Orentation Starts Today

Good Morning! It's 5AM on Friday morning, our first day of orientation today! Lets see our outing on Wednesday was short lived - new and interesting smells and jet lag got to us feeling queezy and tired. We ate and came up a slept for a bit, Josh slept for lots of bits. I think we've readjusted our internal clocks, Josh took a few more naps than I did - I didn't have that crash that you hear of. The night before last I slept for a few hours but was up most of the night - not cool.  I spent most of my night like this... notice the clock - I had been up since about midnight.

Because of our insomnia, we were up quite early for breakfast, which did I mention... there is also a salad bar at breakfast - craziness! We met some new teachers, and headed out to the outdoor market in a quest to get some pants. Quite the experience - I found some I liked but didn't know if they would fit, so the shop owner said I could try it on as he handed me a large skirt. So I preceded to try on these pants under this skirt in the middle of the market. They were not a good fit. As we left the market the humidity and heat was getting to be a bit much so we were eager to get back into the AC! On our way back we stopped at the 7-11 for some snacks - oreos, popcorn, BBQ chips, and water. 7-11s are everywhere!

When we returned everyone was arriving so we met lots of fellow teachers, even some from Minnesota! We met a group and decided we would explore that afternoon with each other. We went back to the outdoor market - made my first market purchase a dress for about $3! I've since decided that dresses and skirts are a better option than jeans - it is too darn hot and humid to be wearing jeans!! Need a breathable fabric! We then decided to take the skytrain into central Bangkok to go to the mall. We had to take a taxi to the train station then took the train into town - a very packed train, below is a video at the train station of the parking lot.

We walked into the mall - food court central! We saw every types of restaurant; Mexican, Itailan, Thai - many American ones: McDonalds, Subway, Mrs. Fields - just about anything you could find! We ended up eating at a Thai restaurant, very yummy food! After lunch we, the whole group, traveled out onto the street and headed to the snake farm - a few blocks into our walk it started to pour rain! A few more and we found out it is closed - THANK GOD!! There is NO way I'm going to a snake farm - NO WAY! On our quest to stay out of the rain we walked down a neat ally way full of little shops. Our group ended up splitting up, everyone had their own things they wanted to accomplish. Josh and I ended up back at the mall for a while, then made our way back to the hotel for a quick nap and than some supper.

(Josh typing now)
Last night we ventured across the street for supper. Usually we have been eating at the hotel restaurant. It was quite the contrast. In our hotel most of the waiters/waitresses know enough English to communicate with us (always get our order right). This was not the case across the street. It took 2 waitresses, 1 waitress who looked like a waitress but spoke in a waiters voice (if you catch my drift), and another waitress who must have been 12 years old to take our order. The 12 year old know the most English. Beth enjoyed her meal because she got what she ordered. I had attempted to play it safe and get fried rice with pork. They gave me fried rice with sea food. I love sea food, but sea food here will take some getting used to as I found out. I was very thankful when we got back to the hotel and had some chips and Oreos to snack on.

Below are 2 videos I took...

The first is a tour of our hotel room narrating by me.

The second video is from our hotel room. Out the window they had stewardess training.
They are practicing putting out fires. It was very amusing.