Saturday, October 4, 2008

Eternal Summer

I woke up this morning and realized that I have been in Thailand for 4 months. Wow! It feels like no time has gone by. We talked about that today and realized that in America we're so used to marking time with the change of seasons so here, where it is still shorts and tank top weather, fall hasn't registered for us. Sometimes I still think everyone back home is still on summer vacation. Whoa am I way off. This week we will give finals to all of our students. Friday is off for grading and next week the first semester will be over. That means half my time in Thailand is over and it makes me sad. I really do love it here. I love my students. I love the other GES teachers, and I love the culture. Oh and I love the shopping :) Sometimes I do fantasize about going home even for only one day and being able to go shopping at Target and being able to go buy all the things that I need that I didn't know I needed to bring. That will be a good thing if I do end up coming back again next year to teach. I'll know what I need to bring with me.

Onto another story. On thursday night at about 4 in the morning I was woken up by the loudest thunderclap of my life. That clap of thunder was followed by dozens of others of equal volume and a literal waterfall of rain. It kept me up for a good amount of time and I (along with many other teachers I found out) was convinced that this was it, the flood was coming. The teacher that lives in the same room in the apartment next to me, Jonathan, said that his first thought was "the flood is coming, and I have no water!", this is funny because they've been telling us to stock up on food and water in the upper floors of our houses just in case of a flood since August. It was actually a pretty big storm. I don't know of anyone that didn't wake up. I heard a Thai teacher say yesterday that there's a typhoon coming. I don't know if there really is a Typhoon, but it would be pretty exciting.

Today was a fun filled shopping day including and hour and a half sitting in traffic in a taxi trying to get downtown. WE made up for that rough start with lunch at the Dairy Queen Grill (the only dairy queen we've found with food and icecream, and the only other restaurant other than Que Pasa with free drink refills). I found a few good things at MBK. I'm trying to prepare for our trip coming up, getting some of the things I'll need for 9 days on the Everest Trail. Heidi said she found out that we don't need a VISA for Bangladesh. I hope she's right so we don't end up sitting in the airport for 14 hours each time and arn't stuck in the hotel.... We'll see.

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