Mahasarakham!!!

The moment I've been waiting for... going back to sarakham! I got to return to sarakham last weekend! After about 15 months I got to go back to the place I fell in love with, the people i fell in love with, the landscape I fell in love with. But it wasn't all grand and simple, especially getting there. My friend Angela went with me Thursday afternoon to the bus station so that we could buy me a ticket for Friday. She's fluent in speaking and can also read and write. Since I had no clue where the bus station was or how to even go about buying a ticket I was grateful that she volunteered to help me. So we went to the station were sent to about 3 different stalls. When we got to the "right" one we bought my ticket for 270 baht. after we bought it she took me down to the platform so we could see which gate i would need to go to. when I pulled out the ticket and handed it to her she realized that even tho she asked 5 times, "tomorrow, right?" they had given us a ticket for that day instead of the next day. So we had to go back and luckily they gave me my money back and after asking several more people we realized the only way to prebuy a bus ticket is to get a VIP bus which doesn't leave until 6:30 pm. and i wanted to get to sarakham before midnight. So we left after she made sure i knew where i needed to go to buy my ticket the next day.
So Friday I rode the skytrain to the last stop and successfully told the taxi driver where i needed to go and had a very broken conversation with him. It gave me a little confidence in my language. So after I got to the bus station I successfully got my ticket and sat on the hot bus for an hour before we left. I asked several people to make sure i was on the right bus. A few stops down the road (we made no less than 25 stops) a Thai girl got on and sat beside me. It turns out that she is an English teacher at a middle school in BKK, but is from Mahasarakham. So in broken thai and broken english we had a pretty good conversation and she was able to tell me where we were and when I needed to get off the bus.
Saturday I was able to meet one of my favorite students from last summer for lunch. She took me to KFC, which wouldn't have been my first choice, but we enjoyed it anyway. Her English has improved and she tried to help me some with my Thai. After that I met the girls that have been there this semester with HandsOn, and we went to the other side of the city to meet Scott and his family to go to Khon Kaen for Thanksgiving with other m's in the region. We had turkey, dressing, brocoli salad, rolls... the works. It was good and it was fun to hang out with new people.
Sunday the HandsOn girls led English church. There were 4 Thais there, one of which I met last summer and have kept up with on facebook here and there. So it was good to see her again. That afternoon I hung out with Elliot (my supervisor's 9 year old son). We watched the new alice in wonderland (just as weird as i thought it would be). Then it was time for me to head out. I left sarakham around 6:30 and arrived in BKK around 2am. That meant not getting to my apartment until 2:30 and not being able to get to sleep until 3am. Then getting up at 6:30 to go to school. Not fun! but it was totally worth it! Can't wait to be there for a longer time :)


the food table after the damage had been done


my table of full and thankful people