The First Days

I hope that people are able to read this, because my last post hasn't shown up yet. Anyway,

So here I am safely ensconced in my room at my guest house. It isn't luxurious, but it is clean and relatively inexpensive. Also, a fairly large room. I have internet and air conditioning, so things are looking pretty good.

Where did I leave off? Oh yes, Somewhere around Tokyo.

My flight boarded and took off and arrived without incident, which mean that we touched down in Thailand around midnight, Thai time (2 am Tokyo time, and 11 am Sunday morning, Home time). By the time I got my baggage and was through immigration and customs it was already 1 in the morning. I had slept some on the plane, so that wasn't terrible. However, my next flight wasn't until 7:45 later that morning. This meant that there was too much time to just kill, but not enough to go to a hotel. What I ended up doing was finding a quiet out of the way spot and sleeping for a couple of hours, off and on. Around 5 the Thai Airlines counter opened, so I was able to get a boarding pass and go through security to the gate. At the counter, I met another student who was also studying at AST, and it being a foreign land, and we being Americans, we were soon fast friends.

We were at the gate about 2 hours before the plane even boarded, so I took the opportunity to sleep some more. A little after sunrise, we were joined by another AST student who had also been stuck in Tokyo, but had finagled an earlier flight, and so was in Bangkok a good 7 hours earlier than we were. She was able to go to her hotel (which was really sketchy, she told us) and get a little bit of sleep.

The plane boarded around 7:30 and we were off and away to Chiang Mai. They provided food and drinks even though it was only a 50 minute flight, which surprised me, but then I remembered how crappy American airline service was, and was less surprised.

After a couple of cups of strong coffee, we touched down in Chiang Mai around 9 in the morning, and it was already hot and humid. The three of us were met by two of our teachers, one who is leaving Friday, and one who is a permanent faculty here at Chiang Mai University. They are both very nice men. We loaded our luggage into cars and then were off to the hostel where we were supposed to be staying the night.

While there, I had the opportunity to wash my face and neck and put on a fresh layer of deodorant and went back down for the orientation, which went well. Everyone in the program seems very nice and I think we will all get along swimmingly. This is no doubt helped by the fact that we do not all live together. That's right, we all live in different places which we have arranged.

As many of our regular readers know, this was the sticky wicket for me, the one point that caused an undo amount of trepidation in my gut. However, after orientation, we went with some of the students who had looked at rental places the day before to help them move in. We were able to see all the places they had seen, and soon we made a decision. Two of the students who came earlier were going to stay at this guest house, which we thought would be the best of all of them. It's fairly close, clean, relatively quiet because it's far back in the soy (alley), and not that expensive. One month's rent is 6,000 Baht for a deluxe room which is more spacious than the standard room, but not as nice as the suite. 6,000 baht may seem like a lot, but really, when you remember that the exchange rate is 30 baht to the dollar the figure shrinks considerable. This means that my entire stay for 2 months will be $400, with a $200 deposit, which I will get back after I check out in August.

After touring everywhere and choosing this nice guest house called Sa-nguan Malee, we moved our stuff in. Since the banks were closed, our Ajaan (teacher) guaranteed the sum with his face (his words), and the promise that we would pay on Monday.

One of our number had to go buy a uniform since she had not done so in the states. Our ajaan was kind enough to drop us off near some stores that sold the clothes that would be a uniform. After purchasing the uniform, and some other essentials, we began the long trek home in the heat. We got lost a couple of times, but not too terribly much, and were back at the guest house around 5:30. I took a shower and unpacked my things. However, I made the mistake of laying down on the bed, just to see how it felt (hard) and closing my eyes for a moment. The next thing I know, Paula is knocking on my door and asking if I wanted to go somewhere with them. Frankly, I did not. Not that I didn't enjoy their company, it was just that, well, I had been traveling since Thursday morning at 3, I had the farthest to go of anyone, and all I wanted to do was sleep.

At 6:30, I finished putting my clothes away and lay down on the bed. I only woke up twice, but slept until 6 the next morning. Almost 12 hours of sleep. It was glorious.

After waking, I was able to talk to Kelli a little bit on skype before showering and trekking to school. We had another orientation/welcome with our teachers at 9:15, which was nice. We all had to introduce ourselves in Thai with the standard name, where you're from, what do you study, have you been to Thailand, etc. When I told the ajaan that I study sak yant, there was a bit of a titter, and a general sense of surprise, but in a good way. Hopefully I will be able to make the connections necessary to be able to study these tattoos in-depth. Afterwards we met our Advisors and did the Wai Khruu ceremony (honoring the teacher).

You'll notice that I have used two different words for teachers: Ajaan and Khruu. That is because anyone can be an Ajaan, anyone who teaches something is an ajaan. However, not everyone is a Khruu. A khruu imparts more than just school knowledge, they also impart knowledge for living, and other important things. It is said that the parents are the first khruu of a child. Therefore, it is important to pay respect to khruu.

After the short ceremony, we had a placement test, which didn't go well. It could have gone worse, but it could have gone better. The first article was strange and used a lot of colloquial expressions that I didn't know, but the second one was much more readable.

With the placement test done, we were free until we had to do the pre-test, which is required by the federal government so that Dr. Gething can say, "See? They made progress." This left us a while before my slot, so we moseyed on over to the cafeteria/student center, where food is dirt cheap. A bowl of noodles is 20 baht, or about 66 cents, and it is delicious.

I changed some travelers checks to use for rent, and we wandered back over to the humanities building, where several of our number were going over the articles for tomorrows class so we would not be caught unawares. The format is very similar to the way that I've been learning Thai for the past year, so it was no surprise to me, but one girl, from Cornell, said that her teacher didn't use this format and was very informal, so this would be her first traditional learning experience with Thai.

The time for my pre-test came, and I went up to talk to the ajaan who would be doing my test. It was very relaxed and they asked about my nickname, Jom (จอม) which means "master" or very good, or high level, or any number of other things. I told them that it was short for Jom gin (that's a hard 'g') which means "Master of eating" and explained that my Thai teacher thought it was funny because of how much I ate. It was the standard test of where are you from, what do you like, etc. and so was very easy.

With the pre-test done, I returned to the area where my friends were studying, and we sat and chatted for a while. While we were there, two of the girls noticed that the Thai girls next to us were talking about my earrings. Apparently this many in the ears of a man is unheard of in Thailand. Eventually we went back to the student center to eat at the cafeteria (from here on referred to as a 'canteen') and got a few more plates of food to eat and share. It was also delicious and cheap.

We then met with another friend who had just finished his pre-test, and sat and chatted for a bit longer. He had come by motosai (scooter) and so returned that way with one of our compatriots, while the three of us who were staying at the same place as they were waited for the electric car to take us to the back gate, where it would only be a short walk back to the guest house. Once there, we settled up on rent, and I came back to write this post.

Now we're all squared away.

If you want to see something interesting, I suggest you go to the weather channel's website and look up the weather for Chiang Mai and see if you can find a visual representation of the highs and lows. Just for laughs.

Anyway, I've rambled enough, this post is too long already.