Hi All!

This is my first ever blog entry. This whole travel adventure is forcing me to become much more techno-literate, as there are so many modern tools to help me keep in touch. To All of You with whom I haven't been doing such a good job of staying in touch, I apologize, and I hope this blog will help. I can never keep track of who I've told what to, so this way I guess you'll all get the major news.

I originally planned to keep a kind of on-line, chronological journal, but since I've taken so long to get this up and running, and so much has happened, these first several entries may not exactly be in chronological order. It seems most fitting to start with news of the recent Coup D'Etat, since that's the bit that's made world-wide headlines.

First, I just have to say that the whole experience was so incredibly undramatic that it was a far cry from the experience that might be brought to mind by the words "Military over-throw of the government." It's really been more like a blip around here, though I do admit I enjoyed having an unexpected day-off from school, since I know I won't be getting any snow days this year. My understanding is that things kind of got going that Tuesday evening, and some folks heard about it before going to bed, but I didn't find out until I was on my way to the bus stop the next morning. Apparently they activated the phone tree at about 1 o'clock in the morning, with the fear that phone lines might be cut by morning. Unfortunately, several wrong-number middle-of-the-night crank phone calls had disrupted my sleep the night before, so when my phone woke me up yet again with a call from a number my phone didn't recognize, I grumbled about how nobody I know would be calling at this hour, turned the thing off, and went back to sleep. When I discovered the next morning that the number belonged to my administrator, I had to admit I'd essentially hung-up on her.

Anyway, was quite startled to hear the reason school was cancelled -- didn't really know what one does for a coup. How scared should I be? I decided this explained why my TV wasn't working (I'd blamed it on my cleaning lady). Fearing that they might disrupt internet access, too, the first thing I did when I got back to my apartment was to send out an email to all my contacts to let everyone know I was safe, and then spent the morning exploring BBC and CNN websites to see if I could learn anything about what was up. Not much. I did decide it was high time I finally got around to registering with the US Embassy, which they'd been recommending we do since we got here. Just in case.

Enjoyed a quiet day of hanging around home, catching up on email (my inbox was suddenly flooded -- it's amazing what a little thing like a coup will do for sparking correspondence), taking a nap, going for a swim, etc. The next day we were back in school as usual. When the phone tree was activated again to let folks know school would be in session, I learned that several of my colleagues had gone down for a closer look at the "action," and felt a little disappointed that I'd missed out. They said it sort of had a carnival atmosphere, like at home when families might bring their kids out to get close up looks at firetrucks at a streetfair. I'm going to see if I can get copies of some of their pictures. One advantage of being the school librarian (actually I've discovered many, but more about that later), is that I was able to lay claim to the Newspapers at the end of the day, so I'll have the headlines for my scrapbook -- great big print like you'd see in an old movie where some kid is yelling, "Extra! Extra! Read all about it!"

So, we were set for a three day weekend that week, and after school on Thursday, we headed for the beach as planned (That experience will get an entry of it's own -- delightful!). Heaven forbid the political unrest should disrupt our island getaway! On Sunday I set out after church in search of tanks, deciding it wouldn't really seem real until I could see some evidence of the events with my own eyes. A friend and I grabbed a taxi to head down to the part of town where the parlaiment house and government buildings are, and though the tanks were set too far back off the road, we did get plenty of photo ops -- even posed with a few soldiers. They were quite polite and friendly about it. The whole thing really was quite strange. Not just tourists were out snapping pictures -- local folks were posing, too. We saw one girl handing roses through some bars to a soldier, and the yellow ribbons tied on their guns were a symbol of loyalty to the King. I can only think it would have been quite different if the coup leaders were in opposition to the King. Thais are extremely respectful of their royal family.

For me as a Westerner, the biggest part of the whole experience was the realization that for the first time in my life I was living in a place where there was no such things as Freedom of the Press or Freedom of Speech. These basics have always been such a part of the fabric of my existance that I didn't really give them a second thought outside of History class. Suddenly they weren't there. Later in the day Wednesday, my TV started working again, but not the Western News channels. I could see some Thai news programs discussing events, but I knew that even if I could understand them, the sensored nature of being under Martial Law would mean that whatever they were saying would be one-sided propaganda (though, I admit, I would've liked to at least hear that -- it was very frustrating feeling so disconnected and unable to understand what was going on because of language issues). Even the next day, when BBC and CNN were back up an running, and covering the coup as one of their top stories, the report was suddenly interrupted when they started talking about the ousted Prime Minister. The screen started showing images of celebrities with the words "Programming with return shortly" running across the bottom of the screen. It was the first time I learned to appreciate our American Liberties in such a concrete way.