khaw cay kha

Khaw cay kha (pronounced cow jai ka) means I understand. Language so far has been a whole lot better than I expected. I hope that doesn't reflect my faith in my Father and in myself. I am attending a school and have 6 other people in my class. 2 are from california, one from Britain, one from Australia, one from India, and one from Myanmar. We have quite an eclectic group widely ranging in age, seasons of life, beliefs, and reasons for being in BKK. My teacher is, of course, Thai and doesn't speak much English. The school's philosophy of learning Thai is to be completely immersed in it. The dean (for lack of a better term) of the school said that when she studied English in the US that they taught her English in English... so they teach Thai in Thai.
So far we have learned all the consonant sounds, vowel sounds, and what the tones should sound like. saying maa over and over and over at different inflections is a whole lot harder than it might seem. The first 3 days that was all that we did. Thursday we finally started to learn some phrases... Hello, my name is, what is your name? thank you, no problem. All stuff that I had learned last summer, but we went around and around repeating the same dialogue for what felt like hours. So hopefully doing that helped w/ my tones as well as my confidence. Yesterday we learned the basic colors, some school utensils, and to ask what his/her/their name is and how to respond if we don't know. Again, most of this I had learned last summer, but practicing in the dialogue definitely helps.
So all in all, language is good. I have been able to get to know other people in the higher level classes and have eaten lunch with them several days, which also helps by being exposed to hearing it. I welcome the being bored in class because I know that soon it will get much more difficult. God is definitely going to have to help my tongue move the way it needs to and help me to hear. One of the hardest things for me so hard is distinguishing (when hearing) and producing words beginning with a P or B. Who would have thought that would be hard... yeah, it is. trust me. the Ph is the English P pronunciation. the P in thai sounds like a pb or is supposed to.... whatever that means! haha.
The picture is part of the Thai alphabet... thankfully I'm only learning to speak! It's strange to be illiterate, though.
Saa wat dii kha