Last Day of School

The title says it all. Today was my last day of school (or maybe not because I might have to go on Monday to get my friendship book from Fon....). I just sat in the computer room writing in friendship books while my classmates did their final math and Thai language exams.. which in total took all of like 2 hours, which I really don't understand. In Canada, one final exam takes a good 3 hours.... When everyone was done, I went with Ma, La, Bow, and P'Patch to the park next to our school for a picnic. We sat in the shade and ate somtam and sticky rice. It was alot of fun, but soooooooooo hot out. We went around the park taking all kinds of silly pictures, and somehow I ended up with a sunburn on my face (even though I was in the sun for all of like 3 minutes?). It was nice to just hang out with them since I don't know how many more times I will be seeing them now that school is over. Of course I want to see them all again, but I don't know how busy they/I will be over the holidays. And I actually understood alot of what they were talking/laughing about. We tried to take pictures of us jumping (in our school skirts, which probably wasn't the best idea in a public park) and laughed at how all of the pictures turned out. Honestly, I don't think I've laughed that hard in a looooooooong time. Anyways, here are some of my favourites from the day:

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 :)

Making Somtam!

Ok so here are pictures of making somtam (probably a little earlier than you expected, eh?) and other randoms from around my host families house:

Recent Happenings

I have pretty much recovered from my Valentine's Day sickness, yay me! But I haven't really been up to anything all that interesting in the last few days... I found out that my host mom's baby is due on May 28th, which is around the time that I'll be heading home (I don't actually know my exact date of return yet, although I think it should be somewhere around May 21st... hopefully AFS will tell me the date maybe while I'm in ChiangMai this week for the camp...) I went to school yesterday, which was kind of pointless because the teachers have kind of just stopped actually teaching students anything... so we just sat around the school all day. I guess since my friends didn't feel like doing that all over again today, my whole class decided to skip school, which is why I am spending the day at home. This morning whilst I was sitting in my room my a/c started leaking water, which I don't think is a very good sign..... So I'm kind of banished from my room all day since it will be too hot to do anything in there. Apparently all the a/c needs is a cleaning and then it will be fine... And apparently my host mom is going to teach me how to make somtam today, which I'm pretty excited about. Learning to cook somtam was one of the things on my list of things I definately must learn this year. I will try to take notes/pictures/video so I'll remember how to cook it for when I get back to Canada :)

In other exciting news, on exactly 1 month from today my family from Canada will arrive in Thailand! I'm super excited about it. I saw them on webcam today for the first time since I've been here (I actually was woken up this morning by them phoning me to tell me to go on msn haha) which was amazing (although I couldn't get the microphones to work...). I also got to see Dookie, which of course brought a smile to my face :)

Tomorrow morning I am off to ChiangMai once again, although this time I will be going with AFS. They are calling the whole trip our "Enrichment Camp", but I'm pretty sure all we'll be doing is touring around Chiang Mai and having fun and not really doing any workshops or things like we've done at the last 2 camps. I think I will still have fun even though I've already seen all the sights in ChiangMai when I went with my school... I'm also really looking forward to seeing all of the other exchange students that I haven't actually seen since September/October... Apparently tomorrow morning me and the other exchangers on this side of Bangkok (east side) will meet at Rose's School and then head to somewhere (?) to board the bus for ChiangMai. I believe the plan is to be back in Bangkok sometime on the 22nd, so I will update you all again once I'm back. Byes until then!

Valentines Day

Happy V-Day Everyone! Unfortunately my day hasn't been quite so happy, as I've been rather sick in bed since last night. I'll spare you all the gory details though, don't worry. The whole thing started yesterday afternoon when we went to see P'Ron's new baby girl (I think her name is Amelia... or something along those lines). I felt a little off in the car on the way over, and got full blown sick after we ate dinner... Went home, walked straight from the car to my bed... didn't really move much for the rest of the evening... I stayed home today trying to recouperate, and it's now about 6 p.m. and I'm feeling alot better (yay me!). Hopefully I'll feel 100% by tomorrow so I'll be able to carry out my plans of going to The Mall with Elisabeth. Anyways, here's hoping you all have a good one back in Canada!

