Tonight was the last meeting of the first class I ever taught. For some reason, I am a little sad that it's over, but I know that I have many more classes to go. Next semester I will be teaching the entire semester, so hopefully I will be able to get to know my classes a little better.
Tomorrow I start the last leg of my Asian travel as Todd and I will be in Hong Kong for the next few days. I don't really know what to expect when we arrive tomorrow, other than a beautiful skyline (especially at night), a lot of Chinese characters (obviously), and some expensive shopping (at least relative to Bangkok).
I've been fighting a little bit of sickness the last few days -- both a sore throat and another stomach virus. I think that I just haven't gotten enough rest and I am blaming Todd 100% for dragging me day and night all over Bangkok. haha.
In any case, we leave early tomorrow morning. I can hardly wait to get in the air again.
So are you drinking the local water already? Just an ice cube was enough to make me sick...
Chinese characters, both written and walking down the street. hehe -
Poor little you - - - I certainly do hope that you get to feeling better. It's not fun traveling when sick.
So you are obviously enjoying teaching!?! Well you are a natural teacher. You were teaching me how to spell and write my alphabet before I remember Mom starting to teach me. If I ever misspelled something (I remember this being the case on road trips) you would make me figure it out and spell it until I got it right! :-)
Love you!!
Charles, the local water still scares me. I boiled some for five minutes to make coffee this morning. Even when I was in the US for the holidays, every time I turned on the tap I wondered if I should drink it. So yeah, I am still sticking to the bottled water for now.
Contrasting Thailand with Israel:
Israel: Americans can drink tap water safely.
Thailand: boiled or bottled water
Israel: limited access to CNN MSNBC. Only censored news from Lebanon.
Thailand: All American news channels via sattelite. Many US syndicated shows.
Israel: Can easily use American dollars and I even wrote a US personal check in US Dollars.
Thailand: Need to exchange travellers checks or use ATM (if you can find one in english)
Israel: general architecture is utilitarian with a few exceptions.
Thailand: Very modern tall skyscrapers and lots of infrastructure in Bangkok.
Israel: Restaurants are mostly mom and pop affairs.
Thailand: lots of western chains in addition to the mom and pop fare.
So I say all of this to say that sometimes you can be closer to home (Israel) but be far away (culturally) and sometimes you can be on the otherside of the planet and have a lot of the things and feelings that one is familiar with in the west.