Flood & My First Visitors

The flooding in our school's neighborhood has actually become worse since our two rain days last week. It's the rainy season here in Thailand, so there's been little relief for the poor residents, as it's been raining almost every other day. Thank goodness there has been no damage to the school.

Apparently, not enough engineering-thought went into last year's decision to raise part of the road leading to TCIS. The resident's homes in that area were constantly flooding, but the lift caused flooding in different areas much worse than ever before.

It's very sad to drive in and out of school and watch the residents wade through the contaminated standing water. TCIS has donated money for a pump, so hopefully on monday we'll see improvement. The photo was taken from inside our bus and shows the traffic jam caused by the rain, which comes up to the car's bumper in front of us!

On a much more positive note, I had my first visitors in Bangkok this week! Jill and Cooper, friends I met in Saipan, visited after spending three months traveling through India. It was great to see them! They arrived Wednesday night and stayed until the wee hours of Saturday morning when they went back to the States. Cooper is eventually returning to Saipan and Jill hasn't made a concrete decision as to where she'll end up, but she will be visiting family in Wisconsin, where she went to UW Stout with my cousin Dan (small world!), for several months. She mentioned she might get a job and stay in the States, but I reminded her that she shaved her head at a temple in India, she doesn't fit in any more in the United States :) My prediction is that she'll be overseas again before too long, mostly likely back in Saipan with Cooper.

On Thursday we went to a vegetarian restaurant (both Jill and Cooper are vegetarians and I've been acting as one since arriving in Thailand) on Thong Lo and it was excellent! By far, my favorite restaurant so far. We ordered five different dishes and ate them Thai-style (or family style, as we'd call it) with rice and it ran us 230 baht (less than$6). They even delivered it to us a few doors down at the Local Pub, where we went for a couple of beer while waiting for the food. It was great to hear all of their India stories. I was taking notes so I'd have a bit of a headstart when I go in December. I'm all the more excited for my trip now!

On Friday we went back to the veggie restaurant and ordered five different dishes to share. It was a beautiful night with very little humidity and a nice breeze, so we went for a walk down to Ekkamai, the next neighborhood, stopping at a coffee shop for a delicious coffee-ice cream beverage. We hopped on the Sky Train because they hadn't experienced it yet and Cooper wanted a Blizzard from the Dairy Queen in Tesco at On Nut. We did a little shopping so they could pick up a few snacks for their long trip back to the States the following morning. We arrived home and talked to our security guards to ensure a cab would be at our building to pick them up at 3am for the one-hour, 200 baht trip to the airport. It was sad to see them go, but I'm confident I'll see them again, as we're all crazy travelers.