Knitty Knit

I spent most of today talking on the phone with my family, catching up with other people and friends via facebook and MSN, and knitting. I now have 6 rows of my Afghan completed, but had to stop because my hands started getting all cramped up. It was nice just to have a relaxing day though. Tomorrow I will get a chance to relax as well, but hopefully I will also somehow manage to clean up my room a bit (while Rachel was here I managed to create quite a huge pile of random things beside my bed). On Wendesday morning I have to be in Ayutthaya to start my massage course at 9 in the a.m. I think Elisabeth, Annika, and I will all take a bus together there. Apparently buses leave from some station in Bangkok every hour, so we're thinking maybe we'll catch the one at 7.. which means Wednesday is going to be a very very early morning.

p.s. pictures from Rachel's stay here can be found at: http://community.webshots.com/album/567495749eSHUre

Siam Paragon Part Song

Yesterday Rachel and I decided to venture to Siam Paragon. And when I say we ventured, I mean WE ventured. We got there all by ourselves, first by taking a van to The Mall, then a taxi to the JJ Market BTS (Skytrain) Station (well we got a little help from P'Kla there, because we couldn't understand the taxi driver so we just phoned Kla and he explained to the driver where we needed to go), then the BTS to Siam. Yay us. I actually felt quite proud of us for making it all the way there and back on our own, and I'm also feeling quite pleased with the fact that my host family even let us go there and back on our own. Hopefully that means that in the next little while I will start experiencing a bit more and more freedom of my own. At Siam Paragon, we ate Big Macs at MacDonalds, and ice cream at Swensens. We just looked around at all the fancy shops including Gucci, and then ended up spending the rest of the time in a bookstore that had quite a good English book selection, even better than the selection at The Mall. So I ended up buying myself 3 books: Eat Pray Love, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and The Five People You Meet in Heaven (Rachel's recommendation). I also bought a couple gifts for a certain person for Christmas which means I am now officially done my Christmas shopping! Now I just have to wrap it all up and somehow ship it to Canada, which probably won't all happen until after my massage course. When we got back to Nongchok last night, my host dad picked us up to drive us home, but on the way we stopped at a random Catholic Church for him to, "make a donation" because his mother was Catholic apparently. Apparently she is also burried in the cemetary across the road. We didn't stay long. Rachel and I both agreed it just seemed weird hearing people saying Christian prayers in Thai. I don't know how to explain it. It's just that Thai isn't the kind of language I could imagine something really beautiful being written in in the first place, so for me to imagine praying in Thai just seems odd. It is a very beautiful written language, but spoken it doesn't sound so great. And another interesting thing about the Thai language is that they have no equivalent of the English letter "V", which is weird considering that the Thai language has forty something consonents, many of which we don't have in English. I remembered a couple instances when Thai people had asked me what is the different between "V" and "W" , and pronounce the letter "V" like "wee", so Rachel and I were wondering whether or not they actually have that sound in their language. We looked it up in the dictionary, and they don't.

Today we spent the morning just hanging out, and Rachel packed all her things up for going back to Ubon. We went and ate lunch at yet another politcal rally thing my host dad's party was putting on. It was weird, when we were done eating we kind of just wanted to leave because everyone was staring at us. So we asked P'Kla to drive us home but he told us to stay for a while because, "Thai people want to see foreigner." We were like, "uhh see us do what?" Yet another thing that makes it seem like they just want us around for votes. In the afternoon we watched CasaNova, and I took up knitting. I started making an afghan, and so far I have all of 1 1/2 rows done. Yay me! I'm actually quite proud of myself though, becaues I only learned how to knit today, and I can already purl quite quickly. At around 4 we went with my host parents to ChinaTown to do some shopping and eat dinner until we had to take Rachel to the train station. Now, guess what we had for dinner? Shark Fin. It was like Shark Fin soup. And then we had coconut shrimp. Rachel and I liked the coconut shrimp, not so much the shark. But my host dad kept going on about how the shrimp was cheap but the shark was expensive. That man is absolutely obsessed with money. It kind of drives me crazy. He was going on to Rachel about how he gets to fly anywhere in Thailand for free, and how he spent 70,000 baht today but the government gave him 100,000 so he made a profit..... It honestly kind of makes me feel like I am just another one of his purchases to show off. Anyways, we got to the train station a bit early and waited around for the train. When it finally arrived we got on to find Rachel's seat, but another person was already occupying it. It appeared that they both had the exact same tickets, until a train worker noticed that Rachel's was actually for tomorrow night. How nobody seemed to notice that before we got to the station (trust me, both my host parents spent about 5 minutes looking at her ticket, as well as the lady at the ticket booth at the train station) is beyond me. Rachel decided though that she would rather see if she could get a ticket for tonight instead, since we had already driven all the way to the station and what not, and there ended up being one available, so I had to say goodbye to her... Which was really not fun. Now I'm back at my host families house with my knitting. When I originally asked them if she could come and stay with us, I told them I would go stay in Ubon with her in November, but for some reason they were all under the impression I was going with her today. They asked me about 5 times each if I had my ticket for today and what not, and then when I got back home Cherry looked at me and asked me why I was there. Gotta love language barriers.

Ratchaburi

So the last couple of days have been rather eventful. Here is what happened:

THURSDAY

We woke up insanely early under the false pretenses that we would get to see the floating markets that day. We went to our meeting place, Rose's (a lady who works with AFS) school where we met up with Elisabeth and Annika from Germany. We got on the bus along with a bunch of other school children, thinking we were off to the floating markets, but when we got off the bus we found ourselves in some random clay pottery making factory. We watched people make pots on those spinner thingys (like Demi Moore does in Ghost), which wasn't really too exciting for me since I've seen that done before. By that time it was about 10 in the morning, and we started to wonder if maybe Rose lied when she said we were going to see the floating markets, because Elisabeth pointed out that they are only actually open until 11. We got back on the bus though, and when we got off again we were at the Siam Cultural Center, where they had all different models of the different styles of Thai houses and Monastry cells set up on display, as well as a cave with images that depicted some story about Buddha. I found the images quite disturbing, but maybe that has something to do with the fact that the story was all told in Thai, so I didn't really understand it at all. Our next stop was another place which was quite the same in that it had all the different models of Thai homes for people to view. At that place we did see a boat (on land), a canal all full of water, and a market (where we bought some delicious roll-de-sai-mai) so we figured if we just put them all together we would have a floating market... Our last stop was at some really neat overgrown Buddhist Temple. Rachel and I each donated 20 baht, and received 3 sticks of incense, a candle, a stick with fake leaf of it, a flower, and little sheets of paper with little sheets of gold on them. We stuck another 20 baht bill onto the stick with the fake leaf and added it to the "money tree" type thing, lit the candles and incense which we then held in our hands in a prayer like fashion, left the flower on a pile with a bunch of other flowers, and then stuck the gold sheets onto the Buddha imagine inside the Temple. However, my gold kept on floating away in the wind, and when I would try to catch it, it would get all stuck to my hands. Then we did this ritual where you shake a container full of numbered sticks until one falls out, then you take a piece of paper with the corresponding number to the one on your stick. On this paper is a fortune, and traditionally, if the fortune is bad, then you leave it at the temple. If it is good, you take it with you. Since neither Rachel or I can read Thai, we just both took our with us. When we got back to Rose's school, Rachel, Elisabeth, Annika, and I went and looked around a nearby market, then went to KFC for dinner before P'Kla picked us up. When Rachel and I got home, we asked Cherry if she could translate our fortunes for us. She read Rachel and just told her, "it is bad." Then we asked what was bad about it and she told Rachel, "you love a boy." When she read mine she started laughing and told me it was true. Then I asked her what was true about it, and she told me, "you can't speak and you have a host."

