Anecdotes

This Is Why I Prefer Dogs To Cats:
The other night, I woke up at about 2 in the morning to go to the bathroom. As usual, my host families cat (I don't know it's name) was sitting around in it's usual spot at the top of the stairs. It followed me down the stairs, all purring and what not, and then proceded to follow me into the bathroom. Now, at first I tried just opening the door for it so that hopefully it would go out of the bathroom, but then I realized it didn't really want to leave. So, then I tried picking it up and putting it out the door, but the damn cat just started clinging to the door with it's claws... Since I really needed to pee, I just gave up on trying to get rid of the cat, and proceded to go pee. But as I was on the toilet, the damn cat attempted to bite my leg (but it didn't actually pierce the skin, don't worry). When that was all over and done, it tried to follow me back into my bedroom, but luckily I was able to get in without the cat. I should have just left the thing in the bathroom.


Now, as you all may know, my host gramma lives with my host family. Even Elisabeth will back me up on this one.. she's deffinately not the nicest looking lady. She just kind of glares at me (well at everyone) as she just wanders around the house all the time. She also knows that I can't speak very good Thai, and when anyone else is around she tends to just kind of ignore me (although when I'm not around she apparently calls me "khon suuay" (beautiful girl))... BUT last weekend (and again this morning!) while the rest of my host family is either at work or at my little sisters swimming lessons, she has started talking to me in quite rapidly fast Thai. I can understand a little bit of what she says.. some like "song khon (two people.. me and her, I'm assuming) bye (go) sooa (which can either mean a shirt, a tiger, a mat, or to buy) Islam." What I interpreted from this was that she wanted me to go with her to either buy a Muslim person, or buy Muslim clothes. I said to her okay, went to go and get my purse, and then I go back downstairs and she's just in her room watching tv. Tres confusing. Ngong maaak. (try saying the word "ngong"... it's the hardest thing in the world for me, same with nguang, nguay, or just anything that starts with "ng" at the beginning... But on the bright side, Thai's have a hard time saying "sp" or "ts".. so for example when they say "speak" it comes out "sah-peak".. and when they try to say "peanuts" it comes out "penis".)

Ampowah Photos

Sooo Patch just sent me pictures from the trip to Ampowah (planing Mangrove trees in the Mangrove forest by the sea... in case you've forgotten..) they can be found here: http://good-times.webshots.com/album/569124683RIWTOq

Tomorrow Rachel will be flying back to Australia.. The plan is for me to go with my Coordinator to the airport in the afternoon tomorrow (maybe around 2ish) so I can say a final goodbye to her. I bought her a silly little gift going away gift after school at Tops today, which hopefully she will like. It's just a little hamburger keychain that says "love you" on it.. to remind her of all the good food (i.e. hamburgers) she is going to get to eat now... and it will match the french fry phone that she bought in Bangkok. Other than that I have absolutely no plans for the weekend. But I'm sure it will be no problem to find something to keep myself occupied.

There are also some new videos at: http://community.webshots.com/album/565019446hXFBpQ?start=0 (but not all of my videos as it takes forever to load them... enjoy... and you guys do know you can always post me comments on here.. sometimes I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall. It would be nice to have a bit of feedback once in a while... for starters, tell me how you like the videos?)

Banding

Yesterday after school I stayed around with a girl from my class named Hussna, and her boyfriend, who plays guitar is this band at my school... which means I FINALLY (after 5 months!!) got to watch this band jam/practice. They even let me play with them for a bit, until we realized that I really don't know any of the songs they play.. and lets face it, I'm not soo good with the whole freestyling thing (something I deffinately need to work on when I get back). But it was still really fun. It was pretty much the same atmosphere as I spent countless hours in at House of Rock in Creston.. so I felt totally at home. Possibly the most at home I've felt in a looooong time. When they were all finished practicing, Hussna's boyfriend drove me and Hussna home (me first), which was nice because it was starting to get dark out, which is when it starts to get dangerous for me to walk down my street alone by myself. He also offered to burn me a CD sometime of all of the music he likes, which I thought was quite nice to him. Other nice things people have done for me lately include:

A girl in my class made me (along with pretty much all the other girls in my class) a huuuuuge bow to put in my hair for school. While I'm pretty sure she sold them to all of the other girls to make a profit, she gave me mine for free. Unfortunately, after I had only worn it two days, I managed to lose it... When I came home from school on Monday I took up hair down and put the bow in my closet (where I always put my bows).. when I went to make my hair on Tuesday morning, it was gone. Which means either someone moved it, or maybe it's hidden within all of my crap. But I don't think it's hidden because I searched through all of my crap, but everyone knows that I am the worst at finding things (can't-find-itis)...

One of my good friend from my class, a BEAUTIFUL Muslim girl named Praew gave me a Christmas card yesterday. In it she wrote something along the lines of "I am happy to see you. I hope you are happy too. I wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I hope you are happy when you go back to Canada. I will miss you." It was sooooooooo sweet. Almost made me get all teary eyed when I saw it... mainly because it sucks being away from my family for Christmas, and then there is this girl in my class who obviously has realized that and tried to cheer me up a bit by giving me a card. It really did cheer me up a bit. Didn't make me teary eyed out of sadness... just out of happyness I guess realizing what good friends I have here in Thailand.. and of course the fact that her English wasn't gramatically correct at all (what I wrote above is what the meaning I interpreted from when she actually wrote), but she went to the effort of writing it all out in English for me.

Overall I guess there is one stereotype about Thailand that is deffinately true.. Thai people are really very kind.

