for show.  I'll rate them on ease, taste, presentation, and try to get into the nitty gritty details about what kind of nutritional value (or lack of) each dish has, right down to the vitamins and nutrients that directly affect our bodies for the good, the bad, and the ugly.  I'll also try to add tips about safe food preparation, bacteria and virus prevention, and nutrition through the different cycles of human life.  

Oh did i not mention? I'm a nutrition major here at Utah State, so hopefully I will be able to provide some *Lets hope useful* insight about the nutritional value of the food that I put on here.  Don't worry though, just cause I'm a nutrition nut, does not mean that every dish I make is going to be healthy.  Far from it in fact.  I'm probably the biggest dessert person you will ever meet.  So there will be almost only food posts that consist of oozy gooey chocolates, dense decadent cheesecakes, and many a cheesy bread.  I still love that kind of stuff, and you should too! My only piece of advice to everyone is moderation in all things! Really, if you follow that piece of advice, you can eat pretty much anything and be healthy! Just no binging! and believe me, this is something that I struggle with every single day too. 

Well, if your actually reading and following this blog, I thank you and would love to hear comments if you have any   

Happy cooking! :)

p.s here are a couple things I whipped up from Pinterest over the Christmas Break I though I would just slap on here as a teaser.  Sorry for the bad picture taking, i'm going to get better at it I promise! soon I'll be a professional food photographer

This was a veggie christmas tree I made out of broccoli, cauliflower, red/yellow/orange peppers and cherry tomatoes.  I stuck them all on three apples in the middle with toothpicks and used a piece of pineapple on top as the star.  

Merry Veggie Christmas! 

For Christmas dinner I also mad some Bruschetta which is probably my favorite bread dish ever, and that's saying something! Probably cause the tomatoes make me feel a tad healthier than just downing straight carbs.  But anyways, it's diced tomatoes and onions topped with chopped cilantro, a dash of fresh crushed pepper and some parmesan cheese. All of that was placed on top of a baguette covered with a thin layer of olive oil and lightly toasted. Heavenly sounding no? And so easy!

After Christmas we had some leftover ham, so I made myself probably the healthiest ham sandwich in the world.  Between to layers of Scrumptious wheat bread I put avocado slices, diced tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, green peppers, diced cilantro and a fat slice of Ham! Good use of the left over veggies that nobody in my house eats but me :)

Getting goofy after dinner missing Thailand and practicing my Thai dance moves

Yup, just me.  And that's my mommy in the background, she's the cutest.  Thanks for reading! Recipes and food tips to come :)

"SUPER SMILE"

Great Week

Great week.  Only one more day of teaching though! I got a couple of posts to catch up on while I have the time! I can't believe that my time here is so close to ending! I literally never thought that it would ever end.  I am so sad, but at the same time, I am really excited to get home and spend the holidays with my family.  Once Christmas is over however, I am going to have a hard time getting back into the swing of school and actually working.  Thailand is just so laid back, I feel like I have been on vacation for the past 4 months.  Ok, lets be real, I HAVE been on vacation for the past 4 months.  

I come into my room one day and what do I find!? Four little monkeys jumping on my bed! (that's one of their favorite songs to sing FYI) That's Max with the pointy teeth, Mhew getting ready to jump on Yada who is hidden under the covers, and Gui is the one in pink laughing.  I love my kids so much! I feel like I have toured a lot of Thailand, seen many cool things, tasted a lot of great food, got some great photos, but the one thing I feel like I will never be satisfied with having enough of is time with is these kids. Every day, they get more comfortable with me, I see and hear them growing not only in their english, but in aspects.  In the four short months that I have been here, I have watched these kids grow up immensely.  I am extremely sad that I am such  short part of their lives and I hope they don't forget me, because even though they will have tons of other American teachers coming to teach them english next semester and the next and memories of what I taught them may fade, They have made a huge impact on my life, and those memories won't fade easily for me.    Alright, I need to stop now.  (don't cry, don't cry!) 

