1/4

Since I have now been here for a total of 2 months and 2 weeks, I am officially 1/4 of the way through my 10 months (yay I haven't completely lost my math skills yet... my typing skills on the other hand...) How do I feel at this point you may ask? Well, I must admit that although earlier in my stay I had thought about switching to a semester program rather than a year program, I think that if I was only staying until December, then I would be half-way there.. and I'm really not feeling like I'd be ready for it to be half over. Not while I'm still having such troubles with the language and everything. I think I will probably only really start to get a grip on this confusing language probably around December, and I would hate to have to leave just then. Not to mention the fact that there are so many exciting things happening in the New Year that I would miss out on. To reflect upon my first quarter... I would have to say that while I struggled alot at the beginning, I'm finally now starting to feel alot more comfortable in this country. I am no longer phazed by the humidity, using squat toilets, and eating spicy things. (I actually sucessfully managed to eat some spicy som-tam tonight without my eyes going all watery.. Cherry was quite impressed) However, there are still some things about this country that I don't think I will every completely get used to. For example, the hoardes of homeless/starving dogs on the streets, children getting beaten in school, and the cock fighting.. I have already done many things that many people will never do in their life. I think if I feel as content as I do now at the end of my stay, then the whole thing will have been a success.

Tomorrow night I will be going to see The Nutcracker Ballet in downtown Bangkok with P'Beam. Since the show starts at 730, and will probably last a couple of hours, plus the added time of getting back to Nongchok from downtown Bangkok.. it's going to be a late night, which would really be no problem except that Rachel is coming on Sunday morning rather than Monday morning. Her train will arrive here at 550 in the a.m. Which means I will be waking up quite early in order to catch a taxi with Korn and Cherry (as P'Kla will be working) to meet Rachel at the station. I apologize in advance for the lack of updates which there might be in the next few days, as from the sounds of it I might be quite busy (which is deffinately alot better than being quite bored).

Noodles

Nothing much exciting happened today besides eating noodles for lunch. And when I say "eating noodles" I mean forcing myself to chew and somehow swallow the noodles. Honestly, they weren't that bad. I eat them willingly at school as an alternative to rice all the time. But for some reason they just weren't sitting well with me today, and I had a headache (I think maybe they had alot of MSG) and kind of felt like puking. I ate some candy to get rid of the taste and it actually, amazingly worked. I don't feel like writing too much now, because really there is nothing too exciting to write about.. and I don't want to bore you all. And my laptop is starting to warm up and burn my legs, so I think I'll be going now. Oh, on the bright side it stopped raining today (it's been raining for the last week nonstop). While before when it was raining it was icky and muddy outside so I didn't feel like going out and doing much, now that it's stopped it's blisteringly hot outside so I don't feel like going out and doing much. Oh Thailand.

Wow, just as I wrote this it started raining.

Waterfalls (?) Part Song

(song = two in Thai)

This morning started out with some good news, Rachel from Australia will be coming to stay with me for sure!! She will come by train and arrive here in the morning on the 22nd, and stay until the 29th. I'm super excited... although I have no idea how we are going to spend the week. Hopefully just having fun and doing the crazy things exchange students tend to do.. Maybe go visit downtown Bangkok for a couple of days with Elisabeth and her other German friend. Who knows.

This afternoon my host dad asked me if I wanted to go see the waterfall, "since last time there was no water but this time there is many water." His words, not mine. I really should know by now though that when he asks me to go see waterfalls, he's really asking me to go wait for him while he gets some Thai massage or something. We went to see a damn first. The same damn we went to see last time, but this time it actually had water shooting out of it. Then we went to see the "waterfall" which was actually just a really scary river. It was scary due to it raining so much in the last few days I'm assuming. Anyways, there was a random crab there that my host mom was poking with a stick. I thought crabs lived in the ocean, not beside a river. Silly crab. After that the three of us went out for dinner. It was a steak house kind of thing at some fancy hotel. My host dad ordered for me (as he usually does, but usually I appreciate it because it's all Thai food and I don't know what any of it is anyways.. but this time it was steak! I know how to handle that myself.. kind of) and he ordered me a pork chop. It really wasn't a very good pork chop, but it came with gravy, potato bumps, a roasted tomato, and peas and corn. The best part of the meal was.... NO RICE! I somehow managed to avoid eating rice for 2/3 meals today (the other one was lunch, when I had soup with noodles, not rice). However, I don't think either of my host parents really liked their dinners, they didn't even eat their potato bumps! Which were by far the best part... After dinner we stopped back at that weird massage/temple place we went to that one time before so my host dad could get "healed." My host mom and I just waited around, while she talked to some guy about me (I can always tell when they're talking about me because they always say "farang" which means foreigner). I phoned Patch and talked to her for a bit though, and unfortunately plans for going to her elementary school tomorrow to do activities got cancelled. She did say though that if it ever stops raining she will take me downtown Bangkok to go shopping for a Thai traditional dress :)

