Sam Phran, Nakhon Pathom

Alright friends, it's been just under a month since I updated.  Things were looking a little bleak.

I had to trade this

for this

And trade this

for this

And lastly, this

for this

Well, and a bunch of Thai people with very limited English.  There's a couple teachers at my school with decent English, but they're mostly guys.  And the last thing a farang girl wants to do is appear too friendly with any male co-workers.  Not all Thai women are crazy and jealous, but some are, and I've heard horror stories.

But Bree, I hear you saying, just go make new friends!  Yes!  I had that same thought.  I miss my friends, I shall go make new friends, pfft, how hard can it possibly be?

Pretty hard, as it turns out.  I have been here for almost a month, and I have yet to see another white person.  A lot of Thai people out here know a few English phrases (though I'm not sure they know what they mean, exactly), and they're happy to shout them at me as I walk past.  "Hey you!" "Hello!" "Where you come?" "Where are you?" "I love you!"  I once even had a taxi driver yell "Hello!  Lady first!"  It's not that the people here don't like me, or they don't want to help me, it's that for the most part they've no idea how to do that.  Catching a taxi will usually involve at least six other people strolling over from whatever they happened to be doing to see who can figure out where it is the town farang wants to go.  It's nice to feel so well cared for, and I understand I'm in a foreign country, but sometimes I just want to be able to walk to the 7-11 and buy cigarettes without a huge production.  Alternately, I feel terrible for anybody trying to travel in the US that doesn't speak English.  I know first hand that most people there aren't this helpful even if you do speak the same language as them.  I can't imagine putting a language barrier in the mix.

My little kids finally succeeded in taking teacher down a peg.  Last week I was a little sick, but back to work pretty quickly.  I didn't quite get over it, though, and on Sunday when I went into Bangkok to drink with some friends for several hours, I totalled my immune system.  Monday I woke up pretty bad off, but I made it through work.  Tuesday I woke up a little worse off, but I made it through work.  Wednesday... I arrived at school and several of the Thai teachers just felt my forehead, clucked a little and shuffled me to a bed, despite my protests that the children need me.  Every time I'd get up, somebody would find me and lead me back to the bed, after exchanging looks with another teacher.  "Now what's our crazy white person think she's doing now?  Teaching?  Ha!"  I finally called my agency, they called and spoke to the school and I was released from bed prison to go to the doctor.  Have I mentioned that yet?  The way people get over colds here is by going to the doctor.  Not over the counter medication, if you can believe it.  So I hauled off to the doctor, where they looked at my throat, took my temp and my blood pressure.  They declared in no uncertain terms that I had a cold, and needed to drink lots of water.  Then they handed me a bag full of pills.

Each of those different pills comes with different instructions, like "Take one pill four times daily before meals"  "Take two pills three times daily after meals" "Take six pills eight times daily every time you use the bathroom."

Okay, maybe that last one was an exaggeration.  But anyway, I'm off to figure out what pills I'm to be taking right now.  I still maintain that a shot of NyQuil is way easier than this.