Sickness

This morning I woke up at 5, because the plan was for me to go to school at 6 and go along with Patch and other students to some university where our school was competing against another school in sport. I’m not really sure exactly what sports they were going to be competing in, but the impression I got was that the whole thing was more of another Sports Day type thing (where the focus was more on Cheerleading etc. than on actual sport playing) only between 2 different schools. All day yesterday students at my school were preparing for the whole event. I helped with painting this huuuuuuuuge ass banner thing a bit after school. All the cheerleaders from our different teams from Sports Days combined to give each other ideas for the whole event. But…. I didn’t go, due to being too sick. I told my host mom I was "mai sabai" (sick) and then went back to bed.. until 2 p.m., when my host mom came in and told me I needed to eat something. So I ate some rice (hurray) with some soup, and now I'm here back in my room. My symptoms include diarrhea, headache, sore throat, nauseau (although I haven't actually thrown up), and a bit of a fever. My host mom is convinced I need to go to the doctor (because Thai people go to the doctor for EVERYTHING!), but I think I really just need some rest... I'm already feeling alot better than I did a couple of hours ago, so if I continue feeling better and better, there's really no need to go to the doctor.... Hopefully I'll feel all better for Sunday though, because my host family has plans to take Elisabeth and I to Lopburi to see fields of sunflowers (or something?)

Edit: Just went to the Doctor, who spoke incredibly good English, and gave me all different kinds of medications/anti-biotics/electrolyte tablets to take.

Camping

So since my internet has yet again failed me, this post, unfortunately, is going to be picture-less. Which sucks for you because I have some really nice pictures to share... Camping went pretty much how I expected it would. Although we did end up going camping at Khao Yai National Park (which I wasn't expecting), which is actually one of the places on my Must Visit List in Thailand list. I was planning visiting there with my family when they come in March. My host mom told me we would leave at about 2 or 3 in the afternoon (but since she's Thai that really meant about 4 or 5), and we ended up leaving at about 5 or 6 (I'm not sure). Due to a prolonged wait at a random 7-11 for my host cousin Ron, we didn't end up actually getting to the park until 9 45. Unfortunately the park gates close at 9, so we had to sit outside the gates looking cold and homeless unless one of the park rangers took pity on us and let us in. I quite enjoyed the drive through the park. It was all twitsty and turvy and mountainy, kind of like the lake road. It made me feel at home, after 5 months of the Alberta-esque roads in Bangkok (completely flat and straight). Oh, and Bangkokians drive alot like Alberta drivers too, just to let you all know.

By the time we actually got to the campground and had our tents all pitched (we being my host parents, host siblings, cousin Ron, and a bunch of Random other 30 year olds... kind of weird, Ron's (pregnant) wife wasn't around, but there was another nice lady there who was, ummmm, keeping Ron good company(?)) it was probably about midnight, and believe it or not, it was actually on the verge of cold! Although I can't really say it was cold compared to Canadian standards... but I could actually see my breath while breathing! All the Thai's were wearing their gloves and big winter jackets and toques and things and sitting there shivering.. but I was all nice and relaxed in my jeans and hoodie :) It was the coldest I've felt in quite a while, and I must admit I quite enjoyed it. I was fairly bored though, since everyone else was just sitting around, eating, and smoking "herbs"(???) (apparently alot of Muslims do it... it confuses me too...), so at around 130 I went to bed, despite being completely awake.

I woke up at about 9 the next morning, and we all just sat around for a few hours, eating and what not. There was a gang of monkeys all around the campground which would try to steal innocent campers' food. It was quite amusing. And at one point a Kimodo Dragon (sp?) wandered by! It was exciting for me, since it's the first time I've ever actually seen one.. but I wasn't really too keen on getting close. I went with Sunyair and 3 of the 30-ish girls in our camping group on a "hike" to a nearby (3 km) waterfall. However, we only got about halfway there, when all these girls in their fancy shoes and clothes got tired and called it quits. The rest of the time was just spent sitting around some more, while the Thais socialized. On our way back home we stopped at a beauuuutiful waterfall (1 km walk), although it's not the one within Khao Yai National Park from the movie the Beach (so I deffinatley have to go back just to see that one...) It was tall and quite lovely. I was hoping to post picture of it on here... but unfortunately you will all just have to wait until my internet decides to work in order to see it. If you're really desperate maybe try googling NamTok Haew Narok....?

