London Calling

#teachersummer2017 has started off with the real deal. I am traveling with a group of students and teachers from school to London for a week. At the end of the week they will return home and I will travel on. We have crammed as much culture as possible into the past few days.

The adventures of group travel with high school students have included but are not limited to:

• Walking long distances at an alarmingly slow pace
• Seeing students experience one or all of the following: their first trip out of the US, big city livin', meals they did not anticipate
• Making sure everyone gets on and off the tube at the right stop*

Sometimes this has made us feel like this:

But mostly we have felt like this:

I won't recount everything we've done since that would be a laundry list of London sights and museums. Highlights have included Windsor Castle, Stonehenge, the Jane Austen Museum in Bath, ice cream in theaters***, and so much art.

More to come of our goofy teacher times!

*No students have been lost** and we did get that other chaperone back eventually

**Yet

***There has never been a show that has not been made better by ice cream at your seat at intermission.

Happy Labor Day! or AT in Hats, Part II

Today, Labor Day, marks the unofficial end of summer. Sure, we technically have until the equinox in mid-September or until you feel a fall crispness in the air (mid-November in Atlanta), but by tomorrow, teachers everywhere will be back at work.* I feel the need to mark this end to my ultimate teacher summer with a tribute to my very own AT.

We've been back in the country for a while now and both had to travel-detox. For me, that meant going back to teaching, writing my dissertation, and binge-watching all four seasons of Scandal. For AT that has meant minor kidney stone surgery** and recuperation, finding out what UK did all those months, and binge-watching Shameless.

Now that there is some distance between myself and "The Most Amazing Trip Ever," I'm ready to reflect. I am glad we went everywhere we went. I encourage every single one of you to go to Cambodia as soon as possible and see Angkor Wat. I want to go back to Tokyo with a suitcase of only blue, black, and white dress clothes*** so I can fit in properly (or at least better) and spend quality time in the many different neighborhoods. I would go back to the Middle East but it's going to take some time and an unfortunate side effect of this trip is my new opinion on school dress codes. I've already started planning 2016 in South America and I can't wait.

The biggest takeaway from the trip is what an amazing person, aunt, and travel companion AT is. Let it be known that she planned every single thing on this trip and enjoyed doing it. This is great news for someone like myself who loves to travel and not to plan. AT graciously revisited places she had already been to give me the experience of seeing it for myself. Yes, she repeated countries for me. That is true love. 

AT let me walk her up and down cities and towns to see temples and museums and who knows what. She was a super trooper in an Israeli emergency room visit and generally suffered some pretty serious pain in the last few weeks while usually saying it was fine. She bought more blankets than you can imagine are possible and, thankfully, encouraged me to buy too many of my own.

She is amazing and I am the luckiest.

I am also the worst because I'm going to honor her with more pictures of her in hats.

Devoted blog readers will recall a previous post memorializing some fantastic hats over the years. AT will tell you herself, she does not have a real 'hat head.' She does, however, like to fill her niece with joy and will occasionally put on a hat just to make me smile. These are those pictures. Please enjoy them with the ridiculousness that is intended. May you all find your own AT who goes out of her way to bring the world so much happiness.

A store in Tokyo

Conquering Angkor Wat with Indiana Jones style

A temple in Delhi OR that time AT joined a biker gang

Red hat society!

Well, we all can look ridiculous. I still don't know why Dad didn't buy this turban.

Our best Jackie O

O-man, I wish she had gotten this one.

Full abaya-glam

OK, actually, I think we look pretty great here. The deserts of Jordan really suit us.

A beautiful felted hat in Istanbul that, oddly, was not purchased.

Happy fall, everyone, and may there be plenty more pictures of AT in hats to come!

-KT

*Let it be known that my Georgia students will be starting their sixth week back at school. That's right. We'll be giving report cards while most of the country is giving out their syllabi.

**Turns out that was not food poisoning. Our apologies, India.

***I still won't do the pantyhose. Sorry, Japan.

Bangkok!

