Expanding my World......

This is the flag of Thailand. The center stripe of blue used to be red but was changed in 1917 as a show of support for the Allies in World War I. I am now volunteering as an "English conversation partner" for two students studying at the English Language Institute in Knoxville. Benjarat is from Thailand and Song is from South Korea. I haven't met Song yet (he was a no-show) but "Ben," as she told me I could call her, is a pretty Thai girl with a wonderful smile. She has been in the States for about a year but needs much improvement with her English in order to increase her TOEFL scores and be admitted as a student at UT. We're meeting at Panera but I may then scoot her to Starbucks across the street because I have $15 in gift card money there and, as usual, I am flat broke. I have taught myself the usual greeting one makes to another in Thai (sa wat dee, with the "dee" being drawn out in a mid-tone). Thai has 5 tones! So it is possible that one word has five different meanings depending on how you use the "tones." I'm hoping my obvious butchering of this greeting upon seeing Ben tonight will put her more at ease and we can jump in to some English conversation about her family.
Now that I'm educating myself more about Thailand, I can't get the song "One Night in Bangkok" out of my head! Unfortunately, it's not the only song of the '80's that's stuck in there.
Update: I met with both Ben and Song last night. We had an hour of conversation and I learned a lot about them. Ben is from Bangkok and Song is from Seoul. Ben is a female and Song is a male. :) I gave them a lift to the library after our session in my "big American car." ha ha I look forward to meeting them again next week. We worked on the "ch" sound and the "th" sound, both of which are difficult to master when you're not a native speaker of English so you can only imagine how difficult it is to make the "lth" sound, such as in the word "health." :)