The House, The Jacuzzi, A Real-life Update

My motorbike is still great, by the way.

And my second more-than-a-week vacation this month went splendidly.

A few people have asked me about the actual circumstances of the rental house, so maybe clarification time has come. The Chinese teachers and the American teachers together rented a house. There are two rooms on the second floor (the main floor) which include the living room and the bedroom, although the bedroom is only put to use as a drunken pass-out locale (and to this day unused by the Chinese and Americans, at least. Thais are lightweights). The downstairs is just a bathroom equipped with a fully functional squat toilet. We all still live in the school, but we now also have a hangout pad. The cost: 71 Baht/person, or $2.20/person for the month. It is frequented three or four times a week.

The British teacher at the school, Brian, recently built a pond. He dug the hole and cemented the walls. I helped him fill it up to calculate the size of the pond--8000 L--and we decided we needed to have a pool party instead. The mental gears turned, a few in the right direction, and we have begun to dig a second hole in his yard for a jacuzzi. Since half of all school days are cancelled in Thailand, we have many daytime opportunities to bust open the ground. As of now, the seats are shaped and the jets are almost in place. The next steps are to create a fire heating system and to cement it into the ground. It should be fun to have a party jacuzzi as well.

I only have a month left at the school, and I have begun to think about my after school travels. The tentative plan: Thailand for two weeks with my father, India for three or so weeks and the south of China for a week and a half or so. After I return home, I hope to have a really cool job (national park or something neat like that), apply to medical schools--possibly in Europe, and then take off again for somewhere also neat. Who knows what will actually happen? Not this guy.

On a final side-note, I would like to point out that I have not suffered from any form of food poisoning so far in my travels. But knock on some proverbial wood.

(Pictures are from Koh Samet and Koh Chang)