Thai Lessons

Today's the day! I start Thai lessons, which will hopefully let me finally figure out what everyone around me is saying. I have high hopes.

In less cheery news, I'm running really short on money this month. In an attempt to make what little I have left last till the end of the month, I have caved and finally plugged in my refrigerator in hopes that buying groceries will be cheaper than eating out all the time (but remember I still don't have a microwave or any sort of cooking apparatus aside from a kettle)...I wonder if you can cook rice or pasta in a kettle...I have the feeling my next post is probably going to include a paragraph on how I've now broken my kettle.

I think it's all the start-up costs that have eaten up the cash...the bike, the apartment furnishings, the everything else...it adds up.

Also, it doesn't help that little things keep coming up. For example, yesterday morning, I took 1000 baht out of my drawer and said "This has to last me 3 days". It didn't last 24 hours.

In the morning I spent 85 baht on breakfast, then paid 100 baht to reimburse Mr. Khai for the tickets to the theatre fund raiser at Chiang Mai University we had attended the previous night. It was put on to raise money for the victims of Hurricane Nargis, and was all in Burmese, (and lasted about 4 hours) but I'm glad we went. Then, during the meeting in the morning, one of the girls at the office had to be taken to the hospital because she was having terrible stomach pains which had been going on for a week already and she hadn't said anything. The word appendicitis was thrown around, but we couldnt be sure until she'd seen a doctor. Thing is, as I mentioned before, there isn't an 'emergency medical assistance' portion of the budget. Everyone threw 200 baht into a pot to cover her medical fees. That afternoon, I went grocery shopping which ate up another 500 baht, and stocked up my fridge a little bit, and bought some mangoes from the old lady with the highway robbery fruit stand by the mall for another 35 baht. Another 60 baht on dinner just about cleaned me out. It was terrible. I've got maybe another 10 days till I get paid, and it's going to be tight but I will make it work.

We were supposed to go to the farm this morning but it's pouring rain so we've decided to hold off till noon and go then.