22

22 is the number of mosquito bites I have…..just on my right leg. They’re on my legs, feet, bottom of my feet, arms, back….basically they’re just everywhere and driving me insane. The mosquitoes love me here and I wish they didn’t.

I still have just been observing classes at the school so far; the other English teachers here are suuuuper nice and very helpful. The kids are so cute and its hard to want to teach them English instead of just playing with them. I still haven’t found out what grades im going to be kids, but hopefully they let me know soon! I also still haven’t gotten a schedule for the semester (what days are holidays, when/if we get a Christmas or new years break) so I’m hoping we get one of those soon so I can kinda map out when/where I can travel to. I’m a little nervous that we haven’t really gotten any information about what is expected of us, when we’ll be teaching, if we’re supposed to turn in lesson plans, what materials we can use etc….and it’s Thursday and we’re supposed to start teaching on our own on Monday! Hmmm…..

Last night, the other 3 girls that are here through the program with me decided to see what else our little town has to offer. Since we still haven’t figured out the public bus system in our town, we hopped in a taxi and headed for the mall! The mall is about a 20 minute drive from our school, and I can already tell that I’m going to be frequenting this place often. The mall has 5 levels and is full of amazingness. It has a movie theater (that is showing harry potter 7 starting nov 19th in English!!!!!!!!!!!), a bowling alley, like 5 Dairy Queens, an A&W, Sizzler, coffee shop, and so so so much more. The girls and I are hoping to do some bowling some nights since its only 150 baht (about $5) for 3 games on weeknights! We were planning on going and seeing a movie since we had heard that wed nights were when they offered cheap tickets (only 80 baht to see a movie!) but the only movie they had that was playing in english was Cats and Dogs…..and that just didn’t seem too appealing to us. So we wandered the mall for a while and headed back to our dorms.

So one thing I forgot to mention about my dorm room is that it is FREEZING. The a/c in our room is broken and only has 2 settings: off or freezing. If we turn it off, it becomes unbearably hot, but if we turn it on we are cold! So we keep the a/c on and just layer up! I have to wear a sweatshirt (which I almost didn’t bring with me since all I hear is how hot Thailand is!) and sleep under 2 blankets. I guess it could be worse and our room not have any a/c at all which would be horrible, so I guess I’ll take this over no air at all.

if anyone would like to send me care packages while I’m here I would not mind at all :) my address here is:

Sunflower Trilingual School

Attn: Jenna Shelburne

39/10 Moo 4 Ekachai-Setthakit Road

Tambol Kogkrabua, Amphur Muang

Samutsakorn 74000

Love you all!

ok. and as an extra note since i wrote this entry yesterday.....i have found out that i am now teaching pre school.......so i'm teaching 2-3 year olds! this is going to be an interesting year, but im excited to see how it's going to go!