I just got back to Bangkok last night from the AFS camp in ChiangMai. I had a good time there, but unfortunately alot of the sights we visited I had visited before when I went with my class in January.. so it got a little boring at times. But the company was good... there were lots of people to visit with (about 70 exchange studens overall). I mostly hung out with 2 girls from America (Kathy and Marissa), a girl from Belgium (Katrijn), and a girl from Peru (Maria). So, here's a brief recap of the things we did:

Wednesday - we all met up at the AFS office in Bangkok where we boarded buses and left for Chiang Mai at about 10 a.m. We stopped at various gas stations along the way, and ate our lunch on the bus... We watched a couple of movies, slept, and visited with eachother. Nothing too exciting really. We arrived at our hotel in ChiangMai in the evening, were assigned our rooms (I shared with Katrijn).... and that was Wednesday.

Thursday - was a really fun day. We went to an "elephant park" type place where we went bamboo rafting down the river, watched an elephant show where the elephants demostrated all kinds of talents such as playing musical instruments (including the harmonica), playing soccer, and even painting pictures, went elephant riding, and went for a ride on a cart pulled by oxen. I must admit I had very mixed feelings about the whole elephant show. While the things the elephants were showing were quite amazing, they were the types of things that humans are meant to do... not elephants. Then we went to some army camp base (I'm not really sure?) where they had this 60 meter tall tower which we could jump off of and then kind of go down a zip line type thing. We didn't have to do it, but if we did we were given a certificate. I did it of course, and I'm super glad I did. Of course we were all harnessed in, and the thing was completely safe (or else I probably wouldn't have done it....). I was quite proud of myself for actually jumping on the count of three, because alot of people kind of had to be pushed. Anyways, I've got a video of me doing the whole thing, and I uploaded it on here for you guys to watch :)

In the evening we went out to a traditional dinner thing where we sat on the floor and ate all kinds of yummy food (including super good fried chicken which I never would have guessed was a traditional Thai food?). There was a bit of a dance/drum show which we watched, and I was kind of amused by the fact that I already knew the names to alot of the dances and could probably give a whole commentary on them since they were the same dances which Patch had to record commentary for (I swear I've heard her repeating it so many times that I joke with her about her voice haunting me in the night). We all got up and joined in on one of the Thai dances, which was quite fun...

Friday - was actually a pretty boring day for me (and I only took 2 pictures the entire day... my bad). In the morning we went by songtaew to DoiSuthep which I had already visited with my Thai friends before. Although this time when we went up the mountain nobody got sick and puked over everywhere (unlike what happened when I went with the Thais) which I was quite happy about. And this time I actually climbed up the stairs to the temple at the top of the mountain rather than taking the lift... However, it was so hot out that once we had finished climbing the stairs we all just kind of sat down on benches in the shade and didn't even look around the temple at all. In the afternoon we went to the Royal Flora 2006 garden, which I had also visited before. It is pretty much just this massive garden which was built to commemorate something to do with the King (?) and (according to one of the exchange students) cost about 300 billion baht to make. We all thought that it seemed a little ridiculous that Thai people would spend so much money on a garden when there is so much poverty in this country...... but who knows, maybe the money made from people purchasing tickets to this garden goes to some kind of organization or something. I really hope so. AFS gave us all some pocket money for dinner (150 baht... about 5 dollars) and dropped us off at the night bazaar. I went with my friends to eat Subway, which was actually probably one of the most exciting things about the whole trip. Honestly. I walked into the Subway, and it actually SMELLED like Subway. It was the first time I've smelled something familiar in over 7 months. I of course had a turkey sub (which is what I always have in Canada), which believe it or not was super exciting because 1. Thai people don't eat turkey meat and 2. sandwich meat isn't available in Thailand. Sooo having sandwhich meat that was turkey was pretty much the coolest thing since sliced bread.

Saturday - we went to a hotsprings type thing in the morning. They had this kind of man made river thingy weaving around in the shade which was all full of hot water coming from the springs. People could sit at the edge and dangle their feet in the water. The whole concept of it just seemed kind of weird to me because it's so hot in this country to begin with, who wants to go sticking their legs in nearly boiling water (it would be nice in a cold country such as Canada...)? and also because Thai people are weirded out by feet, so why they all want to sit around and stick their feet in water together just kind of confuses me. Also I saw an old lady cutting her toenails into the water... We went to an umbrella making village to eat lunch and do some souvenir shopping. I ate lunch, but didn't buy anything since I had been there before with my Thai friends. In the evening we went to Walking Street, which I must admit didn't seem as impressive to me as it did when I went in January. There weren't as many interesting things to buy, so I didn't really buy much.

Sunday - was spent traveling back to Bangkok. We just sat on the bus all day... spent most of the time sleeping, listening to music, and just chatting with eachother. When we got back to the AFS office my host family was already waiting to take me home... so I had to say a quick goodbye to my friends and then went back into my foreign free life. Honestly, it isn't really the easiest thing to go from being around so many foreigners to going back to being around absolutely none. It's hard to explain. I get the same feeling whenever Elisabeth and I go see a movie in English at the mall. When we leave the theatre it's kind of like, "oh crap I'm in Thailand :S"

I uploaded pictures from the whole trip onto my photo page. You can view them here: http://community.webshots.com/album/570231760VNouSx however, I haven't had time to upload all of my videos yet, but hopefully I will have time in the next few days/weeks seeing as how I'm all done school now :)