End of our First Week of Schooling!

Em and I enjoying our first "Thai-style Tea" in Thailand

The Bearded Traveler:

It's been a lovely week of school and a lovely week in Chiang Mai! Full of transitions and new things and sweating like pigs throughout! (Which I have recently discovered is slanderous toward the swine population, as they do not actually sweat.)

First, I'd like to say that I thoroughly enjoy our TEFL course at Text-and-Talk Academy. Our instructor is obviously a veteran of teaching English in Thai schools - after 17 years I suppose he should be - as well as an amiable character who is easy to get along with and learn from; which is one of the major characteristics that make him a good teacher of teachers as well as his Thai students. Many of us in our class have remarked that we feel like most of class has not been about learning at all, but mostly just chatting, however, when we all think back we realize that we have learned a great deal about Thai cultures and customs in just a few days and never really noticed! It's sort of funny like that.

Today has been a good day as well. Em and I learned that almost all Thai's have nicknames that they go by and that most people don't even know the other's real name. For example: The woman, "Ahm" who works at our school has no portion of "Ahm" in her name at all and many of us have no idea what her real name is. "Moz," our teacher joked today that most Thai's have nicknames that have nothing to do with them at all, and that they could just as easily be named "Beer" and "Whiskey." Moz said that even the kindergartners that he teaches go by nicknames chosen by their parents, and do not use their real names.

With this new knowledge, Em and I had an enjoyable time reading at Starbucks today, making up nicknames for each other that we could go by, first by our middle names, "Pat" and "Cat," but we realized how silly that sounded and then created the names "Bux" for me and "Star" for Em - obviously utilizing the names of our surroundings. We had good fun with this for about a half an hour and then returned back to our guesthouse to play some cards and have a beer. Unfortunately, the guesthouse was out of beer, so we played a few rounds of poker against one another, wagering kisses and hugs for the victor. As it stands, I owe Em twelve kisses and three hugs. The lovely bugger never lost a hand and owes me nothing - not my best game of poker.

Also, we saw a gecko eat a bug. Good night all.