Settling in

We’ve been in Chiang Mai almost two weeks now, and it’s really starting to feel like home.  It’s always the little things that you start doing after a while that make you realize that even in places that can feel so different from one another, the fundamentals stay the same.  We went grocery shopping yesterday, and bought pretty much the same stuff we’d buy at home (cooking it should be another adventure, since all I have at my disposal is an electric hot plate and some as of yet unexplored pots and pans under the sink).  I’m working my way through the 4th Game of Thrones book, which is pretty awesome so far.  We still have to do laundry (with the exception that we don’t actually do it ourselves, the laundry lady does it for us.  I LOVE it!!!)

Yesterday we made our second big push into job hunting, and are waiting to hear back.  I think our best shot is at CMU, the university down the street from us.  We applied at the humanities department and at the language institute, and they both seemed pretty receptive, so hopefully one turns into something.  I’m still anxiously awaiting word back from an NGO job I applied for, and we have meetings next week with a few people around town who could hook us into the aid community here, which is what we’d really rather be doing anyway.

Aside from all that, the latest development is really our bicycles.  We got back into riding in DC, and then were getting around Pasadena a bit by bike while we were home, and it seemed like a good transportation option here too.  It is both very relaxing and terrifying at the same time, since there’s really no crosswalks and every time you have to turn across the road you take your life in your own hands.  At least getting used to driving on the wrong side of the road has been easy enough, although it still throws me off sometimes to turn right and have to cross traffic.  The only real difficulty is getting across the moat, which is confusing to begin with and worse when you need to get over 8 lanes.  Since there are so many scooters here, the cars are used to looking for things that aren’t other cars (unlike in the states, where it sometimes seemed like drivers were purposefully ignorant of my presence or tried to drive me off the road).  One day I’ll remember to take video.