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Ending the Exchange

One of my last weekends in Thailand was also my last meetup with all the other exchange students in my district. The International Weekend was a big meeting with both the inbound and outbound exchange students where we all shared stories and advice and even got to cook some of our country’s food to let the Thai students taste! The meetings were actually a lot of fun— we got to teach Thai students how to properly shake hands (since they are used to “Wai-ing), and give them tips on how to make the best of your exchange. 

The best part of the weekend was definitely getting to cook some American food. Somehow, I ended up in charge of the foods for all the Americans, and I decided we would make the chili that my dad makes at home a lot and M&M cookie ice cream sandwiches. Even though we were missing a few ingredients, both dishes turned out perfectly. The afternoon cooking will definitely remain one of my best memories in Thailand— it was so fun to be in a huge kitchen with all the other exchange students helping each other with their dishes. You could start at one end of the room and smell at least five different county’s dishes as you walked through— first the American chili, then the Canadian maple-glazed veggies, the Mexican tacos, the German apple pancakes, and the French macaroons! It was such a fun evening, and we were all stuffed to our limits by the end of dinner. 

The next day, we all took a bus into Bangkok for the day to see the Grand Palace and do some last-minute shopping. I had already been to all the places we visited, but it was great to be there with all my friends. 

After the International Weekend, I headed back to Khon Kaen to pack my bags and return to Seattle. My good friends Bertille and Claire came to stay goodbye, and almost all of the exchange students in Khon Kaen came to the airport with me to send me off, which was really sweet!

My flight plan went through Korea with an eleven hour layover, which I was originally kind of annoyed about and dreading, but then I found out that I could take a free tour of Seoul that picked up and dropped off at the airport while I was waiting for my flight. The tour went to an old royal palace and a big walking street downtown, and it was a great break from the airport. There was perfect spring weather (I felt like I could really breathe again since there wasn’t as much humidity as there was in Thailand) and the places we visited were gorgeous as well. It made me want to go back to Korea sometime!

Now, after a long flight back to Seattle, I’m home safe and sound! I’m settling in and readjusting to being back well— it’s so nice to sleep in my comfy bed again and pet my cats and have meals without thinking about my budget before deciding what to have. I miss my friends a lot though, and my daily bubble teas! I’ll write a post again soon about how readjusting is going, but for now I’m going to get some rest to beat the jetlag! 

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A Nationwide Water Fight-- SongKran 2014!

Happy Thai New Year! In Thai culture, the new year is celebrated as a water festival, as water in the purest substance and it cleanses and gives life. Originally, SongKran was celebrated by respectfully and lightly pouring water on Buddhas and elders, but in modern day, it has escalated to a free for all watergun fight on all the city streets. Anyone you ask will tell you the best place to participate in the festivities is Chiang Mai. Some families (like my hosts) have grown tired of getting soaked on the daily during this festival and decide to pack up for a vacation outside the country, and since my hosts had a connecting flight through Chiang Mai on their way to China, they decided to let me and my friend Bertille fly with them and stay with another Rotary host and experience SongKran to the fullest. 

When we arrived in Chiang Mai at dinnertime on the eleventh, people were already armed with buckets of water and threatening to throw, even though the official start of the festival wasn't until the thirteenth! We thankfully avoided getting splashed that night as we went to dinner, but the next day was a completely different story.

  We got up at eight in hopes of walking around the city and exploring before the true water fight started, but it was about 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and we were happy to discover that Chiang Mai was in full-on SongKran mode a day early. We explored the old city (and got a delicious smoothie) while getting covered in water all day. We ran into some Rotary students from the Chiang Mai district and they showed us the best place to enjoy the water-- the ThaPae gate of the Old City, where Air Asia set up huge speakers and misters and everyone was dancing and splashing around together. It was honestly like no other holiday I've ever seen. Everyone was participating, from toddlers to grandmas, and there was no point in even trying to stay dry. The kid in everyone came out and I felt like a little kid playing in the sprinklers in my backyard, except this time, a whole city of people were playing with me. Sorry for the lack of waterfight pictures-- I was happy to experience the fun firsthand rather than try and take pictures with my camera through a plastic bag!

At night, it got cloudy and cold, and we went back to our hosts place on the early side to get dry and relax a bit before heading back out to dinner. The next day was another day full of splashing and we finished it off with some hot cocoa since we were literally shivering, something that doesn't happen too often here! 

On the evening of the fourteenth, I was planning on heading the Chabad Chiang Mai's Passover Seder, so Bertille and I stayed dry most of the day. We went to a coffee shop right by the ThaPae Gate so we could watch the games while staying dry and getting some work done. The walk there felt like a video game. We had to duck behind cars and think of the best street-crossing strategies to keep our laptops out of harms way, like a non-life-threatening version of a war. We got there safe and sound, avoided getting wet on our way back to our hosts, and changed into nicer clothes for Passover before heading out to the Seder. We were running late, so the original plan of walking was out of the question, and we had to take a SongTaew, or minibus all the way across the old city. We found one pretty quickly and got in with two guys in short shorts studying their map of Chiang Mai and speaking Chinese, so I struck up a conversation with them, and found out that they were visiting from China for the festival, but were surprised about how angry the Thai people seemed as they threw water everywhere--wasn't this supposed to be fun? I definitely agreed that after sunset, the Thai gangs of teenage boys riding around in the back of pickup trucks were a little overly aggressive, especially since it was so cold out after dark, and just as we were talking about this, some guys ran up to the back of our songtaew with buckets of ice-cold water and ruthlessly soaked us all, disregarding our fancy clothes for the Passover Seder. So we showed up late and wet, but were welcomed nonetheless-- everyone else was wet as well!

