Chaiyaphum

So, as many of you may have guessed, I went with Natalie to the province of Chaiyaphum for the long weekend. However, things all began on Wednesday...


WEDNESDAY
I had to get up super early so I could have my makeup and hair all done fancy for the parade thing. It kind of sucked, because I was really tired, and whenever I would close my eyes so the lady could do my eye makeup, I would begin to fall asleep. I really wanted to put a picture of myself all Thai-ed up, but as explained before... Anyways, there was one other girl (I'm honestly not sure who she was) who was on the float with me. She was actually Thai, so the float looked half normal. So we pretty much just sat there on the float that was all decorated with a big candle and lots of flowers, and smiled. Whenever I would stop smiling, everyone around would tell me to "smi!" They would also get after me for not sitting up straight and things like that. It was pretty annoying, because it's not like I asked to be on the float or that they even asked me if I wanted to. They just told me I was doing it... I tried to smile and look happy, but I was annoyed and hot and got a sunburn :( I was kind of amused though, because every time we would go over a little hill or bump, they would all freak out and try to make sure I didn't fall over. It was nothing at all compared to being on the icy Grad float though.. We floated from the school to Carrefour (a Walmart type department store) and sat in the parking lot for about half an hour, before we floated back by the school then all around the neighborhood, ending up at the Buddhist temple right across from the school. When we arrived there, we all took a candle and lit it, then held it between our hands, and walked around the temple three times while thinking of what we want best in life... Then we put the candles in this big candle holder thing.
Patch met up with me at the temple (she's Muslim, so she didn't actually take part in any of the ceremony) and she was pretty much my personal photographer, because all the way from the temple back to the school, people kept on stopping me and wanting to take pictures with me. It was kind of fun at first, but then a little annoying because it took about 10 times longer just to get back to the school. Even when we finally arrived at the Thai dance room, where I was supposed to get changed, someone phoned over and said I had to go to the English department because the teachers there wanted pictures.
When I finally got out of my Thai dress, Pylynn, Patch and I went out for lunch at Carrefour. I had papaya salad for lunch for the second time in a row.
In the afternoon, Natalie and Suzy took me to another school for my AFS meeting. It went alright, but tomorrow I have to go talk to my AFS advisor and tell her either I need my own bed, or I need a new family. I have noticed however, that I think it is almost Thai culture for people to share a bed in this manner, because even when I was staying with Natalie, her and I shared a bed just the same as Cherry and I do, with a pillow dividing the center... However, it is against AFS rules for an exchange student to share a bed sooo...
After the meeting, Pylynn drove me home from the school, where I quickly had to pack my things for going to Chaiyaphum with Natalie. We started our journey by van, then switched buses a few times before we could get to the bus station to leave Bangkok. Since it was a long weekend, everyone was trying to leave Bangkok, and the traffic was craaaazy. It took us over 3 hours just to get to the bus station. Pretty much the second I got on the bus, I fell asleep.

THURSDAY
I woke up quite early in the morning, in order to transfer from the bus to a bed at Natalie's house. At the last minute, Jasmine decided she was going to come to Natalie's hometown for a day before she went to go to hers... so she came too. Natalie lives with her mom and her little cousin Parah (like Sarah but with a P) who is 2. She was apparently born with water on her brain, so even though she is 2 she can't walk yet. And she is cross-eyed. But she is pretty much the cutest and sweetest little kid I've ever met. Even by Friday she already liked me so much she cried when I went to go get ready for bed... Anyways, in the morning on Thursday we went to go watch the parade that was happening in Natalie's hometown. It was pretty much the same at the one I took part in the day before. People in Thai outfits riding on floats with big candles. Except there were LadyBoys in this parade too. It was my first time seeing any in Thailand! I know it's a silly thing to be excited about, but I found it kind of exciting... We missed most of the parade though, and only got to watch the last little bit of it. The rest of the afternoon we spend just running errands around town. We went out for lunch and had papaya salad again. Third time in a row.
Around supper time we went to a neighboring village where Natalie's Gramma and a million other relatives of her's live. While we were there she took me to see a couple of ladies making Thai cotton. They were making blanket type things with elephant patterns. They told us that they can make about 1 to 2 meters a day, and that a finished 2 meter piece sells for 150 baht. Thats 5 dollars. 5 dollars a day. We had supper in the shack that Natalie's Gramma lives in. And when I say a shack, I mean it. She lives in a barn. The floor is just dirt. But I can't complain, because her family was all very nice, and they made me feel even more at home in the couple days that I was with them, than my host family has in the two weeks that I've been here with them. After supper, we went to the Buddhist temple nearby. We sat in the temple while a monk chanted stuff in a different language. I felt so out of a place, I must admit. All the people sitting in front of me kept on turning around and staring at me. Or they were staring at Parah, which wouldn't have been very nice either... After all the chanting and what not, we each did the candle lighting thing again, and walked around the temple three times.

