As of Friday (which was the King's Birthday), I have been in Thailand for 5 months! Go me! On Friday I went with Patch and 5 of her friends who have also previously gone to America with AFS to a Mangrove Forest Conservation Place in AmPohWah (not really sure on the spelling of that one?) It's not so far from Bangkok. The original plan was for us to spend Friday night there, but seeing as it was Fathers Day in Thailand and all, everyone seemed to think it would be better if we just went for the day, and could spend the evenings back at home with families. I'm not really sure how to describe a mangrove forest. Pretty much it's just a forest growing in mud that is right at the edge of the sea. During the day the tide comes in, and it appears like this forest is just growing right out of the ocean. At night the tide goes out, and all of the muddy/swampyness is visible. Since we were there during the day, we saw the more beautiful side of the whole mangrove forest thing. We drove around in a little wooden boat through the trees and out into the sea, where there were all of these little huts on stilts. Even though these huts weren't the greatest quality, they still looked sooo beautiful just being out in the middle of this blue sea (although I'm sure at night when the tide is out and these huts are just on stilts in the middle of a big mud puddle.. it wouldn't be quite as beautiful). We stopped at one for lunch. We had all different kinds of seafood, including squid and shells which we cooked over this little mini fire. It was really yummy, but didn't agree too well with my stomach.
When we finished our lunch, it was time to head into the mangrove forest to plant some baby mangrove trees. This involved being in mud up to our knees, digging a hole into the mud with a little stick, putting the baby mangrove tree into the hole, and then using our hands to fill in the rest of the hole with mud. Basically the whole thing just involved alot of mud. It was fun nonetheless. On our way out of the mangrove forest, we floated in our boat past a family of monkeys gathered on the muddy banks. Our boat driver gave us some bananas to feed to the monkeys (which he told us wouldn't bite, unlike the monkeys in the mountains...) There was one rather aggressive monkey who climed out onto a branch and practically into our boat in order to get the bananas from us. I felt bad for the sad little monkeys on the shore who weren't getting any bananas, and I wanted to give mine to them.. but I was worried this one aggressive monkey would jump into the boat and steal the bananas from me... so I just gave them to him before he bit me or something. There were more monkeys on the other bank, who didn't get any bananas, so they all started letting out these shrieking monkey noises.... I'm pretty sure we may have started a civil war between the monkey clans or something. It was quite the experience.
Before heading back to headquarters, we stopped a ways out in the sea, and took turns being pulled around on a wooden wakeboard which was tied behind one of the boats. I just sat on it and got pulled around a bit.. and all I could think about was how if I was in Canada right now, I would be doing the exact same thing only it would be behind a snowmobile and in the snow (rather than behind a boat in the sea.)
Yesterday I went to The Mall with Elisabeth so we could go see the movie Twilight. While I waited for her at the movie theatre, I played Guitar Hero at the arcade! My first time playing in 5 months.. and I must admit, my Guitar Hero skills aren't quite so good. At the arcade they have 2 different kinds of Guitar Hero.. one where you play on the "guitar" just like it regular Guitar Hero.. and one where instead of playing a guitar you just hit coloured buttons on the machine. All the Thais seem to prefer playing the one where you just hit these big coloured buttons, which I think is silly because the whole point of the game is to play on the "guitar".... I really enjoyed the movie Twilight, but I must admit it made me quite homesick for my small town with all the mountains and trees and natives and what not. Even Elli felt homesick for Germany when the movie was over. It was kind of depressing to think that we just had to head back to our host families where everything is so confusing and un-familiar.. It just gets exhausting being an exchange student sometimes times, despite all the fun we do have. It will be nice just to be back where everything is familiar and makes sense to me.
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