FRIDAY

We slept in a bit, and then P'Kla drove us to the van station so we could take a van to The Mall. At The Mall we shopped around a bit, went and ate ice cream, and then saw the movie My Best Friends Girl. I enjoyed it, but I think maybe some of the scenes were cut out a bit, because the whole movie just didn't really seem to flow to me, and everything is censored in Thailand. I mean, I watched Charlie's Angels on TV last week, and they cut out the scene of Drew Barrymore rolling down the hill naked (although you can't actually see any of her naked-ness). After the movie we went and shopped around at the market. I bought a couple Christmas gifts for a couple people, which I am quite proud of. After all that, we somehow managed to get on the right van to come back to Nongchok, which means I have succesfully now taken public transport without the help of any Thai person! Yay me! When we got back home, P'Kla informed us that it was P'Keng's birthday that day, so we had a little celebration with ice cream cake and all sang him Happy Birthday. I thought it was kind of weird because we didn't have any celebrations like that for either Cherry's or P'Kla's birthdays, but then I realized it probably has something to do with the fact that P'Keng is the first born child in a Chinese family...

JJ Mall

Yesterday afternoon Rachel and I went to Carrefour (P'Kla drove us) where we ate KFC (for the second day in a row), and then wandered around for a while and bought lots of chocolate. We also bought maps of Thailand at the bookstore. In the evening the two of us went for a walk down the road by my host family's house. It was nice because it was the first chance I've had since I've been here to really explore around the neighborhood. Although, all the Thai people wound kind of come out of their houses, gather around, and just stare at us, without even trying to be discreet about it. It was kind of... frustrating. I think maybe I'm starting to get used to living here and seeing Thai people everywhere, I just kind of expect them to be used to me too, which makes me feel really awkward when they stare. The scenery was really quite beautiful though, with all the palm trees and rice fields. There is also a Muslim Mosque fairly close down the road, which is beautiful. I love it because every night (well actually at random times throughout the day), I can hear Muslim prayers being said over a loud speaker coming from the Mosque. It may seem crazy, but I love hearing it, even though I don't understand any of what their saying, it just really sounds beautiful, and very calming. I think I will miss hearing that sound when I leave. After our walk we went with P'Beam, P'Kla, Korn and his girlfriend June to the park where we fed some fish in a pond, and then just played on the playground for a bit. It was actually really, really fun. Sanook Maak.

Today we went with P'Beam and P'Kla to JJ Mall. We didn't actually get to go to the Market (JJ Market is apparently the biggest, most famous market in Bangkok) because of it being a weekday, and apparently all the shops are closed. So instead we just wandered around the mall, while Beam and Kla went shopping for fish. I bought a couple gifts for a couple of people, and we also bought some hot pink, little, crocheted flowers to glue onto our maps of Thailand to show all the places we've been, which we did when we got back from the Mall. We spent the rest of the evening just hanging out in the basement, half watching Ratatouille and half talking.

Shopping and Such

We ended up being rather late picking up Rachel, but it was fine. She didn't get kidnapped while she was waiting for us or anything, which was deffinately a plus. Although I was under the impression we were taking a taxi to the train station, P'Kla ended up driving us, but it turned out he didn't actually know the way to the station, so we had to switch into a taxi halfway there. My host auntie then picked us up at the train station and took us out for breakfast before we headed back to my host families house. We just spent some time hanging out and Rachel got all settled in, and then we were hoping to go to Carrefour in the afternoon to buy TimTams and other kinds of good foreign food. Then at some point my host dad asked us if we wanted to go somewhere, and we said yes just to get out of the house, without really know where he was asking us to go. He gave us these aweful bright orange shirts with Thai words on them, and told us to wear them. So we put them on and ended up being taken to some political rally thing put on by my host dad's political party to try and get votes for their candidate in the upcoming election for mayor of Bangkok. It wasn't very much fun, needless to say. Rachel and I were being kind of paranoid, and just thinking that some rival campaigners might show up and shoot the foreigners wearing the shirts which supported their enemies or something. Luckily we made it through without being shot, although we did run in to a dog that I'm pretty sure might have had rabies or some other scary disease. When we got too bored to stay around any longer, we asked P'Kla if we could leave. He then asked his friend to drive us home. So we got in the truck, and drove off, but he took us down some completely random road that I've never been down in my life. We kind of started freaking out thinking he was going to drive us off and kidnap us. We're just a little paranoid is all. As soon as we turned down a road I recognized to being close to home, I was freaking happy. Then since everyone else was still at the politcal rally thing, Rachel and I just watched movies and hung out for the rest of the night.

Rachel is now officially my hero. You want to know why? She figured out how to turn on the hot water in my shower. You want to know how to turn it on? There is a switch above the door to the bathroom (which I can't reach) which turns it on and off. Go figure, hey? I guess I could have just asked my family and figured it out alot sooner and saved mysef suffering through cold showers. But oh well, at least I will never take a hot shower for granted again.
Rachel and I ended up sharing the big bed that I used to share with Cherry. I think Cherry is a little pissed at us for kicking her onto the floor. But Rachel didn't want to sleep on the floor, and she didn't want to share a bed with someone she didn't know...

Yesterday Patch took us shopping in downtown Bangkok, mostly for me to buy a Thai dress. I ended up buying a really pretty but somewhat simple one. It's kind of a purple-ish colour, and the lady at the store tailored it to fit me perfect. Yes, I will admit she had to make it bigger for me... I bought alot of other things for myself as well. A couple of t-shirts (one that says "I heart BANGKOK"), a pair of THE comfiest pants every known to man, and a new purse. We went to KFC for lunch, and then had some super yummy ice cream while we were waiting for my dress to get tailored. When we were all done shopping, we headed back to the mall by boat. I think traveling by boat is one of the best ways to go in Bangkok, because you can really avoid all the crazy traffic jams. Patch dropped us off at the Mall as she had to go somewhere with her cousin. We shopped around for a little bit, and then met up with Cherry to take a van back to Nongchok, where we switched to a motorcycle sidecar thing for the rest of the journey home. It was the first time I've taken one of those sidecars for transportation. It was fun, but very slow going, and the whole contraption felt kind of tippy.

We don't have too many exciting plans for today. Hopefully we will be able to go to Carrefour in the afternoon and buy some good snacks and maybe rent some movies. Tomorrow we're hoping to be able to go to the Mall or somewhere else to do some more shopping.

The Nutcracker

Must write quick because I have to go pick up Rachel at the train station.. but apparently our taxi to go pick her up isn't here yet. Hmmm. This means I could have slept in longer. The Nutcracker last night was amazing. It really just put a smile on my face. All the beautiful costumes, the music (they had a live orchestra playing everything), and the dancing all put together was just magical. It was my little bit of Christmas I'll get this year, I guess. Also, there were soooo many foreigners there. So many cute little girls wearing princess costumes or tutus. I thought it was really sweet, it kind of reminded me of how I used to dress up when I was that small. I think Beam felt a little out of place just due to the fact that everyone else there was either a foreigner, or a very wealthy high society type Thai person. I think she liked the ballet itself though.

