Sunday, January 25, 2009

Meeting the Group

It was such a relief when I finally got to meet others in the TESOL training program. 
We all meet up at the airport on Saturday morning to take a 10 hour bus to Chiang Mai, in north Thailand, where we'll be doing our training. Of course, I had the most luggage, so embarrassing! seeing how most of these people have been traveling for months with just a backpack and here I am with the two largest suitcases and a full backpack, typical so-cal girl. 
There are a couple Canadians, some cute English boys, a bunch of east coast people and a really interesting Aussie couple. Everyone is pretty well traveled and a few people have even done the peace corps, and almost half of us are vegetarians,  so that's really exciting!
We arrived pretty late in Chiang Mai but I managed to grab a couple beers at the local bar near our accommodations and chat with some local Thais, who very kindly tried to teach me some basic Thai with no suck luck.
My first day in Chiang Mai was great. A group of us went exploring the city and it looks like there is going to be so much to do here. There are local cooking classes, yoga studios, muy thai boxing matches, elephant rides, hiking and even shooting ranges (not that I'll be trying that anytime soon, but just in case). There are little coffee shops and markets everywhere that have tons of exotic fruit and really cheap food, like $1 for pad thai. The best part is the Thai massage place where you all kinds of foot, head, back massages for hours for less then $10. I think I could really get use to this! 



1 comment:

  1. I am so jealous!!! Sounds like the start of a great adventure. We all miss you...take care.

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