This morning I woke up and it was pouring outside. We have a big screenless window in our room that we usually keep open, so the rain sounded dangerously close to me. But I was safe and dry in my bed, and to make things better I had no where else to be. I loved that. I can’t remember the last time I had a rainy morning to stay in bed.
Later in the morning we had a team meeting, where we discussed our personal goals for the month. We talked about how we want to give genuine feedback about each other’s character – ways in which we’ve grown, and areas we still need to improve. Then we surprised Leslie with a birthday cake and balloons.
This afternoon I went to the mall with some of the girls to see a movie. Transportation is a bit tricky where we are – it costs way too much money for a tuk tuk or a taxi, and supposedly there is a cheap bus that goes to the mall, but we’ve yet to find it (I’m wondering if it’s a Harry Potter sort of thing where we need to run into a brick wall and then suddenly we’ll appear at a magical bus stop, you know?)
So we decided to hitchhike. I’ve attempted hitchhiking in both Romania and Israel, but it wasn’t until today in Thailand that someone actually stopped to pick us up. A truck pulled over almost as soon as I put my hand out (instead of a thumbs up we used their signal for “come here” – it looks similar to our motion of shooing someone away, but instead of flicking your fingers out, you pull them in. Get it?) We were taken straight to the mall and dropped off at the front doors – talk about traveling first class.
After the movie, dinner and a bit of shopping we were ready to go back home. Again we tried to motion cars to pull over for us, but it was getting dark and we figured they thought we were motioning for a taxi. So we walked over to the line of cars pulling out of the mall and asked if anyone was heading our way. Almost immediately we found someone, so we climbed into the trunk of their SUV. A man was driving, and what I assume to be his wife and 20s something daughter were in the vehicle with him. “I’ll turn on the air for you,” the daughter said. Like I said, talk about traveling first class.
They dropped us off on the main road near our residence, and when they discovered we had to walk a little ways the daughter handed us her torch (our equivalence of a flashlight). “And here’s my card if you need anything,” she said. Her name is Grong, and according to her card she’s in the insurance business.