Postcards

Nothing too exciting has happened in the last couple of days. Just thought I'd write a quick update to let you all know I'm still alive! Yay! I'm also apparently getting into the bad crowd of kids at school, according to all of my Thai friends... because I've been invited to go to a concert sometime with this same boy from school who is always asking me about playing bass. They all tell me he is "mai dee", a bad boy, and that I shouldn't be around him. All I know is that I would looooovvvvve to go to a concert sometime in Thailand. And don't worry, this whole going to a concert thing wouldn't be considered a date. This, I guess, is just one thing that sucks about being foreign in a new school: I have no idea who the "good" group of kids are, and who the "bad" group are... I really just become friends with whoever smiles and says hi to me. And as much as I'd just like to go by my instinct about who I would like to be friends with, it's esepcially hard to do in a Thai school when people are pretty much just friends with the kids in their particular class. (wow going back and reading that last sentence, it totally doesn't make any sense, but my English is failing me and I have no idea how to make it make sense...) I would love to be friends with and hang out with all the musician type kids at my school, but I don't want to risk losing the friendships I've developed with the "good" kids in my class.

One other thing of interest: I got postcards in the mail from Bessy and Auntie Heather yesterday! They were both beautiful, and totally made my day. Hint to all of you guys out there: I really enjoy getting mail. As easy as emailing can be, it's just not the same as getting actual physical mail.

Also, lately all of the Thai kids have been bringing "friendship" books to school. It's pretty much the same idea as us getting our friends to sign the empty pages in our yearbooks at school... except they happen to have whole books just full of blank pages for everyone to fill out with writing and pictures. I don't have one of my own yet, but I'm hoping to get one soon to have all my Thai friends fill out... I've spent alot of time lately filling out my classmates "friendship" books (and alot of the books I'm filling out I don't even know the name of the person who they belong to... my bad) which is nice because it gives me something to do during the day (since I STILL don't have my own schedule...... everytime I see my Coordinator I ask her about it, and everytime she gives me some lame excuse for why it isn't finished yet....). I pretty much have a standard message which I write in each one.. it goes:

I have enjoyed being in your class this year at school. You have been a kind friend to me in Thailand. I hope we get to spend more time together before I go back to Canada. I will miss you when I go back to Canada, but hopefully I will see you again one day.

Camping/Sunflower Photosssssss

http://community.webshots.com/album/569224102gJSTrq
http://community.webshots.com/album/569227470mkfnbg

Sunflower Fields Forever

On Saturday (I was feeling 100% better sickness-wise by then.. but a bit depressed about upcoming Christmas, I must admit...) Elisabeth came over in the afternoon. Since there's really not too much to do around Nongchok, we walked to Carrefour, loaded up on foreign type snacks, went back to my house, and had a mini-foreign movie marathon to celebrate it being our HALFWAY DAY! and all... it was good fun. We even managed to find a couple of Christmas-themed donuts that we ate happily.

Sunday morning we woke up early to go to Lopburi (a bit farther north of Bangkok than Ayutthaya.... and famous for it's herds of monkeys, although we managed to see exactly zero monkeys while there :S) to see Sunflowers. And when I say we saw Sunflowers, I really truly mean it. I've never seen fields of sunflowers like this before. I really really really wished the Beatles had written a song called "Sunflower Fields Forever" so I could have listened to it while standing in this gigantic field of Sunflowers. I'm sure we have such fields in Canada, but unlike the Thai's, I don't think we'd make these fields into a popular tourist attraction. Why Thai's love their sunflowers so much, I'm not quite sure. They're not really even big fans of eating the seeds. Which reminds me, since I'm now over halfway through this thing, I better break into my huge bag of spitz that I brought with me soon... They had all kinds of shops set up selling all kinds of random things that just happened to have sunflowers glued to them. Elli and I bought ourselves Santa hats with sunflowers! Only in Thailand I tell yeah. My host parents bought us little stuffed monkeys to add to our whole outfits.

Then we went to go have our picnic lunch at a place which at first appeared to only be a park. Upon closer inspection though, we realized that this park was located right next to a huuuge body of water. This is where things got confusing. This body of water was huuuuge, had waves, and was all blustery, which made it appear to be ocean-like. Yet, we did travel north of Bangkok, and the ocean happens to be South of Bangkok. Just when Elli and I thought we would never ceased to be amazed with the things you can find in Thailand (an Ocean in the middle of Lopburi? I was detemined to go taste the water to see if it was salty or not), my host mom ruined our fun by informing us that it was actually a dam. We spent a few hours hanging out around this dam. There were all sorts of people there (well all sorts of Thai people, we were the only foreigners), and all sorts of shops and activities to do. We spent some time being pulled around behind a tractor all the way across the dam wall (trust me, it was sure blustery out there on that ocean), and painting little ceramic sculpture with my host sister. Even though I tried to keep to the shade as much as possible, I (being the silly-skinned person I am) somehow managed to get a sunburn. In the middle of December. Yay me! (Honestly, who gets a sunburn in December?)

On our way back home we stopped at a little rivery, and shady (so I quite enjoyed it) place, where we rolled up our pants and waded into the water a bit. As beautiful as it was, there was still quite a bit of garbage floating around in the water. Seeing things like this really makes me feel sad. Thailand has such beautiful scenery, but also has a habit of leaving garbage all around, which makes all thes beautiful places kind of stinky and not quite so enjoyable.

Today I went to school again, which wasn't too eventful, but I enjoyed it anyways, since I haven't really actually gone to school too much lately.

HALFWAY

So, since I'm staying in Thailand for 46 weeks in total, and I have now been here for 23 weeks... I am now offically HALFWAY THERE! Yay me!