The Seder was the most energetic one I've ever been to. We were sat at the table reserved for English speakers, and our whole table became fast friends. The rabbis were dancing all around, and the Seder didn't even feel too long before we got to the food. There was a great brisket and cucumber-tomato salad, and we all stuffed ourselves. Though we were originally only going to go to this one Seder, we went again the next night, and even met some French Jews that Bertille had a great conversation with. Even though I didn't understand the French, it was so fun to listen to the French speaking during a Jewish service during a Thai festival in Thailand. I felt so immersed in culture, and everyone was so happy to be where they were. Bertille even enjoyed herself so much that she told me that if she had to be any religion, she would chose Judaism because our holidays are so fun. It's crazy for me to think that she hadn't even met any Jewish people before coming to Thailand, and how two nights could influence someone that much. It made me so happy that the services were fun, and that I got to participate at all. It's been good to have a bit of my culture from home celebrated here once in a while!

On the morning of the sixteenth, we were surprised to see that the SongKran splashing had stopped as scheduled. we spent the whole day walking around the Old City, exploring shops that looked nice, and heading to the Night Bazaar for souvenir shopping in the evening. It was a long and tiring day, but a break for manicures in the middle made it nice and bearable, especially when the city around us was so beautiful. We had to head back home the next day, but I'm happy to have a few days to rest now before the International Week that starts on the 24th. I'll be busy busy until I fly home in about two weeks!  

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A Bus, Some Boats, and Beautiful Beaches

My final Rotary trip was what I've been looking forward to all year-- gorgeous snorkeling, beaches, tanning, and spending tons of time with my friends. It definitely lived up to what I was hoping for! But before the trip, all the exchange students met in Chanthaburi for the District 3340 Conference, where we got to see presentations about what our district has accomplished this year (we've donated a ton of books to rural schools, along with blankets and other supplies), and we got to meet some of the excited outbounds.

For the first day of the trip, we checked out Chanthaburi's cathedral, which was super pretty. All the European students laughed at it though-- our Thai tour guide was bragging about how old it was (100 years), and people from France were definitely not impressed when they have churches dating back over a thousand years. It was still cool to see it in a country where you normally see Buddhist temples! From Chanthaburi, we took an overnight ride to the Krabi province for our stay on Koh Lanta. And the bus ride was definitely worth it! The island was beautiful, the hotel was nice, and the snorkeling trip we did off it was probably my favorite part of the trip!

On our way to Similan National Park from Koh Lanta, we stopped to check out the spectacular "James Bond Island" on a longtail boat. We also made a stop at a Muslim floating village, which was lovely to walk around and shop at. On the way back to the bus, we were allowed to ride on the roof of the boat!

Once we arrived to Similan National Park, we found out that we were camping for the next two nights! While it was a surprise, we were all up for it, especially after seeing how breathtaking the beach was. The water was the bluest water you have ever seen, and you could see to the bottom almost anywhere. There were huge rocks to climb on, and when my friends and I went night swimming, the bioluminescence in the water lit up all around us! The island was one of the most beautiful places I've seen in my life. On our snorkeling trip around SImilan, I got to swim up and pet a wild sea turtle, watch a moray eel look for food, and watch jellyfish swim around without letting myself get too close!

After Similan, it was time to head to Phuket, the most popular island in Thailand. We visited a cool spot to watch the sunset, went shopping on Patong beach, and went to the famous Phuket Fantasea show!

Now I've arrived back in Khon Kaen, but not for long! I head up to Chiang Mai with my good friend Bertille on the 11th for Thailand's water festival, SongKran, which I am looking forward to a ton! I'll also be able to attend Chabad Chiang Mai's Passover seder while I'm there, I'm so glad that I haven't had to miss out on too many Jewish holidays while I've been here. After I get back from Chiang Mai, I have only a week back in Khon Kaen before I meet all my exchange student friends again in Korat for an International Weekend. And I go home about a week after that! I'm nervous to be so busy this month, but I'm so happy that these last few months in Thailand have gone so well. I've been pretty happy since my move from Ubon to Khon Kaen, and I can say without a doubt that there will be plenty of things I'll miss about this country. I'll try to post again soon, hopefully right after I get back from Chiang Mai!

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Family, Fun, & Sun

My family arrived on Valentine's Day and we went up to Chiang Mai for a few nights, and then down to Phuket! It was so nice to see them, and though I was nervous to see how our relationship had changed, we picked up right where we left off! 

In Chiang Mai, we spend a lot of time walking around the old city, getting massages, driving through the countryside, and even taking a wonderful cooking class! On Valentine's day, we found a huge group of people lighting off heart-shaped floating lanterns to celebrate both Valentine's day and a Buddhist holiday, and decided to join in the festivities!

