Where Two Cents Can Take You

Ko Samui--

Ko Samui has more of an urban sprawl than Ko Tao; it's commercialized and busy, but is large enough of an island that you can choose your damage easily. We are staying on Chaweng Beach, which is known as the party beach and high commercial area, but even within Chaweng there is a slower, quieter end (which is where we are staying). Our "hostel" is partnered with a fancy resort hotel (Seaside Hotel) so essentially, we are staying at a resort and using all it's ammenities on a backpacker's dime! It was complete luck that we found this place, and we have settled comfortably into the retirement section of the poolside. Everyday we wake up, put on our suits, grab an ice coffee from the bar and laze around the pool or on the beach. We bought boogie boards and so I make a point of near-drowning myself in these waves everyday. We contemplated renting seadoos, but with our recent luck and with Jesus taking a break from our wheel, we decided otherwise.
An entertaining portion of Chaweng is what I call Jersey Shore. Around Al's Resort is a section of professional tanners and body builders who are either italian, scandinavian, or arabian; and it doesn't matter who you are, how old you are or how attractive you are-they will catcall you. A daily jaunt down to Al's Resort will cure even the most hate-filled of the self-haters. After the sun falls, we crash in our hotel room and watch Top Model, nap, shower, and plan to hit the dirty streets of Samui. Recently, we went to the Fisherman's Village and tried an array of scary and unidentifiable food items and set off fireworks on the beach. Livin' large.
Yesterday I was thinking about how easy it is to 'fall off the grid.' I never considered a lifestyle of traveling and teaching until last Spring when I decided to plunge into a teaching job in China. I never viewed myself as an international teacher, and I still have a hard time finding an identity in that-I just feel like Im on a long vacation and running away from my student loans. I have talked to other travelors who have motor-biked through Vietnam, taken the slow boat on the Mekong for days, slept on the side of the road in Cambodia, danced until dawn at the Full Moon parties on Panyang, gotten married underwater while scuba diving, jumped from the highest waterfall in Indonesia, rode an elephant through the jungle, played with monkeys, lived in trees and ziplined from destination to destination, and dranken too many "special milkshakes" in Laos. Those people are true travelors living off a backpacker's dime and looking for the next conversation, the next soul-mate, the next close call, the next ferry ride out of here. Those people have truly fallen off the grid, they teach english and don't worry about their professional lives back home. They live off Thai Baht, and still make a killing out here. I envy their life, their scars, their discusting matted hair and perma-tanned-cancerous skin. I wonder, could I be like them one day? What would it take? Is that the life I'm supposed to choose or is there something else?
But the beauty of Ko Samui is that these thoughts are fleeting because this place is so chill, and while it might seem like I'm thinking too much about it, it's a passing thought that I know I can always return to later. I don't need to decide my professional fate this year or even in the next few years. I could teach at home for a year and then go away for a year, every year, for the rest of my life. If you don't want to be on the grid, you don't have to-but there is safety on the grid and I think that is enticing to most North Americans raised in the public or private school system.

Anyway, those are my two cents for the day-and two cents here can buy you a fruit shake, and now I'm craving one of the those so I gotta go.
I love you,

xox

PS Playlist: Owen Pallett, "Heartland" (holy moly!)

'Teacher Man' by Frank McCourt

I love this exerpt from "Teacher Man" by Frank McCourt (also wrote 'Angela's Ashes' and 'Tis'):
Find what you love and do it. That's what it boils down to. I admit I didn't always love teaching. I was out of my depth. You're on your own in the classroom, one man or woman facing five classes everyday, five classes of teenagers. One unit of energy against one hundred seventy-five units of energy, one hundred seventy-five ticking time bombs, and you have to find a way of saving your own life. They may like you, they may even love you, but they are young and it is the business of the young to push the old off the earth. You have to learn the tricks. It's hard, but you have to make yourself comfortable in the classroom. You have to be selfish.
The classroom is a place of high drama.You'll never know what you've done to, or for, the hundreds coming and going. You see them leave the classroom: dreamy, flat, sneering, admiring, smiling, puzled. After a few years you develop antennae. You can tell when you've reached them or alienated them. It's chemistry. It's psychology. It's animal instinct. You are with the kids, and as long as you want to be the teacher, there's no escape. Don't expect help from the people who have left the classroom, the higher-ups. They're busy going to lunch and thinking higher thoughts. It's you and the kids. Find what you love and do it.

And now I'm reading 'About A Boy' by Nick Hornby! I love vacay...