A Whole New World...

Hi everyone! I am enjoying my time in Bangkok very much! I arrived in Hong Kong on Monday night at 7pm (which is 7am Monday in America) and we stayed at the Regal Hotel right at the airport (which by the way was voted #1 hotel airport in the world 2 years in a row!). I was incredibly tired and jetlagged so I had dinner and went to sleep, got up at the crack of dawn and was on a plane to Bangkok by 8:30am. First off let me tell you how incredibly WARM it is here! As soon as I stepped off the plane I was overwhelmed with heat. FUNNY STORY: When I was at JFK airport with Kevin's military bag which had all my clothes in it, I was informed that the padlock that was holding the bag together was going to be broken as soon as it tried to get through security... excellent. Luckily I have a wonderful boyfriend who gave me his lucky keychain (thanks DLO) to hold the bag together. The airport lady was very helpful and taped my bag in 238573845 different ways so that nothing would fall out and luckily it was successful! Okay back to Bangkok stuff..

When I first got here, I was shocked at how much poverty I saw. It reminded me of those commercials or infomercials that you see on tv that show pictures of mothers and their starving children. I was a little shocked because, although where I am living is very nice, right outside of my gated campus is poverty. There is a restaurant that we all go to every night called Grandma's, but I wouldn't necessarily call it a restaurant.. it is more like an outside tent surrounded by weird little houses/buildings. Grandma (the lady who serves us our food everynight) is hands down the cutest little Thai woman I have ever seen. We LOVE her, and her food is so good! (By the way, I am not a huge Thai food lover, so I think I have already lost some weight!) I usually get a grilled cheese/ham sandwich or this other dish called a "sexy egg" - how could I not try that? Anyway, it is not your typical restaurant.. you sit at picnic table type benches outside (EVERYTHING WE DO IS OUTSIDE) and she brings you your food as it is ready. Her grandchildren are there helping her, and I am pretty sure she lives upstairs from where the restaurant is.. no doors to her house at all. Very strange, but that is how most of the places over here are. It's a totally different world. On the walk to Grandma's, we walk by several beds tucked away under tent-like things, it's kind of sad to see how much poverty there is, but the people seem to be incredibly happy.

Classes are interesting, the professors are sometimes very difficult to understand because of their accents. All of us Americans constantly are getting stared at because we are the only foreigners around - it's so strange but cool! My room is on the fifteenth floor of my apartment building and I have a balcony that overlooks the city. It's AWESOME. The bathrooms are just one big room with no curtain/bathtub.. just a showerhead coming out of the wall.. in other words, when I shower so does my entire bathroom! It's bizarre, but I don't mind it.

Last night was by far the coolest experience that I have had so far. All 35 of us went out to a Thai bar right near our building, and as soon as we walked in the DJ's started blasting American music and all of the Thai people started dancing! I saw one Thai girl busting a move and I was laughing and clapping and she motioned for me and my friend Hilary to get up and dance with her so we did for a little. They played Tik Tok, California Girls (I flipped out with excitement when this song came on!) and some Justin Beiber. It was a BLAST. They have humungous towers of Heineken beer that cost 400 baht (about 12 American dollars) which kept us pretty happy for the night. We went to another bar down the street after that called BaBa which is apparently where all the international students hang out.. so we saw some Europeans there which was cool! Right now I am at the "new campus" called Wau Mak which is where I have two classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, all of my other classes are at the old campus in Bangkok (about an hour away) which is where I am living.

Tomorrow we are going on a canal ride through Bangkok, and Saturday we are going to an amusement park! So far I love Bangkok, but I miss everyone from home a lot too!

I will blog again soon :)

<3 Bri