We went to Tesco one day (ooh big shocker there, haha. We are there everyday) And we stopped in KFC to sit for a while because it's air conditioned inside.  While we were sitting, there was a group of kids sneaking pictures of us.  But they weren't very sneaky about it, so I kept making faces and photo-bombing all their pictures.  They kept laughing and staring at us, so I decided to sneak a picture of them too! I think they saw me though.  

One of our friends that we met in town was back from school for the weekend (she attends school in the next town 40 minutes away) so we went out to ice cream with her.  Her name is Nattida and she is the coolest, cutest girl! She is the one who took us out for my first taste of sushi that one time.  Anyways, this was probably the last time that we would get to see her before we left so we headed off to Swensens.  We had a contest to see if we could tie the cherry stems from our ice creams into knots with our tongues.  Heidi was determined.    

Sorry the lighting is so weird, it was super bright outside so it washed me out, but I wanted documentation! I did it! Apparently if you can tie the cherry stem in  a knot with your tongue, your a really good kisser ;) haha I must be

Hello Waffel and Mango Sorbet Ice cream! Complete with a shot of chocolate goodness.  You can be assured that I drank that shot whole.  

Nattida could tie a stem in a knot too! 

All of us.  That's Nattida's brother Fame on the right.  He is so funny and speaks english very well! 

We will miss our friend Nattida.  She and her family were so good to us.  Taking us out to eat, taking us shopping, taking us out to eat again and again! haha Thai people are so generous and so giving.  Were so grateful for Nattida and her family taking us under their wings and showing us around. We will miss you guys! 

A Thailand Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving has already come and gone.  Frankly, I still feel like Halloween hasn't even hit yet since that's supposed to happen when at least a little bit cold.  It's now December 2nd, and I feel little change in the obscenely ridiculous heat.  But, nevertheless, time goes on, seasons change (at least in other countries), and holiday festivities happen! We were very  very excited about Thanksgiving because we wanted to cook a grand feast for ourselves.  We have a cook here at Imperial who makes our lunch and dinner for us and it's always great! However, we were all very much missing home and all the comfort foods that it brings.  We really wanted a thanksgiving dinner that would remind us of that.  We quickly realized however, that any hopes of our thanksgiving dinner tasting like home was inadvertently related to the minimal supply of American-like ingredients available in Thailand.  In other words, we had to make do with what we had and improvise a lot.  

We decided early on that we wanted our Thanksgiving dinner to be Harry Potter themed.  We had previously determined the different houses that we all belonged to and Lindsay, the creative one, made cute little place mats for each of us.  

Natalie made a beautiful Happy Thanksgiving banner.

Our glorious spread of food! We had Mac and Cheese from the box topped with crushed crackers, a pumpkin dip made from canned pumpkin, apples, crackers, jello, boxed mashed potatoes with a couple real ones in there as well, boxed corn bread, boxed muffins, dragonfruit, pineapple, Some croissants, watermelon, raw brownie/cookie bites (we don't have an oven) and a banana pudding pie. So much food! We were pretty much in heaven.  It just tasted like home! (or college really haha)  

Yummers! Can you tell I miss American food a bit? I did make myself sick by eating too much though :( And I only at 1 plate! Granted it was overflowing, but still! That's not like me.  

Our beautiful placentas and cups.  The other girls are the creative ones, I didn't help at all with this haha

That's me! In the hufflepuff house and proud of it! :) 

Great thanksgiving spent with great girls.  I missed my family lots, sure, but I just keep telling myself that I get to spend all of Christmas break with them in just 16 days! 

"Super Smile!" 

My silly kids

 Before I came to Thailand, I would never have really said that I was great with kids.  It's not that I don't like kids or anything, I simply haven't had that much interaction with them, outside of the random babysitting job here and there while in middle school.  There are no young kids in our family, no nieces or nephews (hint hint Andy and Amy), so one of the biggest things that I was worried about when I decided to do this whole adventure, was would I even be able to teach and connect with these kids?  I shouldn't have worried about it really.  The first day that we met them, we spent 2 hours just playing with them on the playground.  I had not had that much fun in so long! They crack me up all the time with their broken english and just their copious personalities. (see what I did there? I totally looked up a different way to say "big" because I feel like my vocabulary is so far gone, I need to try expanding it again for when I can actually talk to people without having to mime everything and use very simple words again.)