1/4

Since I have now been here for a total of 2 months and 2 weeks, I am officially 1/4 of the way through my 10 months (yay I haven't completely lost my math skills yet... my typing skills on the other hand...) How do I feel at this point you may ask? Well, I must admit that although earlier in my stay I had thought about switching to a semester program rather than a year program, I think that if I was only staying until December, then I would be half-way there.. and I'm really not feeling like I'd be ready for it to be half over. Not while I'm still having such troubles with the language and everything. I think I will probably only really start to get a grip on this confusing language probably around December, and I would hate to have to leave just then. Not to mention the fact that there are so many exciting things happening in the New Year that I would miss out on. To reflect upon my first quarter... I would have to say that while I struggled alot at the beginning, I'm finally now starting to feel alot more comfortable in this country. I am no longer phazed by the humidity, using squat toilets, and eating spicy things. (I actually sucessfully managed to eat some spicy som-tam tonight without my eyes going all watery.. Cherry was quite impressed) However, there are still some things about this country that I don't think I will every completely get used to. For example, the hoardes of homeless/starving dogs on the streets, children getting beaten in school, and the cock fighting.. I have already done many things that many people will never do in their life. I think if I feel as content as I do now at the end of my stay, then the whole thing will have been a success.

Tomorrow night I will be going to see The Nutcracker Ballet in downtown Bangkok with P'Beam. Since the show starts at 730, and will probably last a couple of hours, plus the added time of getting back to Nongchok from downtown Bangkok.. it's going to be a late night, which would really be no problem except that Rachel is coming on Sunday morning rather than Monday morning. Her train will arrive here at 550 in the a.m. Which means I will be waking up quite early in order to catch a taxi with Korn and Cherry (as P'Kla will be working) to meet Rachel at the station. I apologize in advance for the lack of updates which there might be in the next few days, as from the sounds of it I might be quite busy (which is deffinately alot better than being quite bored).

Noodles

Nothing much exciting happened today besides eating noodles for lunch. And when I say "eating noodles" I mean forcing myself to chew and somehow swallow the noodles. Honestly, they weren't that bad. I eat them willingly at school as an alternative to rice all the time. But for some reason they just weren't sitting well with me today, and I had a headache (I think maybe they had alot of MSG) and kind of felt like puking. I ate some candy to get rid of the taste and it actually, amazingly worked. I don't feel like writing too much now, because really there is nothing too exciting to write about.. and I don't want to bore you all. And my laptop is starting to warm up and burn my legs, so I think I'll be going now. Oh, on the bright side it stopped raining today (it's been raining for the last week nonstop). While before when it was raining it was icky and muddy outside so I didn't feel like going out and doing much, now that it's stopped it's blisteringly hot outside so I don't feel like going out and doing much. Oh Thailand.

Wow, just as I wrote this it started raining.

Waterfalls (?) Part Song

(song = two in Thai)

This morning started out with some good news, Rachel from Australia will be coming to stay with me for sure!! She will come by train and arrive here in the morning on the 22nd, and stay until the 29th. I'm super excited... although I have no idea how we are going to spend the week. Hopefully just having fun and doing the crazy things exchange students tend to do.. Maybe go visit downtown Bangkok for a couple of days with Elisabeth and her other German friend. Who knows.

This afternoon my host dad asked me if I wanted to go see the waterfall, "since last time there was no water but this time there is many water." His words, not mine. I really should know by now though that when he asks me to go see waterfalls, he's really asking me to go wait for him while he gets some Thai massage or something. We went to see a damn first. The same damn we went to see last time, but this time it actually had water shooting out of it. Then we went to see the "waterfall" which was actually just a really scary river. It was scary due to it raining so much in the last few days I'm assuming. Anyways, there was a random crab there that my host mom was poking with a stick. I thought crabs lived in the ocean, not beside a river. Silly crab. After that the three of us went out for dinner. It was a steak house kind of thing at some fancy hotel. My host dad ordered for me (as he usually does, but usually I appreciate it because it's all Thai food and I don't know what any of it is anyways.. but this time it was steak! I know how to handle that myself.. kind of) and he ordered me a pork chop. It really wasn't a very good pork chop, but it came with gravy, potato bumps, a roasted tomato, and peas and corn. The best part of the meal was.... NO RICE! I somehow managed to avoid eating rice for 2/3 meals today (the other one was lunch, when I had soup with noodles, not rice). However, I don't think either of my host parents really liked their dinners, they didn't even eat their potato bumps! Which were by far the best part... After dinner we stopped back at that weird massage/temple place we went to that one time before so my host dad could get "healed." My host mom and I just waited around, while she talked to some guy about me (I can always tell when they're talking about me because they always say "farang" which means foreigner). I phoned Patch and talked to her for a bit though, and unfortunately plans for going to her elementary school tomorrow to do activities got cancelled. She did say though that if it ever stops raining she will take me downtown Bangkok to go shopping for a Thai traditional dress :)

When we got home my host parents had a second dinner, because apparently the first one wasn't good enough or something. Also, my host dad told me that in December he will be going to America and Canada for one week, Vancouver in particular (probably because that's where the Thai embassy is.. I know because that's where I had to get my visa from). He kind of drives me crazy sometimes because he likes to talk and not really to listen.. When he told me he was going I was trying to tell him it will be cold then but probably not snowy because it's Vancouver, but instead he just told me about how he gets to go first class in the airplane all expenses paid and stuff. I think I forgot to mention before that last week he was commenting about how nice the weather is in Thailand, and said, "In Canada it's very cold now." I was all, "umm actually it's fairly warm in Canada right now due to it being summer." Honestly, it scares me that even a politician here doesn't understand the whole northern/southern hermispheres have different seasons type of thing. Here's something even scarier: Elisabeth was telling me that at her school a few weeks ago her class was learning about World War Two, and that the teacher was explaining about Hitler being German and what not, but Elisabeth pointed out he was actually from Austria, and the teacher asked her, "Aren't Austria and Germany the same thing?" EEEK. Really, nobody around here seems to understand where Canada is. I'm like, "how can you miss it, it's that really huuuge country in North America?" But they all seem to think it's in Europe. Anyways, both when my host dad went to Germany and when he went to China, he brought back a whole suitcase full of food from whichever particular country... so right now I'm just kind of curious to see what food he will bring back from Canada?

I was planning on including pictures from the damn and such in this post.. but apparently my free trial of ACDsee has run out, which means I can't upload pictures until I download it again...

As Much As I Hate To Admit It...

