Fresh Starts

I have a bit of writer's block these days. I feel like I haven't written on this blog in so long that I don't even know what to write about. I hope that most of you have facebook and are able to see the pictures because it takes a lot of time to put them on my blog. I will put a few on here from this summer for those of you who don't have facebook and to give a quick look back at the summer work here.

Hopefully the pictures will speak for themselves.....

Guests of a different culture

I have been living in my new house for a little over 2 months now. It has been a great blessing in many many ways. Every Wed. there are about 15-30 Thai students that come for "cell group" and almost every week-end 1 or more of my Thai friends come and stay the night. It has been a busy place. I even had some American friends come and stay for a few days. All of these guests are welcome and I love having them!

Unfortunately my house also has some unwelcomed guests. If I have never written this before can I just say that everything seems to come in much larger forms here in Thailand. For examples--roaches. The roaches are huge in this country. I have one that has decided to move into my home and I am scared to kill him because he is so big! The most recent unwelcomed guest is a rat (or maybe 2 or 3). I have actually only seen him 3 times but I know he is around because he leaves evidence. I have been trying to figure out how I am going to kill him. I have been given many suggestions but most of them I just can't do. The most ideal way would be for me to put out poison and he eats it and then he goes outside and dies. Doesn't that sound like the perfect plan??? I am afraid it won't be that easy.

If anyone has a great "American" way to kill a rat please let me know. I am up for any suggestions. I do have some workers coming tomorrow to close holes and such and maybe that will solve the problem and I won't have to kill him at all--we will see.

Living in a different culture has many surprises--some good and some not so good but it is just life!

I am alive :)

I hope that people are still reading my blog and haven't given up on me yet. It has been a very very busy summer!! I am currently writing this blog entry from Chiang Mai ( a city about 9 hours north of Bangkok). I will give a quick summary of the summer.

The Univ. students from America arrived in early June and then we immediately began work on 3 univ. campuses in Bangkok. At first I was busy taking all the American students around and spending days on the 2 different univ. campuses. I teach English 2 days a week at Rangsit University to chemistry students. It has been a lot of fun. I have a freshman class on Monday which has around 50 students and sophomores on Tuesday with only about 20 students. Tuesday is a much easier day but I enjoy both of the days. The rest of the week I spend at Sripatum Univ. tutoring students and just working to build relationships.

The first week-end in July we had an English camp in Pattaya. We had over 200 univ. students from the different campuses. It went really well. We had some students make decisions and many who are seeking to know more. I will be busy doing a lot of follow up in the month of August.

I came to Chiang Mai for 2 weeks of meetings the day after camp finished. I have enjoyed seeing a different part of the beautiful country of Thailand. The other day I went with some friends on an elephant trek through the countryside and also went white water rafting. It was a lot of fun! I am ready though to get back to Bangkok! Only a few more days of meetings left and then I return home!

I still don't have internet at my house yet but hope to have it up and running in August. I will try to be better at updating my blog so please keep reading. Pictures to come in the future!!