Rats and Physicals

Today we met everyone in the language department and were also introduced to the rest of the teachers at the school. There were tons of Thai names that I cannot at all remember, some Chinese names, and Ann which I do remember. They were all very nice. My favorite part occurred when there was some commotion in the language department before the meeting and I was just watching, listening to a language I could not understand when a younger teacher turns to me and laughs and says, "There is a huge rat problem!" And I thought to myself I'm not sure I'd find discovering this information as humorous as them, especially if the rats had apparently infested my top drawer in my desk. I later found out a mouse had chewed through my coordinator's Masters diploma.
At the meeting we had to go to the podium and introduce ourselves via microphone and golly my voice sounds funny, especially that loud. So I introduced myself and laughed half way through, but the Thai homies loved it. They gave me a ceramic mug which was pretty dang cool. For hot beverages I had been using an old plastic iced coffee cup.
Later in the day we went to a clinic because foreign teachers must get a physical in order to work in the country. While we were there my coordinator said, "Leah, you know the doctor is very smart!" and then started laughing. At first I thought she was trying to make a joke that he was incompetent and laughed because she was laughing. Then she said something about a new boyfriend and I realized she was trying to hook me up with said random doctor. Classic. The physical included: being weighed, blood pressure being taken, a doctor asking if I was sick, a doctor asking if I had any symptoms, a doctor asking if I had a cough, a doctor listening to me take two deep breaths, a doctors having me hold my arms out and lightly squeezing each forearm as well as the same with each calf. Then we went to another room to have our blood drawn by a nurse who was gloveless. They test for syphilis and that only.
I'm terribly sorry I haven't any photos to further tell the story of the day.