Well last Sunday was the big day that I have been preparing the last two years for. I wrote the Grade 6 Thai test, which the Thai government has set as the standard of fluency. Passing this test is one of the requirements to be able to get a missionary visa. On Friday, my Thai teacher took me and the other student in my class to see where the test was going to be held. She told us that we needed to take the number 4 bus, which is part of a new line of buses called the metro bus. All [View Full Entry]

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As many of you know, our church has been caught up in planning this year's English Camp. Every year we invite students from Ramkhamhaeng University to join us for a three day camp over a Buddhist holiday. I am pleased to report that this year's camp was a smashing success. We started the day early meeting at 6:00 for prayer before the campers arrived for registration. This is probably the biggest outreach of the whole year for us, so everyone was involved. All of the residents at the church came to camp, so I had to pack my pet fish along, [View Full Entry]

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Last Friday, I skipped out on Thai school and joined with some other teachers on a day trip to the floating market, followed by elephant riding. We started out for the floating market early (at 7 am). Adjan Sucharn (a Thai who is also a teacher at our school) was our tour guide. It is his hobby to take the new teachers that come around to all of the popular tourist attractions. On our way to the market we passed salt fields. They are fields filled with water instead of plants. We stopped at one road side display and some of [View Full Entry]

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I woke up this morning feeling very pleased with the way that my day went yesterday. It started early, getting up at 5:00am to be ready to leave the center at 5:30am. A large group of us went to Ram 2 campus. For those of you who don't know, Ramkhamhaeng University is the largest university in the world with over 500, 000 students. With that many students, they don't all fit on one campus. Our center is located just a few minutes away from the main campus on Ramkhamhaeng Street (go figure!) All of the university promotion that I have talked [View Full Entry]

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Something very out of the ordinary happened this week. Many of us from the center went to Ramkhamhaeng University to promote our free English club and to take registration for our upcoming English camp. This week first year students are registering, so it is a strategic time to be on campus promoting. Unfortunately, all of the other clubs at the university feel the same, so there is always a crowd of recruiters vying to win the freshmen for their own groups. The university sets up barricades around the building where registration happens and all the groups cluster at the end of [View Full Entry]

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As promised, I am now blogging about previous adventures. My departure from Ontario was abrupt in some ways, but in other ways not really. You see I was waiting on a note from my doctor and proof of medical insurance before I could book anything. So I was ready to go, but wasn't allowed to yet. The last e-mail that I needed came in on March 26th and that very day I booked my plane ticket to leave on the 28th. I arrived on Saturday night in Vancouver. I stayed at my good friend, Janet's house. She had a new two [View Full Entry]

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I have been somewhat remiss in writing the last couple of weeks. While I was in Canada, I took a break from blogging, but I have been back travelling the wide world since March 28th. I have a lot that I'd like to write about, but I have learned from experience that it is better to write about what is fresh and then go back to the stuff that you missed. After I left Ontario, I stopped over in BC and Taipei, moved into my new room in the new building in Bangkok and celebrated Songkran (Thai new years). All of [View Full Entry]

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So this week I donated blood for the first time in Thailand. I have been wanting to for a long time, but at first I didn't know where to go, and then there were just odd circumstances that kept me from doing it. Well, finally there was a blood donor clinic in the building right across the road from me, so it was very easy for me to go. Here are my observations on the differences between donating blood in Canada and in Thailand: It was a clean procedure, but not to the same we-have-to-cover-our-butts-from-being-sued kind of a way. For example, [View Full Entry]

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Well, it's been awhile since I've written, but that's just been because there hasn't been that much to report. Last Tuesday was Remembrance Day in Canada. It is easy to overlook in Thailand, but I've always been a bit of a history buff and I think it is an important holiday, so for the last two years I've had my own private little Remembrance Day ceremony. I tune into a Canadian radio station on the Internet and listen to their service. Last year the connection was good, but this year, the connection was really slow, so the radio service was pretty [View Full Entry]

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Last week, just after arriving home from Kuala Lumpur, a group of my friends went to a cake buffet to celebrate Nat's birthday. In actuality it was a high tea, but basically it worked out to all you could eat cake, desserts and drinks (I don't really like tea, so I stuck to the juice.) They did have some baked goods there that were savoury, and so had some nutritional value. I hadn't eaten any breakfast, so I behaved myself and ate a ham and cheese bun/twist thing first. Then I dove into the cake and other sweet baked goods. We [View Full Entry]

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