Translating

I mentioned a few entries ago that I'm going on a school trip with some of the students. This is going to be a really neat trip and should be a blast. Last week, when I found out I was going, I was given a schedule and guidebook for the trip which is absolutely wonderful, except that it's all in Thai. So, being the studious and proactive person that I am, I have taken it upon myself to translate it! Now, before any of you start thinking that I'm fluent, let me tell you that I am not. My writing and reading abilities are not anywhere close to fluent, but I've been working on them for a while. I've tried to translate children's books and other things for a while, but haven't really gotten into it. I decided to to this and really got into it and spent about 7 hours this past week translating it. I've finished about a page of it (and there are many more pages to go), but I've really enjoyed it. I'm learning a lot of Thai and sentence structure and so on and plus I now have a schedule in English. The guidebook also has information about the different places that we will go to visit, so I'll be able to learn more about those places as well. But, it's surprisingly fun for me translate. The first night I stayed up until midnight translating because I was so excited that I was actually reading Thai. Anyway, it's just one of those silly little things that I got excited about and felt the need to publish on the Internet for all to see. Oh, it's also something that I can do instead of studying for the GRE and still be productive and feel like I'm doing something worthwhile...so maybe that's the trick.

RM

And a little postscript. It's raining here. It hasn't rained since October and this means that the seasons are changing. It's no longer cool and wonderful weather and it's starting to get hot. It's in the 35-38 degree Celsius range this week (which is is the 90's Fahrenheit). The air-con has been off since about November as well and it's been on in the afternoon for a while but today marked the first day that we turned it on in the morning. I can't imagine what it'll be like in April when it is at the hottest.