Eid ul-Adha

Yesterday was the Muslim Holiday Eid ul-Adha, and since nobody in my host family could explain to me what it was all about, and the explaination that Patch gave me was apparently wrong... here is what Wikipedia has to say about the whole thing:

Eid ul-Adha (عيد الأضحى), or the Festival of Sacrifice, falls approximately 70 days after Eid ul-Fitr (end of Ramadan) and is celebrated in honor of the prophet Abraham willingness to sacrifice his son as a proof of his loyalty to God. Celebrations usually include presenting an animal (usually a cow or a sheep) sacrifice, and the meat is shared with family, friends and those in need.
The festival also marks the end of the Pilgrimage or Hajj to Mecca.
As with Eid ul-Fitr, there is an early morning prayer for the Eid, and celebrations lasts few days.

For me this meant skipping school (as I'm also doing today), going to the Mosque with my host family in the morning, and then visiting with different host families relatives throughout the rest of the day. I didn't get all dressed up in a hi-jab and Muslim clothes, I just wore jeans and a long sleeve shirt the whole day, which I was alot more comfortable wearing. Going to the Mosque wasn't actually that eventful as I just sat with my host mom and my lil brother and didn't take part in any of the praying at all. I did get a cute picture of me and my lil host brother all dressed up like Santa though:
The rest of the day we just spent at home, and many of my host families relatives gathered around to celebrate. The whole day was actually quite boring for me to be honest. They just sat around and ate noodles, spoke in Thai. I ended up spending alot of time on the computer in my host dad's office. For lunch I ate noodles and some meat balls which I'm sure weren't actually made from beef. They were probably dog or horse or monkey or some other kind of animal I really would not want to be eating.... The made me feel a bit nauseaus actually.

Apparently today I'm going camping with my host family and some of their relatives. I'm not really looking forward to it so much as I think it will just be alot like yesterday, only minus the computer for me to kill time with. Hopefully there will at least be some good scenery to take pictures of, and some good food to eat. I think I'll be happy when I finally get to go to school again on Thursday, because this long weekend has just been toooooo long for me.

Photossssssss

New Photos Can Be Found Here:

http://community.webshots.com/album/569124683RIWTOq
http://good-times.webshots.com/album/569117553erGXYb



I bought the best book at The Mall the other day. It's called, "Very Thai" and it explains all about these Very Thai things one may find in Thailand. For example, I've learned from it why exactly people sell and carry around wooden penises everywhere in this country.... (it freaked me out a little bit the first time I was shopping outside a temple and saw one right next to a mini Buddha statue...) Apparently they are a kind of goodluck charm. They make little boys wear these charms around their waist while swimming in the river, because they believe it will distract water demons from damaging the boys actual penis, or something like that. I've also learned from it that Thai's dislike reading because it is something a person does alone, and is therefore un-"sanook" (fun). Thai people, on average, read only 8 lines per day. It was also an American who standardized the Thai writing system, and many attempts have been made by different leaders throughout Thai history to simplify the written language (for example, to add grammar or spaces between words) have been rejected.... Which certainly doesn't make things any easier for me :S

5 MONTHS!! and Other Things.

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.

Thai Father's Day

Tomorrow is the King's Birthday/Father's Day in Thailand. One difference I've noticed from this holiday and the Queen's Birthday/Mothers Day (which was back in August), was that Mothers day seemed to be more about Mothers... but Fathers Day seems to be more about the fact that it's the King's Birthday. Elli and I really wanted to go to the Grand Palace and be two of thousands of Thais who stand wearing yellow shirts (yellow is the King's colour) and waving these yellow flags and wait for the King to make a brief appearance on his balcony. But instead I'm going tree planting with P'Patch and some of her friends who went to America with her last year. It should be fun/interesting. This morning at school we had a ceremony which was similar to the one on Mothers Day (certain students' dads came with them and went up on stage to get special gifts...), except this time the whole thing took place outside. They had set up this nice big stage at one end of our soccer field, and all of us students were lined up neatly in rows covering the entire field. For 3 hours. In 30 degree weather. In the end they let me leave and go sit in the shade because I was overheating. I contributed to the whole ceremony by helping Cherry and her friends give food to the monks (they did the same thing on Mothers Day, but I didn't help them that time...) We waited along a line with all of the Buddhist students while the monks made their way along, collecting food in their alms bowls. Before we could give them the food, we each had to hold it in our hands and say a Buddhist prayer. Since I don't know any Buddhist prayers (or ANY prayers for that matter), I just held the food and Cherry took a picture of me looking like I was praying. When the monks reached us, we all gathered around eachother, and I put my hand on Cherry's back who had her hand on someone elses back who was touching someone elses back etc., so that we were all somehow connected to the person who actually gave the food to the monk. While we did this we had to have our shoes off. I'm not really sure why. The best Cherry could explain to me was we must have our shoes off because the monks don't wear shoes. I took pictures during ths whole thing, but I'm still having internet troubles here, so I won't be able to upload them just yet. After we gave the monks the food, we all squatted down around a little tree and did the whole touching eachother thing again, while one person poured water on a leaf, and a monk sayed a prayer over the microphone. Honestly, I have no idea what this whole act is supposed to signify...