Today was just as uneventful as yesterday. Perhaps even a little less eventful than yesterday. At least I managed to focus long enough to study Thai for a bit. I haven't given up hope yet completey that this year will be amazing.. I took a year off for this, so I'm going to try my best to make it worth while.. Still have 8 months left in order to do it.. so I'm not too concerned yet! Just feeling a little lonely I guess

Today

Today consisted of studying some Thai, reading more of The Memory Keeper's Daughter (I'm having a hard time putting it down... although I really should slow down on my reading because I don't know when the next chance I'll have to get back to that bookstore will be), watching The Weakest Link until the power went out due to some crazy raining outside, trying to get a hold of Rachel from Australia (however it appears she has no minutes left on her phone), and trying to figure out what Christmas gifts to buy everyone back home. I'm hoping that sometime soon I will actually be able to get a hold of Rachel and arrange for her to come stay with me the last week of September, or else all my days from now until the massage course starts are going to be just like today.... It wont be the end of the world, it's just a little frustrating when I'm in Thailand! and there are so many amazing things I could be seeing/doing, but instead I'm cooped up in this little house. Hmmm

Samut Sakhon

So apparently Cherry doesn't know her days of the week in English, because we actually went to Samut Sakon (another province to the SouthWest of Bangkok) today, instead of on Monday. I left with my host parents in the afternoon, and we went to The Mall to do some grocery shopping and wait until Cherry was done her extra tutorial (yes, even though she just finished her exams on Friday, she is already studying for her exams at the end of next semester). Then we picked her up, and headed out for dinner at a restaurant beside a river that apparently leads to the sea. It wasn't too exciting. I ate the weirdest ice cream I've had in my life for dessert. It was weird, Cherry handed me the menu and said "Kris, pick a dessert, it's in English." and I looked at it, and it was completely in Thai. So I was like, "uhhh very funny, where is the English." and then she finally looked at it and said, "oops the title is in English but everything else is in Thai." Duh. Oh well, I'm going to try and not give her a hard time about anything, but I dunno, part of me kind of feels sorry for her. The reason for that is mainly just because she has no hobbies, all she does in her free time is study, and I think her parents put alot of pressure on her to do well in school. Also because she seems very sheltered, and isn't really allowed to do much on her own. The first day I was with my host family I remember my advisor asked my host parents if they'd ever let her go on exchange, and they said no. Then she asked if they would let her go to Canada and stay with me (not my idea, she was just asking theoretically), and they said no, it's too dangerous. I know I really shouldn't feel sorry for her for these things, because she's been brought up in a different culture, and one of the things I've noticed about Thai culture is that kids here are more encouraged to study than to join extra curricular activities and things like this. I shouldn't say the way they were brought up is bad or wrong, because my understanding of how someone should be brought up is based on a completely different culture. I must admit it is really hard to suspend judgement about these things sometimes. Anywas, after dinner we drove to some relatives home (I'm not really sure exactly how they are related). My host parents chatted with them for a bit, and they gave Cherry the phone number of either their son who is a doctor, or their daughter who is a pharmacist, so that she can contact them and ask questions about their profession and such. Afterwards we drove back home, and at one point I think my host dad was yelling at Cherry about something, but I'm not really sure because I couldn't understand what he was saying. It was awkward. We got back just after 11 p.m.

10 Weeks Later...

I have officially been in Thailand for 10 Weeks... Yay Me! I must admit, it feels very good to know I've at least battled it out for this long... I can't imagine how amazing it will feel after 10 months.

I hung out with Elisabeth from Germany today, and she is offically my favourite German. You want to know why? CANADA was her first choice country for her exchange... Thailand was actually her second. Stupid Canada, why couldn't we have accepted Elisabeth? I guess it's a good thing we didn't, because that means she's here for me to hang out with. She also showed me a bookstore at the mall that sells a bunch of English books. So I bought two: The Secret Life of Bees, and The Memory Keeper's Daughter. And now I know where to go back to find more :)

P'Kla drove me to Elisabeth's this afternoon, and the plan was for him to drop me off there and then her and I would take a taxi or the bus to The Mall. We kind of got lost on the way to her house, and it took us about 40 minutes to get there. Probably would have taken 30 if we hadn't gotten lost. P'Kla ended up driving us all the way to the mall though. We went and saw the movie Mamma Mia!, which I really enjoyed. I could barely keep myself from singing along on some of the songs... but I'm pretty sure all of the Thai people would have that I was insane. Not that they don't already think that. We went to eat lunch at The Pizza Company. I ordered a pepperoni pizza not knowing that Elisabeth is vegetarian... but she was really good about it, and just picked off the pepperonis. We talked about how during the first little while we both felt completely homesick and kind of wanted to go home and all those things, but are both super happy now that we stuck through the rough part... and now feel like we can handle anything. One of the girls from Germany actually went home after 1 week because she couldn't handle the emotions, and although I felt like going home after 1 week, I'm really glad I didn't.

We looked around the mall a bit, but didn't buy anything. When it was time to head back to Elisabeth's house for P'Kla to pick me up, we waited for a bus for about 10 minutes, but it didn't come, so we decided to try and take a taxi instead. We were able to tell the taxi driver the general direction to go in, but he started asking us things in Thai we didn't understand, so I phoned P'Kla who talked to the driver about where to take us. He ended up just taking us to a random bus stop in Minburi, where my host family (host dad, host mom, Cherry, and P'Kla) came and picked us up. We took Elisabeth back to her home, and my host family was all really impressed with her Thai accent and her Thai vocabulary. She really didn't say anything in Thai that I don't know yet... but I think I'm kind of developing a problem where I am a little shy to actually speak Thai. Must fix that. We then went to some shopping mall that I hadn't been to before called Seacon Center I believe. We went for Cherry to get a haircut and for the five of us to go out for dinner. While Cherry was getting her hair cut, P'Kla and I looked around at some little shops in the mall where they sold all kinds of Thai type souvenirs. When we walked into the mall I saw a place that sold little elephant tea sets, which I thought were really cute, so I wanted to go back and look, but when we went back, the store was closed... I did manage to find some cute gifts though which I think will make good Christmas presents for some certain people back home....

We went to a Japanese noodle house for dinner, and I really didn't feel like eating much since I was already full from the pizza. I ate some food anyways, and during dinner I asked my family if it would be okay for Rachel to come and stay with us. They said yes and asked questions about the dates she will come and how she will get here and such, which I'm not really too sure about yet, but tomorrow I will phone her and hopefully get that all sorted out. I'm hoping maybe she will come around September 22 and stay until September 28 or so. During that time Elisabeth will have another German girl staying with her. They are planning to go rent a hotel room in downtown Bangkok for a couple of days and visit Siam Square and Wat Phra Kaew and such, so maybe Rachel and I will go too. On the way home from dinner, Beam phoned me about the tickets for the Ballet. We decided it would be better to go on the Saturday night, but unfortunately most of the tickets had already been sold. She tried to explain to me over the phone where the tickets we could buy were, but I didn't really understand... However, she told me the price, and they were some of the most expensive tickets, so I'm assuming they're fairly good seats.

Overall, today was a good day.. and I'm feeling pretty happy that all of my plans seem to be working out, such as the ballet and Rachel coming to visit. I'm not sure what I will do tomorrow, but on Monday apparently we are going somewhere to visit my host cousin. That's about all Cherry was able to explain to me...

