Winners!!

Hello All!

This post is in yellow because Monday's color is yellow. Monday was a pretty mellow day, but a fun one nonetheless. 

In orientation on Monday we learned how to count to ten in Thai and I though it would be fun to teach all of you. 

One= Nuun (said like Nun)
Two= Saawng (said like song)
Three= Saam 
Four= See
Five= Ha
Six= Hohk (said like Hawk)
Seven= Jet
Eight= Bpaaet (said like Pat)
Nine= Gaao (said like cow)
Ten= Sip 

Now you all are basically as fluent as I am in Thai. As I am sure you can imagine, I sound pretty ridiculous when I speak in Thai. Pretty sure I won't be fooling anyone anytime soon with my Thai language skills. Also we found out that the equivalent to LOL in Thai texting is 555, aka HAHAHA. =)

The last part of orientation was an activity and we all were broken up in to teams for a Bangkok scavenger hunt. The items we had to find were things like a squatty potty, a Thai brand with English writing on the label, a sign with Engrish (this refers to incorrect English and we found a hair saloon), a face lotion that didn't have whitening cream in it (yes this is really a thing here and yes it is nearly impossible to find a normal lotion that won't make your skin look whiter. Clearly I don't need any help in the white skin department), a soi dog (or street/stray dog) and more. We had to take photos with one group member and the item on the list. I don't have pictures of all of the items for you, but here is the Squatty Potty picture and the Thai brand with English writing on the label. 

As you can see I took one for the team and did the squatty potty picture. We got bonus points for humor/creativity and the squatty potty photo was the judges favorite. I guess most people stand and point, but I jumped up on the horse!

You all may have been wondering why the title of this blog is winning and that is because our scavenger hunt team won the competition! What did we win? This basket of awful tasting gelatin Thai candies that taste like wax and perfume. Sounds yummy right?

I know they look cute and yummy, but don't be deceived. 

After we finished the scavenger hunt, tasted, and spit out the candies, we were invited to a special welcome ceremony. At the welcome ceremony we all received a blessing from the Thai people who are hosting our orientation and then we lined up to receive a little white bracelet to bring us good fortune on our journey in Thailand. 

 Fiat is the guy in the pink top closest to the camera in this picture and he gave me my Thai blessing. Please don't be surprised if I bring Fiat home with me. We may be adopting him as he is the cutest little Thai boy ever.

When I kneeled down for my blessing and bracelet he said to me "I know your journey to get here was not easy, but you here now and you will thrive and inspire". The whole time I was thinking, oh if you only knew about the difficulties I had to get a letter of good conduct and my trip down the stairs at the sheriff's station. What does one sprained ankle and a scar on my leg really matter? I made it to Thailand and that is all the counts. 

This is a photo of Jill and I after the ceremony with the Thai welcoming group. They are all incredibly kind and amazing to us.

After the ceremony Jill, Lauren, and I went out for dinner and then called it an early night. We had to be up the next morning by 5:30am to go to the Grand Palace and as you can probably guess, we were pretty beat from our lack of sleep the night before. The time difference between Thailand and California is 14 hours (we are ahead), but this makes talking to everyone really hard and kept us up this night until 12 just trying to chit chat with everyone back home. Needless to say, we are aren't sleeping many hours at night, but don't you worry we are expert nappers. Before I go I wanted to quickly share with you something both disgusting and kind of awesome that I found on the scavenger hunt. 

This is a pack of cigarettes here and they all have these awful advertisements on them. I know it is gross, but seriously who could smoke and see that every time they reached for a cigarette? 

Hope this blog finds you all well. Stay tuned for the Grand Palace! =)