Café Con Monica

Its the weekend!

Well for me that is…. had a wonderful weekend this past one and now I am on my last day of work this week. It is a Buddhist holiday so we have Thursday & Friday off of school! Unfortunately that means I might be kinda quiet on the blog front this week but I hope to have some quiet time to relax and read blogs by the pool or on the beach if there is wifi. I am heading to Koh Phangan for the Full Moon Party. What is that you ask? It is a giant beach party held every full moon where tons of people come to an island and party the night away.

These are some pics from the internet: 
Its going to take us a 12 hour train ride to get there because the flights were just a bit on the expensive side since it’s a holiday weekend. I am excited to get there and get some sun and relaxation. Next week is my last week at the school in Thailand then I have two weeks to travel and relax before I am off to China to teach some more kiddies! I actually kind of wish this had been my plan all along because now I am getting to experience two different places! 

Anywhoodles! I am very excited to be going and I hope to get some pics posted of last weekend and some more Bangkok photos and pics from this weekend up soon! 

A Wednesday….

Maybe you had to leave in order to really miss a place; maybe you had to travel to figure out how beloved your starting point was.” ― Jodi Picoult, Handle With Care


This week the homesick feeling finally hit me. Its hard to explain it, its more than just missing Chicago since I have been trying to move out there for as long as I can remember. Its missing my family, friends and The Boy like so much it makes my heart hurt a little everytime I think of them. I love Thailand, don’t get me wrong and I have a feeling I will love China just as much once I am there but its the fact that there is no immediate end date. You know when you go on vacation or away for a short time and you get to enjoy yourself immensely because you know the time is limited and you have to make the most of it. Here the time is not limited. A year or more is a long time. When I leave for China I am signing an 11 month contract. That means that on top of the 3 months I will have been in Thailand I will add another 11 months. That makes me happy and very sad at the same time. I am sure it will only get harder the longer I am away and when I have to miss holidays and birthdays I will probably cry but I know that I am going to keep having some insanely amazing experiences to look back at too. 
This past weekend my parents ran the Rock & Roll Chicago half marathon and I wasn’t there…I am ALWAYS there as many of my previous posts have shown. I saw the pictures and immediately cried, on the 4th of July I skyped with my family in all their fourth gear…afterwards I cried. Haha I am kind of a sissy, incase you weren’t sure! 

Its hard though…Being in another country doing what you would do at home getting up and going to work everyday and coming home and grading papers and lesson planning. BUT I am 12 hours ahead of Chicago so I can only really talk to friends/family early in the morning or in the evening. Only having about 17 English speaking people in town and 10 of them work with you and the rest are much older and just not interested in making friends. Things take forever to get done because of the language barrier. I have been here over a month we just finally got internet at our house last week.

OOk I think this post turned into a bitch fest…sorry! The whole point of this really was to say how much I miss my family and how I definitely didn’t think it would be as hard as it is! 

Hopefully tomorrow will be a happier post…..

Another weekend trip!

I might have mentioned before that I live about an hour outside of Bangkok so as soon as the weekend hits I am out of my small town and on the big dirty city! A couple weekends ago I was lucky enough to have 3 days instead of 2 since some of our students were doing a competition on Monday. Anyway! My roomie decided to head down to Bangkok for Friday night with me and then we would go our separate ways in the morning. I have soooo many pictures in Bangkok that I think I might just save those for another day…


I did decide to go to Koh Samet for 3 days alone since no one else was available to go and I want to make the most of my time here in Thailand. It is a 3 hour bus ride southeast and well worth the trip! Once I got off the bus and onto the pier I met another American girl traveling alone and once we were on the beach we met two more American girls traveling and so I had people to hang out with 🙂


The beaches are beautiful in Koh Samet and the island itself is a national park so you pay a fee to get in. The hotels were pretty booked up but I got lucky and found one on the good beach but not cheap at all 🙁 Which is what led me to decide maybe I only needed two days and one night there. Anyway there was tanning, swimming(a small amount), watching amazing fire shows and TONS of dancing and drinking! I love loved it and I am so glad that I went. It turned out to be the best weekend I have had here yet!


Ook enough…here are the pictures and a video of the fire show! 





And here are two of the videos for that awesome fire show the Thai guys with amazing bodies put on! haha 

I know that was a ton of pictures but hope you enjoyed them! 

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