A CTR ring in Thai says "choose things good"

August 4, 2009
I learned what my CTR ring says this week - it says "Luag Sing Dii" - literally translated, it means "choose things good." I think that is quite awesome. Everyone is jealous of me and the one other Elder who have Thai CTR rings.
We learned some cool things about Bangkok and Thailand this week. Brother Sakhaa said that prime contacting time in Bangkok is 8:00 in the morning because of all the students from grade school up to university students, all go to school at the same time - and there are 8 MILLION of them - so they are everywhere. I am excited to see that - he says it is quite a sight. Sister Knudson said that we will nver get yelled at - the Thai people are just too nice. And, that all Thai missionaries know each other - it is like a family because there is only one mission that speaks Thai. She says we will know everyone from like five years in front of us and five years behind us.
I am getting better at reading Thai - I can now read a whole paragraph in a half an hour, which is a huge improvement from last week. Script is phonetic, but they have some pretty funny rules - silent letters and strange vowel combination's, and there are tons of cases where the letters will change their sound. Letters have a different sound, depending on whether they are in the middle or end of a word. So really, there is just a lot of memorizing to do - and then try to decipher what it says. I really love reading though. Thai is such a beautiful language - both in the way it looks and sounds. I am excited to be able to speak it eventually. We have also started working on teaching in Thai - I can teach the first principle of the first lesson (which happens to be one of the shortest). I love teaching in Thai because it forces you to simplify what you are teaching - All I can say is that God is our Heavenly Father and He loves us. But that is really all they need to hear.
We had a Spanish companionship come teach us a lesson in Spanish the other day. No offense Dad and Taylor, but learning Spanish is wussy. I understood everything they said and I haven't been here learning Spanish for six weeks. That is ok though. Spanish has a lot more practical application than Thai. Still though, know that I have it harder and am probably smarter than you. :)