Day 2 - May 2

Today was glorious.  You want to know why?  Because the missionary had grace upon my sorry soul and let me sleep in til 1pm that's why!  (Haha, if you think I'm completely lazy, let me remind you there is an 11 hour time difference and I hadn't slept in almost 2 days.)  I was also up til around 2am last night.  Anyway, so I got another "cold" (but not really cold, just not hot) shower this morning and then I went out with Gabe for lunch on the streets of Bangkok.  It's not the touristy part, so it's pretty much just local open shops or markets on every block.  We found a place and had some pork over rice and some veggies.  It was good.  Did not like the hot sauce lol.  Gabe doesn't either.

After lunch, we walked a few blocks away (which all look completely the same to me so I could never get there on my own) to a local community center where Gabe has been teaching English.  I just observed today as he taught on the concepts of "in", "on," and "under."  That was fun.  After practicing that, the class played games to review their vocabulary, both using Pictionary and Hangman.  I really, really enjoyed it, which is good, because that's a key element in what I'll be doing over there.

After we got back, I practiced my Thai in the room while Gabe went for a run.  Sometimes it actually sounds like I can speak it like a native - I know - scary.  I'm using some free software I got on BYKI.com...its really good.  I can say a few things, and later learned that like half the phrases I used are like antiquated.  Always fun to learn.

We had dinner with Alan and Lynette (the missionaries), as well as a student from SAGU who's done a semester abroad, required for their Intercultural Studies majors (as I think it should be for ours).  We had spaghetti and salad and garlic bread...very good dinner.  Then we played some games - they do this a lot here to kind of relieve the culture shock of living with Thai people.  If I didn't mention, Gabe and I live in a building where the Pastor and wife and son live, as well as 2 other girls from the Bible School.  The church is on the first floor; we live on the fifth.  Most of them don't speak fluent English, except the Pastor's wife, so it was fun to be with other English-speaking people.  We played games after dinner over these amazing soft gingersnap cookies.  The first game we played was called "Ticket to Ride: Europe" and then we played "Guillotine."  I won in the first game and tied for second in the latter one.  It was alot of fun.  We lost power about halfway thru Ticket to Ride and didn't get it back under the last round of Guillotine.  It got hot pretty fast, so we broke out a flashlight, and then candles.  Apparently it just happens in their apartment building a lot.  We came back here around 11:30pm and I got a shower.  We're leaving tomorrow at 9:30 for church and most of you college students are just getting up in the day.

The Lord is good, and his mercy endureth.  I am alive and well, without swine flu, and blessed so much for being here.  Thanks for all the prayers.  Grace and peace.