Chiang Mai

So the school year is over, and in the meantime I am living in Chiang Mai and will hopefully be teaching English for money. I actually have in interview in an hour and a half.

I got here on Thursday and spent the first day looking for work. I forget how humiliating the job walk can be. There you are, dressed in your best clothes wandering around and trying not to sweat very much. You find an TEFL place, and you walk and grinning like an idiot-- but not grinning TOO much because you want to look friendly but not desperate. Hand in your resume, the person looks you up and down with a nasty look and a fake smile and you get the feeling that you are applying for their job. They hand you an application like its a huge problems (your smiling pleasantly the entire time) and then you sit down outside (they never let you sit in the office, God forbid) and fill it out, although all that information is already in my resume. Then you turn the application in and they drop it in a drawer and give you a look like "Are you still here?" Note to secretaries and administrators: it would kill you to poke through the resume and ask a few pointless questions.

I got one interview on the spot and another interview a few days later. I got the first job but the are still working out the classes for next week, so I might have to go with this second job. Hopefully I will be teaching tomorrow.

Chiang Mai is terrifying. If Pai is Santa Cruz, and Mae Hong Son is Palo Also, then Chiang Mai is a mix between Seattle and LA. It's got a Seattle flavour because there are coffee houses everywhere, on every corner, screaming that they have mochas, espresso, etc. There is even a few Starbucks. I haven't gotten a frappichino yet, however, due to the fact that the cost of the drink is twice the amount that I pay per night at my guesthouse and also twice the amount of my average daily living expenses. It's about 200 baht, or about six dollars. It's funny how skewed your perception of money gets. I would never pay more then 150 baht (about 5 dollars) for a meal here, and in Seattle a comparable meal is around $20. Anyway, I have gone into Starbucks on more then one occasion just to sit and smell. It really does feel just like home (or smell like it anyway).

Yesterday I also found the mall. They have a movie theatre, a sushi place, Pizza Hut, KFC, Duncan Donuts, Hagan-daz, etc... Three floors. I just wandered around in a daze. They didn't even have stuff like this in Sanaa, Yemen, and quite frankly I was scared out of my skull. You could buy anything in the world and all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball somewhere. There was a fashion show and music was being blasted everywhere. I couldn't believe that I used to go to places like that on a regular basis and think nothing of it.

My room in the guesthouse is quite literally the size of Jake's place in the Blues Brothers, although I have my own bathroom. I also have my own freaks who live downstairs, including an older fellow who sits and smokes all day at the same place at a table. I have not seem him move, eat, drink, just smoke. It's very chilling to leave in the morning and see him there just to come back eight hours later and he's still there like a wax statue. I also talked to a guy last night who told me that he was Israeli. After my initial wave of distaste, I yelled at myself for being a racist and tried to talk to him with an open mind, as one being to another. As a reward I found myself being lectured five minutes later for living in Thailand for three months and not speaking the language. I finally turned away to talk to the French guy next to me after being given an impromptu vocabulary test on Thai words that he thought I should know. My stereotype of Israelis, alas, lives on.

I think that I will enjoy living here, it will be a nice vacation.