After a wonderful time in Chiang Mai, we were all super ready to get to the beach! And it was even better than expected. Our hotel was fantastic, there was a place for us on the beach every day, the water was perfect. I don't think I could have been much happier! We went on a snorkeling trip to Koh Phi Phi and a sea kayaking trip around some other islands, and relaxed on the beach in between. It was fabulous!

After seeing my family off at Bangkok's airport, I met two of my good friends, Claire and Bertille, along with our District Chairman, Mr. Siri, to spend the weekend with them in Bangkok. It was tons of fun, we got to go to Chatachuk weekend market, Siam Paragon, and see some of the protests that were going on (from afar). It was so great getting to spend some quality time with friends!

After my fun few weeks, it was bittersweet to arrive back to Khon Kaen. But I was getting far behind on my online classes and desperately needed to catch up, so it was good to hit pause for a few weeks. I've finally finished my math class, and now I'm moving on to the second semester of history! I'm also starting to look at colleges and prep for the ACT... looks like real life is catching up to me! On the 22nd, I head off the the District Conference in Chanthaburi, and go directly from there to my final trip with Rotary: the Southern Paradise trip! I couldn't be more excited to head back to the beach! The Southern Paradise trip ends a few days into April, and then on April 11th I head back up to Chiang Mai to celebrate SongKran (the Thai water festival) and Passover. Following that, the third weekend in April will be the International Weekend in Korat, and then a few weeks after that, I head back home! I've finalized my return date as May 4th... Just in time for Sophie's birthday! It's so weird to think that my experience here is winding down. Though I'm looking forward to arriving home, it would be a lie to say that there isn't anything I'll miss about Thailand!  I'll try to update more often, you can definitely expect an update after the southern trip, at the beginning of April!

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Settling in to Khon Kaen

Over the past month, I've mainly been settling in with my new life in Khon Kaen. After the bus trip, I had one week of school before a two week long break. My new school is located on the university campus, which is super convenient since my host brother is studying to be a vet at Khon Kaen University, and his building is adjacent to the high school, so I can catch a ride to school with him every morning. Compared to my last school, this school is really small. I'm actually in a class of kids equivalent to high school sophomores, so I'm older than all of them. Normally, that's not such a big deal, but in Thailand, I've found that kids act much younger than they really are, so being in a class of 15 year olds is surprisingly challenging. Most of them aren't so interesting in becoming my friend, since Thai schools get off for summer break at the beginning of March, so I'll only be attending for two months (actually, I have a total of eleven days left going to school here!). To be honest, I'm a little disappointed with my school experiences here; at my first school, teachers never showed up, at my second school, Thai kids were too intimidated by the loud Mexicans to talk to me, and here, kids showed me around for one day before they stopped talking to me. I've found myself abandoned in classrooms with no idea where to go, since I don't have a real schedule. I basically just have to sit in the homeroom classroom all day, since when the rest of the class leaves, they split up for certain electives, and if I ask anyone if I should come with them, they just say, "no, have different class". That said, I'm pretty content with sitting in the classroom by myself. It gives me plenty of time to binge-watch TV shows and work through some online classes so I can be on-schedule when I return home. I would have loved to have Thai friends from the get-go, but I think the time for making friends has passed unfortunately. At least I have great exchange student friends, and a really nice new host family!

Now, to tell you some of the interesting things I've been up to:

On New Years, a few of my friends visited from other cities to celebrate with me and the other exchanges that live here. We had a ton of fun. Went out for pizza, and hung around the mall where they had a countdown and firework show! Unfortunately I don't have pictures of the celebration around the mall because I forgot my camera, but here are some of my friends and I on New Year's Eve!

  The next weekend, my host family took me and Hannah, a Taiwanese exchange student, to Surin for the opening of a new temple that the Rotary club was opening. We got to stop at an elephant show on the way down, which was so cool to watch!

The following week, my host mom invited all the exchange students in Khon Kaen to sleep over at my house, and cook dinner beforehand. I made chili, steamed broccoli, bought a loaf of nice bread, and make chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwiches for dessert! The next day we went to a rural town and donated blankets, books, and jackets, to the people. 

For the rest of my free time, I go to the mall, where I can get free wifi to work on my online classes. I'm a little ashamed of how much time I spend at the mall, but it's a great workspace for me, especially considering that my house doesn't have wifi. My host mom owns a coffee shop in the basement, where I can get free drinks and wifi all day! I've learned some ways to walk around Khon Kaen so I don't get lost, and I'm working on mastering the songtaew (minibus) routes so I can get around by myself. My family comes to visit starting the 14th, and I'm so excited to travel with them. I can't wait to finally hit the beach and revisit Chiang Mai, especially since I didn't get to see much of it the first time around due to food poisoning. In the meantime, I'll be back to my daily visits to the mall and binge watching TV shows!

[uberubon]

Birthday, Bangkok, & A Bus Trip

I’m going to start this off by apologizing for the length of this post—I’ve been busy for the past couple weeks!

