AIT/Bangkok First Week

I'm a little late in starting this blog, but I've been so incredibly busy with so many things that it's hard to find time to sit down and write this. My first week at AIT has been incredible. I've seen, ate, heard, and experienced so many different things it's hard to put it all into words. Bangkok is everything I imagined plus much more. It hard to put a whole week into one blog post, so I'll break down everything as a whole to get a better picture of it all.

Weather

Jordan and I waiting for the rest of our group- OUTSIDE!

Of course I must start with the weather. Going from 14 degrees to 80 has been one of the easiest transitions of my entire life. The sun is literally always shining. On our most overcast day you can see rays of sun poking out from the clouds. Since it's winter here the humidity is not bad at all and the sun is going down around 6 something at night. Since our classes started it's a little unfortunate we don't have time to enjoy it as much because we have three 2-hour blocks of classes everyday.  Starting at 10am and going until 6 with breaks in between. Once summer starts in mid-February the humidity, heat, and daylight time will all increase drastically. I can't say that I'm not excited.

Food

Another important aspect of Thai life is the food. The meals are unlike anything else in the U.S. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are all the same type of food. There is no cereal or pancakes or burgers around here. I think I may have eaten more rice in the past week than I have in my entire life. I really love most of the food though. It's very spicy by my standards but in a good way! Food is literally sold everywhere too. Street vendors are all around selling everything from "meat on a stick" to Pad Thai, and even fried insects (taste like sunflower seeds). They're way of holding a fork and a spoon to eat everything is different too! My favorite part of it all is that a standard meal will be about 40-60 baht, so roughly $1-$2. Our adviser, P'Bao says that she eats out everyday and doesn't even have a kitchen. I have been missing the occasional American meal, but the food is fantastic here.

Campus

Our campus is about 20 miles north of Bangkok which is almost an hour with the horrible traffic that is here. It's certainly a lot smaller than Michigan State's campus. Our rooms are nice in the sense that they're big, have semi-comfortable beds, air-conditioning, and a balcony but it ends there. We DO NOT have HOT WATER! You can only take cold showers. It's one of the most miserable things ever. Even with it being warm out, it's so hard have ice cold water splashing on you. Our internet is really bad here in the rooms too and kicks you off a lot. There's a lot of stagnant water all over which produces a ton of mosquitoes. I have so many bug bites on my legs that it looks like chicken pox. Aside from that it's really cool. We have a huge pool that is a lot of fun. There is also stray dogs and cats all over that are cute. They don't bother you at all. There are huge monitor lizards too. They kind of look like kimodo dragons, but aren't dangerous. I really like the campus and it's very beautiful.

People

I can say that 99.9% of all the people we meet here are some of the nicest I've ever met. Everyone loves to help you, and they thinks the "fa-rong" (foreigners) are so cute. If you have trouble understanding each other they'll apologize for having bad English as if my Thai is even existent. It's so cute. They're a very touchy culture as well. They grab your arms or hands a lot when they talk to you. They're always quick to try to teach you different Thai words and phrases. It's very refreshing to be around people like that. The only people that have been hit and miss with us are taxi drivers. We've had some that are so nice and cute, but then we've also had some that have scammed us. It's very annoying and the language barrier can be difficult sometimes. Luckily our adviser/helper P'Bao and some of her friends help us all the time as much as they can. We would probably be lost in Bangkok right now without them.

I'll be trying to post more frequently as much as I can.