Jarhead//Click

Today was a bit more eventful than the last few days, but still not super exciting. P'Kla drove me to school where I talked to my Coordinator and Advisor about plans for the school break. My Coordinator still thinks it would be better to wait until after the break to do the week exchange with Rachel, and I have to agree with her partly on it because I know it would be more interesting if she came here and went to school with me, rather than just came and hung around my house with me. That after all is the point of the week exchange, to go visit another school and what not. However, I don't know how I'm going to survive if the rest of the break keeps up like this. I think it will get better once everyone else is finished exams and what not, because then I will actually have people to hang out with. Anyways, my Coordinator said it's ok for Rachel to come here, I just have to make sure it's all good with my host family and then arrange dates and transportation for her and what not. Hopefully it all works out. If not, I will just find a way to maybe hang out more with someone who lives closer around here... Patch invited me to go with her next Thursday to the same school we went to before to do different activities and games with the students. It'll give me something to do I guess. It'll give me something to do I guess. Beam didn't come over today, which means we still haven't bought the tickets for the ballet. I'm starting to freak out because it's a week from tomorrow, and still no tickets! I guess if we can't get them in time, there are different performances we can go see which are part of the same festival... I think they have different shows all the way to the end of October actually. And my Coordinator is supposed to contact AFS for me to confirm the massage course for October 1-10... and then phone me back. But people around here aren't generally to good at the phoning back thing. So I will probably just phone her in a couple of days. When I got back from school, I spent the rest of the afternoon watching English movies/TV shows on our new cable channels! I watched ER, Jarhead, and Click. Jarhead was really good, and I was enjoying it alot while I was watching it alone, but then my host dad came in and it was kind of awkward watching it with him.. mainly just when there were any sexual references... because Thais kind don't display any sexual feeling at all..... by that I mean they won't even hold hands in public... Anyways, I was glad when my host mom came in and called me for dinner haha so I could get out of that awkward situation. Tomorrow I think I will be going to a nearby mall with Elisabeth to go see a movie or something in the afternoon. I think we both are just desperate to get out and do something, no matter what it is. Shall be fun.

Toast and Peanut Butter!

Today started out really good, I had toast with peanut butter (no banana though) for the first time since I've been here! When I walked into the kitchen this morning I saw Korn buttering some bread and then putting it into the toaster oven (toasters don't really exist in Thailand), and when it was all done he offered me two pieces. I also had a head attack when I looked for my peanut butter in the fridge and didn't see it at first (everything must be kept in the fridge here, even potato chips, or else the ants will get it), but was able to find it eventually.. Best breakfast so far by far. The only thing that was really missing was some nice tea. My host gramma gives me Chinese tea every now and then, but it's just not the same without sugar and milk :(

The rest of the day was kind of long and boring. I quite literally spent it in my room, all alone. I ate lunch by myself in the kitchen. It was rice with chicken and cucumber that P'Kla had bought and brought home for me. In the afternoon I could hear Beam, Cherry, and Kla downstairs watching TV, so I thought I would go join them. But when I got downstairs Cherry was sitting on the couch giggling, and Beam was obviously hiding behind the couch. I could hear her giggling too, but I played along anyways, and pretended that she was doing a good time hiding, tried to ignore Cherry's giggling like she wasn't actually giving it all away. After what seemed like 10 minutes Beam threw and eraser at me and asked me if she startled me. I should have lied and said yes but I said no and kind of told her I knew she was there all along. Then they told me they just drank some weird Thai energy drink that made them "go crazy." I dunno, it was really weird. However, Beam told me that she will be able to go to the ballet with me, which I'm really excited for. Also, AFS emailed me today about the massage course, and apparently it's actually the one on October 1-10 that is still open, which means that I won't be going to that camp that I didn't really want to go to anyways on the 1-3. Tomorrow I am to go to school to talk to my coordinator and make sure all these plans will work out, hopefully she will let me miss out on the camp and go to the massage course.

I've really got to find something to do around here. I know I really shouldn't be complaining, because alot of the other exchange students around here haven't done nearly as much as I've done in the way of traveling around and seeing touristy things and such, but I can't help feel like my family isn't taking enough of an interest in me. I think alot of it has to do with the fact that they're just all so busy, combined with me not being able to do anything on my own. It's beginning to get really frustrating. I need to find some new hobbie or something to keep me preoccupied. I should take up scrap booking or knitting or something that I can do at home, because really I can only spend so much time studying Thai and nerding it out on the internet each day.... I just think I need to somehow find the balance between alone time and going out time. Right now it's a little too much alone time. I'm still feeling good about being in Thailand, and alot of what is driving me crazy I think is that fact that I'm in Thailand! I want to go out and see and experience new things, instead of just being alone in my room all day. Ok, enough ranting for now. I must go eat dinner.

Le Grand Tour

So, here is a video of my Thai bedroom. I actually took it a couple of weeks ago, and have tried uploading it a couple of times, but it never worked until now. Enjoy:

Today was spent studying Thai with the help of P'Beam and P'Kla, eating various meals throughout the day, watching the Golden Compass, and reading some of Slaughter-House Five. For lunch I ate a Thai version of Itchiban Noodles. And when I say "a Thai version", I mean it was exactly the same as Itchiban Noodles, except spicy. So spicy that by the end of it my lips were numb. But not so spicy that I was crying. So a good level of spicy-ness I guess. Beam tried to teach me the five different tones in the Thai language today, and I pretty much failed miserabley. The only tone I have no problem with is the rising tone, where you make your voice kind of as though you were asking a question in English. The five tones (just for those who are interested) are: mid, low, falling, high, and rising. Although several words may have the same spelling and same pronounciation in Thai, because their tones will be different, it changes the meaning of the word. For example: mai (mid tone) means a mile, mai (low tone) means new, mai (falling tone) means no, mai (high tone) means ".... right?", mai (rising tone) means silk.

I also watched a bit of a Thai horror movie with Beam and Kla, however there were no English subtitles, so I was absolutely confused as to what the dialouge was. Yet, amazingly I was still able to follow the story line, and still got all scared/creeped out along with everyone else. Yay me! Tomorrow will be another lazy day as far as I know, and then on Friday I'm to go to school for a little bit to discuss with my AFS Coordinator some plans for the school vacation. I'm hoping that Rachel from Australia will be able to come stay with me for the last week of September, then from October 15-24 I will go to a massage course in Ayutthaya with Elisabeth from Germany. Today when I talked to my coordinator on the phone she said that Cherry told her that my host family has travel plans for the break, which I'm absolutely unaware of. So I asked P'Kla about it, and he knows nothing either, however he promised he will find out for me, so that I can figure out for sure if the massage course and such will work out. Apparently I'm also supposed to go to some camp at the beginning of October with my coordinator and maybe kids from my school. I don't really know what it's about, but my coordinator asked me about it a couple of weeks ago and I said sure I'd go, but that was when I had absolutely no other plans... I'm not really sure if I'm still interested in doing it. But whatever, I guess I can suck it up for a couple of days. Also, Pailin won't be able to go see the Nutcracker Ballet with me, so I asked Beam if she would be interested in going instead, and she said yes! So there is still hope for me seeing some ballet yet.

p.s. Guess who totally fogot to eat her carrot in the fridge? And who has some sour milk in her bedroom? Long story... Beam's Aunt bought me some milk to take with us on the weekend, which Beam had in her bag along with some chips and candy and such, which she gave to me when we got back on Sunday... However, the milk was left un-refridgerated all weekend, and still has been since then... Let's just say it's reached the point of nastiness. I better remember to throw it out tomorrow, before it gets any worse. Ewww.

