Song Thaew - New Room - Stuff

I discovered much to my anger today that the song thaews (red trucks that serve as taxis in Chiang Mai) have raised their fare by 50%. This does not bode well for my transportation costs.

I'm about 15% moved into my new room. I sleep here most nights. It is very nice to have ac, but as I am on the top floor, it is very hot and i worry a bit about electricity costs.
The internet isn't terribly fast, but it will suffice.

Lia and Lana are in Bangkok at the moment, and are supposed to be coming here any day now. Or so I'm told. Orginally, they told me they'd be here last Saturday, but I'm fairly certain its Tuesday at the moment.

I have a strong feeling that I'm not going to be able to study in Korea next semester as my 'advisor' is giving me a hard time about it. If it was up to me, I'd go and study intensive Korean for 1 semester and not worry about the credits. But sadly, the powers that be are more interested in me getting credits rather than me getting an actual education.

Its extremely frustrating for me to have to sit through classes where the teachers are picked at random to fill time slots and often have little prior knowledge of the subjects they get roped into teaching. In my environmental class, I usually study Thai environmental words as they come up in class. In the 12 or so hours of this class so far , nothing has come up that I didn't already know. I'd be surprised if I actually gain any knowledge from it. Its pretty boring, and so far there hasn't been any work other than reading or occasionally talking. I try to offer up a nice monologue each class where I attempt to point out that part of the reason the environment is in bad shape is that out of the handful of people that care on some level about it, just sit around and talk nonsense.

My next exciting example is Translation class. To my growing amusement, all exercises outside of our 25-year-old textbook are taken from the bible. The teacher seems nice enough and isn't aggressive about the religion, so I haven't had to challenge her yet, but it could happen if she crosses the imaginary line in my mind which shields me from all forms of religion. Again, this class is easy, but involves a bit more brainwork because it forces me to translate passages into Japanese and/or Thai. But I have this class on a long day and I'm always struggling to not pass out.

Rather than go on endlessly (as I surely could) about what's wrong with every class I've ever had, I just want to say that I wish I could weasel an education out of this degree program. But alas, as usual, luck is not on my side.