sawatdee ka!

Ok, so since i dont have internet everyday i've been writing just on my computer and i'll upload posts when i have internet access. i wrote this a few days ago when i first got here! i'll try to update a little bit more current information later this week!

Thursday, 14 October, 2010

So I made it to Bangkok in one piece! Tuesdays was an extremely long day…Chelsea and I left LAX at 1:40am on Tuesday. The flight to hong kong was 14 ½ hours long and of course neither of us were able to sleep very much. The flight had a lot of good movies and the food was pretty decent so the 14 hours in the air weren’t too bad. I was of course stuck in the middle seat of the middle aisle between Chelsea and some other old man who just slept and the entire time. We pretty much skipped Tuesday entirely because once we arrived in hong kong it was 7:30am on Wednesday…it was weird to think that we had just time travelled and skipped an entire day while flying half way across the world! We didn’t have much time in between our flights so we had to rush to make it to our plane to take us to Bangkok…we had to go through security again in hong kong so that took a lot longer than expected. The flight to Bangkok was short and easy, only 2 hours, which seemed like a breeze compared to the flight we had just endured. When we arrived in Bangkok we had to go through immigration and get our pictures taken which we weren’t too thrilled about…we weren’t exactly looking out finest after travelling for so long... we got our luggage and went to the designated meeting place CIEE had told us to be at. When we got there 5 other girls were standing there so we went up and introduced ourselves. One of the girls, Olivia, said she had already been waiting a ½ hour and she had seen no one from CIEE or OEG…so we decided to wait a little longer thinking they might have just picked up a group from the airport and were on their way back….but we waited and waited and no one showed up. Finally another girl came up to our group and asked if we were with CIEE and told us that the group was meeting in a different location! Soooooo long story short, CIEE had told us the wrong meeting point. oh well. There was about 12 of us in the group who were getting picked up from the airport. I checked out how much luggage everyone else brought and I have to say I brought a lot less than a lot of people. A good portion on the group is only staying for 5 months and they brought like 2 huge pieces of luggage and just tons of stuff they all thought Chelsea and I were crazy for only have one suitcase for an entire year! Anyways, we got in 3 different vans and headed out to our hotel.

The louis tavern hotel, where we’re staying, was about an hour drive from the airport. When we got to the hotel and checked in we found out who are roommates were for the orientation. I’m rooming with another girl named Chelsea. She’s from Wisconsin and is teaching in suphan buri. There was about 6 of us girls that had all arrived at the same time and we decided to explore the area around our hotel a little bit. We were all exhausted from the long day(s) of travelling, but we had just got to Thailand and wanted to check it out a little bit. We walked up the main road in the area, soi 64, there’s not much here…just some little shops and lots of street vendors selling food. We ended up going to this restaurant and tried to order some food from the menu…..that was a disaster. We thought we were getting pad thai…. We ended up getting chicken wings. So we left the restaurant confused and still starving. We walked up the road a little more and saw a street vendor selling some yummy looking noodle dishes. So we pointed and smiled and she filled up little bags with the noodles. We went back to our hotel lobby and ate them happy to have some more substance in us. Afterwards we went to a little internet café to use their internet. At the hotel we could pay to use the internet for 200 baht an hour, which seemed a little excessive….even though that’s only like $6 for an hour…but someone had told us that at the internet café we could have 25 minutes for only 5 baht! Such a better deal. So we headed there to check our e-mail and let our parents know we were still alive! By then it was 7:00pm and we were all ready to crash. I know it seems silly but all of us were dead asleep by 7:30pm that night.

The next morning we woke up and headed downstairs for our breakfast at the hotels restaurant. It was a buffet style and there were lots of choices for us….some looked familiar some definently did not! They had normal American dishes like croissants, omelets, and fruit, but then they also had lots of rice dishes to choose from. I decided to have a little of both and had a croissant and fried rice. It was delicious. Next it was time to go to our first meeting of the orientation. There are about 80 of us here to teach English with CIEE. We’re from all over the US and we’re all going to be spread out all over Thailand. One funny thing I noticed is that 80% of the participants are females. There are about 7 guys here and 4 of them are here teaching with their girlfriends. I thought this was rather odd!

Phillip, the coordinator for our group gave us an overview of the orientation and just told us what to expect this week. Tomorrow we’re going to the Royal Palace which should be exciting and tomorrow we’re also meeting our school coordinators so I’ll be able to get a lot of my questions answered about what grade I’m teaching, when my breaks will be, how many hours a week I’ll be working etc. After Phillip gave us an overview of the week we broke up into two groups and we each went to different workshops. My first workshop was on Teaching Skills. Paul, our teacher, went over some of the expectations the schools are going to have for us, common pronunciation problems that thai kids often have, first day lesson plans and a lot more. He was really informative and gave some great tips. Our next session was on learning Thai. Our teacher, right now I can’t remember her name, taught us common words/phrases that we are going to need to know while were here and stressed the importance of really trying to learn the language and use it when we’re out in our cities. It’s really hard! Thai has:

44 consonants

22 vowels

5 tones

YIKES! Its going to be a challenge but I really want to learn thai and be able to use it while im out so I’m going to need a lot of practice.

At the end of the day some guy came to our group with cell phones! So I now have a thai cell phone number, so exciting.

Tonight, some of the girls and I went out for dinner. We went to this little place right off of the main road in town. We had a really hard time trying to tell the waitress what we wanted…just lots of pointing and nodding and puzzled faces on both our faces and hers. Whenever we order something we never know if they understood us or if we made any sense so it’s always surprising to see what we end up getting. Tonight we asked for 4 plates of chicken curry and 3 plates of rice…..we ended up with 7 plates of rice and these two bowls of like chicken soup/broth. It was really yummy, just not at all what we were expecting! After dinner we walked around a little bit and then called it a night. I’m writing this blog right now hoping to stay up till 9:30pm….wild I know. My body still hasn’t adjusted to this whole time difference thing and I’m still a little off. Tomorrow we’re going to the Grand Palace! I’m excited to start seeing some of the sites and really taking in Thailand. We’re also meeting our school coordinators tomorrow so I’m hoping to get some of my questions answered about what I’ll actually be doing at the Sunflower Trilingual School…..like what age will I be teaching, when are my holidays, how many hours a week will I be working, and will I have internet in my dorm room! (I think I already know the answer to the last question….i don’t think I will :( but oh well I’ll figure it out!)

Hopefully i can get some wifi soon so I can load up my picture so you guys can see what I’ve been up to the past few days!

LOVE YOU!

chelsea and i at LAX

some of the girls and i at dinner

in our room figuring out our new thai phones