Life in the Kingdom

I've now passed my one week mark here in Chiang Mai.  I absolutely love it here and I haven't started my regular work with students.  That starts in one week.  Our last day of Thai orientation and culture is tomorrow. It should be a lot of fun as it involves a visit to the elephant place and a traditional Khantoke dinner.  This weekend has been fun too.  My coworker/future housemate and current neighbor, Lizzie and I were invited to lunch by another coworker and his family.  Its been really nice the way our coworkers both new to the area and been here forever, have really embraced us and made us feel so welcome. On friday night, most of us were at the dinner at our principal's house.  That too was a blast especially hearing the stories from where people have been and their experiences.  We are all coming from different places and some have been on the missionary field all their life due to parents moving here and others are fairly new like me.  That dinner was the beginning of a really relaxing weekend. I say relaxing because although I've been gone from home most of the weekend, for once I'm not worrying about homework or work related stuff on a weekend.  So I've felt free to be spontaneous and hang with people.

Mahidol Rd.  Doi Suthep in the background

Tha Pae Gate

Getting back to Saturday, we had lunch with our coworker's family and they took us to a shopping area on the other side of Chiang Mai.  A place we hadn't been to yet.  We were able to explore one of the malls here and walk the neighbor.  The walk turned out to be quite long as we had to go where there were sidewalks and find our way from there. Eventually we decided to return to the old city via songtaew.  This is like a taxi sort of but its two rows of seats behind a cab but enclosed except the back end where you get in.  We negotiated our fair and made our way to Tha Pae Gate.  This is on the eastern side of the old city. We wandered in the gate but shortly after wandered back out in favor of finding a place for dinner.  We found an inexpensive restaurant serving thai food.  Of course!  I actually had a hamburger with our friends for lunch so I opted for Khao Soy for dinner.  I don't know the difference between good Khao Soy or bad yet but apparently there is one.  Khao Soy is a traditional thai noodle dish with yellow noodles, a meat of choice like chicken, beef or pork.  Then you add raw onions, pickly veggie and hot sauce but to your liking.  Its quite yummy.  I had it my first day in Thailand.
Since the rain here is showing up quite a bit, we got caught in it while downtown.  So we negotiated a tuk tuk to get home.  Tuk tuk's are like open air taxis and it helps if you aren't tall as the roof is quite short even for me.  I also have discovered that Lizzie is a Glee fan.  That totally rocks!

Tuk Tuk coming down the street

Sunday-today for me, I returned to Seng Sawang church.  I had considered also going to an English international church later in the afternoon but you'll find out later why I didn't do that. 
Church currently means that I enjoy it all in Thai.  Actually, they've been translating bits and pieces for me.  They actually is multiple people.  Last week, the sermon was translated due to our guest speaker.  San, a thai woman that I met, translated bits and pieces of the non sermon parts.  This week, I was told that Amos, one of the pastor's sons would translate.  Poor guy had a lot of difficulty as its very hard to translate especially when you are only a teen.  I saw between his mom, Sariton(spelling?) and him and between those two and an occasional translation from the pulpit, I got a translation.  While I love the translation, I actually felt okay in the times when I didn't know what was going on.  The family has really been quite welcoming to me.  After church, we went to another mall where father and son were buying shoes and mom and I were just shopping.  We also enjoyed a lunch in the cafe court area.
Only an hour after they brought me home, I got to experience another part of the culture; the motorcycle or scooter as it reminds me of.  One of my coworkers, Andrew who we had lunch with only the day before, has loaned Lizzie and I his extra motorcycle for as long as we need it.  Incredibly awesome and generous!  Lizzie knows how to ride one already so it was easy for her to acclimate.  Me on the other hand has never even been a passenger.  So I rode on the back around the neighborhood for a trial run.  That was easy.  So then I drove around the parking lot.  Yes,  I drove!  But the reason I never left the parking lot however is that I have a little lack of confidence with acceleration and I like the brake.  I did find that I drove better when I went faster however so Lizzie and I were figuring out when the quite time of the neighborhood might be so I can practice on a street.  Our parking lot isn't that big.  We did go out- me on the back of Andrew's cycle and Lizzie on our cycle and went to coffee.  Unfortunately the rain made an appearance so that's it for practicing for today.  But I can't wait to get more practice.