scramble scramble scramble

When they told me I'd be leaving May 13th my first thought was "Hey! that gives me a full 2 weeks after exams to get all my placement preparation finished. Fantastic!"
I was a fool.

In actuality, what that means is that placement preparation and exams collide with a sickening crunch somewhere in the second week of April, and pretty much fight each other for time in my life until exams are finished at the end of April.

Classes officially ended April 7th, which for me meant that the few weeks before April 7th were a depressing haze of final assignments and essays all of which needed to be handed in before the end of classes. I was lucky enough to have two classes without final exams, which I'm thankful for now but it meant that there were two or three times the number of assignments in those classes as the other ones. Anyway, somehow I've made it to exams.

The thing that makes end of year finals so much more difficult than the winter term finals has to be the weather. In the winter, it's cold, windy and grey so nobody really wants to be outside to begin with. In April on the other hand, winter is finally beginning to relinquish it's iron grip on the world. The sun is shining, the birds are singing outside my window, the flowers are blooming and I'm hunched over my desk scowling at an ecology lecture. The injustice of it all.

It's certainly been difficult to juggle placement prep and exams at the same time. I have had to visit the good Dr. Wise to get my vaccinations before I go. Unfortunately, his office isn't the closest to where I live by bus, and I've had to make the trip 3 times so far, and am scheduled to go once more before I leave because some of the vaccinations have required multiple injections spaced out over time. Taking 3 hours to go to the doctor really cuts into a day of studying. But, it hasn't been for nothing.
I can proudly proclaim that I am now vaccinated against Hepatitis A and B, Typhoid and (as soon as I've recieved this last one) Japanese Encephalitis.

I was supposed to receive my malaria vaccination as well but thanks to a recent incident where a dog bit a bunch of of people at a mall near my house, they gave out about a thousand rabies shots and thus are out of the vaccination. Looks like I'll have to stay away from strange looking dogs and monkeys. That's right, monkeys.

Also, in the end it was decided that I would not go through with the motorcycle course because (long story short) it wasn't specifically mentioned in my job description that I would be required to ride a motorcycle while there. Unfortunately, I had already purchased motorcycle gear when the decision was made (and paid for the course, incidentally) but the school was nice enough to reimburse me for the helmet (as the store where I bought the gear refused to take it back, even unused), and I was able to get some of my money back for the course as well.

I'm planning a trip downtown sometime either this week or next week to pick up a water filter and a good set of boots and a good raincoat for monsoon season. I think I may also look for a book or two to tide me over on the trip there.

My friend Angie (who happens to be going to Guatemala and whose travel blog I've linked to on the right) sent me a link to this Amazing site a little bit like Google Maps that gives you street views of Chiang Mai, the city where I'll be living. It's amazing, you can go anywhere in the city and have a 360 degree photo view of what you would see standing in that spot on the road:
http://www.mapjack.com/?TpbyUmRbacUE7CAA

As the trip nears, my excitement builds. My Thai is improving quickly, though it would be improving faster if I had more time to practice. I should be able to start putting more time in after exams have finished though (I say that as though I'm going to have tons of free time as soon as school finishes but I know from past experience that's never how it goes). In case you were wondering what I'm up against, this is what the language looks like. Basically, you have 44
consonants, but there is a lot of repetition. These 44 consonants make 21 different sounds (so you've got to remember which ones make the same sound, and when spelling you've got to remember which consonant to use with which word, even if they sound phonetically the same). Consonants make different sounds when placed at the end of the word, for example the letter that makes the 'r' sound at the beginning, makes a 'n' sound at the end, and so on. Once you've mastered that, it's time to move on to the 32 vowels! Vowels can be written before, after, above or below, (or any combination of the four) the consonant. Easy, right? But lets not forget the 5 tones (low, middle, high, rising and falling) which which any word can be said. There are 5 different tone markers which are used in conjunction with the vowels and are written above the syllables to which they refer. If there is already a vowel above the letter, the tone marker is written above that. Confused yet? Me too...this is going to take some practice to learn, but Thai is a beautiful language with lots of history, and it is interesting learning a language completely from scratch. At least with spanish and french they used the same characters. It's interesting to think that I haven't had to do this since I was learning to read and write and speak English.

Anyway, I think that's enough procrastination for me. Back to the books we go.