Two weeks...

From Gary: Today marks 2 weeks in country and we have adjusted quickly and well. We are considering taking some Thai lessons in speech and culture…the other evening I was in a grocery store and subconsciously noticed that everyone was standing still…like in something out of the twilight zone. I finally stopped walking and listened to the last five seconds of the national anthem, something Thai’s do at 6 pm each evening. Oops. I won't do that again.

Actually, within a couple days I adapted to left-side driving – amazing myself. It is shifting with the left hand that sometimes gets me, and looking up to the left to find the rear view mirror. There is almost no honking… everyone flows like water down the stream sharing whatever path is available, regardless of lines. (Not anywhere as crazy as Cameroon.) All major roads have good medians and signal lights with flowers galore! Of course, Penny is reminding me ‘left, left, stay on the left’ … and here I thought I was more of a Republican!

Grace International School is amazing (GISthailand.org). The motivated staff and many quality programs are a tremendous asset to the many mission parents located here. My work in the computer department supports more computers than I can count, and I enjoy the Thai staff members I serve with. South of Chiang Mai there was a major fiber optic cut in the Internet circuit, but as with any computer department, the first thing you think is that your own network just crashed. And, being alone that afternoon, I got to learn our internal network with firewalls, content filters, backup connections, etc… real quick.