But anyways, they have turned out to be one of the greatest joys that I have over here in thailand.  Traveling is great, seeing new things and trying new foods are awesome, and at times it seems like it's all I really talk about or focus on, but these kids really are a blessing in my life.  I'm their teacher? No way! I can't even begin to explain all the different things they have taught me.  I just hope they are learning from me as well.  Yeah I really hope that since that's the whole reason the ILP program sent me over here haha.  

I teach the older classes at Imperial.  There are 12 students in total, and their ages range from 5 to 6.  Yeah, still pretty young to be the oldest group at the school, but they are extremely smart for their age.  I have actual conversations with the kids.  This is Phuvit.  He is kinda the class clown.  All the kids love him and call him Silly Phuvit..  He loves the color pink, being tickled, making crazy faces in every single picture, and singing the hippopotamus song. 

These two are as thick as thieves! But they are the sweetest little girly girls.  On the left is Yada and Gui is on the right.  They constantly have to be sitting by each other, and have to be doing the exact same things whether it's dotting all their i's with hearts, or showing teacher Charlotte how to properly bend her hands when performing a thai traditional dance.  They are incredible at it! I will get some videos of the girls dancing and put it up later.  They are very artistic and love anything girly and pretty.

Now this little guy, there's not enough room to write about.  His name is Ongry, which at the beginning of these four months, I may have though was a little appropriate.  It's pronounced Ornery, like someone is being a pain.  He is very touchy and is always being told to keep his hands to himself, but it's just because he's such a loving kid.    He has gotten so much better over the semester anyways.  But he is definitely the most affectionate.  Almost daily he comes up to me and says "teacher teacher" really quietly while motioning for me to bend down with his finger, and then he gives me a kiss on the cheek.  Or he will kiss me on the hand, and even the stomach because that's about how tall he is hahaha.  Tonight, actually, I had the sweetest moment yet with him.  Usually, outside of the school, the kids are shy whenever they see us and they are with their parents.  They will act like they hardly know us even though they act so differently in school.  But tonight, we were out at the Chinese festival and I hear a child yell "TEACHER!" and I turn around and Ongry is running toward me and just jumps in my arms even though his dad was right there.  It just completely melted my heart. :)  

Again Gui on the left, she is such a beautiful girl.  And Ongry.  I want to take him home with me! 

Haha Fei Fei.  He looks like an old man in this picture.  Fei Fei is obsessed with Ben 10, and Spider Man.  He is by far the brightest kid in my homeroom.  I can ask him normal everyday questions and get a fairly good response.  He comes to me with questions about bigger words or things that done make sense (because I never noticed it before, but english is so messed up, there are so many words that sound like they shouldn't sound.  Try explaining to a confused Thai kid why you pronounce Wednesday "wensday" but spell it like you do.  All you can really say is, that's just how it is.) The poor kid.  He is exceptionally bright though, and doing so well for being only 6.  Gotta admit he is one of my favorites.  Yada and Gui both love him and it's so funny to watch them flirt with him. 

Oh those two.  Best of friends

Oh dear, there is Phuvit and his crazy face again :) And that's Max on the left

 Max is a little ball of energy.  If your not careful, he can have the class riled up and off on some random tangent about buffalos within a matter of seconds.  (buffalos seem to be a hilarious topic around here to the children).  But behind his mischievous little grin, he is a sweetie pie.  Sometimes I don't know about him though.  He will be telling me a story, and I kid you not, this is exactly what it sounds like every single time: "Teacher! And...My like this....and.....and like this.....and my like this....and THIS!" and he sits there waiting for a response, and I just have to try to guess what his story was about by his hand gestures and pointing.  I'm pretty pro at miming now. 

