Land HO!

I'm here, safe and sound! I'm sure I look like a deer in headlights right now everything is SO different here. I have a small apartment about two blocks away from the office I work at, my room mate Goi is pretty much my life-line right now. I'm learning a lot from just watching her live here. Our room is about the size of my dorm room in college (shout out to Kayloni!) and has a queen size bed that we share with a big fan pointed at us. I've learned to sleep with no blankets and just a silk sheet if I get cold. The heat I was warned so much about but so far lots of the buildings and offices have AC and its up so high I actually appreciate the warmth when I go outside! The shower and toiled is interesting. Pretty much the "bathroom" is a giant shower with a toilet in it. The shower head only has one temperature COLD, haha, and most people here don't use toilet paper they use a hose to 'rinse off' kind of like the Buvet in Argentina except standing up. We have a giant window overlooking the city view, they don't have screens here either so you can just hang outside of it. This can be REALLY fun when it's raining which it usually does every afternoon in a downpour. There IS lots of traffic which can make it hard to sleep sometimes but I'm still trying to figure out WHY…there is a city-wide curfew at 1:00 AM and anyone caught on the streets can be arrested. I take it cars are exempt from this…

Work is getting busy lately, they have lots for me to do but are nice and give me afternoons off for right now because I'm so jet-lagged. I hear it lasts about two weeks, ugh. I keep trying not to fall asleep in meetings that are in Thai…I really now possess the potential to sleep ALL day. It feels like 3 AM after lunch here, so then I fall asleep and wake up when its dark, then fall asleep again. Work I hear is really going to pick up though in the next couple weeks and I'll have to be fully conscious then, lol. I'm basically working with the same 4 people every day, Goi (my roommate) Andrew (Student Missionary from Southern) and Doug (the pastor) give or take any Thai people we talk with about doing films with or that need posters, brochures or some other designed material. We can end the day whenever we want to really and then the afternoons are ours… Goi is a mean badminton player and although I slept through yesterdays match I hear I'll be playing in the future. We eat dinner in the room, I was shown several promising street vendor locations to find great noodles, pad thai, fresh fruit (DEF not American fruit) and a SMOOTHIE VENDOR! YEYA!

I hear theres LOTS of SM's in Thailand and 4 that are in Bangkok also, but we're all kind of spread out in pairs so I haven't met anyone else yet. Andrew and me were assigned to this location on the Design Team and the others were assigned to church-schools around the city to teach English. Hopefully we'll be able to do a weekend outing or something when Goi, Andrew and me aren't working.

I have internet at work but I'm trying to get it here in Goi's apartment too because being disconnected from you guys is hard :( The time change is kinda rough but if any of you are awake in the mornings…hopefully I'll see you online :)