Well it's Sunday morning, seems pretty much like every other morning. Strange not to have church and other things planned. It will be three weeks on Tuesday and things are settling down a bit in some areas and others are up in the air.

One big unknown for now is Beam. On Friday she woke up with a fever and sore throat. She saw the doctor who told her to stay home and gave her some kind of medicine. Saturday she went to the hospital, which seems to be more common here, one way to get a better diagnosis perhaps. As of today we don't know her status. Everyone here is very concerned about Swine Flu and there have been a couple of recent deaths, one in Phuket where we were last week. So we'll see what is up today, hopefully.

It directly affects us since we may have to pick up her classes. They don't hire substitutes so other people in the department pick them up, or the kids are just excused and no class. We are supposed to be teaching a few classes on our own anyway, so maybe our workload will increase if she's out for a time.

The students continue to be great for us, very helpful, attentive and respectful. We are still an "oddity" here and are "sought out" for greetings, handshakes, etc. Our adult class at 3:15-4:15 M, W, F is a delight. Many of the teachers have learned some English, but with no place or people to practice with they have forgotten. the are so excited and appreciative to "relearn" and practice......very rewarding.

I'm not sure about the weather. I know we are in, or maybe "entering into" the rainy season. Up till Friday, it hasn't really rained that much. But the spigot turned on Saturday, & night and today. It has REALLY rained hard and often, with very little breaks. That keeps us from any kind of outside fun. We will definitely run between the raindrops today to the fitness center and work out. Hopefully a walk through the neighborhood too. But if this is a sign of what's to come, it could be kind of depressing (gray and rainy all the time).

We miss our ability to see friends and just plain goof around like we do. We were very lucky to travel a lot the first 2 weeks since the weather was good. I do watch a few movies out of a Pakistan station, but none that I haven't seen already. They have 200 cable channels, but really only 2-3 using English. In retrospect I wish I would have brought more novels to read, and maybe a bunch of DVD's. I want to find a place that rents DVD's and see if they have any English ones...(probably not, with most being dubbed over in Thai.)

So all is well here. We still have a lot to learn in the school, classes to visit and things to see and do. Food continues to be amazing, our hosts incredible and our "adventure" continues!

Ron