kankles & ngoh.

we have just had our first (almost) full day! let me tell you, the past 78 hours have been quite the adventure.

we arrived at the birmingham airport at 5:30am tuesday morning only to find our first flight had mechanical difficulties and was delayed! what a great way to start our trek across the world! but, luckily they fixed it quickly and we were on our way! then it was to charlotte for an hour. then new york for 7 hours in which we prepared for the doozie. 21 hour flight from new york to singapore. from there we had another 7 hour layover in bangkok and then we finally arrived in khon kaen around 7:45pm

the 21 hour flight was crazy. there was one point where we hit some pretty bad turbulence and my friend Shelly who has never flown before said, man i really love roller coasters! because, thats what it felt like... the stomach-in-throat kind of feeling. we then looked down only to see that our ankles had gone missing and that our feet were just connected to our calves. that was a comical realization as well. and our whole team has had kankles since...

(Courtney on the L and mine of the R)

all of it was well worth it though. when we got off our final flight, most of CO-Thailand was waiting in the airport with us with a huge "Welcome to Khon Kaen" sign and LOTS of smiling faces. it really did make me totally forget about my exhaustion and smell and just so thrilled to finally be there!

the thais are so welcoming and so kind. they have had so much patience with us and the language barrier. it has been SO funny trying to learn this language too... its tonal and being southern, that just makes it funny. so far most of us have learned the basics: hello/goodbye, hot, thank you, beautiful, and how to appropriately greet people. its all so fascinating.

my favorite thing so far is the food. oh my gosh that food is so good. all the fruit is so incredibly fresh and colorful, the stir fry and meet have so much flavor too. although it was strange eating sticky rice and pork on a stick for breakfast, it was SO good. we also had this fruit that taste as good as it looks. its called, ngoh (เงาะ).

and lunch was even better! their "smoothies" here are to die for. i got a watermelon one that was insanely good. tonight for dinner we are going with some students to the Night Market, so I am so excited to see what we will get there!

there is so much more i would love to ramble about but im trying to keep this short and to the point! this is just a 'how we are doing' type post. Monday is when we start going on campus and really spending time with the students. our team is so much fun and the people here are awesome so i really cannot wait to see what all the Lord has in store!

abc.