Friday January 29

Since there was no school today ( atudy day for the students), Pen's daughter Nit had promised to take me to work with her. she worked as a muci teacher, teaching piano lessons. We were to leave at 10 she told me the night before. I woke up early to make breakfast with Pen. She was stoked on making pancakes with me and had gotten a mix special. We ate them drizzled with fresh honey her father had made from the bees he kept on his farm. A man from korea but now living in chiang mai came over to talk to pen. he was teaching a seminar on family values and christianity. The conversation quickly turned to only Thai so I brought my book outside. Nit came out around 11 to tell me she was sick and wasn't goign to work. sirirat came to pick me up shortly after that and brought me back to her house for lunch. Sirirat had to rest in the afternoon. She was exhuasted and had been sleeping at the hospital all week. Her neice Gam had been in the hospital with a stomach bug and was now fine. I found the internet cafe and caught up a bit on emails i hadn't been able to read all week. At 4 I went and met the kids from the orphanage as they got out fo school. They ran up to me and hugged me excitedly. I had missed them. They walked back to sirirat's with me and hung out for a bit. Sirirat gave me a bunch of projects to start working on. Designing a card for the orpahage, helping make some posters with the kids for presentations, etc. I was happy to have a job and got right to it. She showed me some articles on child sex trafficking she had written as part of her dissertation on her computer and I was fascinated. I didn't realize that Thailand was the sex traficking capital of the world. Some of the kids from the orphanage had been involved. I showed her my art website and she began introducing me to people as as famous artist. I laughed. At dinner I finally figured out who sirirat's dad reminds me of (it had been bothering me since I got to thailand.) He looked exactly liek the actor from the last king of scottland. Except his eyes were a little more slanty. And when he ate and his lips stuck out, he looked like sebastian from the little mermaid.