A few weeks ago, I was planning on having a small get together for my birthday, but a bunch of other exchange students came down to Ubon for various reasons and they all wanted to celebrate my birthday with me. It was so nice of them! I felt bad asking my host parents for so many people to stay with me, but I figured we could fit plenty of people on the floor in my room, which wasn't that small. They kept saying yes and eventually there were six other exchange students planning on sleeping in my room! The day they all arrived, my host parents told me that they reserved two hotel rooms for us at the hotel down the road for the two nights everyone else was in town. It was so unbelievably nice of them, and everyone definitely appreciated getting to sleep in a bed! The Friday before my birthday I went to Claire's house to bake a cake, which didn't cook that well and we ended up turning it into cake-in-a-bowl instead of something that you can slice and put on a plate. It was still delicious though! Everyone appreciated that it wasn't one of the gross, artificially flavored Thai cakes that most bakeries sell. We went to Mexican food for dinner and stuffed ourselves with nachos and tacos, which were delicious!

On Monday it was time for me to ride up to Khon Kaen with the exchange students who came to visit Ubon, because I now have a new host family and Rotary club in Khon Kaen. My new host mom, Mabu, is super nice, and I have a 23-year-old host brother, Kard, who was an exchange student to Germany eight years ago. My host dad is really nice as well! We live about 15 km out of Khon Kaen in a small hotel-like building, where I have my own hotel-style room, complete with my own bathroom and a minifridge! While we don't have WiFi or hot water, I really like the new setup. I'll have to learn to deal without having WiFi at my house though, especially while doing online classes for school at home. 

Anyway, I really like Khon Kaen so far! There are so many super nice exchange students here and I'm excited to start at my new school after New Year's. 

I got to go to Bangkok a while ago for a wedding with two of my friends, Hannah and Selena, which was fantastic! We even got to stay at the Grand Sheraton for a night, which was such a treat with a full-pressure shower, hot water, and a soft bed! We fit in plenty of shopping and the wedding itself was beautiful (with great food!). We went out for Chinese food one night and got Beijing Roast Duck, something I miss a ton from Beijing. While the duck wasn’t up to the Da-Dong standard, it was definitely delicious!

After getting back from Bangkok I had to unpack and repack right away for the Northern Thailand Rotary trip. I was super excited, so packing wasn’t too much of a hassle. I had a hard time figuring out which bags to use, since I only really had carry-on sized bags and gigantic bags. I ended up using two carry-on bags rather than one huge one, which I think was a good decision in the long run but definitely made it harder to carry all my stuff from one place to the next!

On the first day of the trip, all the students met up for dinner in Korat (Nakhon Ratchasima) and prepared for the overnight bus trip up north. It was fantastic to reunite with everyone. I missed them so much even though it had only been about two weeks since the last trip. We arrived in Lampang around 7am and got to shower and prepare for the day at the Lampang Elephant Conservation Center, where we got to ride elephants and watch them perform various tricks and skills, which was crazy! The elephants were so smart, they could paint pictures (and one even did a self-portrait!).

After the Elephant Center, we went to a ceramics factory where we got to take a tour and see how everything was made in their assembly line before painting some mugs ourselves. It’s cool to have my own personalized coffee mug now, especially since I got to see all the steps of how it was made!

The next day, we started off by visiting a temple called Hariphoonchai Stupa, which is the most famous temple in the Lampoon province of Thailand. It was gorgeous! We also got to see a gorgeous waterfall before heading up the tallest mountain in Thailand, Doi Indhanond! Once we arrived at the top, a few other exchange students and I explored the area and ended up finding tons of gardens, mud, and a spectacular view of sunset over a neighboring mountain.

In the morning, we headed up to visit the official “Highest Point in Thailand”. I never thought I would be so cold in a tropical country! After speedily getting photos so we didn’t freeze, we headed to another set of beautiful stupas that were above the clouds, so we got to look down at a sea of fluffy white as we explored the gardens around the temple. It was beautiful! After that we took the bus into Chiang Mai for dinner, and then headed to the night market. However, a ton of people, including me, must have had something bad for dinner and got food poisoning. A few others and I had to spend the remaining time that we had in Chiang Mai in our hotel rooms and at the hospital! I’m really sad I missed out on such a fun part of the trip—I was definitely looking forward to seeing Chaing Mai. I guess I’ll have to go back sometime!  

Following Chiang Mai (and feeling well-rested and recovered) we all took the bus to the Maekok River Village Outdoor Education Center, a center run by a farang (foreigner) that feautured obstacle courses, a swimming pool, archery, and best of all, a “Confidence Course”—the obstacle course over freezing cold water that we had to do at night! (I was one of the four girls who made it across-- bragging rights? A lot of people fell in!) Thank god for the bonfire that they set up, since after the Confidence Course all the exchange students huddled around the campfire and hung out for a while, which was definitely a highlight of the trip for me. Campfires are so fun, even without s’mores!

After a yummy breakfast the next morning, we headed up to a silver shop, where there were cool pieces of silver art (the carvings were the coolest!). We also got to go to an umbrella factory and got to see how they make parasols in an assembly line, even the decorating and painting parts. All of it was fascinating. We also got to see the Queen’s northern villa and gardens, where the variety of flowers was mind-blowing.

