the first few days

This has been my first chance to write because the internet is slow at school and I haven't had a chance to get to an internet cafe. So far, Thailand has been amazing. I'm living with a host family in Chiang Mai for the next 5 weeks...I originally thought it was 3, clearly I should have paid more attention when they told me about this program. After the home stay, we'll do a 3 week unit in the forests, then 3 weeks in some different villages, and then 3 weeks in the islands in the South. I'm looking forward to the islands the most. 

My host family is great, but it takes a lot of energy and effort to try to communicate with them. Thai is a hard language to speak because each vowel has 5 different tones and each tone means something different. So for example the word "kai" can mean 5 different things depending on the tone of the vowel (rising, low tone, high tone, mid tone, or falling). My main concern so far has been the food, which hasn't been horrible. I accidentally ate octopus the other day, which was iffy. It was more octopus jerky than anything, and it wasn't horrible. I haven't been eating much here though because most things I see make me lose my appetite. My host mom has been worried, and got me a loaf of bread to eat. This morning for breakfast, I had a jelly sandwich. It was pineapple jelly, which was kind of strange, but it was tastier than the leftover dinner from last night that is left out on the table over night. Thai people tend to ignore fridges, even though they all own them. I live two houses down from another girl from DU on the program (Franchi, pronounced Frenchie) and a street over from another girl on the program (Angela). Tonight, we're all going to aerobics with our host moms after school which should be fun!

The trip to Thailand wasn't as bad as it could have been. It took 36 hours to arrive, including flights and layovers. The flight from Chicago to Tokyo was the longest (13 hours), but I slept for over 10 hours of it so it wasn't bad. The second longest was 7 hours from Tokyo to Bangkok which I also slept through. The day we arrived in Chiang Mai, we were picked up from the airport by people that work at the program and dropped off at the guest house/hotel that we stayed at for the night. We had the day to walk around the city as a group and then sleep. 

So far, so good! So grandma, don't worry! I'm alive and well :) All my love to the US! and those special DU friends studying abroad all over the world. I'll write again when I have something more interesting to say! MUAHHH!