It's been so long since I've talked about daily life here in Bangkok. Lately I've been writing about my recent trip to Myanmar and my family's visit, and I haven't posted any updates about goings-on at Chitralada School or in my life in Thailand.
We are coming up on the end of the semester. M6 (senior) classes will be finished next week; they get extra time off at the end of each semester to prepare for and take university entrance exams. We've got about a month left in the rest of our classes before finals, department mark checks, and our big term holiday in October.
It's really a relief, because lately things haven't been going perfectly smoothly. At Mathayom we lost one teacher this week due to a "family emergency." She left Bangkok quite abruptly with one week's notice, leaving me, James, Ryan, and Geoffrey to handle the fallout and restructure the schedule. I think it's obvious that I'm not happy about this.
My plan of doing something new and fun each weekend hasn't stayed quite on track lately, although I have been doing some things. The weekend after returning from Yangon I didn't feel well and stayed in to rest. The next weekend I found a Chinese bookstore in town and went there to look for resources to help with my language study (I am currently learning Mandarin).
This weekend I went to Central World Mall downtown to browse for travel guides to help me plan my October holiday. I've got a few ideas, but nothing is certain yet. At Central World I discovered a new Japanese tea shop. They were handing out tiny samples of hot matcha tea, and I decided to sit down and have a cup. It was very interesting to watch them grinding the tea. Matcha is a type of green tea from Japan that is ground into a powder. It's supposed to be very healthy as the entire leaf is ingested. If you've tried green tea flavored things, they were probably made with matcha powder. This store (Chaho) had just opened up, and in addition to the samples they were putting on a Japanese tea ceremony to attract attention.
Leaving the mall, I somehow stumbled into a "Japan Expo." Besides the stalls selling lots of Japanese foods and advertising Japanese brands beneath paper lanterns, the plaza was filled with cosplayers - people who dress up in colorful costumes. It's really popular in modern Japanese culture. It was loud, crazy, and too much for me!
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