So, I am now back from the Optional Trip to the South, and am with my new host family, although all of my belongings (besides the clothes I took with me to the South) are still at my old host families house. Sometime in the next couple of days I will have to go back there and pack up all my things, which I'm not really looking forward to because of the awkwardness/tension that will be there. On the bright side, my new host family, which happens to be the same family I stayed with the night before the Optional Trip, seems very nice. I already think that things will be alot better for me here. They live in Nongchok as well, so I think I will still be going to the same school. My new family is Muslim (I'm not sure if this means I will be going to Mosque with them and all these things, but I do know it means I won't be eating pork for 7 months), and my new host dad is actually my Advisor's brother. I will be sharing a bedroom with my new little host sister (her name is "Sun-ma", but I'm not really sure how old she is). I also have two younger host brothers, one who is maybe around 9ish (I'm not really sure), and another one who is only 1 year old. He is so cute, but he is kind of scared of me, I think because he's just not used to seeing foreigners. I think (well I'm hoping) that it will benefit my Thai language to have little siblings around, because like all little kids, they are very curious and are always wanting to ask me things. But since they can't really speak English, they always just ask me in Thai, which forces me to speak in Thai.
Last Friday, before we headed to the South, Elisabeth and I went to help out at an English Camp which was being held in Bangkok. English Camps are quite popular in Thailand. It's pretty much just where students go for a few days and learn English. The one we went to was full of kids from ages 5-15, and it was pretty much a gongshow just with kids running around and not really listening. I was feeling not really in the mood to be putting up with all of it, just because of all the drama going on with my host family situation and what not. Not knowing where I would be living when we got back from the South. However, the family who I spent Thursday night with (same family I am now living with) had offered to me that when I got back from the South I could live with them. So I did know that if AFS could find nothing else for me, I would at least have this family to go home to. There were three other exchange students (all German) who had been working at this English camp all week. In the evening when all the kids went home, us five students went with Ajarn Rose to the South. We went by van, and I don't remeber much of the journey as it was at night and I slept... When we got to the resort in the town of Prachuap Khiri Khan, I just fell right back asleep. Annika (Germany) met us at the resort, so in total we were 6 exchange students. 5 Germans, and then me.
We spent the next couple of days just hanging around the sleepy little town of Prachuap, eating Thai food, and going to the beach. A short drive from town there was a gorgeous beach (well the beach itself wasn't really so pretty, but it was all kind of in a lagoon type thing, and looking out to the water you saw all these beautiful cliffs to each side, and an island in the middle). We all got pretty sunburned on the first day, despite putting on sunscreen and even going swimming Thai style (in t-shirt and shorts). Early on Monday morning, Rose and 3 of the German girls had to head back to the English camp, but Elisabeth, Annika, and I stayed in Prachuap. We continued our routine of just bumming around at the beach, talking a bit with random Thai people (it was weird, I've never felt like a "beach beauty" before, but here since we were virtually the only foreginers (or the only young foreigners) all of the Thais would stare at us and want to talk.. which most of the time just consisted of them yelling random English words that they've learned in school at us ("HELLO!" "SHUT THE DOOR!" "SIT DOWN!" "I MISS YOU!")). On Monday while at the beach I accidently dropped my cell phone in the water. I was planning on getting a new one soon anyways, since my texting wasn't working on anything on it. On Tuesday we decided to take a train to the nearby tourist town of Hua Hin (where I ended up buying myself a new cell phone). Let's just say that the train ride was an experience. But when the ticket only cost 19 baht, I guess you can expect that the conditions wouldn't be too great. Basically it was just crowded with people (so crowded that we had to stand for the first half of the journey) and smelt like puke. We took a bus home instead of going back by train. While in Hua Hin, we just went to the beach for a bit (but didn't go swimming because we had no swim wear), but spent most of the day at a mall eating Western food and shopping. We went to the Pizza Company, Dairy Queen, KFC, and Swensens. We spent more on food than on transportation that day, but it was fun. Elisabeth and Annika esepcially enjoyed it because Hua Hin is pretty much the German capital of Thailand. There were soooo many tourists there (I think the foreigner to Thai ratio was greater there than it is in Bangkok!), and they were ALL German. It amazed me. I think by the time I go back to Canada my German will be just as good as my Thai.
I don't really know what else to say about the Optional Trip. It was basically just a nice, relaxing time. It was nice to just get away from all of the host family drama for a bit, lay on the beach, and hang out with other exchange students. Yesterday Elisabeth and I came back to Bangkok by bus. I met up with my coordinator and she brought me to my new home, since I arrived here kind of late at night, I pretty much just went to sleep. This morning while I was eating breakfast I visited a bit with my new host parents, and some random guy named Ron (I'm not really sure how he is related to my new host family) who went to an international school in Thailand and speaks amazingly good English. Although because he learned British English, he keeps being confused when I pronounce words such as "dirty" like "dirdy". I never really noticed all these weird things about my accent or about English in general until I came here. To me, English was always just the language I grew up learning, and it always just made sense to me. But now I have people asking me all these questions about things they are learning in English that don't make sense to them, and I am finding I can't explain to them the answers, because I just know how to say these things in English, but I don't know why we say them like this. For example, one of the German girls was asking me about the word "already" and how to use it in a sentence. She wanted to say, "she already leave Thailand," but I told her the proper way to say it is "she already left Thailand," so we agreed that to use the word "already" you should conjugate the verb in the past tense. But then I told this girl that her English, "is already good." She pointed out to me that I just used it in present tense.......
I'm not sure what I'll be doing for the rest of the day today. Right now I feel though like I wish I could just fast forward a couple of weeks to when I'm feeling alot more at home living in this new house with these new people... They are extemely nice, but it just always takes a little bit of time to adjust to new living arrangements.
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