The Bulk of it All

As many of you know, I'm about as obsessive/compulsive as you can get without getting a diagnosis. Usually whatever I obsess about has some end in site. If it is an athletic obsession, it usually ends with me blowing out my knee or something equally dramatic. If it's fishing, the end of the season comes sooner or later. Seinfeld only went for 9 seasons and then that one died out, etc.

It is to my chagrin that my obsession with learning Thai has no such quick resolution. I've been enrolled in the university since I got here. 5 days a week, 3 hours a day. On top of that I'm seeing a Thai tutor for an hour before and 2 hours after every class. I then proceed to batter Pui with questions for another 3 or 4 hours. I'm speaking a little better, I can listen a lot better, and my reading/writing is going off. My vocab is probably getting close to 2000 words which is more than I thought I would ever know.
I'm still perplexed by all the special case rules for the reading/writing. I came across the word for 'culture' the other day: wat-tha-na-tham. However the word is spelled as such: watntrrm. After applying all the special rules of what do do with 2 r's, n's followed by t's in the middle of a sentence, etc., you end up 4 syllables where before there was 1!
Also, here is a lame video of me talking Thai with Pui so you have an idea how I sound.