BAHHHG!

I just finished my orientation paper, reflecting and analyzing different things that we learned throughout the lectures that we had last week. These lectures were done by visiting professors and were about Thai history and politics, Human Rights, the Livelihood Model, and Thai Social Structure. I'm glad the paper is finally done, and now I have a day of preparation before I head to a homestay for our first unit on food and agriculture.

The Thriller performance was awesome, although I didn't perform because I missed some of the rehearsals since I was visiting friends in the hospital. We have now had three people in the hospital - one with salmonella, one with food poisoning, and one with appendicitis. It's good that the health care system here is so good and cheap! Here, people do not go to doctors for minor things, they always just go to the hospital. So our Ajaans keep having to remind us that even if we are having a stomach ache, we can go to the hospital and they will take care of us. It is a hard thing to understand, because we all see the hospital as such a serious place to go. 

I am also getting closer with my peer tutor, and am not surprised anymore when she shows up at our apartment and expects me to go out with her. We can never really understand each other on the phone, so she just shows up sometimes in her bright blue pick-up truck, and we all hop in the back. It is so nice to always have open-air transportation here - in the states we would never just ride in the back of a truck with 10 other people. She really wants to take a few of us shopping before we head to the homestay, which should be amusing, since her and her friends are so much more fashionable then we are. I feel like I am going to come back to the states with a lot of collared, frilly, and patterned shirts. She also got really excited when I told her that I liked to sing, and mentioned that she LOVED kareoke. So she is going to take me out to do kareoke with her friends and sing her favorite two songs: As Long as You Love Me by the Backstreet Boys, and My Heart Will go On by Celine Dion. Should be a pretty amazing time!!

I am on the editorial team for our combined blog with another study abroad group called CGE in Mexico. We had a meeting about it today, and I am really excited to get going with the process - I set up a link to our blog on the right side of this page. Our two groups have similar focuses of development and globalization, so we are going to blog back and forth to see the similarities and dissimilarities of our experience. As an editor, I edit the blogs and help find other programs throughout the world that we can hopefully connect with in the future. We are trying to make the blog into a space where people can discuss the issues that we are learning about/experiencing. In addition, it will be a place where past CIEE students can write about how they took what they learned in Thailand and applied it to their lives at home. Should be really interesting, so check it out if you want!

P.S. "BAHHHG!" means "OH MY GOD!" in Isaan (the type of Thai that we are learning). You have to scream it with your eyes wide open. Our peer tutors taught us this the other night when we were all out at a bar, and it is basically the funniest thing I have learned here. You say it when you are extremely excited...my friend Justin said it today in Thai class and my Ajaan fell on the floor laughing. She is usually pretty strict, so it was a really, really funny thing to see!