Monday, June 14, 2010

Not In Kansas Anymore

Traveling was rough. Arriving in Bangkok was worse. Massive confusion and the urge to curl up into a ball and stay there for the rest of the 9 weeks. Somehow I managed to pull myself out of it though and I seem to be adjusting well. I had breakfast and lunch for only 75 cents so that cheered me up quite a bit. We seem to have a really great team this year and I'm exited to work with them. Crazy thing...showers make up the entire bathrooms here, there is no separator or anything like that so I'm trying to learn not the soak the toilet paper when I shower. I never knew spicy until I ate here and I've learned that my lips can sweat. It turns out that in Thai, if you are a girl you say things differently than guys, but I didn't know that so for the past few days I've been saying things as if I was a guy...I could not for the life of me understand what I was saying wrong to make people look at me funny, but now I know. I'll keep you updated on all the cultural changes that I experience because I find them to be quite fun. You really have to have a sense of humor here.

Today was the first day of projects and not all that eventful. We went to the hospital in the morning and found out just exactly what it felt like to be in the I Love Lucy episode where she works at a chocolate factory assembly line and can't keep up so she starts shoving chocolate in her mouth and so on. We were given orders to compile what they call "one packs", which contain 1 folded strip of gauze, 6 cotton balls, and then sealed airtight in little plastic bags. Our instructions were that we could only assemble 120 at a time, but the best part was that every time we thought we were finished, the lady brought more materials to do another set. 1, 2, 3, 4...120, 1, 2, 3, 4...120, 1, 2, 3, 4...120 and on and on and on. I wanted to start putting them down my shirt just so we could catch. I'm only joking, I know how important even the littlest things are here, but seriously, it was a long day. I also had a meeting with my country director about possible projects with human trafficking victims, cross your fingers and hope it all plays out. Tomorrow I'm teaching at soccer school and I just want all y'all to know that I've never played soccer a day in my life so this should be interesting. Actually from what I hear there is no soccer involved, they just call it soccer school. That makes sense...right?

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