Getting there...

We’re beginning to get into the groove of life in Thailand, and especially here in Suphanburi.  Suphan is considered a small town, though it seems relatively big to us.  This past weekend we made a journey to the grocery store, the weekend market, and the mall.  Those may all seem like mundane activities, but doing even the simplest thing here, like taking the bus for example, turns into some sort of unorganized adventure.  In Thailand they have the saying, “Mai pen rai” which translates to “just let it go” or  “don’t worry about it”.  We have found ourselves repeating the mantra many times over the past 2 weeks.

Here's us on a tuk tuk (a motorcycle with a cart on the back).  Key in on the side mirror.

On Friday a group of teachers from our apartment went out to sing karaoke, a popular past time here.  I was expecting your typical karaoke bar, with drunken renditions of decade old songs sung to a crowd of your equally drunk peers.  Well, in Thailand you rent out your own little room and sing with only the group you came with.  At first I though it was a little weird, but we all got pretty in to it.  The fact that they had the most out of date and random selection of English songs made it even better.

School is going pretty smoothly this week.  We thought up our own lesson plans; I’m working on the pronunciation of R and L words, since every student has trouble distinguishing between the two.  I’m enjoying teaching a lot actually.  The kids are so precious and fun, with the only exception being the constant, non-stop, incessant, frustrating amount of talking in the classroom.  I wouldn’t care if they were whispering, but it gets to the point where I have to yell so everyone can hear me, and I don’t think my voice can handle that for very long.

This week in class I started reading off the attendance so I can get to know at least a few of my 730 kids’ names.  They each pick a nickname (most of them are in English) to be called at school.  I have no idea how or why they choose the names that they do, but some of them are so random that I have to try not to laugh as I’m reading them off.  Here are just a few examples: nut, tiger, boss, safe, gun, hygiene, bank, touch, first, pop (a popular one), shop, tony, mix, god, book, golf, beer, ice (another common one), benz, sweden, bill, mike, field, cake, Neptune, mighty, and gift.

Also, in Thailand every day of the week corresponds to a certain color.  Tuesday is pink, and it represents something to do with the king.  The king is pretty much “the man” here.  His face is on posters everywhere, and all the people love him.  So, on Tuesdays all of the students and teachers, us included, wear pink polos to school.  Awesome.

Lots of love