The next day, we went to a village of “Long-Necked Karen”, the tribe in Thailand famous for their golden rings worn around their necks to elongate them. The experience was more sad than interesting, as the women of the tribe aren’t allowed to leave since they are the moneymakers of the village. Most of the exchange students were really uncomfortable there and we left early. The next stop was the Golden Triangle, where Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar (Burma) meet. We took a boat and casually spent half an hour exploring a market in Laos! The boat ride along the Mekong River was gorgeous, especially on the way back, during sunset!

The next day was another (admittedly less spectacular) flower garden, followed by a visit to the famous White Temple. The White Temple lives up to its name by being completely white, and it is a temple very different from other temples I’ve been to. A bunch of death was depicted around it, and the inside of the temple (pictures prohibited) displayed many modern images and current/recent big events, ranging from Spiderman to Angry Birds to 9/11. I overheard one exchange student theorizing that the higher up on the wall the image was, the closer the subject of the image was to achieving Nirvana. This was a cool theory and it made sense when I thought about where all the images were placed. 9/11 was at the very bottom of the mural while Spiderman was just a tiny bit over halfway up, but I forgot to notice if there was anything right at the top. It was the only theory I heard that really explained why they would put the pictures they chose up. It was a way to get people today to understand the difficulty of reaching Nirvana, and what actions bring one closer and farther from it. It was super cool to think about!

The following day, we visited the first capital of Thailand, Sukothai, where we saw the ruins of the ancient capital. I think seeing ruins of temples are more interesting than seeing plain old temples that are restored and worked on every day, since they have more of a sense of history. Apparently, the Thais using Sukothai as their capital were attacked by the people of Burma, who burnt the temple at Sukothai and forced the Thais to move south to a new capital in Ayutthaya. After checking out the ruins, we braced ourselves for a five hour bus ride to Pissanulok, where we didn’t see any tourist attractions, but did get to stay at a nice hotel and have a fun Christmas dinner before driving back to Korat the next day.

Saying goodbye was super sad, and I’m already looking forward to the next trip, which is painfully far away, in late March! Hopefully I can organize some more get-togethers soon. In the meantime, I’ll be working on online classes, meeting my new Rotary Club in Khon Kaen, and hopefully celebrating New Years with friends!

[uberubon]

PhuKraDueng National Park

Last week was my first official Rotary trip, a hike up Isan's tallest mountain with all the other exchange students in my district. We spent the first night at a "resort" at the bottom of the mountain, and hiked up started at 8:30am the next day. I was told different things about the trip from everyone I talked to, but what I was expecting was just a really long walk with not too many steep bits. It was actually pretty steep, excluding the 1km flat section in the middle. By the time we got to the top we had covered 9km, and some people told us there was another 3km section to get to the camp, so we continued to trek on. One of the weirdest things was that the top of the mountain was covered in sand rather than dirt, and there were weird evergreen trees that looked nothing like Seattle's! It was beautifully, and the slightly chillier weather reminded me of the very end of summer back home, still hot during the day but freezing cold at night! 

The second morning on top of the mountain, we all woke up at four to catch the sunrise! Though the sun was covered up by clouds most the time, it was still beautiful and fun to watch! On the way back from watching the sunrise we came across a Buddha and a tree covered in bells, and though I've seen plenty of Buddhas before, the tree was gorgeous! 

After breakfast there was a 20km walk around the summit of the mountain, which was all flat so it wasn't nearly as hard as the day before. We passed a bunch of gorgeous waterfalls and absurdly high cliffs that were perfect for photo ops! The main fun part of that day was just getting to walk with different exchange students and get to know them. 

The next day was an optional hike to a waterfall, which of course I couldn't turn down! I'm definitely glad I went, it was probably the best day of the trip!

That night, we had a turkey dinner for Thanksgiving and I set up the portable menorah my mom sent for Hanukkah! There were three other Jews on the trip and they were all glad I brought something along to celebrate Hanukkah. We all went around the table and listed what we were thankful for and had a huge photo session after dinner, it was tons of fun!

The next and final day was hiking down the mountain, which was rather treacherous at the beginning but got easier after the first bit and me, Bertille (France), and Ali (Chicago) ran down most of the mountain. What took us four hours on the first day only took about an hour an a half the next day! I love going down mountains so this was definitely a fun part of the trip for me! I'd upload pictures from the hike down but Ali had a fancy DSLR camera and took most of the pictures, so I might upload a few once she sends them to me! This post might have too many pictures already anyway... I think one from the top of the mountain before heading down is good enough!

Getting in the van to go home was sad and I wish we could have stayed longer! But we have our bus trip to Chiang Mai in just a few weeks so I know the wait won't be too long! I'll have a small get together for my birthday this Saturday and maybe head up to Khon Kaen to see The Hobbit with a few of the other exchange students up there when it comes out, so hopefully these few weeks will pass nice and quickly! When I get back from Chiang Mai I switch host families and possibly cities (don't know what to do about the name of this blog if I'm no longer in Ubon...oh well!). More updates in a week or two! 

[uberubon]

A Series of Celebrations

First of all, sorry it's taken me so long to post! The past few weekends have been more eventful than normal, but that's definitely a good thing! A few weeks ago, we got to head to the Ubon Ratchathani Zoo, which was similar to the one I went to near Bangkok, but a bit smaller. We all got to feed the giraffes, and there was even a zebra being walked around by a zookeeper outside its cage. It was really fun!

