First Day in Thailand!
(My Sunday, the 29th)
Houses around our apartment building
Took a long Sunday morning walk and explored around the place
where we will be living. It is beautiful, in a grungy sort of way. There are
chickens and soi (street) dogs everywhere.
People keep a lot of stuff outside, I guess because the nice weather
they have. We also saw a ton of Mom and
Pop stores, selling all sorts of things like cooked meats, fresh eggs, dried
and fresh fruit, but also things like straws, candy, bottled drinks, and a ton
of stuff that I couldn't tell you what it is.
Later in the day two wonderful women from Lertlah school
took us shopping. We got cell phones,
and a bunch of stuff we need for our apartments, like fans, bed spreads, shoe
racks, hangers, cleaning supplies, etc.
We went back after having a wonderful lupper of pad thai and chicken on
green chili from a soi (street) vendor.
Unfortunately, my feet couldn't really take all the walking around
because I got huge blisters, as you see in the picture.
Not for the faint of heart.
I still hate my apartment.
Last night I found out that a there is a colony of ants living in my
bathroom walls. I am going to see if the
7-Eleven down the street from us has any ant traps. I am also pretty sure that there is some kind
of spider nest in my walls because I have killed about 7 of the same type of
spider *shudder*. Today I will talk to
someone today about being moved into a different apartment. There is a free one upstairs that I would love
to nab, and I would totally be willing to pay extra for it. It's a corner room and, from what I can tell,
quite nice.
Anyway, aside from the feet and the apartment, everything here is wonderful! The people are beautiful, the city is amazing, and the school that I am going to be teaching at is better than what my expectations were. :)
Love you all,
Kelsey
How friendly are the people there. I bet you they are great. Does it help being Canadian. How are you making out with the language issue.
ReplyDeleteThe people are very friendly. It is a different kind of friendly though...for example, they laugh at you when you speak Thai to them (how much does this cost, goodbye, hello, thank you, etc.), but it's not a malicious laugh, it's a friendly laugh.
ReplyDeleteWe have also had people burst out laughing out loud when they see us, which is kind of strange but again doesn't feel "mean".
I don't know if it helps here that we are Canadian. I have spoken to quite a few Americans who also teach at Lertlah and they say that Thailand is such a popular tourist spoke for Americans because even in their own experience Thailand is one of the few countries that don't act more hostile towards Americans, like quite a few other countries do.
The language thing hasn't been much of an issue yet. We've gotten lost and turned around a few times in transit, but the taxi here is so cheap that if you "waste" one dollar taking a taxi to a place that you didn't actually want to go to it's not a big deal. Lertlah staff made us helpful cards that have our home address on them, plus it helps that we are just off of what appears to be a pretty big street.
We've all learned a few key phrases. I can say hello, goodbye, thank you, how much, where is the washroom, chicken, pork, shrimp, curry,....pad thai...and a few other's that I can't remember. But no, it's not difficult getting around or communicating.