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Hey all. (careful, this is a long one)
I feel settled! I feel with however much certainty is possible in this country, that I will work at my school for at least the next few months and that I will remain in my current apartment for at least the next few months. It feels good. It has even taken me a little while to really get that I am in Thailand and will be staying here for a little bit. But now, I am starting to understand the various forms of transportation, I am getting a better and better grasp of my students (including discipline), and I finally know and can almost pronounce the name of the street I live on!!!! I'm in.
and for your information I live on Ratthinatibet... street... or road.... or way..... blvd?

So, now that I live here and all, more things I have noticed.
1. gossip is important. Not to say that it is not a past time all over the world, but here it is the preferred method of conflict resolution. Instead of "losing face" (or causing someone else to) by approaching someone and saying a bit of constructive criticism, you tell a mutual friend (or several) and they do the work. It is a hard one for me to really understand, but I can see its value in avoiding conflict... kinda
2. My apartment has a bedroom, a bathroom, and a balcony. I have an air conditioner, a desk, a very firm mattress (all of the beds here are made of limestone and steel), no hot water (not that I would use it), and an American style toilet! I am the first one to live in this apartment, I tore the plastic off of my limestone and steel mattress!
3. It seems that most people eat a majority of their meals out at little sidewalk carts. They are typically very good. On the off chance that they are bad, they are baaaad. A lot of people speak english here but a lot of people speak none. I am getting very good use out of a present that my last job gave me. It is a book full of pictures that I can point to if I don't know the word for something. Meals generally range from 1-2 US dollars. Generally, with the food carts, the meat and everything sits out in the sun all day until you order it. A very common thing is for the meat to be cooked halfway in the morning, then cooked the rest of the way when you order it. Still tastes very good. There is some amount of raw-meat-dishes here where incredibly spicy chillies act as disinfectant.... but usually only can manage a small bite of those (very very spicy).
4. Work. I get to work at 7:30 every morning. I can walk there from my apartment. Unfortunately, it is already so hot at 7:30 that I am sweating for a good while after I arrive. A few times already Johnny and I have been picked up by coworkers or students driving to school. sweeeet. I teach classes in the morning and have afternoons free to lesson plan. Most Thai teachers have more classes but they teach the same one or two over and over again all week. I have several subjects (English for food and beverage service, E for communication, E conversation, E for Business Communications... etc). My classes are somewhat hard to teach cause I will have to teach terms the students haven't really heard to much and teach them in english. For example, I had to teach a class about stocks. They did not know what stocks were in Thai, and I had to explain the whole concept in English. Its fun though. The other day I went to a class and no students showed. My co-teacher did not show. Finally, after preparing everything on the whiteboard I went and found my co-teacher to ask her if the class had been canceled. She didn't know and it turns out it had been canceled. flexibility! The only not fun thing about work are meetings. Out of five days a week, the school averages 3 or 4. And, they are long. I am supposed to be done with my day at 4:30. This past tuesday, I found out at 2 that there was a meeting at 3. When we showed up to the meeting there was coffee and pastries in front of the room (so you know I was stoked at first). Seeing this made all the Thai teachers grumble because it is apparently the sign of a long meeting. 3 hours and 40 minutes after the start of the meeting I was able to clock out. and no, no overtime. Between tues, wed, and thurs, I had to sit through almost 10 hours of meetings. All in Thai. So boring. In the tuesday meeting, we had to look at slides from the directors vacation to Japan (cause he spent a small amount of time at a school and wanted to show the teachers what is different at another school... but he covered more of his vacation than the school grumble grumble). Apparently, around 50 teachers quit this school every semester because they can no longer put up with the meetings. I learned this at an around 50 person meeting for all of the new staff. Most of the meetings are lead by a woman that Johnny and I have affectionately named "monotonedragonladywithmouthdiarrhea." Also, most teachers use microphones in class, even if there are only like 10 students in the class. I only use the microphone to make the feedback noise if I have a big class that wont shut up. Other methods of quieting conversations are: 1. timeout. You have to sit in a chair facing the corner and think about what you did 2. Sit out in the hall and think about what you did. etc..
5. Transportation. There is a lot of public transportation in Thailand, and it is all really confusing. There are Taxis, they drive like madmen. Tuk tuks, are three wheeled taxis that make the actual taxis look like cautious drivers. There are public buses (some are air conditioned and are more expensive) and private buses (the drivers of which apparently don't get paid well enough so they drive crazy). There are minivans that act kinda like buses but are a bit faster. There are Songtos (Sp.?) which are trucks with benches in the back and a cover over the top. You can also pay a moto taxi to take you on the back of his or her scooter. Thai women sit side saddle on these bad boys. It looks like the sketchiest thing ever, like one little bump and there she goes.
6. Bathrooms. In general, the public bathrooms that you have to pay for are going to be the only ones that have toilet paper, well, that might have toilet paper. The bathrooms at the school don't have toilet paper, paper towels (or other hand drying system) or soap. I understand the no TP and paper-towel thing.... but no soap??? I'm all about instant hand sanitizer now.
7. From my apartment, it takes about an hour and a half to get into central bangkok. Its not that far a distance, its just a busy journey involving buses and trains.

last thing about me living here is that Thai culture is pretty shallow and very appearance oriented. This week, on of me fellow teachers asked me to try and tuck in my lip. (Ashley, I know you are lovin' this right now). Obviously I did my best to explain to her that we are all different and wonderful in our own ways and that some of us were just born with big lips.

