Thailand... The adventure officially begins...

I've been in Thailand for 5 days now and it feels like I've been here forever. It's a hard feeling to explain but I do enjoy it for the most part. The journey getting here was quite taxing overall. Carrying my carry-on's through three different airports, plus an extremely uncomfortable flight and sheer readiness to finally be there already attributed to the fact that it took FOREVER to finally reach Chiang Mai.

We just finished our third day of class. It's been pretty interesting so far, though I do get a bit bored sometimes. It's most likely because I'm pretty tired often. As I've mentioned 100 times, there are roosters outside the window which crow almost all day it seems except in the late night. Because I'm a pretty light sleeper nowadays, I wake up from them and can't seem to fall back asleep. It's terrible actually and causes me to be quite tired the rest of the day. For example, this morning I woke up at 6:15am because of them and didn't have class until 9am. I would try to go back to sleep, but it just wouldn't happen because they crow so loudly every 10 seconds or so.

I have been learning a lot in class about teaching. I'm getting pretty nervous with the thought of ACTUALLY teaching in class. I don't worry so much about being in front of people or stage fright or anything. What most worries me is that I'll forget my lesson plan and need to resort to my notes constantly. I have a really bad memory and it's really going to hurt me in the beginning as I try and become a teacher that actually seems like she knows what she's doing.

As for Thailand itself, one of my fav. things is these red trucks called song-tao's. They are red covered trucks with a pretty much open back and two long bench's in the center. It's awesome for all of us to travel in and it usually only costs 20 baht per person, (32 baht is a dollar). So it's pretty amazing and I love the open air feeling of it. When you look out the back you see the road flying by and it's just really invigorating. The guys stand on the back of it sometimes and hang on riding through the wind, yet I haven't brought myself to be able to do that because knowing me, I'd end up losing grip and dying pretty much. :)

We went to a temple yesterday which was REALLY awesome. It was a Buddhist holiday (I think) yesterday and we saw all the monks do their thing in the temple itself. I stood in the back with my shoes off because the monks are so highly respected here (the only thing respected more is the King) and I didn't want to do something to offend them. There is something called the Wai here which is basically a respectful greeting and depending on your place in society, different ones are given at different times. Knowing this, I didn't want to offend the monks in anyway so I just stood back and observed.

What was also really awesome was seeing an old temple behind the one we went to. At least it seemed like an old temple. It seemed like a giant ruin and people were coming up to it and lighting incense and kneeling to the ground and ringing bells. It was quite amazing to see it because I cannot even imagine how old it is. And it was gigantic!!!

Thailand really is the land of smiles. Everyone here is so nice, and it makes life here seem so easy going. Let the adventure continue! :)