One week later

We've only been in Thailand for a week, but it feels like much longer. It has been pretty much non-stop since we arrived.

Tuesday night Cyrus, me, and some other people from our program went out in Bangkok with the Thai girl, Apple, who we met at the bar by our hotel. First, she took us to Khao San road. It's pretty much backpacker heaven. A lot of hippies and a lot of westerners. She said it was something we had to see at least once while in Bangkok. After that, we told her we wanted to go to some crazy Thai club, where it was less touristy. The club was the size of two warehouses and had the most ridiculous bass I've even heard, you could feel it in your whole body. The bass, coupled with crazy strobe lights and laser beams, made it a good time! A bottle of whiskey later, we finally all made it back to the hotel.

This is a video of us walking down the street near our hotel. Sorry it's a little shaky, we're still working it out:  Walking down Soi 64

Wednesday, we had to leave Bangkok to avoid the floods, so we went to the beach in Chonburi. The beach was nothing too special, the northern beaches aren't nearly as pretty as the ones in the south. The next two days of orientation were pretty torturous, just because we were at this nice resort, but had to sit through lectures and classes all day.

But we let all that built up energy out our last night together, when we explored Pattaya a little bit. So Pattaya is pretty much the dirtiest city ever, seeing as it has the most brothels of anywhere in the world. Let's just say there was an extremely high proportion of old, fat, white men. Most of them sporting Hawaiian shirts. But we had a big group with us, so we had a good time just walking down the street and making fun of everyone else. We also tried fried grasshopper.  It really didn't taste that bad, but just thinking of what you were actually eating wasn't pleasant.

Finally, on Friday we all went our separate ways to our respective schools. We originally had a 4 hour ride to our city, but it turned into 7 hours due to all of the traffic from people fleeing the flood in Bangkok. We stopped to eat dinner at a market where we were literally the only white people there. It was the first taste we had of actually being in Thailand not surrounded by a big group of other Americans. Then when we reached Suphanburi (the city we are teaching in) our coordinator picked up me, Cyrus, and one other girl who is also at our school, and brought us to the apartments.

The next day, we just unpacked and cleaned. The apartments are pretty basic, just a bedroom and bathroom. But a lot of other teachers from the area live in the building, so we'll always have people to hang out with and show us around. We tried to eat at a restaurant across from us, but since we were away from all tourist areas, the whole menu was in Thai (and not the phonetic Thai that we can figure out, it was all in Thai characters). But after a lot of broken english and Thai, we finally were able to order something. I just keep looking towards the future, when all of this will be easy!

Our school coordinator, Wattana, took us shopping later in evening to get anything we needed for our apartment. We went to a Tesco, which is the equivalent of a Wal-mart. Most of the stores here, like Tesco and 7-11, are really empty from people stocking up in case of a flood. But we managed to get what we needed. Then Wattana took us out to dinner with two other Thai teachers who we will be working with. The food was amazing, and the two other teachers were awesome.

Now it's just a matter of getting settled, and exploring the city a little bit. School starts on Tuesday, and we are both extremely nervous. We'll have to come up with a lesson plan, and teach to a class of 50 students. But it will be an experience!