FRIDAY
Friday we spent doing alot more touristy type things. In the morning, we went with Natalie's aunt and cousins to a nearby spring thingy. I don't know how else to describe it other than it is just a place where water comes up from the ground and then flows out into a creek. It was in the jungle though, and was so beautiful. There were tons of Thai people there, all swimming fully clothed. We had lunch there (papaya salad number four), and Jasmine and I wandered around (she'd never been there before either) and took pictures. We then took a drive out to a damn (I forget what it's called) that's in the middle of the jungle with mountains. Natalie said if we were to stay longer, we could have spent a day climbing one of the mountains. Deffinately gives me a reason to go back I guess! I kept hoping the whole time we would run into an elephant, because there were signs everywhere saying to look out for them... but sadly, no elephants. :(
In the afternoon, we took Jasmine back to the bus station for her to go to her hometown. In the evening, we went back to Natalie's Gramma's for dinner. Natalie's mom was so sweet though, I think she knew I was kind of getting sick of Thai food and papaya salad, so she went and bought me a stake with coleslow before we went to the Gramma's. It was very nice of her. I met more of Natalie's family, and we spent the evening looking at the pictures on my camera that I had taken throughout the day.

SATURDAY
Saturday morning Natalie and I went to the bus stop and waited. We waited for a loong time because the bus was late. However, when we finally did get on the bus, the ride went by very quickly, and next thing I knew we were in Bangkok. Cherry phoned us while we were on the way and said my host family was going to the beach that night and they would wait until I got back to Bangkok so I could go with. Somewhere along the line though things got misunderstood, because I was under the impression we were going to the beach for the night. So when I got back to my host families house, I re-packed all my things to get ready for another night away. When I went downstairs to leave though, they all told me that we were just going out for supper at the beach. It seemed a little silly to me to drive for about and hour and half just for supper, but I wasn't going to complain, I would get to see the ocean :) I think there were 11 of us who went out for supper. My host dad ordered himself a bottle of wine, and the waitress brought it with a bottle opener thing (the kind you screw down into the cork then pull out). She didn't open it though, and nobody in my host family could figure out how to do it, so finally I just did it myself. Now they all think I'm an alcoholic because I know how to open a bottle of wine. Dinner for 11 people came to only 50 dollars. This is one thing I love about Thailand, the cheapness. Korn rented the movie 10000 BC for us to watch on the way to the beach, as my host families truck has a DVD player thingy in it. Even though it is one of the cheesiest movies I've watched, I really enjoyed it because of all the English :)

SUNDAY
Today I had big plans of going to hang out with Amanda and Juan, seeing as I didn't want to see any cockfighting. However, these plans fell through, and I instead spent the day with my host brothers. It wasn't so bad. In the morning I tought P'Kla, P'Klang, and Korn how to play Cheat and Spoons. They taught me how to play some game that was kind of like Old Maid. It was actually really fun. Even though at first I thought it wouldn't even be worth it because explaining Cheat to people who don't really speak English was a hurdle in itself. Although, I must admit I felt quite pleased at the end of it all when we were all having fun playing a game which I had taught them. In the afternoon, P'Kla, P'Klang, P'Beam, and I went to The Mall (yes there is a mall here which is just called The Mall) because Klang needed to buy a laptop. It was alright because I got to visit with Beam, and she invited me to go both white water rafting with her sometime in the next couple of months, and to go to the south of Thailand with her in March where we will go snorkeling. If I am still here in March, I will deffinately go.