Haha Max, such a ladies man.  Look at his little face.  Gui is eating her ice cream cone she made with Teacher Jessi earlier, and Yada is wearing Teacher Charlotte's glasses.  

hahahahaha  That may be the first time I have seen Max not smiling! (well, other than when he's in trouble) haha

This is my entire home room class.  From left to right, it's Phuvit, Gui, yada, Fei Fei, Ongry (is hiding) and Max.  LOVE these kids.  Best homeroom class ever!

  

This is the other group of kids I teach! They are such a joy as well! From left to right it's: Bonus, Mhew, Preawa, sydney, and Yindee.  

Yindee is probably the most beautiful Thai child that I have ever seen.  He has this little demon face that he likes to make just to freak us teachers out.  He will roll his eyes up into his head and then tilt his head down and sneer at us and then bust up laughing and look so cute again! It's like what's up with you child! But he is such a pleasure to teach.  He is very good at reading, and can actually read some very basic small words just by looking at them.  

Now this is Bonus.....I should really leave it at that because if I get started on her, it might be a couple paragraphs later that I finish.  Oh well, I have time if you do.  If all of teachers were asked in one word to describe this child, every single one of us would say without hesitation: "creepy". She's not possessed or anything, it's quite hilarious, her creepy status, but at the same time, I wonder what is going through this child's head.  You really would just have to meet her to know what I'm talking about, but she's one of those that your standing waiting for the class to line up and you realize one kid is gone, and your looking around for Bonus, but she is standing behind you, staring up at you with this smile on her face and then busts up laughing when you finally see her.  I will ask her questions, and she looks like she is just not getting it and stares at me with this blank expression, but then slowly, ever so slowly, she starts grinning, slowly sticks out her tongue, and just sits there, grinning evilly at me like the Cheshire Cat! But seriously, all in all, she is a great, beautiful child.  She is very advanced in reading when she is not spacing out.  She has made me fall into fits of laughter during the middle of lessons for a good minute or so just because of some of the stuff she does or says.  

Mhew Mhew Mhew. She is one unique individual.  She has this really deep raspy voice, and the greatest laugh that sounds almost like a maniacal child show villain.  haha it's the funniest thing.  She and Max are brother and sister.  She has a very spunky attitude and loves to be first at everything.  She is very competitive, but still so eager to learn 

Preawa is the brightest girl in this class.  At times I have to ask her to stop and not answer the questions so that the other kids can have a turn to answer because she literally understands most everything that I say to her!  I can ask her about her weekend and she will tell me all the things she did, places she has visited such as Bangkok and Singapore.  She has the sassiest comebacks  all the time.  Sometimes, something will happen in class that no one else will get and I will be having a moment by myself laughing or making a face because none of the other kids understood what was just said, and she picks right up on it and is like "teacher you laughing at Bonus because she is silly" because it's usually Bonus I'm laughing at.  If I am not careful, and and not keeping the class on track, she will completely take over and run everything.  She is going to be very successful one day I can just tell.   

Last but surely not least is Sydney.  She is probably the most polite and kind girl ever.  She is constantly remembering to push in her chair, she always helps me hand out papers and the counting cards.  Whenever she has afternoon class with her little sister MeNee, she is constantly making sure that her little sister is saying all the correct phrases and participating in the activity because she wants her little sister to get tokens.  You can really tell who the siblings in this school are because they really look out for each other.  The thai people really emphasize the mentorship of the older children to the younger ones.  Whenever it's someones birthday and their parents bring a cake for the kids, the Thai teachers always pair an older kid up with a younger one to help them get their dishes and pieces of cake.  It's the sweetest thing because the older kids aren't shoving or wanting more cake or complaining about sharing their cake with the younger kids, they just take care of them so well! Nothing like spoiled American kids.  But Sydney is by far the kindest and most polite child.  She is so beautiful too.  She just went to Spain this past week or so.  Her family is kinda loaded. 