When we got home my host parents had a second dinner, because apparently the first one wasn't good enough or something. Also, my host dad told me that in December he will be going to America and Canada for one week, Vancouver in particular (probably because that's where the Thai embassy is.. I know because that's where I had to get my visa from). He kind of drives me crazy sometimes because he likes to talk and not really to listen.. When he told me he was going I was trying to tell him it will be cold then but probably not snowy because it's Vancouver, but instead he just told me about how he gets to go first class in the airplane all expenses paid and stuff. I think I forgot to mention before that last week he was commenting about how nice the weather is in Thailand, and said, "In Canada it's very cold now." I was all, "umm actually it's fairly warm in Canada right now due to it being summer." Honestly, it scares me that even a politician here doesn't understand the whole northern/southern hermispheres have different seasons type of thing. Here's something even scarier: Elisabeth was telling me that at her school a few weeks ago her class was learning about World War Two, and that the teacher was explaining about Hitler being German and what not, but Elisabeth pointed out he was actually from Austria, and the teacher asked her, "Aren't Austria and Germany the same thing?" EEEK. Really, nobody around here seems to understand where Canada is. I'm like, "how can you miss it, it's that really huuuge country in North America?" But they all seem to think it's in Europe. Anyways, both when my host dad went to Germany and when he went to China, he brought back a whole suitcase full of food from whichever particular country... so right now I'm just kind of curious to see what food he will bring back from Canada?

I was planning on including pictures from the damn and such in this post.. but apparently my free trial of ACDsee has run out, which means I can't upload pictures until I download it again...

As Much As I Hate To Admit It...

Today was just as uneventful as yesterday. Perhaps even a little less eventful than yesterday. At least I managed to focus long enough to study Thai for a bit. I haven't given up hope yet completey that this year will be amazing.. I took a year off for this, so I'm going to try my best to make it worth while.. Still have 8 months left in order to do it.. so I'm not too concerned yet! Just feeling a little lonely I guess

Today

Today consisted of studying some Thai, reading more of The Memory Keeper's Daughter (I'm having a hard time putting it down... although I really should slow down on my reading because I don't know when the next chance I'll have to get back to that bookstore will be), watching The Weakest Link until the power went out due to some crazy raining outside, trying to get a hold of Rachel from Australia (however it appears she has no minutes left on her phone), and trying to figure out what Christmas gifts to buy everyone back home. I'm hoping that sometime soon I will actually be able to get a hold of Rachel and arrange for her to come stay with me the last week of September, or else all my days from now until the massage course starts are going to be just like today.... It wont be the end of the world, it's just a little frustrating when I'm in Thailand! and there are so many amazing things I could be seeing/doing, but instead I'm cooped up in this little house. Hmmm

Samut Sakhon

So apparently Cherry doesn't know her days of the week in English, because we actually went to Samut Sakon (another province to the SouthWest of Bangkok) today, instead of on Monday. I left with my host parents in the afternoon, and we went to The Mall to do some grocery shopping and wait until Cherry was done her extra tutorial (yes, even though she just finished her exams on Friday, she is already studying for her exams at the end of next semester). Then we picked her up, and headed out for dinner at a restaurant beside a river that apparently leads to the sea. It wasn't too exciting. I ate the weirdest ice cream I've had in my life for dessert. It was weird, Cherry handed me the menu and said "Kris, pick a dessert, it's in English." and I looked at it, and it was completely in Thai. So I was like, "uhhh very funny, where is the English." and then she finally looked at it and said, "oops the title is in English but everything else is in Thai." Duh. Oh well, I'm going to try and not give her a hard time about anything, but I dunno, part of me kind of feels sorry for her. The reason for that is mainly just because she has no hobbies, all she does in her free time is study, and I think her parents put alot of pressure on her to do well in school. Also because she seems very sheltered, and isn't really allowed to do much on her own. The first day I was with my host family I remember my advisor asked my host parents if they'd ever let her go on exchange, and they said no. Then she asked if they would let her go to Canada and stay with me (not my idea, she was just asking theoretically), and they said no, it's too dangerous. I know I really shouldn't feel sorry for her for these things, because she's been brought up in a different culture, and one of the things I've noticed about Thai culture is that kids here are more encouraged to study than to join extra curricular activities and things like this. I shouldn't say the way they were brought up is bad or wrong, because my understanding of how someone should be brought up is based on a completely different culture. I must admit it is really hard to suspend judgement about these things sometimes. Anywas, after dinner we drove to some relatives home (I'm not really sure exactly how they are related). My host parents chatted with them for a bit, and they gave Cherry the phone number of either their son who is a doctor, or their daughter who is a pharmacist, so that she can contact them and ask questions about their profession and such. Afterwards we drove back home, and at one point I think my host dad was yelling at Cherry about something, but I'm not really sure because I couldn't understand what he was saying. It was awkward. We got back just after 11 p.m.