The Water Horse

I completely forgot to mention the best part of getting back on Sunday night... having my parcel which my family sent to me waiting in the living room for me to open it! Honestly, it was like Christmas came early.. There were all kinds of wonderous things hidden within, such as Borat (watching that after being in a kind of reverse Borat situation, you know going from North American culture to something totally different, kind of sheds a new light on the whole movie), a video of the dance recital this year, salt and vinegar chips (yay, something other than seaweed flavour!), earrings from Jan, and all kinds of Canadian type souvenirs. It really made my day.

I spend yesterday doing not to much at all, just getting some much needed rest and catching up with people from back home. In the evening my host dad asked me to go for a bike ride with him for exercise. It's really starting to annoy me how much he's on my case about getting exercise. But I figured a bike ride would be nice anyways since it would give me a chance to explore the neighborhood a bit. Let's just say it was a very short bike ride, with absolutely no hills (imagine bike riding in Alberta, how tiring), and the bike put at a very low gear. I didn't even break a sweat. I did get alot of weird stares though. Afterwards I went up to the roof of my bedroom for the first time, where they have it all set up like a deck kind of. I'm not too keen on doing that whole experience again, since the stairs to get up there were scarier than the scary stairs at the restaurant in Paris.. for all of the two people who might be reading this who went to Paris with me.. everyone else just imagine some super rickety wooden stairs.

Today I actually managed to do something productive, and I studied Thai on my own for about an hour and a half. Although I deffinately haven't mastered the Thai language yet, I can feel my skills improving, mainly in the fact that whenever people tell me new Thai's words now, I can actually remember them. Before it was always as though the words would just go straight through my brain, and not "stick" at all. I've also begun teaching myself the Thai alphabet, which is already helping alot in understanding the Thai language. I think learning it will be a huge benefit since there are so many sounds in Thai which don't exist in English, and that way when people tell me new Thai words, I will know how to spell them in Thai with the correct sounds, rather than trying to write them using the English alphabet. In the evening I watched the rest of the movie The Water Horse, and showed Beam and P'Kla the video of the dance recital along with many other pictures from back at home in Canada.

For tomorrow my big plans include phoning my AFS coordinator to see if it will be possible for Rachel from Australia to come stay with me for a week in September, as well as to see if I can attend the massage course in Ayutthaya in October. I spent some time today looking into different meditation courses I can take in Thailand, and the best one I've found is actually the same one Nickolai did in India (visit www.dhamma.org to read about it). I really want to do it as soon as possible, since there is another program I can do where I go stay with the monks in a temple in North Eastern Thailand, but this program doesn't actually teach meditation, only the monk lifestyle, and therefore they recomment you take a meditation course beforehand. However, AFS says we're not allowed to do any meditation courses during school time, which means I would have to wait until April to do it! Hopefully I can convince them to make an acception....

Also, I've added the pictures from Chanthaburi to my photo page (http://community.webshots.com/user/kristenthailand )... I apologize in advance for my extemely bad hair in the pictures. This is what happens when my hair is subjected to both humidity and wind.

Chanthaburi

Ok this is going to be a long one. Here it goes...

THURSDAY:

I left with P'Kla, P'Keng, P'Kai, and some random guy at 10 in the a.m. to go to JJ Market. On the way we stopped and picked up Beam, and then realized there wasn't nearly enough room in the truck for 6 people, so instead of us all going to the market, they dropped Beam and I off at her mother's house. While we waited for her Mom to come home, we ate some lunch and watched DodgeBall. When her Mom finally got there, it started storming like crazy outside, and her mom didn't want to drive in the crazy weather, so we had to wait for the weather to ease up a bit before heading out to Beam's Gramma's house at Nonthaburi. While we waited we watched a bit of the movie The Waterhorse. On the drive out to Nonthaburi (about a 1 hour drive) I fell asleep. For some reason I was super tired the whole weekend. And it all started during that car ride. Anyways, once we arrived in Nonthaburi, we went out shopping for some snacks to take with us for the weekend, and then spent what seemed like hours waiting around at the school where Beam's cousin works for her to finish up whatever it was she was doing for the day. I just spent the whole time listening to my iPod, and helping Beam with some of her English homework. One of the questions in her homework was "What is something about another culture you like?", and since she likes the sound of Christmas, she was asking me all about different traditions that go along with Christmas. I told her about a few, and said that it will be sad for me to miss Christmas this year. Then she told me, "but I think your host family might be Christian." And now let's just say both Beam and I are absolutely confused as to what my host families religion is. On the host family application form they said they were Buddhist, but then again they also said they only had 4 children, not 5. That night Beam, her cousin, and I all slept on the floor in the living room of her cousin's house. I went to sleep pretty early because we had to wake up at 5 the next morning, however Beam stayed up until 2 30 finishing up her homework.

FRIDAY:

Woke up early in order to board the bus at 6 a.m., and then ended up sitting around on the bus for over an hour. When we finally got moving, we discovered that there were some problems with the bus, and we ended up breaking down and having to wait even longer for a replacement bus. When we finally were able to head out to Chanthaburi for good, it was around 10. We arrived around 2 in the afternoon, ate lunch at Oasis Sea World, and then stayed around to watch a dolphin show type thing, where they just made the dolphins do tricks and what not, kind of like at Sea World, except that this place was alot more run-down, and I actually felt really bad for the dolphins. The show was pretty entertaining though, and afterwards we had a little bit of time to do some shopping at the gift shop there. Chanthaburi province is famous for it's gem-stone market. There were all kinds of gem-stones there, such as rubies and sapphires, but I had no idea how to tell whether the quality was really as good as the store merchants were saying it was, or if I was just getting ripped off, so I didn't end up buying any stones. However, I instead let myself be ripped off on a necklace covered with "crystals" that looks like the Thai flag. I really liked it, so I bought it, but in hindsight I'm thinking I really shouldn't have paid what I paid for it. Oh well. We then headed to a waterfall which was part of some national park. Since we were running a bit behind schedule, due to the whole bus breaking down scenario, we only had 45 minutes at the national park. If we would have had more time, we could have gone swimming at the bottom of the waterfall, but we didn't, so instead we just ran around and took pictures of various things, fed a huge swarm of fish some vegetables, and had all of about 2 minutes to look at the actual waterfall before we had to head back to the bus. I really wish we would have had more time there, because there were all kinds of neat nature trails surrounding the area which I would have loved to explore. We headed to the hotel for supper, after which we walked around on the beach for a bit, and then joined in with the rest of the group for some campfire (minus the actual fire) activity type games. We planned on waking up early in the morning to do some aerobics with the rest of the group on the beach while the sun was rising, and possibly go swimming in the ocean before heading out for rafting.

