i'm so so so sorry for not writing for the last week. i've been in hotels where i had to pay to get internet, and i had other things to spend money and time on. but now i'm here, so that's all that matters.

the first week here was jam-packed of thrilling orientation activities like teacher training and thai society lessons and repetition. YEAHHHHH! sarcasm. the actual lessons were boring half the time because they didn't have that much to say to us, so they just filled up time by repeating what we'd already been told.

so the actual learning part of orientation was terrible, but no matter. i got to meet a crap ton of awesome people, and it seems like most people with the program are pretty cool. of course there are a few bad seeds, but you can't really expect an entire group of 91 people to be awesome all the time.

but oeg (overseas education group, the group in charge of the program) isn't made of pure evil. i know this because they planned this excellent trip for all of us to the grand palace in bangkok, which was absolutely phenomenal. you have to look at pictures. i can't really do it justice with words. (but here i go, trying anyway...) the entire thing has gold glittering all over it, curly doos at the end of the rooftops, and brilliant colors in between. the big to-do at the grand palace is visiting the emerald buddha, which is probably the most sacred of all buddhist items. funny story: the buddha is actually jade, but the abbot who found it thought it was emerald, word started spreading about an "emerald" buddha, and the name stuck.

so that was tuesday or wednesday or something (i don't know. i've completely lost track of what day it is), and for the rest of the week we did dumb orientation crap until we ventured to kanchanaburi for some elephant riding, bamboo rafting, and relaxing at a resort on the river kwai. indeed, we went to the actual bridge over the river kwai, then ate dinner at a floating restaurant almost below the bridge. this was all on the same day we hopped on the back of some elephants, took an incredibly relaxing raft ride, ate some delicious food, and spent the night drinking, dancing and swimming. the day was easily in the top 10 most perfect days of my life.

now i'm sitting in my apartment in suphanburi, getting ready for possibly my first lesson (yeesh) and writing what has become a semi-dull blog post. no real witticisms this time.

i have so much more to tell you, and i promise i'll have funnier/more fascinating posts later, once i can get on the internet more than once every five days. but right now, i've got the hiccups and i'm exhausted from a day of setting up new life. my rock-hard bed is looking rather inviting.