10 Weeks Later...

I have officially been in Thailand for 10 Weeks... Yay Me! I must admit, it feels very good to know I've at least battled it out for this long... I can't imagine how amazing it will feel after 10 months.

I hung out with Elisabeth from Germany today, and she is offically my favourite German. You want to know why? CANADA was her first choice country for her exchange... Thailand was actually her second. Stupid Canada, why couldn't we have accepted Elisabeth? I guess it's a good thing we didn't, because that means she's here for me to hang out with. She also showed me a bookstore at the mall that sells a bunch of English books. So I bought two: The Secret Life of Bees, and The Memory Keeper's Daughter. And now I know where to go back to find more :)

P'Kla drove me to Elisabeth's this afternoon, and the plan was for him to drop me off there and then her and I would take a taxi or the bus to The Mall. We kind of got lost on the way to her house, and it took us about 40 minutes to get there. Probably would have taken 30 if we hadn't gotten lost. P'Kla ended up driving us all the way to the mall though. We went and saw the movie Mamma Mia!, which I really enjoyed. I could barely keep myself from singing along on some of the songs... but I'm pretty sure all of the Thai people would have that I was insane. Not that they don't already think that. We went to eat lunch at The Pizza Company. I ordered a pepperoni pizza not knowing that Elisabeth is vegetarian... but she was really good about it, and just picked off the pepperonis. We talked about how during the first little while we both felt completely homesick and kind of wanted to go home and all those things, but are both super happy now that we stuck through the rough part... and now feel like we can handle anything. One of the girls from Germany actually went home after 1 week because she couldn't handle the emotions, and although I felt like going home after 1 week, I'm really glad I didn't.

We looked around the mall a bit, but didn't buy anything. When it was time to head back to Elisabeth's house for P'Kla to pick me up, we waited for a bus for about 10 minutes, but it didn't come, so we decided to try and take a taxi instead. We were able to tell the taxi driver the general direction to go in, but he started asking us things in Thai we didn't understand, so I phoned P'Kla who talked to the driver about where to take us. He ended up just taking us to a random bus stop in Minburi, where my host family (host dad, host mom, Cherry, and P'Kla) came and picked us up. We took Elisabeth back to her home, and my host family was all really impressed with her Thai accent and her Thai vocabulary. She really didn't say anything in Thai that I don't know yet... but I think I'm kind of developing a problem where I am a little shy to actually speak Thai. Must fix that. We then went to some shopping mall that I hadn't been to before called Seacon Center I believe. We went for Cherry to get a haircut and for the five of us to go out for dinner. While Cherry was getting her hair cut, P'Kla and I looked around at some little shops in the mall where they sold all kinds of Thai type souvenirs. When we walked into the mall I saw a place that sold little elephant tea sets, which I thought were really cute, so I wanted to go back and look, but when we went back, the store was closed... I did manage to find some cute gifts though which I think will make good Christmas presents for some certain people back home....

We went to a Japanese noodle house for dinner, and I really didn't feel like eating much since I was already full from the pizza. I ate some food anyways, and during dinner I asked my family if it would be okay for Rachel to come and stay with us. They said yes and asked questions about the dates she will come and how she will get here and such, which I'm not really too sure about yet, but tomorrow I will phone her and hopefully get that all sorted out. I'm hoping maybe she will come around September 22 and stay until September 28 or so. During that time Elisabeth will have another German girl staying with her. They are planning to go rent a hotel room in downtown Bangkok for a couple of days and visit Siam Square and Wat Phra Kaew and such, so maybe Rachel and I will go too. On the way home from dinner, Beam phoned me about the tickets for the Ballet. We decided it would be better to go on the Saturday night, but unfortunately most of the tickets had already been sold. She tried to explain to me over the phone where the tickets we could buy were, but I didn't really understand... However, she told me the price, and they were some of the most expensive tickets, so I'm assuming they're fairly good seats.

Overall, today was a good day.. and I'm feeling pretty happy that all of my plans seem to be working out, such as the ballet and Rachel coming to visit. I'm not sure what I will do tomorrow, but on Monday apparently we are going somewhere to visit my host cousin. That's about all Cherry was able to explain to me...