Crises

I've still been going through a lot of ups and downs. Many times a day I ask myself what I'm doing here and how I possibly thought it was a good idea to come. I'm so anxious and so focused on myself I don't think I'll be good at building relationships with my students or helping or serving anyone. Everyone else seems to know what they're doing, or to have someone else to be bummed with, or to be so independent that they flit around without a second thought. I start teaching tomorrow (my classes are 7-9 a.m. and 7-9 p.m...awesome) and I'm totally freaked out.

I'll try to keep the emo stuff short on the blog posts and focus more on descriptive things and stories.

Yesterday was a good day; I should have written yesterday because I was happy and creative. Rung took me along to the Bang Sue train station (we took a bus and the subway to get there), where she teaches English to the kids whose parents sell food when the trains come in. It was a lot poorer than what I've seen so far in Bangkok but still not quite reminiscent of Mombasa. Then we went to this huge weekend market at Jeje Park, which I think Bangkok is famous for. HUGE HUGE HUGE. Never seen so much shopping in my entire life. I'm not in a shopping mood quite yet, but I'll keep in mind that if I want ANYTHING for under $5, I'm all set. There were so many foreigners there, too, Europeans and Koreans mostly, and I LOVED people-watching. Then we took the light rail downtown to see a few HUGE HUGE HUGE fancy fancy fancy malls (there are 10 in this one area) and eat lunch. And then took the water taxi back to Bangkapi (Bangkok is super huge and the area Santisuk is in is kind of on the outskirts...well not really but it's not downtown), walked along the canal past a pretty temple and a mosque, and took a little tuk-tuk-like "subalu" back to the apartment. Then last night there was a farewell dinner for one of the staff who is moving to Vietnam, and we ate traditional food--grilled fish, noodles, clams, and sweet and sour peanut sauce wrapped in lettuce leaves--sitting on the floor. I got to talk to some new people and some people I'm starting to get to know. I'm FINALLY remembering names, which is hard because there are some letters that exist in Thai that don't in English, and vice versa. So there is Kwahn/Gwang and Sally/Saree and Rung/Loong (and the r-l thing isn't to make fun of Asian accents--l and r really are interchangeable). Some of my favorite people here are the Filipina missionaries, Ethel and Joy. They speak amazing English and are a lot of fun. And they both know Martha :)

Anyway, I am going to meet Rung for dinner (she's taking me to get bak, or worms, haha). I'm glad this post turned out much happier than I actually feel.