I'm FINALLY here!

5 different modes of transportation and 14 hours later, I FINALLY arrived in THAILAND!!!
Since my arrival, I've been crazy busy, so busy, it has taken me over a week to find more than 3 spare minutes to sit down and write a blog entry (sorry).

Lets see here...a week ago myself and 8 other LanguageCorps students branched off from the group of 26 and headed to Pattaya where our last two weeks of training would take place.
We were picked up bright and early from the Okay Guesthouse Friday morning by a tuk tuk, then were brought to a large snazzy bus. After we crossed the boarder into Thailand, we were then transported to a smaller van ... just when we got comfortable in that ride, we were again transferred to a teensy weensy little van which did not even fit all of our luggage (we had it stacked below our feet, on our laps and in front of our faces - needless to say this was the worse leg of our trip as it was 5 hours long). Just when we thought they couldn't transfer us another time, they did - we were dropped off at a "bus station" and put on a baht bus (this is Thailand's main taxi service in the area) which eventually took us to our destination.

After 14 loooonnng hours of traveling I was more than ready for a shower and a nice place to lay my head. All 9 of us could not stay in the same hotel and were divided amongst 3 different ones. Myself and 2 others (Cammie and Mylinh) were taken to the Greenvale Hotel and my mouth nearly dropped when I walked into my room. It was a gigantic step up from my last accommodations! I have a huge bed (with actual sheets-yay!), nice furniture, a large bathroom where I do not need to sit/stand on the toilet to shower, and a flat screen TV - no complaints from this girl, that's for sure!

I slept the best I had since my departure from the States. Sadly, this was not the case for some of my fellow classmates. A few people really got the shaft and its not fair because they paid the same amount of money to the program as myself and the others did. One guy didn't even have a place to stay for the first two nights so he slept on a couch and another girl is staying in a room that is anything but satisfactory (she has no light, her bed and pillow smell of mildew and her AC broke). Atleast for those staying in the not so amazing accommodations, they have something to look forward to: an upgrade. However, myself and the others staying here are most likely going to have to take a downgrade. We'll wait and see I guess.

After a hot shower and a good nights sleep, myself and a few others decided to explore the area the next day. We walked along the beach, went through markets, shopping malls, and ate authentic Thai food - yum yum! The following day (Sunday) our group went for an outing to Koh Larn - a beach about 45 minutes away by boat from where we're staying. White sandy beaches and gorgeous blue/green water - ahhh, this is the life! We enjoyed a delicious lunch then spent the afternoon basking in the sun. I cannot imagine how much hotter it's going to be here in a few months, I was sweating bad enough then and it's only the rainy season. Speaking of rain, it hit us hard while we were out there!! One minute it was beautiful, then out of no where a horrific thunder/lightning/rain storm hit us. We all ran for cover and waited it out for TWO HOURS! Seriously, I've never seen anything like it. It was incredibly loud (and close!) and flooded the area within seconds. I'd post a video, but I just looked at it and the video doesn't give it justice.

Upon safely retuning home, we all retired to our rooms as we had a big day ahead of us. Now that we have completed our 1st two weeks of training, we are moving into the teaching part. My friend Cammie and I were assigned to Renu Kindergarten where we would be teaching both the students and the teachers. At first we were very intimidated to be teaching the teachers, however after our first day we found out we were not teaching the them grammar, sentence structure, vocabulary expansion etc. Instead, we were simply teaching them songs (If you're happy and you know it clap your hands; the ants go marching; head, shoulders, knees and toes and other various kid songs) for them to then teach to the students so the kids can go home and sing them to their parents.

Week 3 is over and done with and I'm left exhausted. Teaching kindergarten is a lot more work then I thought it would be...it doesn't help that the school I'm at has very little resources (those that are there I'm not sure if I can use b/c I cannot understand the Thai teachers - they speak very minimal English). Although I have spent countless hours preparing lesson plans, hand making tracing paper, cutting out shapes, binding story books etc I can honestly say I am happy where I'm at, doing what I'm doing.

It's finally starting to sink in that I'm not just here for vacation - schools start up again in November and I need a job ASAP! Wish me luck!