Only One Week?!

So, I already started this post, but I accidentally x'ed out when I was switching between Facebook and this. Starting over, this past week was orientation for this year's inbounds in D3330. Nine exchange students took the train,

Hector, Isabela, Sasha, Eri, Crystle, Rotarian, Alica, Me, Vaula

 and we met the others at the resort in Trang. The train ride was great, overnight, though we didn't sleep. We were way too excited to meet everyone, we were talking until 3am then decided to TRY to sleep. So we were in these cabin things, two to a room. Crystle and I roomed together for the week. This is Jeffrey, our frog. He spent alot of time in our room. Honestly, I don't mind having a frog in the room, they eat spiders and other unpleasant bugs.

These adorable little cabins!

and Jeffrey

We spent so much time this week swimming, singing karaoke, and just talking. It was so great to talk to other people who are going through similar things. All of us are feeling homesick, all of us have been thrust into a culture that we've never had any experience with before. And we're such great friends now because of it. Hunter made the comment on the train on the way home: "We've known each other for a week, and yet we're sitting here talking like we've been friends for years."

Sasha (South Africa)

Eri (Japan)

Zak (America), Vaula (Finland)

Roberto and the pink poncho

Sally (America)

Crystle (America), Me :)

Chelsie

Haha Roberto

We walked out to this island that you can see from the entrance of the resort. When I say we walked out, I mean we literally didn't have to swim at all. The water is warm, and since it was overcast, the sun wasn't too strong. I don't have any pictures from that though, because I don't have a waterproof camera yet, but I do have pictures of the Island from the shore...

Even though I got stung by a jellyfish on the way back to the island, and the rocks were really sharp, and it was probably a really stupid idea... It was still a total blast. The whole week was. We went to this giant cavern by boat, and we went to these natural hot springs in the afternoon. Ok, that was on Thursday... the temple was Wednesday I think... I know it was before Thursday...

At the temple
Back row, left to right: Sasha (South Africa), Dorian (Canada),
Hector (Mexico), Zak (America), Alica (Mexico), Sam (America),
Hunter (America), Me
Front row, left to right: Roberto (Mexico), Sally (America), Isabela (Brazil),
Eri (Japan), Vaula (Finland), Crystle (America), Chelsie (America)

on our way to the cavern

bats

Dorian (Canada) and Sasha

Hector (Mexico), and Dorian

And last but not least. This was probably the scariest moment of the entire week. Well, at least one of them. I was startled by people a couple of times, but to wake up with this in the bathroom was super freaky. I'd been checking the toilet paper rolls in all the other bathrooms, but not in our room, then Crystle found this at like 7am... I finished off the week checking in every corner before I used the restroom... And apparently someone saw a spider that was even bigger than this one...

I've actually got one last photo. I took this at dinner at the resort. It was just such a beautiful sunset that I couldn't not include it. Only partly cloudy, and just after the rain...

Ok, so I had to upload both. Cheers