back to work

So things are officially back to normal...except some of the streets are still lined with soldiers. Honestly, if this whole thing would have happened on a Saturday (and I didn't have anyone in Canada to tell me what was going on) I would have had no idea. In fact, my Thai teacher told me today that she went into work yesterday because she had no idea that anything was even going on! Poor woman bused all the way to school and had to turn right back around and go home! We are so far from downtown, there is nothing happening here. We decided to go downtown tonight because a guy at my school lives down there, and said that everything is perfectly safe. We were on the bus and as we neared downtown, sure enough, there were a bunch of soldiers lining the medians and one of the major bridges in the city. We were actually really wishing that we had our cameras out but, alas, we passed the soldiers without even a picture. As you can tell, it really isn't all that scary over here. Ilda said that there are a lot of soldiers out by her place, which is also far away from downtown, but also by the airport, so a slightly busier area than ours.

I got confronted by my grade four homework class today about whether I liked Thaksin (the ex-prime minister)or the king better. I really have no idea about Thai politics, but I do know that Thais LOVE their king so, obviously, I said the king, then they all smiled and said that was good. They even made me little cards that said, "Long Love the King" (not my spelling mistake...theirs), and "Tuk sin get out" (I think it's supposed to be Thaksin get out...they're in grade four)I asked them who they liked and they all looked shocked and said the king "of course", they were in grade four and they were going on and on about how Thaksin was corrupt and how he hated Thailand and was bad for Thais, etc, etc. They were pretty politically aware for grade fours, that's for sure...that, or brainwashed by their parents...probably a combination of both.

Anyway, everything is back to normal as far as we know, so everything is safe and, as far as we can tell right now, there is no need to worry!

To quote one teacher in the staffroom today, "this was the most boring coup ever! We only got one day off of school!"