Chaipat Hotel Khon Kaen

... the birthday party for Ryan;s Girlfriend, Nok. Tao, Sunantha's husband, who is not only handsome, but is an excellent cook made a beef soup with potatoes and pineapple. It was fantastic! He also BBQ'd two fresh Turkey's (head and neck included).

Many of my new Thai family came for dinner and drink. Uncle Gob (Sunantha's brother-in-law) seems to be very smitten with me (let's face it, as long as they are younger a still ...

... day, Fei-Li hopes to marry and have a child. Because of the 1-child policy in China, it's ideal for the child to be a boy. O launched into a hilarious explanation (with cryptic hand gestures) regarding how one can ensure they conceive a boy. A good deal of her explanation had a solid scientific underpinning which is part of why it ended up being so hilarious when she added hand-gestures to explain to Fei-Li. And these weren't sexual hand-gestures at all - as a matter of ...

... and then asking me to speak in greater detail about it. To say I was unprepared for this is a total understatement. But since I've been working on the proposal for the past 5 weeks, I know the project pretty well so I felt comfortable speaking about it. The President of KKU then said that yesterday there was a high-level budget meeting and apparently national priorities are being set for the country's designated research universities (of which KKU is now one.) It was ...

... Ever. I have looked in at least 6 stores and have seen a grand total of exactly 2 teeny tiny little boxes of OB tampons. I have asked a few people about this and the general consensus seems to be that Thai women are a pad-wearing populace. I share this with you only because it's puzzling to me. And also to alert you in case you ever travel to Thailand.

After visiting the drug store, I headed into the main section of Fairy Plaza. Small stores were grouped around the ...

... article on social mobilization efforts to reduce adolescent smoking in rural Thailand. She brought her revised draft on a thumb drive and when I opened up the file, I was so touched to see that she had added me to the acknowledgements section. Once again, the kindness of the Thai people never ceases to amaze me.

When I went to teach my 6-hour workshop on developing online courses and programs, I found a very tiny class in attendance - one person (Dr. Siriporn). She ...

... In this role play, the partner and patient both insisted on staying together in the room). Taking the sexual history was interesting - I ended up having to explain to the role-playing couple why lesbians need to practice safer-sex if they're not monogamous. I'm so grateful that Pak and her colleague are both also sexuality educators - it made the entire role play go really smoothly and the students ended up getting a chance to see a sexual history being taken correctly.
Khon Kaen, Khon Kaen, Thailand acquaviva

I love Thailand more and more each day, especially because the language issues keep me constantly on my toes and I'm always learning something new.

This morning I went with O and Fei-Li to the Immigration Office so that Fei-Li could get a multiple-entry visa to Thailand so that she could go with us to Lao. We rode in one of the Faculty of Nursing official ambulances. (I love riding in the ambulances because they aren't ambulances inside at all - they're like regular ...

It's taken a bit of time but I think (think) I've finally made some Thai friends. Not easy to do up here. I had so many contacts in Phanat Nikhom, I thought I was losing my touch.

Firstly, I spoke with this amazing high school student on the songtaew a week or so ago. He spent a year in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and delights in practicing his English. He runs over to me whenever he sees me and seemed ...

... the language barrier. But by the end of the session, the student had successfully revised her abstract and the faculty member was able to demonstrate skill in structuring future abstracts and research papers.

My afternoon presentation for the W.H.O. training program was so NOT what I had expected. This is both a fabulous thing and a bad thing. I headed over to the classroom around 12:45 for my 1pm lecture and ran into the physicians from India ...

... at O's family's house this weekend, I took O and Nan out to dinner tonight to thank them for all the hospitality they've shown me and continue to show me. We hopped on their motorbikes and headed downtown to the Sofitel/Pullman Raja Orchid hotel. The food was awesome - I ate cheese tortellini and garlic bread - and we had a great time helping Nan practice her English. She works for the court here and is in a program studying to be a judge, so she needs to ...