So those are my kids! Aren't they just the sweetest, cutest, and best students any teacher could ask for? I love them all so much and am going to be sooooo sad when it comes time to say goodbye :( But till then, I'll keep teaching, and hoping that they are learning something from me. And hopefully they will remember me at least a little bit after I'm gone :) 

C.O.P.E (Cooperative Orthotic and Prosthetic Enterprise)

While we were visiting Laos, we had a couple hours to kill before the foreign embassy opened at 1, so we took a taxi to a museum that a couple of people at the hostel we stayed at told us about.  The museum is called COPE or Cooperative Orthotic and Prosthetic Enterprise.  They create prosthetics for people in Laos who have lost limbs due to remaining cluster bombs buried and leftover from the war. 

This is one bomb, and all of the smaller cluster bombs that are inside.  

Lots of scrap metal that is left over from the war. Scrap metal is so valuable over here, that people will take the risk of going out and looking for bombs just to find the metal to sell.  

Most of the people who are victims of the cluster bombs are farmers who are just tilling the ground and happen to hit a bomb.  These are a couple of the makeshift legs that the native people would make to be able to walk again.

 

There were over 580,000 bombing missions that  were deployed in Laos.  Each of the red dots was where a bomb was dropped.  

I still can't believe that there are so many live active bombs out there in Laos. COPE is really such an incredible organization and everyone should learn more about.  It really opens your eyes to all of the opportunities that are out there in the world to help others.  

If you want to learn more about COPE or learn how to make a donation, check out their webpage. 

http://www.copelaos.org/

Laos

Laos.  What a beautiful Country! Is it really sad to say that I honestly had no idea where Laos was until I heard that we were headed there for a couple days to renew our Visa's?  Our visas were only for about three months and we only have another month left here in good ol' Thailand so it was time to get them renewed. Time has really flown by here! I am getting so excited to see family and have Christmas and be in AMERICA in just one short month! But anyways, back to Laos.  I had no idea it was such a touristy place.  Honestly, I think I saw more tourists and people backpacking through Laos than I saw in Chang Mai.  

I personally thought that Laos was just as beautiful if not, even more so than Thailand.  Granted, we were really only about 6 hours from our home in Phichit, but you could still feel a difference! It is definitely it's own place.  They speak the language of Moeng over in Laos which I think sounds and looks almost exactly like thai, but whatever. We left for Laos at 11:00PM on sunday night and got to the border around 6:00Am and it only took us about 3 hours to get throughout the border and everything.  That was the easy part.  After getting to the American Embassy in Vientiane, Laos, we proceeded to sit for 4 hours straight, waiting to simply submit our visa's.  Yeah, it ended up being a 7 hour long process, so needless to say, we didn't really get to see much of Laos on our first day.  After we finally got to our hostle, I conked out for about 3 hours.  yeah, sitting and standing around all day will do that to ya.   

when we finally got out of our hostle, we saw some pretty neat things. 

This was Patuxia Arch in Vientiane - AKA the Victory Monument.  Pretty impressive right? 

They had the most colorful and brightly decorated taxis and tuk tuk's.  I love taking those things! They are so much fun to ride in! 

This was the entrance to the Mixay temple in Vientiaen.  

The streets are just as crowded, busy and scary as Thailand. 

We did some shopping, and found these little beauties.  So silly. 

When it comes to markets and bazaars, we become like months to the flame.  Literally.  We love shopping so much our money literally goes up in flames whenever we see tents and sales everywhere. 

People sleep everywhere. And apparently leave their children everywhere by themselves as well.

Yummy, lets stop in for a snack of raw Large tiger prawns and squid! 

Check it out, I even caught the fly on top of the wood up in the left corner.  I am a dang good photographer.  Meat drying in the sun. Right next to a super busy road.  Just saying, theres dirt everywhere.  But, Welcome to Laos/Thailand. 

Delicious chocolate shake.  I love that all of the chocolate things here are not sweetened. they use lots of raw cocoa powder in their drinks which is exquisite.