SATURDAY:

Let's just say the plans to wake up early didn't go as planned. We were all too tired. So instead we woke up semi-late (i.e. 7 in the a.m.), went for a little walk on the beach, ate breakfast, and then got all ready to go rafting. We went 8 people per raft, plus 2 rafting guides, one who sat in the front and one who sat in the back. Unfortunately, as the rafting involved water, I wasn't able to take my camera.. I wish I would have been able to though, as the scenery was quite beautiful, minus some of the garbage that was sprawled along the sides of the river in some places. The whole course itself was pretty easy, with rapids only in a few places. I did find it confusing though that whenever the guides would give instructions, they would be in Thai, and I woudln't have a clue what they were saying. However, I quickly learned the Thai words for "Right" "Left" and "Duck!" We all wore life jackets and helmets, so that if there were ever any branches over our heads, our helmets would protect us. We had to stop, get out, and walk, while the guides carried our rafts at three different damns. At one point we stopped by this rickety old bridge which we had the option of jumping off of into the river. I decided to do it, and I must admit, the scariest part of the whole thing was just walking out into the middle of the bridge itself, since the thing was so old and looked like it would break at any moment. One of the other rafts unfortunately got a leak in it just before that bridge, and they had to wait around for some people to bring a new replacement raft for them. For some reason my raft had to wait around for them, which meant that we were late finishing the course. Just as we finished, it started to rain. It was alright, since we were already all wet from jumping off the bridge, until we had to climb into the back of a pickup truck to be transported back to our starting location. The wind mixed in with the cold rain, was not so good. However, we were able to take quick showers and get dressed into our nice dry clothes before heading back to the hotel. We then went swimming in the ocean for a little while (so much for just showering and getting all nice and clean), ate dinner, and then went to bed.

SUNDAY:

Before we checked out of the hotel, we headed just down the road a little ways to a nature trail type thing (called Kung Kraben Bay) through a mangrove forest. Honestly most of it wasn't too pretty, just a bunch of plants growing up from some muddy-ness, but I did see my first Thai snake, and when we finally reached the point where the mangroves met the water, it was beautiful. On our journey back to Bangkok, we stopped at a Temple (I'm not sure what the name of it was) which was situated atop a big hill. This meant that we either had to wait around for a trolley type thing to take us up, or walk up the hundreds of stairs to the top. Since we didn't have much time, and figured that the stairs would be quicker, we walked. It was quite the experience, let's just put it at that. Although we did manage to beat the trolley to the top :) We looked around the temple a bit, saw a bunch of famous monks made out of wax, and then stopped in a little Buddhist shop, where I bought some bracelets which, "are not normal bracelets," according to Beam. She didn't really know how to explain it to me in English, but the whole idea behind them is that the monks have some sort of ceremony where they make these bracelets special (kind of like good luck charms I guess). Anyways, I thought they would be nice gifts for people back home. We made two more stops on the way back to Bangkok, one at a restaurant near the beach for lunch, and once again at a type of harbour to go shopping at some gift shops. These last two stops were in a different province however, called Rayong I believe, and let me just say, the beaches there were gorgeous! Just when I was starting to feel a little disguisted with all the garbage and what not around Thailand, I saw these beaches, and was completely amazed. I also saw a beautiful looked island off in the distance, which apparently is a famous island in Thailand called Samet Island. In Thailand they believe that this is the island of love, and have some sort of special saying in Thai about it. By the time we got back to Bangkok, I was feeling pretty happy to be getting off of that bus, do to the constant Thai style karaoke which took place whenever the engine was running. Thank goodess I had my iPod is all I can say.

A Quick Note...

I just found out that I will be leaving for my weekend with Beam a little earlier than expected, i.e. tomorrow morning at about 10. This is because P'Kla has to go to JJ Market at 10, and he doesn't want to drive all the way there, come back and pick me up, and then take me to where I'm supposed to be taken to (Beam's Gramma's house I think :S) because it will waste too much gas. I'm looking forward to actually just going to JJ Market with him, since it's supposed to be the biggest market in Bangkok with lots of exciting things to buy. He needs to go shopping for something to do with fish. Possibly a fish tank. I'm not really sure. I will be spending Thursday night in Nonthaburi at Beam's Gramma's home, and then we have to leave very early on Friday morning to go to Chanthaburi province in the SouthEastern of Thailand. First we will be going for breakfast at a beautiful waterfall in a national park, then we will go rafting for 2-3 hours. Later we will go to a place called Oasis Sea World, where they apparently breed dolphins and put on dolphin shows. We will we staying at a nice hotel on the beach. And, I must admit that I am pretty excited about the prospect of having some more hot showers at the hotel. Silly me, I'm more excited about the showers than anything....

COC

Sorry this post is kind of late, for some reason blogger hasn’t been working properly, and I haven’t been able to post anything.

So, here is everything about the camp:

SATURDAY:
I had to wake up early in order to drive to the AFS office. P’Kla and P’Beam took me, and on the way there it started raining pretty heavily, so the traffic was pretty jammed (apparently that happens every time it rains). Since it was still raining when I got there, we were told to wait on the bus until all the other students arrived. I sat on the bus with a boy from Egypt. We talked about all the things we’ve done in Thailand, and I asked him some different things about Egypt and what not. Since he’s Muslim, and this month is “Ramadan” (sorry if that’s not spelled right :S), during the whole camp he could only eat early in the morning before the sun would rise, and at night after the sun had set. Kind of felt bad because the rest of us pretty much spend the whole day eating right in front of him. There is no way I would be able to fast like that, mainly because I would faint. But, I guess I will be seeing Patch fasting all throughout this month as well. One of the students was really late to arrive, so we didn’t get much of a chance to visit Ayutthaya (the old capital of Thailand) before we had to head to the camp. We stopped at a mall type place for lunch, and AFS gave us 150 baht each to spend on food. I ended up eating sushi with a girl from Germany named Theresa, and when we were done that we met up with some more German girls (over half of the camp was made up of German girls) to eat the biggest ice cream sundae I’ve seen at my life. Honestly, I think it had over 10 scoops of all different flavored ice cream in it. Sooo good. We hopped back on the bus and headed to a Temple in Ayutthaya, although I’m sorry I forget the name. We didn’t get too much time to spend there, we just got to take a quick peak inside the temple at the large golden Buddha image, and look around the market there a bit. I wish I could have spent more time shopping there, because there were lots of neat souvenirs to buy, plus we were told we should buy something for our host families, but I only had enough time to buy some roll-de-sai-mai, which is the Thai version of cotton candy all rolled up into a crepe. We then got to spend a little bit more time looking around a second temple, however, there weren’t very many shops with interesting things to buy there, and we were all desperately trying to find things to give to our host families. I just ended up not getting mine anything. Bad me, I know, but I felt it was better just to not get them anything, than to get them crappy little gifts they wouldn’t like. A bunch of us climbed up the stairs of the temple to see the Buddha shrine inside. The stairs were so narrow and steep, that we all kind of were freaking out on how we could get back down without falling to our death. It ended up being alright though, we just clung for dear life to the hand rail type thing. However, apparently at some point during the day, one of the German girls fell and hit her head. I’m not really sure where or how it happened, but I do know that she ended up having to be taken to the hospital and never came back to the camp. All the other German girls weren’t too impressed with it. They felt that AFS handled the situation poorly, by telling the girl that she just needed to rest and she would feel better, when obviously she had some kind of concussion. I just hope she isn’t hurt too badly. I’m also feeling really thankful that I was able to get as many vaccinations as I did in Canada before I came here. Everyone else I talk to didn’t get nearly as many as I did, and some of them have already gotten sicknesses that I’ve been vaccinated for, such as typhoid fever. When we got to the resort they gave us our room keys and we had a little bit of time to rest. I had to share a room with a girl from Belgium named Katirjin who only arrived here 1 month ago, due to having final exams in Belgium all throughout July. She was nice, and we ended up spending a lot of our free time together, along with 3 girls from America. I can’t really remember much of what AFS taught us about that night. Really, I can’t remember much of what they taught us at all, since most of it was stuff I already knew. That night our curfew was 11 30. I spent the time up until then visiting with Katirjin and Elisabeth (from Germany), and talking about all the weird cultural differences we have found here. It kind of made me feel a lot better about my whole situation here when I found out that a lot of the other student’s families haven’t really done anything with them. For example, Elisabeth lives closer to Bangkok than I do, yet her family hasn’t taken her to any of the old temples, or to see anything else is Bangkok. She says she just stays at home all the time. Other students have also been having problems with the amount of food they’re being fed. A lot of their families are trying to conserve energy by not cooking so much food that won’t be eaten, leaving the students with really not enough to eat. I’m lucky I have the opposite problem; my family tries to feed me far too much food.