It's so beautiful. There are so many flowers. It's so hot. 

Where to begin? I can start with the fact that we are poolside at what must be one of the most special hotels in the world. We are just back from amazing sight-seeing that was slightly blurred by all the sweat coming from our bodies. 

I'll back up so you can see how we got here. We arrived in Bangkok from Tokyo on Thursday. The flight was about 6 hours and, in comparison to our previous flight, felt like nothing. Upon arriving, we came to our hotel, The Mandarin-Oriental. We were greeted with flowers and the service has been extraordinary ever since. There is a butler on every floor to anticipate your every need, sometimes even racing you to the elevator to hit the button for you. There are so many details I could go to in but my favorite happened today at breakfast. AT blew her nose (with a pre-packed kleenex*) and the waiter was immediately there with a box of tissues to offer her another. Whoa. 

I could go on for days, but I'll spare you. I will say that the lobby is beautiful and the flowers are so abundant that I insisted I take my picture in front of the hanging purple flowers to "show the wedding planner." This is putting many tuk-tuks before the horse and I don't even care. 

For our first full day in Bangkok, we went on a Jim Thompson pilgrimage. Jim Thompson was an American who was stationed in Thailand during WWII and he loved it so much that he returned after the war. He revolutionized Thai silk production and brought it to the attention of the western fashion world. We started at his outlet store, then went to the real store, and ended at his house which is now a museum. 

The outlet store was five floors with the first three all being bolts of fabric. If you need to upholster something in Thai silk, please start here. The choices were endless and each was more beautiful than the next. The top two floors have clothing, bags, and home furnishings all made from Thai silk. We bought many many things. 

We had to compensate for our entire trip in Japan where we tried to shop but found nothing of interest. It felt a little bit like this**:

After shopping at the outlet, we went to full retail. I know we've seen many beautiful things this trip and will continue to go many more awe-inspiring places, but...I think that store was the prettiest place I have ever been. Imagine the most exquisite scarf you've ever seen. And then imagine it is next to another impossibly gorgeous scarf. And then imagine it goes on forever just like that. At one point I had to stop in the middle of the store with my head swiveling around and figure out which way to walk because I wanted to walk all the directions at once. I took no pictures inside because I consider it to be a holy place. 

Our last stop was the Jim Thompson house. Admission includes a guided tour of the six traditional Thai buildings he combined to build his house. It is filled throughout with art and antiques from Thailand and the whole world. 

Today we hit the more obligatory tourist destinations. We rode the ferry up the river to the Golden Buddha. We had a bit of a walk from the pier to the Buddha himself and the heat-dripping*** began. Please ignore the shine from us and focus on the shine from him. 

Next we went to Wat Pho, a Buddhist temple that was a short trip away through Chinatown. We opted for a tuk-tuk to avoid further pore-cleansing. 

When we got to Wat Pho it was one stunning visual after another. We started at the Temple of the Reclining Buddha. He is HUGE! I had/got to don a lovely robe (which I returned, don't panic) to cover up my shorts and then we walked all along the perimeter of him. I don't think the pictures really capture how giantly chill he is, but let's try. 

From there, we wandered around the very large complex. It hosts many tourists, a working Buddhist monastery, more than one thousand Buddhas, and many mounds that are ornately decorated in tile, gold, etc. It was overwhelming to see it all in one place. 

So overwhelming, in fact, that we got on the ferry and turned into our own reclining Buddhas at this pool. And we've come full circle!

There is still much to see! Tonight we are going to visit one of the night markets or continue visiting temples when the heat of the day has dropped off a bit. We then have one more day in Bangkok before we head to Cambodia! 

-KT

*She is an expert traveller. 

**In this scenario, Japan is the snobby Beverly Hills sales clerk, AT is Hector Elizondo, and I am a hooker with a heart of gold. 

***I've decided we need euphemisms for sweat.