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
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