I've officially become a boring person. I'm sorry. (apparently I'm also Canadian).

My days in general have been spent either working on my schoolwork, working on my work work, or some other sort of random task that rears its ugly head. I took on a project for Ella's friend to correct her thesis, which has surprisingly been an agonizingly long process. Ella's university claims their thesises (thesii?) need to adhere to APA style. I think their administrators were absent the day when they learned what APA style was. It's a weird blend of APA, MLA, and their own random nonsense thrown in. This makes it very frustrating, as every time it is submitted it comes back with some sort of error. And since they're not following APA, there's no way to really know before hand. Just kind of, keep submitting it and see what happens? Anyway, I'm pretty sure that project is done now.

We've had a few new visitors show up. Ella had a pal from China who left just as quickly as he appeared, but he did buy us Japanese curry. Which, if there's a faster way to get someone to like you, I don't know what it is. Zolta (I'm probably not spelling that right) was an odd sort of fellow, but affable enough. He worked at a bank, and loved getting pictures of banks and Thailand's multicolored ATMs. I mean hey, we all need a hobby right? I think the picture sums up his personality pretty well.

My school had a festival, which was for some random holiday I had never heard of. I was speaking to someone back home about it, and realizing I didn't know the purpose of it, googled it. The first result was my school's webpage talking about it. Right so, made up festival. Thais are good at coming up with an excuse to knock off for the day, so it seems this is as good as any. And this was no small festival. They had a haunted house that was downright terrifying. Random bloody doll parts strewn about, a student covered in red paint striking a meat cleaver on a block of wood, hands randomly jutting out of the wall and grabbing you... they really like scary stuff! Keep in mind that my school is also a grade school, so there were plenty of little kids who ran out crying. Yeah, that'll teach you kids! I'm sure there were some life scars made.

Over the weekends, we've been quite prolific at the meetups. These fun little events usually involve meeting at some sort of bar and drinking. They've been a blast, and have really opened up our circle of friends. One of my friends, Stefan, has a group on LINE (Asia's answer to Whatsapp or all those other thingies) that seems to grow in number on a regular basis. We had a night of karaoke, many nights of partying, and another trip to Koh Kret island, this time with new friend Francesco. Actually old friend for Ella, he's her student. Also a great guy, we rode bikes around the island and had many drinks at a place that will be unnamed. I was speaking with the owner about why he doesn't sell his stuff downtown. He says that Thailand's laws don't allow it, so he has to stay under the radar. So not only did we get some of the best beer in Asia (Have you ever had a Jackfruit Heffeweisen? It is delicious), we got to do it at an illegal brewery. And had $2 pizzas at the end of the day. If that's not a good day, I don't know what is.

So, future plans! Maybe the next update will be after the semester break in October. I have a bit of time off, and unfortunately have to do another, oh-my-god-I-hope-final, visa run. I found a really cheap (super cheap) flight to Singapore. It is my 2nd favorite city in the world (Whatup Taipei), so it sounds like a good place to go. And when I say cheap, I mean cheap. Less than $10. Why? Because Asia is great, and America never seems to have figured out that cheap flight stuff yet. Of course after airport fees it's not quite $10, but it's still the best deal going around.

Oh and there's this cat that is at the train station every morning. I started taking a picture of her every day, so I've amassed quite an album. Ella and I have named her Bing Bong after the Inside Out character (which, is that not the best movie ever?!)  Bing Bong is actually pretty apathetic to everything, as cats are. And I guess you especially have to be when a million people walk over you ever day. But someone is feeding her, and so she hangs around. So if you ever visit and happen to transfer at Makkasan - Petchaburi, give Bing Bong a hello. She will likely ignore you.

So as I normally do before writing these blogs, I went through my pictures to see what I did the past few weeks. The answer: not too much.

To be honest my free time has been piled high with personal errands. I've been on a sort of "Let's make sure I'm good medically" kind of spree lately, doing a series of checkups and vaccinations. Because hey, it's really cheap over here. (and sometimes free!) Not to mention visa issues, which have always been a giant pain in the ass for Thailand.

But probably the biggest occupier of my time lately is my school. Not my work school, but school school. I decided to go back to get my Masters degree, and managed to find a university in America that has a degree specifically in ESL. I had to do a lot of searching to find a university that I could afford, was able to fit my unique requirements, and a program that would benefit me. Then after all that, tracking down a paperwork trail that began 15 years ago, tax forms for grants/scholarships, you name it. Anyway that fun starts next week and should be a major part of my life for the next 1 to 1.5 years, which I'm not exactly looking forward to. But, I think a MA in ESL would look pretty good on a CV, and probably open up a lot of opportunities in Europe and other ESL markets generally off-limits to the "Do it for a year" backpacker crowd.

Speaking of jobs, I haven't spoken about my new one yet. It's an unusual sort of thing, a blend of webmaster and English teacher. Basically I have 250 or so students that maintain blogs, I give them subjects to write about, and then grade them on it. While this does mean I have to read 250 blogs a week, it's an interesting conduit into an average Thai teenager's mind. Or at least a female one, since it's an all girls school. While I really appreciated most of my students at my last job, this one really takes it up a notch. They're all extremely well behaved, and the average level of English is much higher. I've learned their opinion on government, women's rights, and GMO foods, which is something I don't even know Ella's opinions on. Plus the management is much improved, communicative, and a pleasure to work with, which is always a good thing.

So, as far as travel, I don't know how this occurred, but Ella has not been to a few places around Bangkok that I have been many times, most within my first day of arriving. For example Wat Saket, aka The Golden Mount. It was the first place I visited in Bangkok, and yet somehow she missed it. Also Wat Rakhangkhositraram Woramahavihan, because brevity is for chumps. It's a local curiosity, a wat along the river that a ton of pigeons hang out at. Which is usually a reason to avoid a place, but it's seriously a lot of godamn pigeons. So, here we are. We also managed to take a day trip up to Ayutthaya, to go around and see all those old ruins from the comfort of a motor scooter. One which I am driving legally now, thanks to renewing my American Driver's License. Anyway I've written about Ayutthaya many times, and those 700 year old ruins haven't changed in the past few months.

Maybe more interesting is that on the 5th floor of a mall in the Japanese district, Bangkok has winter. Supposedly it's meant to be a village from Hokkaido, they spread around fake snow to make a play area surrounded by cafes. It's not too large, and the snow has a snowcone sort of consistency, but it's still an amusing sort of thing that's pretty unique. Other than that we've just been being social. It seems in this past month or so, my circle of friends has really expanded in size. Saturday has been "the night" to go out and do stuff, and pretty much every Saturday has involved some sort of drinking nonsense. It's really refreshing to have a close group of friends, and I am starting to really cherish those Saturdays. In particular this most recent Saturday, was a language exchange meetup that I thoroughly enjoyed. Everyone there was super friendly and awesome, at a really cool bar, and just a pleasure to talk to.

And now you're pretty much caught up on my life. Unfortunately I think photos from travels abroad are going to be hard to come by for a while. The Thai school schedule and American one don't really line up, so getting time off from both is going to be difficult. Assuming it does happen, the two things on the list are going back to Vietnam (to do it properly), and visiting Ella's hometown in southern China. Both are quite appealing to me, and I really hope it can happen at some point. Hopefully during Songkran (April), because I do not want to be anywhere near this country when that rolls around again. Last year I ran away to Myanmar, which was a pretty great decision. Although really anywhere you can walk around without being water raped has one up on Thailand during that time.