Tuamos in Thailand

Well, that week went fast. On Monday my host mom took me to school late (on purpose) so that I could go straight to class after we sorted things out in the office. The office for me is the English Program office, which is air conditioned to 23 Celsius, so nice for a few minutes and unbearably cold after that. The head teacher, Teacher Rongrath, has been in charge of at least 25 exchange students before me, so she gave me the choice of studying in the English immersion program or in the Thai program (I chose Thai). She has since set up Muay Thai (Thai boxing) lessons for me and the other exchange student, Indira from Brazil, and also lessons in two art disciplines, coffee painting and gold leaf. The school itself is more like a small college to Americans, with several buildings, a fitness suite, picnic tables, a pond, and arboretum style gardens.      Modelling the school uniform The English program staff My class, 5/7 for the 7th classroom at the 5th year...

On the weekend we went to Bangkok to see my host Aunt, Nuk, grown up sister Bee, cousin Nong Non, and parents Ramet and Supa. The first night we were up past midnight again just existing. (These people are all super nice so you definitely want to stay up talking even if you are literally passing out for a few seconds at a time from being tired.) I learned a few words not in Pimsleur (arroi - good [food]), but mostly ended up speaking English because Nuk and Ramet speak very well. On Sunday morning I went swimming in the neighborhood pool. Nuk told me it was saung met (two meters) deep, but it was actually only this deep: We went shopping at a few markets, one being the popular tourist destination of Chatuchak. They insisted on loading me up with gifts (believe me, they offered 5 times as much as I let them buy and I bought my own pants). , On Sunday evening we had another late night at the theater. It was a sort of variety show with Thai pop stars, a live c...

"Pomm mai kautai" (my language book says you can spell things however you want if you're transliterating to Latin alphabet) means "I don't understand." I have been saying it a lot, because while I would actually feel semi-comfortable going to a restaurant and ordering food (provided the options were spoken to me since I am illiterate), Pimsleur has in no way made me able to carry on with smalltalk. My mother does speak a fair amount of English, so although I would rather be speaking and learning Thai, until I wake up enough to really start retaining the words she teaches me, that will probably be the language she uses whenever I need to get anything done. I thought I had gone through customs yesterday, but my mother (khun mää) took me to the Chon Buri immigration office in the morning. I did go through customs, but we actually had to go to immigration for my family to announce that they were hosting me. With that cleared up, we went out to lunch. Lunch ...

My mom and my brother in the U.S. made me a cake. Here it is: The Thai flag looks a lot like this Thanks Mom and Antero And with that, we're up at 5:00 on Tuesday to go to the airport. I flew to Seattle with Ellen, an outbound from Minnesota going to Chiang Mai, Thailand. Our flight was delayed. In Seattle, we met some Rotary students from the west coast going to Thailand, but after that I connected through Tokyo and they all went through Seoul. The flight to Tokyo was boring even though I had a window seat with extra space and there was a midflight ice cream service. Notice me not being completely squished against the wall So many drink services Actually the ice cream came right in the middle of when I wanted to be sleeping, but still quite classy. That flight was also delayed by an hour, landing after my scheduled board time for the flight to Bangkok, so I rushed through Narita airport. When I got to the gate, I realized I was safe - my next fl...