LAZY WEEKEND

We really have spent most of this weekend at home.  Thursday night saw the usual gathering of the TEFL students as we first met in Patong at Funky's and later moved to a different bar on Nanai Road (the name escapes me at the moment).  We decided we didn't want to give Funky's any more of our money (it had become somewhat of a regular hangout for several in our group) because the owner gave Mark a real hassle the other night.  The new place was nice, although rather small with only one pool table; an added bonus was a constant supply of free (but cold) pizza.

Tim and I slept in a bit Friday morning but we did ride over to Patong just before noon in order to open my bank account.  We followed that up with a nice lunch at Mr. Tu's across from the school (another regular hangout now).  It was a nice, if rather overcast day, but it began to rain soon after we returned home.

It rained much of the night Friday and into Saturday which delayed our plans for a shopping expedition to Central Festival.  We did get over there in the late afternoon.  My main goal was to buy a decent dictionary that I could use in my classes.  B2S on the top floor of Central has a HUGE selection of dictionaries and I spent a good hour trying to choose the "perfect" tome (I decided on the "International Students Edition" of the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary).  I also came away with a copy of Swan and Walter's How English Works (one of the better grammar texts I've seen) as well as McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions (Bob, my TEFL instructor, has suggested doing some lessons on American slang).  We even ran into "Vegas" Gary and his girlfriend at the mall.

Much of yesterday evening was spent cleaning the kitchen and the spare bedroom (AKA, Tim's storeroom).  Her cousin was due to arrive in the evening and we wanted to spruce it up for his stay.  In the end, he didn't arrive until 5:30 this morning (the bus from Bangkok was significantly delayed).  He decided he wanted to move to Phuket and find work in a beauty salon; he's broke so (as family does) we're putting him (and buying him food, medicine, and a motorbike rental so far) until he finds a job and another place to live.  I've stressed to Tim that this charity has a time limit of a week at most.

Anyway, her cousin (I think his name is An) got here with a bad fever so he's slept much of the day.  Tim took a long nap after picking him up at the bus station and I've been trying to catch up on my studying and reading.  At least I feel like I've accomplished a lot even though we haven't been out of the house much the past couple of days.  Not that driving around would be easy to do — the sky's looking like rain again...