A Busy Day in Trang (Work Permits)

Tuesday, October 28

I know that this is quite soon to already be posting a new post, but for now there will be lots of updates and I am sure as we settle in and get use to Trang and school the posts will slow down. The Thai word for westerner (or white person) is "Farang," which is not necessarily a negative word and it is not offensive, but as we walk through the market you can hear whispers of Farang. We had heard that Trang was the up-and-coming tourist location because it is not really touristy. From our first couple of days here, I can already feel that not many farang hang out here. As we were walking to find food our first day, Pat and I were walking along a fairly large road and just about everyone that we past would whip their head around and stare. We also got some honks and some english "hellos." The other night in Tesco Lotus (the wal-mart equivalent) a small Thai kid rushed to try to touch me before his parents were able to grab him. We have been drawing quite a bit of attention although none of it is aggressive or really uncomfortable.

Yesterday (Monday) was a very busy day. Achanee, our coordinator, was to pick us up around 10:30 to go by school and talk about our contracts. I woke up early hand washed some clothes and took the rest down the street to have washed. Nothing is super close to our house, so walking down a six-lane highway with a laundry basket completely full of laundry was fairly amusing. We were picked up at 10:30 and headed to our school, where we sat in the English Department's Teachers' Lounge for a couple hours talking about syllabi and teaching English along with reading our contracts and signing them. We then headed into town for lunch which was quickly followed by making copies of several documents for our work permits, having our pictures taken for the work permits, going to the motorbike store to try to find a second-hand bike to get between school, town and home (since we are living awkwardly in between school and town), hanging out at the Trang hospital for 2 hours to get a physical, and then grabbing dinner. The Thai work permit requires something like 11 documents and 4 copies of all of those documents. The documents include copies of every page of your passport, your diploma, your class schedule, a letter from the school that hired you, a map of the school, a few other documents regarding the English Department and school, two different sized photos, and a physical from a Thai doctor. I guess the place to ge a physical is at the hospital between the Mass Casualty Zone and the Surgical Unit. The physical was to check and see if we had leprosy, elephantitis, drug addiction or chronic alcoholism and should have included an x-ray. We filled out some paperwork and received a number and then we sat for 2 hours and watched stretchers come in and out. Finally our names and numbers were called and we were weighed and had our blood pressure taken and then we waited again. When the doctor finally saw us, we went in together (all 3 American teachers) where he looked at us head to toe and signed the physical and we were on our way. Hmmm...strange. Anywho... all of our paperwork that we need to do is together and now our coordinator has a bit of gathering to do herself.

Today Pat and I are planning on taking a trip to Ko Lanta, an island about 2 hours away that one of our guide books has told us not to miss. Hopefully I will get Pat blogging again, but he tends to be asleep when I am updating the blog.

We now have internet in our house and it seems to be pretty good, which is excellent. We also have a few friends living with us. We have ants and a couple of oversized cocroaches, and this morning when I was putting on my shower shoes in the kitchen there was a large toad purched under Pats shower shoes. It was a bit starting to have a frog face staring at me first thing this morning, but I used the broom to place him outside our back door.