The 32 Hour Journey

Well, after a 32 hours in planes and airports and an additional six hour layover and five hour drive, I have finally arrived in Thailand. My ankles also swelled up twice its normal size in the process! The long journey began at 4:00 in the morning when we arrived at the Salt Lake Airport for our 6:00 flight to Minneapolis. A poor ILP employee had to be at the airport at 4:00 in the morning to give us our passports and visas although the check in counters did not open until 4:45 so we were left waiting for 45 minutes. When we finally got to our gate, we saw that Elizabeth Smart was on the same flight as us. A couple girls in the group wanted to go and say hi to her, but they chickened out. We saw her in the first row as we got on the plane, but she had her head down like she didn’t want anyone to talk to her. After the flight to Minneapolis, we had a six hour layover. The group of girls going to Phitsanulok immediately headed to the gate, but my group decided to eat some breakfast at Chile’s. Almost the whole time, the girls just talked about their boyfriends waiting back home. I stopped paying attention halfway through this as I find relationship talk one of the most boring topics of conversation. The rest of the layover, we spent waiting at the gate with a tiny seating area surrounding it considering the hundreds of people on the flight. The flight to Tokyo was very comfortable as I had an aisle seat and there was no one sitting next to me on the other side. Then after spending two hours in Tokyo, we boarded our final six hour flight to Bangkok. When we finally arrived in Bangkok, we collected our bags and met up with the last two girls in our group. We did the five hour drive to Phichit in the middle of the night so I couldn’t really get a good look at Bangkok or anything else on the way. The streets were very narrow and we almost hit a couple street dogs on the way. We finally reached the clinic house where we will be staying for a week until the summer girls move out of the apartment at the school. The clinic house belongs to the parents of our coordinator Tang. We even call them Mom and Dad. They are very nice and quite funny. The housekeepers are also very nice and made a wonderful lunch and dinner for us. Today we walked around the city of Phichit. It was hot and very humid! We stopped at the 711 to get water bottles on the way back. A large water bottle in Thailand is only 40 cents and comes with its own straw. The dad then drove us past the huge crocodile park and to the school. The school is huge and is surrounded by a beautiful garden and fountain. It was modeled after Hogwarts and has a Christmas tree in the lobby year round. We met the Thai teachers who were all very nice. Some of the kids ran out to us yelling “teacher!” They were so cute, but we played with them for a little bit this afternoon and they were all so crazy! I’ll have to work on dealing with that. We also met the summer teachers who were all very nice and gave us a lot of tips and advice. We also saw the apartment we will be living in and while it is nice, I’d rather stay at the clinic house! I’m sorry for the lack of pictures and I promise I will post pictures of everything soon!