Sawattikha!

Hello!!

Wow, so i am finally where I am going to be for the next few months. I am actually going to be staying at an orphanage for deaf kids in the mountains above Chiang Mai. It is about a half hour outside the city. The website for it is http://www.childrens-shelter.com/ if you want to look it up. I am staying here with one other girl, Dionthe. I think we are going to get along great. This place is so cool! We are up in the hills so it is really green and a lot more rural...and apparently it is the dry season as well, so it will only get greener. There is no AC and it is sweltering! Like ridiculously hot. Everybody shuts down in the afternoon cause it is too hot. So we will work in the morning and evenings. As far as what I am going to do here, I am not sure yet. I think that we will help teach the kids English and math and different things like that. Dionthe signs, so that is an easy jump across the communication barrier for her because everybody signs here, whether you are deaf or not. Apparently Thai sign language is pretty similar to ASL. So I am going to have a lot to learn but I am really excited. I love the kids already. I played jacks and badminton with them. They love badminton so booyah for all you who made fun of me for taking that class...obviously I was inspired:) The kids have already given me a nickname in sign language....but, I'm not sure what it means yet:) Dionthe and I have bikes that we are going to be able to ride around. Man, I am way excited. I kinda feel bad for the other students who are living in the city. We have the ideal spot. There is one other American here. Her name is Audra and we will be kinda working with her. She is really cool and really nice. She has been working here for a couple of years. I am way impressed with her. i am a little overwhelmed trying to take everything in. Everything is so different here, from the tastes, to the smells and trees and fruit...everything! I realized that I couldn't be going anywhere more foreign to me....I think even Chinese-Asian culture would be more comfortable to me than Thai culture. I already love it though. The Thai people are so friendly and accepting so even if i make dumb falang (white people) mistakes, they are forgiving.

Well, there you go for my first blog entry. I will try to be good about posting stuff and pictures, but I'm still new to this game and so it won't be anything fancy. So there you go, that was day one of my Thailand adventure.