Kim and Jeremy in Thailand

Okay, so remember that big rainstorm I was talking about yesterday? It rained hard again last night, and we came to school this morning through a lot of water, a VERY soggy commute. It's a good thing we have a massive beast of a truck, because the nurse lives right by us and she has water in her backseat floorboards sloshing around because it was so deep to drive through.

We arrived at school and the basement was pretty flooded. The choir room had about 5-6" of standing water, and the little dip in the floor outside our office was full. All we needed were some little fishies! Thankfully, the computer servers stayed dry, but there was a lot of damage since quite a few classrooms had standing water, so some books and things were lost. I put up a few pictures on our gallery, although it's hard to get an idea of the extent of it from the pictures.

School was called off early today (10:30) on account of all the water. Several of the mubaans here are flooding, and there are rumors that since the Ping river (which goes through downtown) is flooding again, they will release more water from the dam into the canal which goes behind our mubaan. Parts of our mubaan were already flooded, so this could definitely affect us. Once we finish preparing the school for possible floods, the staff will scurry off to our own places to move all valuables to higher and drier locations.

And just yesterday I was saying that I sometimes forget I'm not in America during school!

We woke up this morning (and several times last night) to the sounds of a fierce rainstorm. Apparently, it's the aftereffects of some tropical storm. But it sure poured, and the wind was crazy!! It was definitely the worst storm we've had since we've been here. This morning as we left for school, it was still raining, and most of the streets in our mubaan (neighborhood) had several inches of standing water. It was a rather soggy commute to school.

In other news, my parents actually bought plane tickets to come out to Thailand!!!! Hooray!!! It only took us four months to talk them into it. They'll be coming out at the end of January. Hopefully my Thai will be significantly improved by then and I'll be able to get us around with no problems. It's definitely getting better-today a man came to the CSD office to drop off a delivery. He had been told to speak with either Jit (the Thai girl who works with us) or Sam, but neither of them were here. He asked me (in Thai, of course) where the Thai girl was who works there, and I told him I didn't know. I asked if he needed me to sign, and he didn't really answer. So I told him that we could go upstairs and there was someone who spoke both Thai and English. We went upstairs and Khun Note (the girl who works in the office and speaks great English) said, "Kim, you are studying Thai!" As if I should already be fluent after six weeks here. :) Anyway, it turned out that he didn't want me to sign because he had been told to talk to Sam or Jit, but once Note vouched that I actually work here, everything was fine. Then we had a nice brief chat about how I've been here for a month, I'm from Chicago, I'm teaching, and how he went to Texas once. All of this was in very broken Thai, of course, but we were able to communicate, which was exciting! I really think that by the time January rolls around, I'll have a decent grasp of the language, or at least what I need to know.

Wednesday was my birthday, and it was an absolutely fabulous day!

First off, Jeremy got up with my alarm (the hardest gift for him to give!) and made me breakfast before school. Then off to school, where I opened up the several cards and a package that had arrived for me in the previous days. Thank you everyone!! Later, I was surprised with a mini-party after lunch, complete with a Dairy Queen ice cream cake! Yes, we have Dairy Queen in Thailand, but this was the first time we'd gotten anything here and it was fabulous. After school, we enjoyed one episode of the Cosby show (a birthday gift from my parents) before heading to a pizza dinner with friends. Then we spent a little while in the mall walking around shopping, and Angela and I both got these hideously large (about 8" diameter) sunflower hair ties, which we agreed were too tacky to pass up. We wore them yesterday to school. (Suprisingly, we got very few comments-I hope people didn't think we actually thought they looked good!) All in all, I had a very excellent birthday, highlighted by cards and emails from many people who I didn't expect to hear from. I guess I'm so far away, I was really surprised that people remembered my birthday, and it meant more than usual.

The most entertaining thing that happened this week was definitely in class, though. Sam had gotten some balut from the Phillipines, one of his favorite dishes. Balut is duck embryo that would have been ready to hatch in a few days, had it not been turned into an Asian delicacy instead. It looks very much like a little duckling, complete with a beak and tiny feathers. Sam brought one of these to class and offered 100 baht (about $2.50) to any student who would take a bite. We had a few students take him up on the offer, and overall, it was quite a wild scene. Imagine one of the craziest nights in high school youth group, only in the middle of a computer lab. Needless to say, it was very entertaining, highlighted with outbursts such as, "Oh, I bit its brains off!!" Now that's something you don't hear much in American schools.

This weekend we went on a trip to a houseboat that belongs to some other members of staff. Houseboat isn't exactly what I would call it, though. There's an area about an hour and a half north of here that was a big valley between some mountains. They built a dam and made a massive reservoir, which they now use as kind of a touristy/vacationy sort of place. The 'houseboat' was really more of a floating cabin. We took about a ten minute boat ride out through the lake to get there, then pulled up to our cabin which is floating on bamboo but tied safely to the shore. There are actually some Thai people who live there, so they cooked for us even. People went swimming, played card games, sang, played guitar...all in all it was a really nice evening. There were 8 staff people and 5 students. We left Friday after school and came back on Saturday afternoon.

Then Saturday night was a big student council kickoff event. These things sure are better attended here than at my high school!! The vast majority of the students came, and brought a massive amount of sugary snacks. They spent the evening playing a variety of sports and games, and hanging out at the pool. We were just the chaperones, but still, a good time was had by all.

Then yesterday we went back to the same church as last week. This time, the pastor spoke (last week was a guest speaker) and we really enjoyed it. We're still open to visiting other churches, but we definitely like this one best of where we've been so far. The only strange thing is that the service starts at 4:15pm, so people can attend a Thai church if they want to. It's a little odd to not go anywhere on Sunday mornings, but I don't think it will take us long to adjust.

Yesterday morning, we went to a Thai church with Joy and Sydney. They are friends with Paiboon & Patcharaporn, our Thai friends in St. Louis. Their church was really neat-very celebratory, with dancers and flags and great music. There was a translation of parts of the service for the English speakers, which was helpful, but I think we will enjoy the church more when we know a little more Thai.

In the afternoon, we went to Chiang Mai Community Church. This is another church full of foreigners, but it's a lot more international and varied (not everyone is from our school) than the other churches we had visited. Our friends the Fishers did the music yesterday, and the guest preacher was very good. It was our favorite church that we've visited so far, so I think we will go back again next week and hear the regular pastor preach.

I wish I had more pictures to put up here, but we have just been exhausted lately. Teaching has taken a lot more energy out of me than I had expected, and Jeremy wasn't feeling well this weekend, so we had sort of a slower weekend. Hopefully soon I'll have pictures of the markets and the places we've been eating to show you.

One exciting thing this weekend was that some friends of ours got a little golden lab puppy. He is adorable! His name is Odie, and he's about 8 weeks old. He is also the laziest puppy I have ever seen. They requested the most mellow puppy out of the bunch and that's definitely what they got. He slept for most of the weekend, and even when he is active, it's only for short bursts. But he's very cute and cuddly and we had a great time playing with him.