That weekend was also Alejandra's birthday, and after months of searching, we found a place that serves Mexican food in Ubon! I have never been so happy about nachos in my whole life. 

We also had a Rotary dinner that weekend, where Daniel's host dad got up and sang karaoke to Daniel's host mom, because it was her birthday. It was so cute!

The day after Ale's birthday, Pilaiporn (the woman I teach English with) took me to an agriculture festival at the local university with her neighbors. The little daughter was so adorable, and kept leading me places around the fair! 

The next weekend, Pilaiporn took me to a wedding in Surin, a smaller city that we took a train to. I wish that we had done some sightseeing around Surin, but it was also interesting to check out the wedding!

Last Wednesday was Emily (from Taiwan)'s birthday, so on friday we threw her a little party and had cake! It was super fun!

The rest of the weekend was spent in Khon Kaen, where there was a big Rotary dinner, and tons of exchange students got to go, including me! I was so happy to see everyone again, being with more English speakers is always fun, and the city in Khon Kaen was so much bigger and more exciting than Ubon. We found out that the Rotary dinner was strictly formal when we arrived, and none of us actually had formalwear with us, so we went to Khon Kaen's beautiful night market instead. We had to take a tuktuk which we crammed five people into at once! We did this twice, and all of us rode in the back of a pickup truck to get from the dinner to the night market after we were rejected for lacking proper attire.In the pickup truck, someone dared me to do the thing from Perks of Being a Wallflower where you stand up in the back of the truck while it's driving and put your arms in the air, and that was so much fun! Don't worry, people were holding on to my legs to make sure I didn't fall. At the market, there was a tree you could tie little notes or wishes to, which we all did (I couldn't resist giving mine a little Nerdfighter touch), and we got shawarma for dinner (because the Mexicans thought it looked like tacos, so they wanted to try it) which was a nice break from regular "rice with a side of meat" thai food. I was originally going to stay with a French girl, Nell, but she wanted to go home early, so a few Mexican exchange students said I could crash at their hotel room with them at a five star hotel, since Carlos's host parents had paid for it and his host sister and an ex-rotary student were staying in the room next door. It was awesome to get to stay in a fancy hotel, especially since in the morning I got to have the breakfast buffet! It was such a nice escape from life in Ubon!

(In the tuk tuk (left to right): Jacke (Mexico), Asa (America), Daniela (Mexico), me, and Clarisa (Mexico)). 

To top off the weekend, Loi Krathong festival was going on when I arrived back in Ubon, and it was another festival including more floating lanterns and fireworks. I went for a little while but I was really tired after Khon Kaen, so I went home. Though Loi Krathong is more famous than the previous lantern/fireworks festival I went to, people in Ubon didn't make as big a deal of it. I saw some pictures from other cities and it seemed like there were hundreds of lanterns in the sky! Hopefully I'll have a chance to see a sky like that in person sometime. 

Though this week I'm back to school, next week I head up for the first official Rotary trip, up to Phukradeung National Park for a five day hiking trip. I'm so excited for these next two weeks, since this week I have plenty of things to look forward to even while I'm at school (Catching Fire comes out on Thursday here, and I'm praying for my theater to have it in English... it's pretty unpredictable). But the hiking trip will be great and I look forward to getting that much needed nature time. Thailand is so beautiful, but the cities are definitely the least beautiful part of it. I'll be glad to get on the hiking trail!

[uberubon]

"Back to School"

The weekend before school started back up turned out to be some sort of festival in Ubon! My host family explained that people would send these pretty woven plant basket things into the river to apologize for all the bad things they had done to the river that past year. There were lanterns like the ones in Tangled, and some of the exchange students and I lit a few, which was really fun, and seeing them all in the sky was gorgeous!

I was never really sure what exact date school would restart on, but this week got even more confusing as it went on! Though I was originally told that school would start on Monday, which made sense, I then found out that I needed to go to get my visa restamped that same day, and I actually didn't need to go to school. So Chris and Daniel and I hopped in a car to get our visas restamped, and the office was about an hour away. When we got there, we had to turn right around and go home because the person who helped Rotary with their visas originally has apparently retired, and the new person doesn't know what she's doing. We had to fill out some more forms and return again on Friday. On Tuesday I went back to school, and I realized that Thai school is going to be really hard to settle into. I've been placed in a class with Daniel, one of the Mexican exchange students in my city, and that has actually made things harder for me. Daniel always ends up inviting Alejandra, another Mexican girl, into our class so that he can speak Spanish with someone and the class is really boring. I totally understand the appeal of having someone else to talk to during an otherwise boring time, but I really wish that he wouldn't invite her into the class! I really like both of them, but when they come into my class together, it presents two main problems: 1. the Thai kids are intimidated by the number of foreigners in the class and are too scared to talk to any of us, and 2. I have no idea what the Mexicans are saying, so I remain bored while they entertain themselves. The hardest thing for me here is the amount of loneliness I've experienced. I spend way too much time alone, and making Thai friends is proving to be extremely difficult. I thought I would quickly become friends with the other exchange kids, but a few of them are rather antisocial and other ones are just hard to get along with. I think my best friend here is a seventy year old Thai woman who has taken me under her wing and invited me to teach English with her. She takes me to cool places for lunch and often invites me to do things with her family, which has been so nice. I really like my host family, but since both my host parents run the liquor shop, they don't have much time to take me places, and I stay home, bored. I was excited for school to restart so I would have something to do, but it seems like I will just be even more bored there! I'm trying my hardest to make Thai friends in the meantime.

