I’m not sure I know what day it is or the time. Sleeping on my bed is like sleeping on a
solid rock. It is hot as, yes I’m going
to say it.. balls. I have to take off my
shoes when I’m entering my own house, because I happen to have a middle-aged
Thai woman as a roommate/house mom/land lady. I slept with a
beach towel as a blanket my first night because I had no sheet. I can’t ever remember how to say anything in
Thai. Why can’t I remember hi? Oh yeah, because it is just a short sawatdee kha. Our shower is ice cold and shares a space
with the sink and toilet. But surprisingly,
I don’t seem to hate any of this. Well, okay I definitely don’t love a freezing cold shower, but it’s something I’ll get
used to eventually.
So far, everything is a learning experience.
I feel extremely naïve in this whole new world, but it’s exciting. Trying to learn words so I can order food at
the night market is interesting. Half
the time I find that I’m not exactly sure what I’m about to eat, but I’ll
learn. Luckily I’ll eat just about
anything you put in front of me. Proud to say that we've already made friends with Uthai, the smoothie guy who after three nights of going to him, found out that he speaks decent English! All of
the new foreign teachers at Anubanchonburi are in the dark, and it’s nice that
we’re in this together. Amelia and I are destined to be great friends here. We have mutual friends from home and got the chance to talk A LOT the few months before we got here. We are living together, walking to school together, teaching the same grade level, eating dinner together, and the list goes on! I am so thankful to have her here or else I would be lost!
A few things I know about Chon Buri:
-It is HOT. I am no
stranger to complaining about the heat and humidity during a summer in New
York. I don’t complain about it via
social networking, but I may start complaining publicly soon enough (sorry in
advance). I worked on my bulletin board today
for about four hours. The bulletin board
is outside. It was sweaty and all I was
doing was cutting and stapling.
-Average
temperature in Thailand in the month of November: 87 degrees. Aka I will be
sweating my buns off, while the locals will be wearing pants and sweaters,
thinking that this is the “cold” season.
And it only gets hotter. My poor
hair is going to hate me!
-I am living in a decently central location:
-20 minutes
from a beach
-One hour
drive to Bangkok
-Phuket,
Chiang Mai, and Ko Samet are all within a long bus or short plane ride
away. The planning has begun, and we
will probably go on our first weekend trip in a couple of weeks! Look these places up, they are just beautiful!
-The school I will be teaching at is called Anubanchonburi,
and I am teaching in the cutest little purple school. I will be teaching English, (reading,
writing, grammar, and conversation) science, and math to Thai children in second
grade. How I will go about this, I have
no idea, but I guess I will figure it out tomorrow. We had two days of orientation which was
extremely helpful, but I still feel like I’m going in with zero clue of what
to do. My Thai consists of hi and thank
you, when I can remember it. This should be pretty comical.
-My apartment is also interesting. I think my description for a lot of things
here is just that. On the first floor is
our common room. We have two couches, a
table, a fridge, some room for snacks and cooking supplies (although there is no kitchen to cook), and a
squatter. What’s a squatter you
ask? Well, have you ever peed outside in
the woods, holding onto a tree so you don’t fall over? It’s like that. A bowl on the ground that you squat over to
relieve yourself. Not my kind of toilet
bowl and luckily I haven’t had to use one yet, although I will have to at some point
during my stay. Then, our landlady, Aor,
lives off of the common room. It’s
almost as if we have a host family because people are always in and out of here
cleaning and fixing things that are broken.
Taking time to get used to. But
after a long day of orientation today, I walked into my room and it had a beautiful comforter on
my bed, a table cloth on my desk, a new lamp, and everything was so
organized!! They are taking care of us
for sure.
On the second floor, Amelia and I each have our own bedrooms. This consists of a twin sized bed, desk, armoire, and balcony. It is simple, but it works. I started “decorating” my room today with pictures from home and it makes me so happy just looking at them. We have a bathroom to share. This has a normal toilet, although toilet paper should not be flushed. Gross, I know. The shower hangs on the wall and is not enclosed. That’s right, I’m showering in front of the sink and mirror and right next to the toilet. Everything gets wet. Like I said, it’s interesting. We each have AC in our rooms (hallelujah) and the wifi is awesome!! There is a third floor with three more bedrooms and we are trying to convince some of our fellow American teachers to move in with us. There are so many animals that you hear throughout the day and night.. Birds, dogs, cats, bugs, and my favorite visitors of all: the lizards. Frequent visitors in my bedroom and bathroom.
The new comforter and table cloth from my land lady!
-Tesco!! Tesco is
basically like Walmart, except you can’t read anything because it is all in
Thai. I went to Tesco the second I got
in from the airport, when I was about to crash from jet lag. We took the Songtao
there, which is the taxi in Thailand. It
is a truck with gated in seats in the back.
They stop for you if you wave, and they let you off when you press a
button. It only costs 10 baht no matter
where you go in Chon Buri. This equals
about 1 cent. At Tesco, Amelia and I
got our Thai cell phones. They’re so
ancient that I don’t even know how to use it, but they work for trying to get
a hold of the other teachers!
On the songtao.. Very jet lagged on my first day
As for now, that’s all my brain can think about sharing
because I have had so much information about work shoved into my head the past couple
of days!
No comments:
Post a Comment