SUNDAY:
In the morning I woke up and had a nice HOT shower. It was amazing. We spent the day doing different activities with the AFS volunteers. We learned some Thai language, and different students talked about the methods they are using to learn Thai. One of the boys from Belgium has learned Thai so quickly that he even explained in Thai how he learns Thai (he can also speak Dutch, French, German, and English). A boy from the USA can already read and write Thai. I’m also just amazed by how well all the students from Germany and Belgium for example can speak English. I don’t know if it’s just that since they are exchange student’s they had to go through some selection process and had to be good at English, or what. But it showed me how poor the Thai students English language skills are, even though they have been studying it for the same amount of time as the Germans and such. Although I guess I really can’t talk, because my second language skills I’ve learned from studying in school aren’t really too amazing either. We also spent some time planning what we could like to do for the long school break in between semesters which is coming up. I made plans with Elisabeth from Germany to attend a massage course in Ayutthaya for 10 days, which means the two of us will be staying together and living in Ayutthaya during that time. I know just have to talk to my host family and make sure I am allowed to go. AFS is also setting up an optional trip at the end of October for students who want to travel to the South of Thailand and stay in a resort on the beach. I signed up for it, along with a bunch of other students. In the evening, our curfew was 11 45. Katirjin and I went to visit with Shawna from America, and we once again talked about all the cultural differences and compared them to our lives at home. Apparently Shawna’s family has been making a big issue about her hair. When we first got to Thailand she had her hair all braided with extensions, which her family made her take out so that her hair is now really short. Since she is African American, her hair texture is different, and her hair doesn’t need to be washed that often. Since Thai people wash their hair everyday (even Cherry seems to think I’m gross for only washing mine every second day), Shawna’s family contacted AFS and one of the volunteers had to go meet with Shawna and explain to her that she needs to wash her hair everyday, and Shawna tried to explain to them that she can’t or else her hair will get too dried out. The whole situation seems a little ridiculous to me. I think it shows just how much we as exchange student’s are expected to just fit right into our host culture, and that sometimes the host family has a hard time adjusting to things the student may do differently.

MONDAY:
This day was definitely the funnest. We spent the morning learning Thai Dance and Thai Flower Making. During the Flower Making part, we learned how to make a bouquet of roses out of blades of grass. It was super hard, but I think mine turned out not too bad. After our short break, we learned Ancient Thai Boxing. The thing to know about Ancient Thai Boxing is that it is more a form of art than a form of fighting. We learned different methods of punching and kicking, and it kind of made me feel like we were all doing Tae-bo. Then, two of the teacher’s assistants (boys who were maybe 12 years old), showed us their Boxing routine which they will use to compete in an upcoming competition. It started out as kind of a dance routine, where they did different movements worshipping the gods and preparing to fight. Then the fighting started. It was a choreographed fighting sequence, just like you would see out of the movies, and it was one of the coolest things I’ve seen in my life. Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me at the moment to take a video of it. The boys acted in it so well, taking turns hitting each other and knocking one another to the ground. For example, one of the boys would run at the other and kind of run up the other’s chest and pretend to kick him in the head so that he would fall down. We were told that in the afternoon we might be getting wet, so we all changed into our swimsuits and different clothes. We went to this area of the resort where there was a fairly large pond, and they had all different activities set up such as tight ropes or logs that you could try and walk across and if you fell you would fall into the water. The first activity we did was a boat race. We each were on a team of 6 people, and had to race to the other side of the pond using only 2 paddles per team. My team lost because the team we were competing against cheated by grabbing onto a rope that was dragging behind our raft, and pulling it so that we were slowed down and they sped up past us. After that we took turns going down a zip-line type thing. We had to climb this tower, where we would start by sitting in a tire type thing, then we would get pushed off the tower and soar down until we were dragged in the water and would come to a stop. We spent some time trying to walk to tight ropes and different things (I just tried walking across the logs). We them had some free time. I was visiting with Theresa from Germany, and we decided to have some tea and cake outside before going swimming in the pool. While we were having our snacks with a few other people at one of the picnic tables, it started pouring rain out. It was one of the funniest situations in the world, a bunch of fully clothed exchange students, sitting in the rain, drinking tea and eating cake. As we were heading toward the pool, we came across a bunch of other Germans who were singing and dancing and such in the rain, so we joined in. We all went swimming in the pool, and went to find as many other people to join us as we could. When that was all over, we had to go eat dinner, then were pretty much set free to do whatever we wanted until midnight. I hung out with Marissa, Shawna, and Cathy from the US, since I kind of wanted to just speak some English, with some native English speakers. We had a fun time just hanging out in Marissa’s room, watching random crappy English movies and trying to play solitaire with UNO cards.

TUESDAY:
After eating breakfast of only toast and English type food (yay no rice!), a bunch of us played UNO for a bit, and then sadly had to go pack our bags to head back to Bangkok. AFS informed us that a National State of Emergency had been declared by the Thai Government. I don’t know too much about the situation, all I know is what Beam has been telling me, and it goes something like this: The political party that my host dad belongs to is the political party that is in power right now. However, the opposing party has been criticizing them, although I’m not sure exactly what they are accusing them of. There have been people protesting against the party my host dad belongs down in downtown Bangkok, and on Monday night three people were killed. Now the government has declared a State of Emergency, which means we aren’t allowed to go out in groups of more than 5 people, and there is apparently a curfew set in place for those protesting. It also means that school is cancelled for at least Wednesday and Thursday. At noon we had to set off for the AFS office. We spent a lot of time waiting around there for our different rides to go back to our host families. Some of us ordered pizza, and we played UNO to see who would win the last piece. One of the AFS volunteers took me to Golden Place, some kind of shopping center, where my host dad was waiting to pick me up. She was really pushing me to do some volunteer work while I’m here, especially after I told her that I’m already 18, and she seemed surprised that I’m in the program I’m in. I didn’t really understand all that she was saying, but the feeling I got from it all was that she seemed surprised that a student would even choose to come to Thailand on exchange. When I told her about the other countries I could have chosen from Europe, she seemed surprised that I hadn’t chosen one of them. It just made me feel really confused, and I don’t really know how to explain it. I spent the rest of the evening just catching up with people on MSN.

I’ve also added my pictures from the COC Camp to my photo page, so if you’re interested you can take a look at them. http://community.webshots.com/user/kristenthailand