Oh, and also. I don't know if you remember that I was thinking about maybe staying in Ban Phe and doing an online course. Well, some people did stay there (some by choice, and some cause the didn't get a position) and those people are screwed now cause the Korea thing fell through! looks like I made the right choice! (its really a bummer though cause some people are going back to their home countries cause they are so fed up).

the rest of this post will be a wrap up on my week. i hope it wont be too long:

As I wrote above this work week was filled with meetings. That was lame. What wasn't lame was getting to know my students better. I now have an ok idea when I walk to a class how many students there should be and their levels of ability. kinda. haha. One highlight of the week was going to play badminton with some students and two teachers after school. When I got there I was joking around and just kinda bein goofy (pretending to stretch, teaching my students what the word ambulance meant then telling them to call one for themselves etc..). Little did I know I was about to make an ass out of myself on the court. It is fascinating to watch people who are good at badminton play. The shuttlecock moves so fast and their reaction time is stellar. My reaction time however, is a little bit less than stellar. Ignoring the rules of physics, a shuttlecock will be moving near the speed of light one second, and dead stopped in the air the next second. If i didn't swing hard and miss, I most likely just didn't see the damn thing coming at all. By the end I was doing alright, but nothing compared to everyone else there. After the games we all went out to eat. On the table at any given time was whole fish that looked like it just accidentally swam into the fryer (its face battered and frozen in a position of "oh shit!"), raw beef, raw prawns, soup, liver, spicy papaya salad, and a whole bunch of grilled meat. It was delicious.
On friday after work, my friend Johnny and I headed down to a town named Pattaya (about 2 hours on a bus out of BKK) because the next morning we were meeting friends of ours and going out to an island off the coast of Pattaya. Pattaya is the capital of sex tourism in a country known for sex tourism. It is not a huge town but it is overrun with ODWM (i hate them i hate them i haaate them). I have been in red light districts before but this one is probably the most disturbing I have seen. It looks like at one time it was a really beautiful little beach town that became one big red light district as Thailand became a tourist destination. It is physically difficult to walk some of the streets because there will be 4 women lined up, blocking a street, and trying to drag you into whatever bar they are "affiliated" with. Its hard cause you want to be nice and just say "no thank you" but sometimes you have to do some foot work to get their hands unclenched from your arm so you can walk away. Johnny and I found a cool bar where we could watch a band, and hung out on the beach for a bit. Overall it was a fun night but I was more than eager to leave the next morning.
The next morning Johnny and I quickly checked out another beach then met up with our friends Cara and Stephanie and ferried out to an Island named Ko Larn. It was BANGIN! It is not far off the coast but it is refreshingly underdeveloped. It is not empty by any means but it is still very green. We arrived on Samae beach and took moto taxis to a place called Monkey beach. Monkey beach = BANGIN!!!! It is very secluded and while between 11 and 3 there are some people on the beach, it is not very crowded at all. Interestingly, the only people that we saw were some Thai people and a bunch of russians. The beach was all russians. And they are pale, and frequently hairy... and they loooove skimy skimpy swimwear. Monkey beach is in a beautiful cove with lots of sea life and water that is crazy crazy warm.... oh yeah, and there are monkeys! lots of little monkeys! You can feed them bananas and they aren't really afraid of people. You can just sit down and they will come up to your and crawl around on you (and if you are holding a bag of bananas, they feel no shame in trying to take them). They were a lot of fun.
The beach was so nice that we rented a bungalow on the beach and set up camp. We made friends with a pretty peculiar native dude and he took us out of an even more peculiar bar/restaurant/karaoke/snooker place. The roads on this island are dark and empty. The bar thing was also empty except for several very inebriated Thai people (our friend/guide started out tipsy and was well souped by the end of the night). After eating a bunch of fresh fish (again, fried whole with the "oh shit" expression) and fried rice, we went back and sat on the beach sipping Thai whiskey for a while. It was so peaceful. The breeze was warm, the sea was very gentle. It was a good night!
Sunday morning came and we relaxed on the beach more, did more snorkeling, fed more monkeys and headed back to the mainland and came home. It was a great morning followed by a fantastically pain-free travel home. It was a great weekend!

I will post pics tomorrow, too tired right now!

--jon