Getting here and being here...

I suppose a blog is an easier way to track my trials and tribulations than email, although I must admit even a mass email seems more personal than this. I am going to give it a shot...

This will be a repeat for those of you who have received an email from me so far...

So, I was delayed a whole day on my way here which was pretty nice, to be honest. An extra day to lounge around in D.C....The flights were uneventful: slept the whole way to London, sleepwalked (is that a word?) through Heathrow, slept half way to Bangkok with my head periodically bouncing off the shoulder of the giant Patrick (the nickname for the ex-pats who come to Thailand for the Thai women) seated next to me. I watched two movies and landed in Bangkok. I had some time to kill there, some bag trouble, but eventually made my way to Khon Kaen, which is only 40 minutes by air from Bangkok.

I settled into my apartment, which is basically a standard hotel room. Its marble-ish floors, two twin beds pushed together, a stand-alone closet, a desk, a small fridge, and a fairly good sized bathroom. The walls are a light mint green and the room came with three posters: two scenes of Thai beaches and one of seven asian men sitting on a fence. They don't use bedding here, just bottom sheets, which were provided. I never told them my nickname but they must have known because the sheets are bright green and blue with cartoon bears all over them. The green side is my bed, while the blue side is my home office. I am on the first floor so my "balcony" is in some bushes and breeds mosquitos but I can hang some of my laundry out there. My clothes will be washed and pressed daily for the exorbitant fee of 10 dollars per month, but touching other peoples' dirty underwear and socks is not something you do in Thailand so I will be on my own for those. My rent is 130 dollars per month (yes, that is exactly 10 percent of what my New York City-bound friends will be paying...) which includes my TV and internet, but not my airconditioning fee, which they'll tack on at the end. Considering its above 90 and sooooo humid you feel like you are swimming here, I could rack up quite the bill for the aircon.

I live in an area called Gon Sa Don, which is a popular place for students and faculty to live because it's close to school. There are food stands, restaurants, bars and shops. It's the Thai version of a US University with more of a college town than ND...myabe Ann Arbor or something... Most of shops you have never heard of but there is a 7-11 open 24 hours on my block, which has the necessities.

To get to work I take a song-tau, which I have been describing as the modern-day Thai version of covered wagons: a pick-up truck with benches installed in the bed and a metal covering overhead. It has been brought to my attention that it is often not easy to tell if I am being sarcastic in my writing. In this blog, I will try to stick to the truth. So, Mary, I was not kidding about the song-taus...or the aerobics. (yes, at 6 pm today I will be doing aerobics with old thai ladies next to "nung wang," the little lake in my neighborhood. If I do not die of heat exhaustion, I will let you know how it goes!) It's about a ten minute commute by song-tau to the University and maybe 15 to downtown where I went for the first time last night. We went to a popular ex-pat bar (Cheap Charlie's) for English trivia. When I say English, I mean English: half the questions were about either football, meaning soccer, or British history. Needless to say, I bombed, but it was fun and I met some other young people teaching around Khon Kaen.

So, school. Its hard to explain really. I have not come close to seeing it all because campus is HUGE. There are 30,000 students and faculty and the campus is fairly spreadout. I did not have any preconceived notions of what a Thai University would be like, but if I had, I would not have been too far off. They are not concerned about grooming or continuity of architecture like ND and the buildings are certainly not as pristine, but I am fairly impressed, but not overly surprised, by what I have seen so far.

I am teaching three sections of English 103: English for Academic Purposes II. I taught today for the first time and we are working on a unit looking at transformations. We read a passage about Frank Gehrty and his design of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain and then answered some questions about it and worked on paraphrasing. Attendance took half of the class period since I was dealing with names like Watcharapol, Ninlakarn, Thitiporn, Thitipong, Chotrawee...and you get the picture. It was pretty entertaining to say the least. Lucky for me, all Thai people have "American nicknames." They are not like ones we have in the USA though. Here are some of the ones that I have learned so far: Oil, Blue, A, C, X, Aim, Key, Bank, Net, Far, View...and I could continue. I think any English word can be a nickname as long as its four letters or less. I met an "Arm" yesterday.

I will have three sections of 103, totaling about 90 students. I will also be teaching beginning level speaking and writing, which starts next week and I think will be even more challenging and hilarious than the 103s. Throughout the semester, I will have over 20 sections of those classes, but in different chunks of weeks. I think I'll have maybe 4 sections at a time for 4/5 weeks each. I am looking forward to the speaking sections most. At the end of each class I am having my students teach me some Thai. Today I learned to say "Excuse me/ Sorry" which is pronounced Khaw-Tot.

So Khaw-tot for this being so long. I will be updating frequently until I have more friends and classes...

Hope all of you are as happy as I am!