My class has been spending the last few days presenting their math projects in all of our math classes. Today I noticed that one of the boys who was presenting had swastikas decorating his project. I'm sure he isn't a Nazi supporter, he just didn't realize what this symbol stands for. I must admit, I'm amazed that there are still people in this world who don't know what it means. I'm not saying that all Thai people are unaware of the whole Nazi thing, but it sure seems like there are alot of Swastikas around Thailand, and that people don't realize they are a bad thing. They just think they look cool. While this does suprise me, it really upsets the German exchange students, as I've witnessed before, esepcially around Elisabeth. We were at a bookstore at the mall which sells alot of English books last week, and she was looking at a biography about Schindler. She said how much she wishes there had been more people like him. I don't know how to explain it, but the amount of emotions she was experiencing in that moment really reached me. I was amazed by how much even her life seems to be affected by WW2. I had always heard about WW2 from a Canadian or American point of view, and never really viewed it from a German point of view before. Speaking of Canadians/Germans/Americans, just the fact that students from all over the world are able to become friends with students from all over the world (some from countries who were always enemies) proves that AFS has accomplished what they set out to do.

Met Boat Trip

On Sunday I went with Elisabeth, who had won tickets from a local radio station (met 107), to a boat tour of the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok. She won the tickets by sending in a text message to the station answering a question about why she loves Thailand. Her answer was, "because of the cute guys who work in 7-11".. and I guess the DJs found this answer quite funny, so they gave her 2 tickets, and she invited me along. We had some difficulties actually finding the station in the morning, but when we finally made it we were all sorted into 5 teams, each team containing 2 farang, 1 Thai, and 1 DJ. It was nice to see so many other foreigners, and not just foreign tourists... all of these people are what they call "expats" meaning they actually live in Thailand. One of the ladies was fron Canada (Penticton to be exact), and I talked to her a bit. I was pretty psyched about that because I haven't seen another Canadian in person for just about 5 months now...

We spent the day boating down the river, and stopping at various piers to compete in a photo rally. At each stop we had a mission to complete, which involved finding certain things around the area and taking pictures of them.. I was hoping to include some of these pictures on this blog, but my computer has been having some difficulties. For some reason my wireless isn't working. My host cousin took my laptop to a store at Fashion Island yesterday, and they checked out my computer and said it was absolutely fine.. it worked with their wireless and all. But for some reason it won't work at my host families house. My suspision is that it is something wrong with my host families wireless.. but they seem convinced that it has something to do with my Windows Vista, and they think that if they change my computer to Windows XP, they will be able to fix it... so tomorrow they are planning to install Windows XP.. but I'm honestly not feeling too gun-ho about the whole thing... I wish I had someway to back up all of my pictures and things before they do this.. because yes, I am actually quite paranoid about losing all of my pictures.. esepcially certain ones from Thailand which got deleted off my of camera and I only have them on my computer... back to the photo rally.

One of our stops was at Wat Pho, where we all got free Thai Massages. It was amazing, esepcially since Wat Pho is THE place for Thai Massages... My back kept on cracking during my massage though, at times when I don't think it was supposed to. The lady giving me the massage kept on making noises like, "oh.. that's weird." but it felt good. I feel so much better now after having some good crack.

My team didn't do so good in the whole event. We came last, to be honest. We still won some free German beer and CDs though! The winners each got a 2 night stay in some fancy hotel in Bangkok.. Elli and I had alot of fun, and got to see some new parts of Bangkok which we haven't really had a chance to see before, including one road called "Khao San Road", which is the backpackers haven of Thailand. There were sooo many foreigners and interesting shops. Khao San Road is also apparently THE place to go at Songkran (water festival) in April. One of the DJs from the station, named Melissa (she does the show called "Sa-Wat-Dee Farang" every morning from 6-7) offered to take Elli and I shopping there sometime. And since she also lives fairly near Elli, she drove us back home to Elli's house when the whole thing was over. However, since it was already dark outside when we arrived back at Elli's I wasn't really comfortable taking a taxi home on my own, and my host family wasn't able to come pick me up. So I just slept the night at Elli's and come home by taxi on Monday morning (and skipped school).

Last night I was sitting in my room and my host dad (who was taking my lil host brother to the doctor.. he had a fever) called me, and tried to tell me something that confused me a great deal. I finally realized he was telling me to go outside and look at the moon. I did, and the sky smiled at me. It was so cool. The moon looked like a smile, while there were two planets/stars (someone told me one was saturn, and someone else said jupiter) that looked like eyes. Apparently this kind of alignment happens only once every 4 years. I'm not sure if it can be seen from Canada.. so you guys will have to let me know if anyone saw it?