Future Bellevue teacher Mike Saltz will have some fascinating stories to tell his students at Bellevue's private Open Window School this fall -- if he ever gets out of Thailand.

Saltz, a fourth-grade teacher at the Thai-Chinese International School in Bangkok, has been in the middle of the unrest in Bangkok.

"We live in one of the conflict zones in Bangkok and we're camped out at a hotel outside the city while we wait for things to cool off," Saltz wrote in an e-mail we received Wednesday.

"Bombs actually went off at the local Tesco we always shop at and our teacher school bus (I was not on it) was attacked by Black Shirts (radical Red Shirts) on motorbikes yesterday. This has been the first and only time I've really been scared."

Since that first e-mail, Saltz said things have calmed down in his area of town, and he has returned to his apartment in the city. He and his family hope to be able to leave Thailand in June. He and his wife have a newborn, and because of the unrest, they have so far been unable to get her a birth certificate because the U.S. Embassy has been closed.

Wilder Dominick, the head of the private elementary school in south Bellevue, said Saltz will be teaching fourth grade at Open Window School this fall.