Royal Thai Welcome

This morning we received an impressive welcome from the governor of the Chainat province. A van took all of us to the Chainat Provinvial Government Building, and we walked into a room set up as if it were hosting a UN delegation. We each had a microphone to introduce ourselves to the governor, in Thai of course. He gave a nice speech in broken English to welcome us to Chainat. Then after some photos, we were back at training. All in all pretty cool experience.

The other noteworthy event today was our afternoon bike ride. Earlier in the training I re-learned what I already knew quite well - that anything involving balance makes me look silly. I'm not the worst biker here, but definitely in the bottom 5. There are 60+ year old women volunteers who look like Tour de France riders compared to me, and I wish I were kidding.

That being said, today's bike ride was incredible. We were constantly surrounded by expansive, brilliantly green rice paddies. We also went on some back roads through the local villages. There's not much more fun than passing Thai locals, some saying "Hello" in English, and seeing their surprise and laughter when we greet them with "Sa-wat-dii khrap". At one point on the ride, we went down a dirt road where some cows were being herded. As we rode past them they started running along with us, and kept up for a good 30 seconds or so. It was one of those gratifying moments when you realize there aren't many places you could ever get an experience like this - on a bike surrounded by rice paddies with cows galloping by a few feet away. After all that, we rode a ferry back across the river to our hotel.

Tomorrow we find out our assigned villages for the next 10 weeks, and move in with our host families. It's a good thing too - a squat toilet may remind me I'm actually in the Peace Corps and not on vacation. Should be fun.