<3

Ngan Wat

From February 6-14, WatNongChok (the Temple right next to my school) is having a Ngan Wat (temple fair). Yesterday evening I went to this fair thing with P'Patch and La (and I went again today after school with some other girls from my class). I don't know how to explain the whole thing... It was pretty much a market set up inside the temple ground, with some fair type games thrown in (throwing darts at balloons etc.), and a big screen set up where they show a different movie everynight. It's honestly not the kind of thing I would expect to see at a place that is supposed to be holy, I guess just because I can't really imagine the same thing happening at a Christian church. But then again, Buddhism isn't at all like Christianity... Nevertheless, I had fun there with my Muslim friends.... I played a game where I had to "go fishing" in a little pond and pick a random floating coin thingy with a number on it to win a prize.. I won a roll of toilet paper :S which is pretty much the most random prize I've ever won at a fair. However, it did come in handy when La, Patch and I pigged out on chicken wings and somtam. Today after school we stopped there on our way home pretty much to buy some snacks, and a couple of girls convinced me to go look at this thing they had set up with all these pictures of people who had been in car accidents and such. The pictures weren't too gruesome at first, and then I saw one where a person's head was smashed open and their brains were everywhere.... One of my friends joked that she wanted to save money, so when she was hungry she looked at these pictures and then didn't want to buy food to eat anymore... Honestly, I don't understand why they would have these kind of photos set up outside a temple for people to look at for entertainment. I understand how maybe they could be used for some type of education for people wanting to be paramedics or something... I dunno. But I will be happy if I never have to see things like that again. As Patch would say, "welcome to Thailand." (she says this to me whenever there are weird going ons, such as when the traffic lights just don't work in the middle of an intersection....)

And on a side note, I have noticed several times lately adults riding around on motorcycles down the highway with a child of two clinging on behind them. Strange thing is, I always see the parent wearing a helmet, and never the kid. Honestly, I just want to make these people stop, take off their helmet, smack them across their head, and take the kid home myself. I feel kind of the same when people don't wear seatbelts in their cars.. Instead they all have special protective prayers written on the roof of their car, and often have a mini Buddha imagine sitting on their dashboard so as to not get in a car accident.... After seeing all these gruesome pictures at the temple fairs you'd think they'd begin to realize the importance of a seatbelt (?)

P'Ron Had A Baby

Wellll not really, his wife did. A girl. On Saturday apparently. But nobody told me about it until today (?). Apparently on Friday we will go visit the happy new parents and see their new baby girl. I asked my host mom Sah what the baby's name is, but she couldn't remember :S

Magha Puja

Today is a Buddhist holiday, apparently called "Magha Puja". But, since my host family isn't Buddhist, this whole holiday for me just means a day off of school.. so today I've just been spending sitting at home, trying to get over my cold which I've developed in the last few days. Nothing too exciting. Here is a little blurb about Mugha Puja in case any of you are interested:

"Also called "Makha Bucha," Magha Puja commemorates a day when 1,250 monks, all from different places and on their on initiative, spontaneously came to pay homage to the historical Buddha. In particular, this is a day for laypeople to show special appreciation for the monastic sangha.
This is a major holiday in Thailand in particular. On this day, Thai Buddhists gather at sunset in their local temples to participate in candlelight processions called Wian Tian."

Supanburi Take Two

Yesterday after school, Patch, her cousin Patcha, and I went with P'Tee once again to the 27 Resort in Supanburi. We got there in the evening, and once again watched all the performances, except this time the performers were all costumed up, and Patch's commentary played through the sound system. I enjoyed watching the show (the costumes just added to the whole effect), and I actually saw some performances which I missed the last time we were there, such as a sword style dance. I tried to take some videos, but the lighting wasn't very good, so pretty much the people dancing just look like white blobs moving around.... When the show was over, we headed to our accomodations for the night... which ended up being in a room that was full of like 30 (really uncomfortable) beds shared with some other employees, rather than in our own hotel room like we had previously. It was alright though... We woke up in the morning around 7, showered, got dressed, ate, etc. And then Patch, Patcha and I just kind of had to wait around for P'Tee to finish up his work. We looked at all the animals at the resorts petting zoo... I guess yesterday they acquired a family of monkeys (don't ask me how exactly these animals were acquired :S)... and these poor little monkeys just looked scared to death with all these people staring at them (which makes me believe they weren't used to being around humans.. so maybe they were captured from the wild?) Then the three of us came across a pink, Hello Kitty, 3 person tandum bike, that we rode around the resort, and only managed to nearly crash 3 times (although nobody got hurt, don't worry). I really wanted a picture of us, but there was nobody around to take one, so I just put my camera on top of this little hill on the road, set the timer, and then ran as fast as I could to get on the bike, and hoped that a car didn't come driving down the road and run over my camera....

