We're here!

So we made it. We're sitting in our "new" desks at the school right now using the Internet. There's so much to tell, but I'm going to try to be concise. First off I wanted to give you the link to more photos we've put up. Click here to see them.

The flight over was pretty smooth. Lots of good food on the planes surprisingly. Saw a ton of movies too. They're was a typhoon in Japan when we were trying to fly out which delayed us there. Justin was very nice and told me they were saying "thai food" so that I wouldn't realize what was going on. Here are some pictures from the airport in Japan.

Once we got to Bangkok we went to our guest house which was very sweet.The only rough spot was carrying our 200lbs of luggage up the three flights to our room. We couldn't sleep that night so we stayed up and walked around a bit.

This is Justin in the guest house.


This is the soup he got in a bag that he ate out of his shoe.

This is us on the balcony of the guest house the next morning.

The train was at 8am the next day. It was a combination of the "El" and Amtrak. We got food and drinks for free which was nice. And we got to see quite a bit of countryside, despite me sleeping for quite a lot of the trip.

A teacher picked us up in Surat and took us to our new house. It's two story with two baths and two bedrooms (if anyone wants to visit :) ). There's air conditioning in the main bedroom, but it's broken now, but will hopefully work soon. The shower has hot water and the toilets both flush. Today Justin got the sort of manual washer going. There's also a lady down the street who washes, dries, and irons your clothes for 30baht or so (about a dollar). The house is the biggest we've had by far. We're hoping to fill it up with lots of nice plants soon and get some more fabric for the walls.

This is our house!!


The bugs haven't been too bad, we got a bunch of mosquito coils which has helped. We also have several lizard friends who help out as well.

The past few days we've been walking around quite a bit and shopping. We've been to the market by the river twice now. They have lots of fresh (meaning still alive) seafood, and lots of fruits and veggies. We got the most amazing fried chicken there yesterday. We've also been to the mall, which wore us out so much that we went to bed at 6pm. There's a Tesco there which is a British walmart. They have a lot of western things there. We also went to the Mackro near our house which turns out to be a Thai Sam's Club. We walked there and got to much stuff (a fan, chairs, a small table) and had to awkwardly carry it down the street. The "doctor" who is half of the thai couple who own the school apparently saw us and sent his wife to try to pick us up. We'd luckily made it back by then.

This is me by the river downtown.

Sunday night we had a fun dinner with the couple and the teachers. The food was amazing, lots of dishes that come out slowly and everyone takes a few bites of everything. It hasn't been as spicy as I thought it would either, which is pleasant for me. The doctor and his friend explained to us about cricket fighting (it's the same as dog or chicken fights) - we're hoping to see some. Some other things we've noticed are all the new trucks and cars. 9 out of 10 cars here look brand new and a majority are giant pick up trucks.

There are dogs everywhere, although most of them seem fairly harmless. The doctor and Pee Nong live next door to us and they have some intense guard dogs they let out at night. We've discovered that if you do anything at night (like move furniture or go outside) they howl for about half an hour.

The people are very sweet here. They tend to first give us a once over as we are one of about 30 non-Thai people in the city and then we'll meet there eye and get a big smile. If we say "swatdee kha/krap" we get an even bigger smile. We've been practicing the "wai" which is how you great people. It's a bow with your hands in a prayer position and you touch your hands to your mouth. Older Thai people seem very excited if you wait them.

It's funny the varying degrees of touch people use to greet each other. Colleen was saying that in Morocco you great people with a kiss on one side and then several kisses on the other cheek depending on how happy you are to seem them. Then there's the western shake and then over here there's no touch and just a bow. It's funny how hard it is to resist sticking your hand out when you meet people.

We'll write more soon and we're working on adding more photos. We start observing tomorrow and continue for the next two weeks. Then there's a break for a week before we start actually teaching. We'd love to hear from everyone! You can write comments or my email is alezaberube@gmail.com and justin's is justinsitarz@gmail.com in case you didn't have those.