Start of a Busy, Productive Day

This is the morning view from our bed. Today was relatively clear compared to last week and the temperature seemed cooler than it's been. You can see the outline of Doi (Mt.) Suthep in the background.

I'd been asked early last week if J would be able to come teach English at work. (She done that some last year.) This year they had a Karen villager who'd gotten a scholarship to to to the Asian Rural Institute in Japan for nine months training. Only about 30 people are selected for this from all of Asia and (I think) Africa each year. Although the program is in Japan, the work is in English. We didn't know how good his English was, but he did have, we were told, a Bachelors Degree which means he's studied English.

So, today, J set up class in our building for her one student, who turned out to be smart as could be and whose English, while not fluent, is already fairly good, by Thai standards. She began with some vocabulary from the Asian Rural Institute website on the assumption he needs to know some of their most frequently used words.

Here's S just before class started. He was already excited to be getting some serious help with his English. He leaves for Japan at the end of March.

Meanwhile our 30 days comes up again in two weeks, so the weekend after next, we're headed to Hanoi so we can pick up another 30 days in our passports for Thailand. By the end of that 30 days, it will be time to go back home to Anchorage. Air Asia, while inconvenient in some ways, has really inexpensive fares. Ours wasn't the best deal we heard about, but the two us fly from Chiang Mai to Bangkok and then to Hanoi (these are booked and treated as totally separate trips) for under $400.

There are lots of other interesting stories from the last few days, but they'll have to wait.