On Wednesday there was no school again because of a holiday celebrating an old King (or something like that, my host family had a difficult time explaining it to me), and Chris (the German exchange student) invited me to go to a waterfall with him and some of his Thai friends. I was so unbelievably thankful for the invite, because I haven't gotten to see much of Ubon and I'm a huge fan of waterfalls! Though it was a long ways away, I was glad to have an activity (and some much-needed exercise!) for the day. I was the only one who went swimming, which made me miss my family back home a lot, because whenever we used to travel to waterfalls, they would be the highlight of the trip and my sister and I would have so much fun swimming! (Sophie has a tradition of dunking her head in the water whenever we go on hikes-- no matter how cold it is!) It made me wish Thai people weren't so scared of natural water, but I still had fun! Another interesting thing is that it's offensive to swim in a swimsuit here-- people tend to go in fully clothed. They let me wear just an tank top over my suit, but most people went in with their normal clothes on, some even in jeans! 

Hopefully this next week at school will be easier, and I'll be able to make some Thai friends who can help me understand my schedule and how the school works more. I would really love to get to know them, it's weird to be treated like I'm better than them or on a different level. While we definitely have different interests and hobbies, I'm here to learn how they live their lives, not to sit by myself all day! 

[uberubon]

Bangkok!

This week, my host family was nice enough to take me to Bangkok for a few days! We stayed with cousins, so they didn't have to worry about costs of a hotel or anything! The first day, I landed at around 10am and met my host mom and brothers, who were already there, at the airport and they decided we would head to Chon Buri for the day. It seemed really peculiar to me. Chon Buri is a three hour drive from Bangkok, and there is so much to do in Bangkok without having to go that far! Anyway, we drove to an "open zoo" that featured animals without cages that you could feed. Some of the larger animals were contained, so it was still safe! 

After the zoo, we headed to eat! Normally I've hated Thai seafood, as all the fish in Ubon is from the river and tastes really fishy, not in a good way! But since Chon Buri is on the coast, there was fish from the ocean at this restaurant and it was delicious! I couldn't have been happier with the meal, since it's been way too long since I've had a good healthy meal. Though my host family of course made me eat way more than I wanted to, at least it was nutritious! After eating we headed home, but they let me leave the window down on the highway as I listened to music through my earbuds, which was so unbelievably nice. I've missed driving my mom's car down the highway with the windows down and sunroof open while blasting music, so opening the window here felt really great!

The next day started off with a trip to a tourist destination that only seemed to attract Thai tourists-- a seagull viewing point. For some reason, my Thai people seem to have a fascination with seagulls, because we walked out on a long dock to watch some plain old seagulls just walk around. I was pretty confused by the appeal, but it was nice to walk down the dock! 

Following the seagull watching, we went to the Grand Palace at Emerald Buddha. The temple was so beautiful, and I'm always amazed by the detail in the decorations at Buddhist temples. There wasn't an inch undercoated, and the place was huge!

After the temple, we went to a mall for lunch, where my host family chose to eat at a franchise restaurant that we have in Ubon! I decided to skip out on their lunch and explore the mall for myself to find something to eat! After looking through all the levels and window shopping and a bunch of cool shops, I found a Subway, and was so thankful for it! I've missed American food so much, and when you want it in Ubon, all we have is McDonalds! I never thought I would be so happy for a Subway! 

My host cousins left after lunch, and my host mom and brother took my on a skytrain to Siam Paragon, one of the big fancy malls in downtown Bangkok! They let me go explore by myself, and I found an English bookstore, an H&M, and tons of other places I've missed from America. I kept asking to stay longer! Of course, I also kept spending more money that I really shouldn't have spent! Now I know why the exchange kids in Bangkok get a bigger allowance from Rotary-- there's so much more to buy!

Finally my host mom said we had to leave, and we took the skytrain to one of its last stops and then got a taxi home from there. The next day, it was raining so they sent me back to the same mall for the entire day. It was nice to explore, but I just ended up spending too much money and being pretty bored, since I was by myself-- I wish I had a friend to come with me! I went to a movie by myself (About Time, which was really cute!). When I got out of the movie, there was a whole Walking Dead event going on, complete with Thai Walkers, which was really funny!

The next day was my final day in Bangkok, and my host family took me to yet another mall... they didn't seem to know what to do with me, and they were extremely set on going to the mall. I ended up walking around Ikea for a few hours, and it made me miss all my stuff from home! Especially their Swedish meatballs, which I wish I could have bought a bag of! Too bad they have to stay frozen. 

School starts up again on the 21st, and it will definitely be nice to be social again! I've really missed having friends, especially since I spent most of my time in Bangkok bored and by myself. Hopefully I'll make new friends soon!

