As you may have guessed from the title, I got the job at Maha Sarakham University. I will be teaching oral English to the beginning level university students. Does that make me a professor?

I will probably leave Ban Phe for the last time on Monday. (Cue nostalgic music) I've had loads of fun, made good friends, but it's time to move on any way. I don't want to be the person who stayed too long at the dance.
While I always kept busy, I still feel uneasy without a job.

On Friday, I spent 16 hours on the road getting home and I will turn around and reverse the process a scant 2 days later. 2 tuk tuks, 3 buses and one airplane to get me home. There was no taxi in Khon Kaen so I had to take a tuk tuk to the airport. Imagine diving up to, oh, say, Pittsburgh airport  in a 3 wheeled, garishly decorated motorcycle samlor, all dressed up, suitcase in hand. It's like something you'd see on Looney Tunes.

Thai Airways feeds you even though it's a 55 minute flight. I passed on the seaweed sandwich, but the jellied Flor de lei candy was nice, as was the fruit juice.

The traffic in Bangkok was so bad that it took the shuttle bus 2 hours to go from the airport to Ekamai bus station - it has taken me as little as 45 minutes in a taxi.

Today I just hung out with Ji and a young man from her class who has accepted a job in Ban Phe. We overstayed our welcome at the coffee shop, went home for a bit, then had Korean Barbecue for dinner. They put a big pot of hot coals on the table, you go to the smorgasbord and pick your raw meat (chicken feet and pig intestine included) and cook it over the coals. While most of it was good, the sanitation here is such that I really worried about carrying raw chicken around on scratched plastic plates that have never known hot water. I think I'll take a cipro just to be safe.

I'm trying to think of a way to buy books on Amazon - text books and the like. First of all, I don't have an address, so that could complicate
things. Plus I don't think Amazon will ship here.

Did you know that you can't buy mp3 songs over the Internet here? I really wanted to download that Beatles song, "There are places I remember.."  but when I went to the checkout on Amazon, it said we can only download to the US. I asked Ji about this and she said, "Why would you want to pay to download a song? This is Thailand, you can buy a copy of 200 songs on a CD for 100 Baht." ($3) Or any movie for $2.40, btw.