1st weekend in BKK

Well, well, well.....its all started off at the doctors office. All 13 new teachers went through the process of EKG's, blood work, urine tests, checkup, and x-rays. Then we all waited for our results....I was healthy except they said my heart rate was a little low. But then as people started trickling out of their meetings with the doctors seemed like a lot of people had something wrong with their hearts. So I am going to go ahead and assume they need a new heart machine



51/2 hours later we were running around the mall and food court trying to get lunch and hooked up with some super fly phones. I got a flashy nokia, good chance it was one of the 1st cell phone models EVER made.As for lunch..grrrr I got frustrated, took a deep breath and said to myself its to early in the whole experience to have a break down in the middle of The Mall food court. So I wiped the one tear that snuck out of my eye ordered white rice, a fried egg with a side of vanilla ice cream. Then we found a grocery store that almost brought me to my knees to praise God. I found lots and lots of food and labels I recognized. I got a real diet coke, teddy grams, and crackers. The box of teddy grams was half gone before I even got out of the store.



We had limited time to get back to campus, shower and get on our dancing shoes. I keep saying "we" I am referring to most of the new teachers and my loyal companions Emma, Danielle, and Erin. We are at the campus about 30 min out of the city. I will give you a whole run down on that in a later post. However, I will say there are lots of bus rides and zipping around in hot pink cabs.



The group started out at an American Bar. We met some teachers that have been there for a semester or more. Two of our buddies from DePaul are part of the veteran teachers so they were taking us out on the town. This bar was great. Cheap beer, pool tables, huge tables to pack us around, bottles of whisky for sale the same price you can get them at the supermarket, the MN WILD game up on the TV, bags, western food, great outdoor area and cockroaches. Yep Big, HUGE, GIANT cockroaches. Only outside....sometimes creeping on to you seat or running across your toes. Great place though.....we will be spending many Friday and Saturday nights there. One of our buddies is even getting together a group of us and we hare having a Thanksgiving meal to be remembered.



After some drinking, picture taking, getting the shivers watching Emma FLICK the little buggers off the back of our booth we headed to the club. Different levels, playing different music and out of control dance parties. We rolled out of the club around 5 Am...But Emma and I were just not ready to go back to "the burbs". Our friends have APTs down in the city so we grabbed some chips and beer from 711 and continued to hangout. Bedtime was 7AM. We all woke up and were all as my family likes to call it...a little tired. The living situation of the amigos in BKK is this. They are not really APTS or studios...they are rooms. The building looks like an apt building but you walk in and there is a bed, dresser, fridge, desk, and chair. The bathroom is all rolled into one. The shower sprays down on the floor...NOTHING to step into, or to slide open...its just hanging across from the sink. So that was an interesting sight to see and one that made us a light shade of green that they had such great places in the city. Best part, they were CLEAN!! Not what we expected after being down there during the day. There are no TV's in the room so you have a few options. We started out all laying around, talking about the night before, and just about everything else under the moon. We had some tunes playing, the smokers were puffing on their cigs, and some of the boys were cracking beers. I was in fetal position.(I blame the pizza I ate the night before...not the booze. ;) ) Sometimes one of us would get the facebook itch and would hop on the computer to remember most of our friends back in the states are sleeping or out hammered at Burtons place, probably making bad decisions.

After laying around all day we ordered Micky D's (yeah, they deliver that down here?!!!????) hopped in a hot pink cab and headed back to campus. That was only one night. We hear there are many great places we still have to experience and I am sooo excited to get in the grove down here. Everyone we have met has been so helpful and I can not wait to see what the rest of this year has in store. Its going to be a good one. I am sooo lucky to have these people in my life out here and I will be posting pics soon so you can put faces with the people I am talking about if you do not already know them.

xoxo Rach