After a week in Thailand, I am finally in my apartment in Suphanburi where I will live for the next 5 months. Thailand is an amazing country with really wonderful people and I am so happy I will be spending the next 6+ months living here. The past week has been spent learning how to teach and live in Thailand with some really fun activities thrown in, too.

The first four days of orientation were spent in a nice hotel on Bangkok, but far away from the part of Bangkok most people think of.  It was relatively in the middle of no where, but was a good setting to sit inside and learn what we need to know before beginning to teach. We were part of the largest group that has ever come to teach in Thailand through our organization (Overseas Education Group: OEG) so there were a somewhat overwhelming number of Americans and British to meet. There were definitely some people that I never had a chance to talk to, but I was able to meet and get to know many interesting and awesome people that I am looking forward to traveling with throughout my time living here.

Our day was scheduled from about 8:30 am to 5 pm, but we did have a chance to explore a little bit after our lessons. We mostly stayed near the hotel and checked out the many street vendors down the street, but one night Eric and I went with another couple to Siam Square in Bangkok. It was basically a huge western shopping malls, which we did not go in, but instead skirted around the outside where there were tons of street vendors selling food and clothing. Another night we were taken to a show of Thai culture as a large group (stereotypical huge tour buses full of Farang-white foreigner).  It was definitely a tourist trap and there were many other Farang, but the show was actually really neat with great costumes, dancing, and a really cool stage that had a river run through it at times and rain come down from the ceiling. We also toured the Grand Palace where King Rama IX lives, which was very beautiful.


The last two days were spent in Kanchanaburi, a neighboring province to Bangkok and Suphan Buri.  We arrived at night and realized we were at a resort, not just a standard hotel. It was on the Kwai river, there were two beautiful pools, and a karaoke bar. After a short lesson the last morning, we went to an elephant camp where we rode elephants, went down the river in a bamboo raft, and watched the elephants do tricks including playing the harmonica, picking people up, and spanking people. I had low expectations for the elephant camp since I had such an awesome bareback elephant riding experience in India, but it was actually really fun and our elephant driver was very silly. After the elephant camp, we went to the famous Bridge Over the River Kwai from WWII. You can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bridge_over_the_River_Kwai.



We were told that we had a surprise for dinner and OEG definitely delivered. We had no alcohol allowed (for good reason) dinner on a floating restaurant (basically a big raft being pulled my a tugboat), which turned into a techno dance party in the pouring rain. After that, we went back to the hotel/resort to hit up the karaoke room until 2 am.  It was a great last night with everyone before getting picked up to go to our respective regions.


We got to our apartment in Suphanburi (Note: I live in Suphanburi the city and Suphan Buri the province) yesterday afternoon and basically layed around and unpacked in the heat.  Today one of the Thai english teachers is picking us up to take us to lunch and hopefully to see the school so we aren't lost when we have our first day of classes on Monday.

There is so much more I could talk about, but this post has been long enough so I will write more another time.  All in all, I am so happy to be here and can't wait to make this place my home.