mai pen rye

If you read any blog written by expats in Thailand, one of the first things you'll stumble upon are remarks about Thai's relaxed approach towards life. They're known as the land of smiles, and they do things on their own time table. Thais have an expression for this thought process: 'mai pen rye' or ไม่ เป็น ไร. This phrase has a multitude of translations ranging from hakuna matata, it's all good, don't worry about it and whatever will be, will be.
Before even landing in Thailand it appears that I've gotten my first glimpse of this relaxed lifestyle. After signing our contracts in April we were given our orientation dates and Emily and I both bought one way tickets to Thailand. That was five months ago, and me being the planner that I am came up with a rather detailed itinerary of some travels along the way including a concert in London and some adventure tours around Croatia. A few days ago, less than two weeks before our departure, we got an email saying that they've changed the dates of our orientation, and now we don't need to be in Bangkok until a week after we were originally told. Now obviously it's a lot better that they pushed the orientation a week further away as opposed to a week closer, but I was still blown away that such a drastic change could happen so close to our departure.
We talked it over for a few minutes but came to the obvious conclusion that the best thing to do with this extra week is to extend our trip to Croatia. While planning that stay we realized that there are so many things to do in Croatia and we wouldn't have time for it all, but now that we have seven more days we'll be able to pack in quite a few more adventures into our stay. There's a definite silver lining to this orientation change, but it also has ensued some panic for me. During our week at orientation we'll be staying with about 20 other teachers to go over teaching tips along with cultural lessons, and it's also where we will be assigned our teaching assignments and learn where we will be living for the next five months. We were originally scheduled a week of orientation in Bangkok, followed by a full week to move to our new city and get acclimated and then school would start the next week. However, now we only have a week in Bangkok for orientation with just the weekend to find/move to a new apartment in our new city, with school starting that Monday. I was really looking forward to having a full week and weekend to get to know my new city and get unpacked and settled into life there. But hey, mai pen rye, right?