Arrived in Thailand

After so much planning, I have finally arrived safely in Muang Phrae, Thailand. I flew with two other students to San Francisco where we met up with two others going to Thailand. We then flew to South Korea, meeting 28 other Rotary Exchange students on their way to Thailand. We all flew to Bangkok where all but two of us met with our host families. The Bangkok airport was CRAZY and took a very long time to get through immigration and figure out what to do. A girl from Ohio and I were picked up by a Rotarian who let us stay in her house in Bangkok for the night before returning to the Airport the next morning to fly to Chiang Mai.

Rotarians Dew and Tim (My "Sister" and my "Aunt") met me at the airport along with Rachel, a friend of theirs from Bangkok who went on Exchange to Indianapolis. They took me back to the hotel they had had the night before so I could shower and rest before meeting my host family (It's about three hours from Chiang Mai to my city so my host famlily could not meet me there.) The hotel was beautiful, all made out of Teak wood. The pillars were made by taking the entire tree (Huge trees with trunks 4 feet across,) and carving designs into it. We stopped in Lampang for Lunch about an hour in. The Restaurants in Thailand are all open. There are no walls, only a few pillars holding up a small wooden roof. Instead of Menus, there are little slips of paper on the table where you write down what you want to order, the white paper is for main dishes, the red is for "desert." Or you can just yell across the room what you want. There was a table full of little kids, and as soon as I walked in I heard "Falang! Falang! Falang! Falang!" (Foreigner) Lampang as well as my city are so far out of the way that tourists rarely make it that far, so Foreigners are rare. All the kids were giggling to each other, trying not to let me catch them staring at me.

Phrae is a small valley surrounded by mountains, so to get there from Lampang, or anywhere really, you have to go through a TON of switch backs and mountain roads, not good after eating what I think consisted of fish entrails. Finally we made it into Phrae the "City" I will be living in for the next year. My family consists of me, Pa Nut, Mae Ou, In, Yie, and Dtah. (Mother, Father, Sister who is my same age, Grandmother, and Grandfather) My first and third host families are relatives and live next door to each other, it's like one house and one family because of how comfortable they are with each other.

Thailand is Beautiful once you get past Bangkok. The farther away from the big cities you go, the more you get to see the REAL Thailand. I am loving it and can't wait to spend my year here.