Before we could head back to Bangkok, we had to stop over at a funeral for one of P'Tee's wife's friends (?). But, before we headed to the funeral, we had some time to kill, so we went to what was apparently a famous temple to look around a bit. When we arrived, P'Tee told us that they had an area set up to show all the happenings in Hell, and another area for Heaven. I asked Patch where exactly Hell was, she told me "noon" (over there), and then I told her "by narok gun" (let's go together). While in Hell, we looked around at all the horrifying statues depicting things that will happen to you when you die, if you do bad things in this life. They were quite grafic, to say the least... I honestly can't imagine walking around that place at night... Needless to say, I'm not really wanting to end up in Buddhist Hell... So we decided to walk over to Heaven, but then we didn't end up having time... so we just went to the funeral instead. It wasn't all too exciting, since all we did was sit around at the temple and talk... Everyone who actually knew the deceased was given a flower made out of paper, which apparently would be used to burn the body. I don't really understand it all... Patch did her best to explain it to me, but she's not actually Buddhist, so I don't think she really understood the whole concept herself. All I know is that I saw people carrying around these flowers, and then when the monks were finished talking, everyone went up into the temple and put their flower on something (although according to Patch, they aren't placed directly on the body)... Once P'Tee had finished doing this, we headed back to Bangkok...

7 MONTHS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, I thought you all might like to know that as of today I've been in Thailand for 7 months! Which is pretty amazing, I think. Also, I only have 2 weeks left of school (well, 1 1/2 really, since I'll be going to Chiang Mai for the next AFS camp Feb 18-22) which I am feeling super sad about.... And I'm off to Supanburi once again with Patch tomorrow, although this time I think the plan is to stay a bit longer on Saturday, tour around the province for a bit, and then come back in the evening.

Laila's Wedding.

On Sunday at 5 p.m., my host cousin Laila got married. The ceremony took place at the Islamic Center of Thailand, which was pretty much a really fancy mosque. The wedding theme colours were white and pink, because apparently the bride's favourite colour is pink... and apparently also EVERYONE knew that, sooooooooo half of the guests were dressed in pink. Including my entire host family. Even my host dad had a pink shirt on under his jacket. My little brother was the only one not in accordance with this whole pink theme... he wore a really cute little white tuxedo with a red bow tie :)

We arrived at the Mosque at about 4 30, and spent half an hour taking picures with the bride and other family members. And running around after my host brother who was determined to lay down and lick the entire floor :S When it was time for the ceremony, we all went into the Mosque and sat on the floor, with the women sitting on one side and the men on the other. Then there was alot of praying in Arabic which was apparently to wish good luck on the marriage or something (obviously I don't speak Arabic so I didn't understand it). It was probably about the most beautiful Mosque I've ever seen (but I didn't want to take pictures, I thought that might be considered bad manners or something), and I'm still absolutely in love with the sound of prayers in Arabic (mainly because they are more sang than spoken). The whole ceremony didn't actually take too long though, and soon enough we all went to sit at the pink table clothed tables to eat.. Since there were obviously more guests than tables/chairs to sit on, so my host family all just kind of gathered around one table, and took turns sitting down to eat, while the others just huddled around and ate kanom (desserts) and what not. And when I say "my host family", I really really mean it... the whole entire extended family was there (which trust me is like a million people.... my host dad has 5 brothers and sisters, and they all have like 5 children of their own... then there was my host mom's side of the family....) At some point my host mom started to get bored as well, so we around and took some more pictures... We didn't get home until about 10 p.m., and the rest of my extended host family stayed for a while at our house eating some kanom.. however, I was still full from dinner so I just showered and went to bed.

Yesterday (Monday) after school, P'Tee (the guy who took Patch and I to Supanburi a couple of weeks ago) took Patch and I to some guys house (?) where there was a recording studio set up. They recorded Patch speaking the commentary for the resort in Supanburi's show.. first in Thai, then in English. I was there to just keep her company, and to help make sure she was pronouncing things correctly. Words she had trouble with included sword, gorgeous, used, and sacred... and I'm guessing that most Thai people would have similar difficulties. However, I think she did an amazing job :) although she was a bit worried that foreigners won't be able to understand her accent. I told her that I understand it fine, but then again I've been listening to it for the last seven months... and I've actually started to pick up some of her speech patterns when speaking English, I've noticed, and well as the whole speaking half Thai half English thing (I know I know it's bad for me to be speaking English at all... but trust me, when you can speak two different languages, it becomes kind of fun to combine them, and you can come up with all kinds of things you would never be able to using only one language....) When we finished the recording thing, P'Tee took us out for a seafood dinner, and then brought us home. When I got home my host family was nowhere to be found (although luckily I've recently acquired a key to the house, so I was able to get inside fine)... I have no idea where they were, and by the time I went to sleep around 11, they still weren't home. However, they were here when I woke up this morning... and they are here now (after school).

p.s. I tried to upload the video of me Thai dancing, but webshots informed me I can't upload it because it is too big :S and I'm not quite sure where else I can upload it.... Possibly on youtube? I dunno, I'll keep you guys updated... I did manage to upload new pictures though... and they can be found at: http://community.webshots.com/user/kristenthailand