Arrival in Bangkok

Our flights were pretty smooth, on time, uneventful, and we had no problem making connections.  After 2 days of travel, we're ready to get things started tomorrow morning.  It's 2:00 a.m. right now, so this'll be pretty brief because there's not much else to report, it's really late, we're exhausted, but with nervous excitement about what's in store for us tomorrow.

Here are the kids lounging in the St. Louis airport, apparently not too concerned about the marathon journey in front of us.

We were on a small American Airlines airplane (Embraer 175) from STL to DFW.

We flew from DFW (Dallas) to Los Angeles and got the LA Renaissance Airport Hotel shuttle to bring us to the hotel.  We only got around 5-6 hours of sleep so we could leave the hotel at 6:30.  Although our flight departure time in LA was 11:00, we played it safe to allow plenty of time in case of unforeseen problems. 

The 15.5 hour flight from LA to Hong Kong was fine, although brutally long.  We had a little turbulence early, but not much.  We arrived in Hong Kong right on time.  Here the kids are milling around the gate area waiting for our flight to Bangkok with a 1.5 hour layover.

The final leg of our journey and everyone's still in great spirits.  This bodes well for a pervasive "mai pen rai" attitude among this year's group.  That means "whatever" in English and is the state of mind we strive for whenever we encounter unexpected difficulties.

WE'RE HERE !

This is Ajarn Akekawat, my former Ph.D. student and thus a Mizzou alumnus.  Along with his sister and his wife, he organizes the logistics for the northern part of our program.