Today was wonderful, I really got to take some good steps into life here. I've been going to school at the instituted for the past few days now, which consists of taking classes in Thai (with a teacher and four other students) in the morning, and then doing some sort of orientation in the afternoon. Today, though, we went out and took a minitour of Chiang Mai. We went to a small culture and history museum, and then to a market, where we had to do a scavenger hunt of sorts, which had us trying all sorts of exotic meats... they love meat. All of it. And I'm learning to love it to... because sometimes that's all there is to eat. Sausages, meat balls, fried chicken, fried pork, fish (right off the dead animal), octopus, shrimp, boiled pork. The site of meat still in it's animal form doesn't even bother me anymore, either, because it's pretty normal. At the market we had to eat an insect. My group chose dried silk worms, which turned out to be pretty good. Very salty, kind of like little potato chips. I enjoyed buying things, because I got to speak Thai to the shop owners, which really makes it real. So anyway, that was the market.

Normally, at least the first two days of school, my host mom would pick me up from school. But I convinced her that today I would be able to take the song taew (literally 'two seats' because it is a pickup truck with two benches in the bed -- an ingenious form of public transportation for less than 30 cents a ride). I take the song taew in the morning wiht a cousin, but today would be the first time I took it alone. I realized I had to do it after I started getting the impression that my host mom thought I was inept at everything I tried (there's many examples to back this up... but most of them were just simple mistakes that couldn't be explained as such due to language/cultural barriers... and I am very klutzy on top of that). So anyway, I built up the moxy to take the song taew by myself today, and it was great. First, I had to cross the 'superhighway', which means a road that Thai people drive on like they normally would -- which is fairly crazy -- except very very fast. But I made it ok. I then waited for the song taew, and was able to finally identify it by using what little I had learned to read the sign (written in Thai) which said that it was heading down Mae Rim road. So I hailed it, asked in Thai if it was going down Mae Rim, the driver said yes, and I went to climb in the back. The back, however, was completely full, maybe 15 people in the bed of a pickup truck, including three or foor standing on the back, holding on. There was no room. But then the driver and the Buddhist monk sitting next to him in the front seat moved over, and I was able to climb in the front. So that's how I road home, squished next to a Buddhist monk. The driver asked me a couple basic questions in Thai which I was able to answer, which was fun. The real twist came when I couldn't remember where I had to get out. I eventually decided to get out at a place that I recognized and though twas close to home. It wasn't. So I walked maybe a kilometer (do the conversion), and I could tell I was getting close, when a normal pickup truck pulled up next to me. It honked, so I moved away. Then a woman got out and told me to get in. I kind of recognized her, but I definitely recognized the man driving as an uncle. I asked where they were going and they said home. So I hopped in the back with their two little girls and we got home ok. The only unfortunate part about the whole thing is that I had planned on hiding the whole getting off early part from my host mom, in order to save some face, but that wasn't going to happen anymore. But she just thought the whole thing was funny. Whew... that was a long story -- sorry if it bored you. I just thought it to be the first noteworthy thing to happen to me yet, punctuated by the lovely orange-clad monk I sat next to.

Anyway. I still love it here, and I'm definitely starting to settle in, which is both good and bad. Bad in the sense that some of the initial excitement has worn off, but good in that I am starting to feel comfortable. The language is coming more easily, and I love learning to read and write it (Thai is written in different characters that look like this: ไป (which means to go), and รน่ฟสากสาฟำสาสืก (means nothing to speak of). I'll leave it at that.

Noah