This past week was pretty good- on Monday I went to the supermarket and ice cream was on sale!!! so of course I had to get a whole bunch for the students! That made Monday night especially enjoyable-everyone loved having a nice treat (who wouldn't?). Tuesday was Thai army day- all week there were lots of paratroopers in the sky, which was fun to see. Also, there is an election coming up, so there are tons of posters around and trucks with loudspeakers blaring Thai political ads and music. Something funny that happened to me: Friday afternoon I went for a walk- I was walking along the road and all ofthe sudden this black bird crossed the street and walked right up to me! It was really weird because I've never seen a wild bird that was that friendly and unafraid of humans. It was really pretty, and it puffed up its feathers and made a lot of noise. I got a long piece of grass to see if it would take it, but I had no luck. After looking at it for a little bit I threw down the piece of grass and started towalk away- the bird chased me and started pecking my shoes! I started running and it still chased me and tried to eat my feet. Finally I got away- it's a good thing I was wearing tennis shoes or it would have been really painful! I don't know if I disturbed its territory or what, but it wasn't too happy with me. Or, here people only wear flipflops, so maybe it had just never seen tennis shoes before!

Bulletin Update

Along with English and all of the other subjects, our students also take Thai language classes here at Legacy. We only have two students from Thailand- the rest are from Burma, so they don't know how to speak Thai. Lawan is our Thai teacher- she graduated from Legacy last year and is now spending her year of service teaching here at theschool. I started going to her Thai Listening and Speaking class at the beginning of the new semester. I was a little worried that Iwouldn't be able to keep up with the students since they took Thai forthe whole first semester too (when I wasn't here yet), but thankfully I'm quite able to. We had an oral test on Friday, so Thursday night Iwas reviewing with some of the students in the class- they were asking ME questions about Thai! I was able to answer them though, which wasactually really good practice for me! I think I did well on the test-we had to make sentences using certain words, and I'm pretty sure I got all of the words right and in the right order. My tones areterrible, so it's probably unlikely that a Thai person could understand me, but I sure have fun trying!

Bulletin Update

First of all, thanks for all of the concern for my well being after the recent disaster. Legacy is in northern Thailand, which has been completely unaffected by the disaster. I felt the earthquake a tiny tiny bit, but other than that I wouldn't have known anything major had happened if so many people hadn't emailed me and called my house! Despite its diminutive appearance on the world map, Thailand is a good-sized country- Phuket is very far away from Chiang Mai. I did go to Phuket and some islands in the area over Thanksgiving break, but I had to take two 12-hour bus rides to get there! I appreciate the emails and the phone calls to my parents, and am happy to report that everyone here is doing just fine.

Last week the other teachers and I went to Laos to get our visas renewed- we had a really fun trip! First we went to Vientiane, the capital of Laos. We saw lots of sights there and ate some really great food! James and I went to a traditional Lao dancing show, which was a lot of fun too. Next we headed to Luang Prabang. We didn't stay there long- we got there in the evening and left early the next morning- butwe did have time to visit the night market and eat some yummy Laotian food there- all you could eat for 5,000 kip, which is about 50 cents. The next morning we took off on a boat trip up the Mekong River. The trip lasted two days total, and the scenery was gorgeous! After the first day the boat stopped in a small village called Pakbeng. We spent the night there, and also spent the next day (Sabbath) and night there. Sunday morning we took off for the second day of the boat trip, which was full of more beautiful scenery. There are thousands of hilltribe peoples living throughout the mountains of Laos, so we could often see bamboo houses along the slopes. We also saw people washing clothes in the river and fishing or collecting their nets. We arrived in Huayxai Sunday evening, and then crossed to Chiangkhong, Thailand the next morning. Then we took a bus back to Chiang Mai- we arrived home Monday afternoon, and classes started up again the next day.