Thursday, January 24, 2008

Made it to Thailand

I made it! I'm in Chaing Mai, Thailand. In the 28 hours since I've been here, I can say that I love it so far! So let me back up and finish the story of how I finally got here.

I finally flew out of Los Angeles at 1 am on Tuesday morning. It ended up that so many people were frustrated they had to be delayed so long, they booked another flight. We had about 50 people on our huge aircraft! Each person had a row to themselves. We arrived in Bangkok at 12:30 pm and had an airline attendant meet us at the gate. She took us to a holding area to check our tickets and give us vouchers for food since our flight was delayed to Chaing Mai. The airport was very clean and modern. (much nicer the LAX) Our flight to Chaing Mai finally departed at 3:35pm. As we were boarding the plane, an attendant who took our tickets said that we needed a different ticket. I was thinking, you've got to be kidding me. I guess the ticket they issued in LA wasn't the correct type of ticket and they weren't going to let us board. Finally a supervisor said we could board but that she would contact us in Chaing Mai for the correct boarding pass. I almost laughed outloud. How in the world would she contact us, and where in the world would we get the "correct ticket number". I figured that, hey, we got on the plane so that's all that matters.

We arrived in Chaing Mai and our luggage also made it! I was relieved! The Bolands, a couple who teach at Grace International School, picked us up at the airport. We arrived at their home, which is absolutely gorgeous! After we freshened up, 3 teachers from the school took us out to dinner at an amazing restaurant. It was all open with waterfalls and flowers. It was a traditional Thai restaurant. I ordered a soft tofu with sweet and sour sauce. It was interesting because you would think that a tofu dish would be vegetarian. But it came with chicken and a lot of veggies. I loved it! We got back to the Bolands home around 9:30pm and I went straight to bed. I got up at 6:30am and we left for the school at 7:15am. My mom spoke in elementary chapel this morning, we got a tour of the school, and in the evening we met with the student council leaders and chapel leaders. They are a great bunch of kids! They really shared their hearts with us tonight. Tomorrow we do high school chapel and the list goes on.:)

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