I survived! Three days and not that many charades later I survived the first weekend with my host family! I live with my host mom and dad, younger brother who's 11 and cousin who's 17. It was a relatively low-key weekend. My host brother has English school in the afternoon, so after dropping him off, my host dad and I drove to several different places around Chiang Mai. Saturday, we stopped to buy a school uniform and cell phone, and then drove partway up the mountain to look down on the city (Chiang Mai sits in a valley, so there are actually mountains surrounding the city). Yesterday, Sunday, we stopped at several temples, including the first temple to be built in Chiang Mai. Last night, we all went down to the Night Market, which is basically this long street lined with various food carts and any kind of craft you can imagine. It was completely overwhelming but a fun atmosphere, and I would definitely like to go back sometime!
Today we had our first day of class. Learning Thai is overwhelming to say the least. We have language class four hours each morning in groups of 5 or 6, and our teachers (called Ajaans) do not speak English to us. And since the Thai alphabet is different from English and we can't read it, we have to write down all the words phonetically. I've been told that these first two weeks are the hardest in regard to learning Thai, and I'm just hoping it will start to make more sense in my brain soon!
After an afternoon orientation on ISDSI's policies and procedures, I headed home. I was very excited because I asked my host mom if I could go for a run, and she said yes! But then she told me I had to wait because my little brother was coming too. Now, don't get me wrong, I like my little brother, but what I really wanted was a little run by myself. But my brother also prefers video games to any sort of exercise, so I'm not sure who was more unhappy about the situation. Luckily, his mom allowed him to stop after a couple minutes, so I got in a bit of a longer run. The running conditions, however, are not ideal because we live in this relatively wealthy teeny, tiny village where the loop around the houses takes me under 2 minutes to run and I am not allowed to run on the road outside the gate....so mom, if you are reading this, you don't need to worry about me running, because there are six policemen on the street and I run by my house (where my host Dad stood outside the entire time) every minute and a half!
But, overall it's going well. My family, especially my host dad, speaks more English than I was expecting, which made communication this weekend much better than I had anticipated. Though I do think half of my host parents' motivation for hosting me was so I could help their son with English and make him exercise, they are actually very very nice. It does work out well, because I can help them with English and they'll help me with Thai, and I'm even more motivated now to learn Thai so I can better communicate with them.
Today we had our first day of class. Learning Thai is overwhelming to say the least. We have language class four hours each morning in groups of 5 or 6, and our teachers (called Ajaans) do not speak English to us. And since the Thai alphabet is different from English and we can't read it, we have to write down all the words phonetically. I've been told that these first two weeks are the hardest in regard to learning Thai, and I'm just hoping it will start to make more sense in my brain soon!
After an afternoon orientation on ISDSI's policies and procedures, I headed home. I was very excited because I asked my host mom if I could go for a run, and she said yes! But then she told me I had to wait because my little brother was coming too. Now, don't get me wrong, I like my little brother, but what I really wanted was a little run by myself. But my brother also prefers video games to any sort of exercise, so I'm not sure who was more unhappy about the situation. Luckily, his mom allowed him to stop after a couple minutes, so I got in a bit of a longer run. The running conditions, however, are not ideal because we live in this relatively wealthy teeny, tiny village where the loop around the houses takes me under 2 minutes to run and I am not allowed to run on the road outside the gate....so mom, if you are reading this, you don't need to worry about me running, because there are six policemen on the street and I run by my house (where my host Dad stood outside the entire time) every minute and a half!
But, overall it's going well. My family, especially my host dad, speaks more English than I was expecting, which made communication this weekend much better than I had anticipated. Though I do think half of my host parents' motivation for hosting me was so I could help their son with English and make him exercise, they are actually very very nice. It does work out well, because I can help them with English and they'll help me with Thai, and I'm even more motivated now to learn Thai so I can better communicate with them.
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