Ubon, part 1

**I sent this email home to family when I was in Ubon last week (Wed to Fri) with my school. So this was written on Thursday, after the first day. More to come about Khon Kaen and of course, pictures!**

I'm in an internet cafe in a place called Ubon Ratchathani...It's the province that is the farthest southest in Isan...It's where Cambodia, Thailand and Loas meet. I'm a few hours from the border
though.

So it's been a very interesting two days so far and has definitely shown me a side to all the teachers that I work with that I never knew existed! It’s been great to just ‘hang out’ with them and experience Thai culture without any sort of Western influence.  They mostly spoke in Thai so I tried to follow along and every now and then one of the better English speakers would explain a little.

We started yesterday morning super early - i was up at 4 am to get ready and get to the internet before I left on the trip - we were on a big double decker bus by 5 am and on the road at 520! I tried to sleep a bit but it was tough. Put a bunch of thai's together and you get mayhem...Everyone was excited and it felt a bit like a middle school or high school field trip.  Aand of course everyone was taking pictures. It was quite fun though. I tend to provide a lot of entertainment for the teachers as I try to listen to their conversations and figure out what they are saying...usually I have no luck though. It took about 5 hours and then we sat in an hour of traffic to finally arrive in Ubon at 11 or so. We came for an
'educational tour' as some of our students are involved in a regional northeast English competition down here. There was an area that was having a fair/ exhibition of sorts but of course us English
teachers (foreign and thai alike) were sent to this school where we waited around for hours….no one was really sure what we were were doing. We eventually figured out that we were waiting for a our student to finish her part of the competition (public speaking and multi skills). However we were slotted number 56 out of over 60 schools.

We finally got to the exhibition and it was pandemonium then trying to figure out where 50 teachers are going to meet the bus. There were probably thousands of people who came for this competition, there were people and huuuge vans/ busses absolutely everywhere.  It was really incredible and also a little overwhelming after spending so much time in a town of 31,000 people where moto’s rule the road! So we waited over an hour on the side of the road. The bus brought us to a 'resort' after it picked us all up. When us foreign teachers heard that we were like awesome! But apparently in Thailand it goes resort, motel, hotel in worst to best. So most of the teachers were laughing at me (yet again) when i told them that for us, a resort is the best place to go. Our resort turned out to not be that bad....as much of everything in thailand is, it was very pretty and surrounded by all sorts of trees and birds and such. Hoever, they are either rebuilding or just opening and they didn't have enough rooms for us....we all slept on the floor in this giant hall. there were maybe 30 of us sleeping on the floor on bed mats like 2 feet wide. It was nutty. I have a picture to post of course. All the other teachers called it a ‘homestay’

We ate and drank last night and sang karaoke (their favorite pasttime) and played card games. The first game was quite simple and was explained to me in English so I understood it.  After dinner we played a different game and this time none of the teachers explained it to me in English, just in Thai. There are a couple teachers who only speak to me in Thai which is great for learning but does get very frustrated sometimes. And they speak English well enough, they just want me to learn.  In any case, they kept saying “ngoo ngoo pla pla” which translates to “snake snake fish fish”. I found out later that day that it means ‘little knowledge”. Soo they were telling me that either I don’t know much in general orr I didn’t know much Thai. Either way, I don’t think it’s an insult, just an idiom of sorts. I was exhausted during the 2^nd game but we were playing in the same room that everyone was sleeping in and it was impossible to sleep with the noise…I have no idea how the thai teachers did it.  Whiskey is the drink of choice here in Thailand and there were a few bottles floating around late into the night. I finally went to bed at 1 or so (late for me these days!) and next thing I know it’s 4 am and EVERYBODY is awake…

I was laughed at by many people when i said it was too early.  And the card game was up and running again, as were the bottles of whiskey. Amazing.  I don’t have that kind of energy! I was completely exhausted and tried to go back to sleep…I managed until about 630 and then it was time for breakfast. Ah-han chao (breakfast) was either rice or noodle soup…it’s very plain and it’s actually their version of chicken noodle soup because they gave it to me when I wasn’t feeling well. It’s quite good though and I’ve gotten used to it in the mornings.

So off to Khon Kaen tomorrow and the adventure continues :)