Waterfalls (?)

Last night I got my own bed (!). Pretty much it is just a thin foamy mattress on the floor. It's comfortable though, so I don't want to complain. Just it's when they told me I could have my own bed, I kind of imagined something a little different. I will post pictures once I take some of it. Last night my host parents also told me they were taking me to see a waterfall this afternoon. I thought that would be sweet, and I made plans to talk to my parents and Keith on the phone for a while this morning before going. When I got up this morning, however, my host dad told me that we were leaving right away. Honestly, I was kind of pissed, because I had been looking forward to talking to Keith all week, and I wanted to phone my family to wish Jessica a happy birthday. I was able to phone really quick, but I wasn't able to talk for as long as I would have liked to... Anyways, it was just my host parents and I who went to see the "falling water". But first my host dad had to go see "his people". I had no idea what that meant, but it turned out to mean me sitting in the car for 20 minutes while him and my host mom talked to some people who lived in this village. I think maybe he's going through some kind of politcal campaign right now, and trying to round of votes. I'm not really sure, but nobody really tells me anything about it. After that we drove for a while, and I fell asleep. When I woke up we were in a mountainous area, and apparently we were near our destination. First we went to this river type thing, that was super beautiful, although we didn't get out of the car to look at it at all. We just drove around and gandered at all the Thai people swimming, and I admired the jungle type scenery. We stopped for lunch at a roadside restaurant thingy and had... papaya salad! We also had sticky rice, and I've decided I prefer sticky rice to real rice. It's just funner because you have to eat it with your fingers, and roll it into a little ball before you pop it in your mouth. Next we were to go to the waterfall. On the way, we listened to this CD with a man singing about the area of Thailand we were in (I'm not sure what it was called), but it turns out that the man singing was actually my host dad, and I must admit, he is a very good singer. I had no idea he also had his own records on top of the politcalness, the riceness, and the cockness. So we got to where the waterfall was supposed to be, got out of the car, and walked down to the river thingy (that must have been below the waterfall). We sat on the rocks for a few minutes, and then my host dad told me that we couldn't actually go see the waterfall because he hurt his knee and couldn't walk to it, but we would come back another time with all of my host siblings and see it. It was kind of dissapointing. We went to see a dam, that was huuuuge. Apparently where all the water is built up, there used to be a city with a temple, but they had to move it when the dam was built (duh). Then we drove to the "hospital" where they "cure people" so my host dad could get his knee healed. It honestly just looked like a buddhist temple to me, with all these crazy chiropractors, and one giant bed that about 6 people layed on at once while 6 chiropractors prodded and poked them. It felt like I waited there forever, while both my host mom and dad got "healed." I found it kind of amusing though, because despite all the Buddhist decorations (the walls were even painted with more of those pictures depicting what happens when you die if you do bad things during your life) the pillows were covered in a Christmas print, and some of the tiles on the benches had Santa on them. Maybe they're partly Christian there? Who knows... Not too much has happened since we got back to my host families home, besides just eating dinner, and now I'm writing this. I think my host family is really starting to get annoyed that I haven't unpacked yet, esepcially now that my bed is in here, and I'm supposed to move all of my crap out of the way for it. Cherry just came in and offered to move my stuff for me, but I told her no. Erg I still have my Thai Drawing homework stuff to do before bed! I have a feeling the whole unpacking scenario isn't going to happen tonight...

NOTE: If you watch the video of me feeding the elephant, the cute little grunting/squeaking noises that you hear, that's the elephant! So cute. And also, the only host sibling I don't have a picture of yet is Klang, as he wasn't at Cherry's birthday dinner, which is where all the other pictures are from...