First and Last Attempt at Being Creative

So the following blog post is my attempt at being creative, well it took far to long so the following posts are going to be pretty bone dry with just enough info to let you in on my life here in Thailand.
By the way, I now officially have a cell phone. The number is 0843462648. I'm not sure if you have to put the 0 before it, so if it doesn't work try it the other way. I'm not sure of the Thai country code, but that shouldn't be too hard to look up. Eastern time zone is exactly 12 hours difference, mountain 14. Give me a call...it is free to recieve phone calls and I am living on a Peace Corps budget of a whoping $187 a month!
Wow.......this can just about sum it up. The unexpected has reigned in this Peace Corps experience, but then again what really can you be sure of when you’re off to a new world? Six days later and what have I encountered? Thai language: minimally, Thai culture: moderately, wanderlust Americans: to the extreme!

San Francisco was gracious enough to host us for our first two days as official Peace Corps Trainees. The staging event dealt with more getting to know each other than actually giving up the secrets of the next 27 months of our lives. As any good group affiliated with the Peace Corps and its contra-normal mission we sang, danced, and drew our way to an understanding of each other and our newly acquired lifestyle. Now is a good time to discuss the Peace Corps “lifestyle.” Confirming the popular belief among many of my dear family members, I have been living the high-life fulfilling my characterization as an international “playboy”. In San Fran we stayed right in Japan town in a hotel that I can say with confidence was not a Motel 6 (my Dad’s favorite). We were provided with a generous daily allowance for meals and transportation although I transported no where my feet didn’t take me and ate meals that most likely didn’t get the five-star stamp. Money in the pocket is never something I can complain about.
The 19 hour flight from San Fran to Bangkok, with a short layover in Tokyo, was not what I would choose to do on my birthday, but given it wasn’t my birthday it was bearable. I managed to sleep through much of it, as weird as that seems given that I very seldom take naps! We arrived at the Bangkok airport one day later at midnight to a boisterous welcome from the energetic members of Peace Corps groups 117 and 118. The state of their sobriety was questionable, but who doesn’t like a semi-drunken American high five immediately after stepping foot on foreign soil. Now when I imagined Thailand I envisioned hot sweaty days, nights, afternoons, mornings, nap times, lunch times, walks, hikes, strolls, and dances. My first 7 hours in Thailand sure proved me wrong. It seemed like it might have been warm outside, but that quickly fled my mind and we embarked on our bus trip to our very humble national park resort. I think there was meat being chilled underneath the bus because frost soon formed on my arms and a solitary ice sickle inched its way towards the seat from the end of my nose. I managed to sleep, but not without reoccurring nightmares of the artic tundra that I thought I had left behind in Denver. Don’t know why those came. Well by the time we arrived at the national park resort it had become painfully apparent that Thais love their air-conditioning, apparently my roomy Anton and I do too. Not wanting to feel any heat whatsoever we thought it wise to turn on the air-conditioning on full blast in our room. Needless to say I woke up at around 5:30 am, a good hour and a half after our arrival, with my same little ice sickle buddy at home once again on my partially crooked nose.