So it begins...

So this is my first blog from Thailand. I’m typing this in an internet café in the middle of Bangkok full of 10 year old Thai boys playing computer games. I’ve been in the country for a week now, and I’m starting to get into the groove of how to get around and function in the city. But let me start at the beginning—which would be when I arrived in Bangkok.
It was about 1:00 in the morning by Bangkok time when we (Brandan and I) arrived. We had been chasing the sun on a 747 from LA to Taipei creating an 8 hour sunset. We then moved on from Taipei to Bangkok for a grand total of 20 hours in the air. We were met by Kelly, Cory and Jorge, and it was nice to some familiar faces. All of us crammed into a taxi cab and headed on “home.” As we drove Kelly made small talk to the cab driver in Thai as I pressed my face against the window trying to get a glimps of the city that is to be my home for the next 4 months. But it was about 2:00 in the morning by that time and I could see very little. We arrived and were presented with home: a dark little back alley--classically ghetto in every sense. The dirty little street was bordered by three story high apartments. Each apartment had what looked like a garage sized metal gate, the kind most shops in malls use after they close. My reaction was mixed. I simultaneously thought, “am I really gonna live here?” and “awesome! I’m living here!” The inside of the buildings more or less match the outside, and our room was small but quite clean, but most importantly included an air conditioner! Praise God! We went to bed about 3:00am ready to get up at 6 in the morning to go to Thai language class. We had missed the first day.
The next morning we needed to get to class quickly, so we each took a motorcycle taxi. Basically you just sit behind the Thai driver on his motorcycle/moped as he weaves in and out of traffic. We quickly weaved in and out of pedestrians and onto the main street into the organized chaos of cars and motorbikes that is the traffic of Bangkok. As we threaded a needle through two moving cars I tried to wipe the goofy grin off my face. This was the most amazing first taste of Bangkok. No windows came between me and the city, only a 360 view and air rushing past. And the smells! Smells of garbage, smells of meat being cooked on the street, sweet smells, putrid smells, smells you can taste, smells without a name. I was still trying to wipe that grin off my face. I didn’t want to look like some tourist or anything like that. We arrived at the Sky Train, and took it the rest of the way to school. Brandan and I had missed the first day, so we just got thrown into it.
Thai is a very hard language to learn for many reasons. First it’s not English. Secondly its tonal, meaning that your voice going up or down can change the meaning of the word. Third, they have crazy weird vowel sounds. We think its just A E I O U. But someone had the bright idea of thinking there are vowel sounds in between those ones. Try saying A E I O U slowly, morphing from one vowel to the next. Yep, those are distinct vowels. Think of Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady. Class is pretty much hilarious because we have all been reverted to toddler status. We have 12 people in our class, all speak English and most are middle aged. With as much dignity as each of us can muster, we let out a eeeuuuu as the teacher makes us repeat it over and over. Apparently we never really get it right, just kind of close.
Anyways, this is getting way too long, so suffice it to say that it was a crazy first day. It was a Friday, and we and bunch of the other SMs were heading about 6 hours south by train to a beach. We had been in Thailand for a day, and we were already getting a vacation! But the weekend at the beach is a story for another day. I’m a week behind and I’m skipping so much, but eventually as things settle down I’ll get caught up. Anyways, this is how I plan to let everyone know what’s going on, so I don’t need to repeat myself to everyone. I hope to hear from all of you. Peace.