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...
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