Kamala Beach

Since I last posted, we have found a house, learned how to ride motor bikes and started school.  On Saturday, Courtney, Shawn, Nancy and I went apartment searching.  We decided to start out looking in a place called Kamala Beach because we were told that it far less touristy than most beaches and it in between where Nancy and I are working.  Kamala Beach, along with many other beaches on the west coast of Phuket, was hit extremely hard by the 2004 Tsunami.  There is still a lot of construction going on but the houses and buildings that are completed are very new and nice.  Within 5 minutes of getting out of the cab,  we wandered down a random side street and ended up meeting a lady who brought us to the house she was renting.  It was super cute but very small with two bedrooms with one big bed in each so I headed back outside and saw 3 others houses on the same street with for rent signs.  We ended up seeing inside of four houses and decided to pick two of them because it seemed like a good neighborhood and they were cheap enough so we could afford two.  Nancy and I picked the first one we looked at because the landlord was very nice and Courtney and Shawn picked one that's two doors down from ours because they loved the couple next door to them.  Alec and Jenny have proved to be an interesting pair - Alec is Thai, has long flowing hair, is covered in tattoos and is a tattoo artist that tattoos with bamboo instead of a needle gun.  Jenny is his girlfriend and is Scandanavian and has lived here for four years and is a kindergarten teacher.  They have already taught us so much and are very willing to show us around and tell us where the best place to do our laundrey is and how much we should be paying for our motorbikes and little things like that. 

Speaking of motorbikes, I will be riding one to school every day.  I've had about 2 days practice and they still scare me but I'm getting better.  Seeing that there seem to be no traffic laws here and I have to drive on the opposite side of the road, it's going to take a while to get used to.  I rode to school this morning, took one wrong turn and was an hour late for my first day of school!!  School proved to be pretty overwhelming and not exactly what I expected but hopefully I'll get used to that too.  Having four classes of 35 kindergarteners in each is not an easy task and in my last class of the day, I had one boy running around naked, three girls crying and about seven little ones hitting me in the stomach right when I walked in while the teacher was outside the classroom on her cell phone.  That class will definitely be my most difficult. 

We are getting settled but still haven't had time to relax yet.  I have been in Thailand for a week and I haven't gotten to lay out on the beach yet!  Hopefully this weekend I will have time to relax and go swimming in the beautiful water.  Whenever I am feeling homesick or missing my office in Rhode Island (crazy, right??), I try to remind myself that not everyone gets to see elephants on their morning commute or live in the mountains with a ten minute walk to the beach (that I plan to make it to sometime in the near future).  We don't have internet at our house yet but hopefully soon so I can update more!

My Bed - bedding is expensive here!

I need to go shopping!