We made it!

After months and months of waiting, and countless responses to the "What're you doing now that you've graduated" questions, we have finally arrived in Thailand. And it feels good.

Fortunately, our trip over went pretty flawlessly. It was as good as you can hope for a 20+ hour journey. Cyrus literally watched 5 movies in a row without a break, and I watched a few, but managed to sleep for a little bit. We met four other people from our program at the Bangkok airport and took a van to our hotel, getting there around midnight. Thanks to the jetlag, we woke up around 5 am to see the sun rising over Bangkok for the first time. That's when it actually hit us hard that we were here.

The next day we went over to check in at our orientation and meet some of the other people in our program. A group was planning to head over to one of the markets in downtown Bangkok, so we said we'd join in. But we decided to just lay down for a few minutes to rest before...and then woke up six hours later. So we missed the market, but did I feel refreshed. Then that night we met up at a bar close to our hotel to eat dinner and hang out with the other kids here. It was an open air kind of restaurant, and they were playing American 90's music (which might be the best kind). The atmosphere was awesome; we drank lots of beer and met a lot of cool people. Drew would have fit in perfectly with his red tank top. We also met a girl whose brother owned the bar, and who spoke really good English. She sat at our table for a few hours and told us to call her anytime if we have questions or want to experience Bangkok.

So after getting back to our room at 2, we had a note under our door explaining that our schedule had changed for the next day, and we were going to visit the Grand Palace instead of just having some classes at the hotel. It may sound like something to get excited about, but being hungover in 90 degree heat surrounded by crowds of tourists isn't the best thing I could have asked for. Regardless of our Debbie Downer attitude at first, the Grand Palace ended up being pretty amazing. The Grand Palace is the most revered temple in Thailand, along with one of the main tourist attractions. It made the Alhambra in Spain look like one of my 1st grade arts and crafts projects. The amount of ornate detail, and just the size of the entire complex was hard to believe.

The rest of the week we will have classes on teaching English, and also on learning Thai. The days are kind of long, but the information is useful. The majority of the people here are super nice and we all get along well. Though there are the occasional one or two people you want to punch in the face. I think we're heading out to downtown Bangkok tonight, so we'll see how that goes. Don't worry mom, we'llbe in a group and I won't accept any drinks from strangers.

Miss you all.

Paige and Cyrus