[uberubon]

RYLA

For the past five days, I've been living at a Thai marine base for a Rotary camp that trains Thai kids/teens in a program called RYLA. Though many Rotarians said that exchange students wouldn't enjoy it, a bunch of us in our district were able to convince our counselors to let us go! We all knew the camp wasn't going to be super fun or luxurious, but we really wanted to meet all the other foreign kids in the district-- it's nice to have connections in other cities, but what I was happiest about was being able to speak English and meet people with similar interests as me! In my city, there are only six of us, and most people are really nice, but I definitely haven't connected with any of them. At RYLA, I met so many nice people, and most of us lost our voices by the last day from talking too much!

The actual camp was really intense. To get there, we took a minivan through a huge thunderstorm for 10 hours, leaving Ubon at 6:00pm and arriving at 4:00am. No one got any sleep-- we played upbeat music the whole way. Actually, the ride was pretty fun, the only bad part was arriving at four in the morning and having to wait for two hours for the sun to rise and other students to slowly start arriving. The first day was definitely the worst, since we had to sit on the ground cross-legged most of the time and meeting other exchange kids and trying to make first impressions can be real stressful, especially when you haven't been allowed to change clothes, brush your teeth, or shower for twelve hours! Things got easier by the evening and I was super glad I brought a deck of cards, because we all got to play them together and it was good for something fun to do after tolerating lectures all day! 

The second day was a mix of fun and boring. We had to wake up at five thirty for "morning exercise", which most of us students thought would be really difficult because it was partially a military camp, but it turned out to be basically just stretching, which actually felt really good because I've been way too lazy since I arrived in Thailand. Since people don't ever walk places (they either take the car or motorcycle), I've been more out of shape than normal. Most of my exercise in the US came from walking places, especially since a lot of it was uphill! Here's it's flat, so walking isn't really that good at burning calories or anything, so getting to stretch my legs again was really nice. I'll definitely keep it up now that I'm back in Ubon and done with my online classes. I'm going to try and go on a two hour walk every day-- running in this heat would probably make me pass out at this point! Anyway, after morning exercise and breakfast, we went to a military museum, which was probably really interesting, but all the explanations and exhibits were in Thai! There was a fruit stand outside, and I was so happy to get a coconut to drink and some pineapple to snack on-- the breakfast of rice porridge wasn't filling at all! After the military museum, we went to a temple and a local village that is something of a tourist attraction because it's one of the rare places in Thailand where Buddhists and Muslims live peacefully together. The village was actually really cool-- most of the times I've been to rural villages like this one, they're muddy and dirty and smell terrible, but this one was surprisingly clean! There was a cool walking bridge that was really tall and had a beautiful view,  and then there was a birdwatching tower that had another beautiful view! After all the tourist stuff, we went back to the marine base for an assembly, which was brutal, of course (sitting criss-cross-applesauce kills your back). Afterwards, we had a spontaneous Mexican dance party, which was definitely one of the highlights of the trip! everyone was up and dancing, and it was really fun even though I didn't know the music! The Mexicans were all really enthusiastic, there were about as many of them as there were Americans but they were a million times louder! They were fun to hang out with, but it was really tiring to put so much effort into understanding what they were saying! I don't speak any Spanish really, but I was able to follow a bunch of the conversation because of context clues and some words that are pretty commonly known. Maybe I'll understand Spanish by the time I get home?

The third day, we finally got to head to the beach! We woke up early for morning exercise again, ate breakfast, and then took a military battleship to Koh Chang, a tourist attraction island just off the coast of the military base. It was beautiful! We climbed a big hill to see a nice view, and then went to the beach! Though it was a tourist beach and many people there were wearing typical bikinis and stuff, Thai people freak out about swimsuits (most of them won't go swimming at all. There are many quirks like that around here.. they don't like the sun, or their delicious fruit, or tans). We were forced to wear shirts over our swimsuits before heading into the ocean, which was super weird! Of course the boys didn't haven to-- Thailand can be very sexist in certain respects. While I was swimming I saw a jellyfish and freaked out, and one of the American boys, Asa, randomly picked it up out of the water and threw it towards all of us! It was funny and nobody got hurt but still so scary! Then Fred (another American) tried to pick up the jellyfish and missed and just got the tentacles, which he splashed at me! The jellyfish didn't hit me, but I think some of its stingy stuff was in the water, because it totally stung my face, and Fred was stung on his hand! We found out there were little jellyfish everywhere, and we were all getting stung! It was really painful and itched a ton! We all moved to the pool, which felt a lot better. After the swimming, we had to go back to the military base for the night, but it was nice to get to the beach and finally get a tan! I can't believe I've bene here two months already and haven't tanned at all unitl now! Back at the marine base, there was a "ghost story" night, and we had to walk through the jungle in the dark and listen to "scary ghost stories" in Thai. The Thai people seemed pretty freaked out, but I had no idea what they were saying so I wasn't so scared! 

The fourth day was more jungle time! They didn't tell us what the activity was for the day, and so I wore normal clothes, a tiny bit of sunscreen, and no bug repellent, but we ended up in the woods! We had to crawl through mud and jump over fences-- it turned out to be the true military training day! After the mud, we had a small lunch and went to a soccer field where a few of the exchange students played against the Thai students, and the exchange team won! There was a relay as well, which I participated in, and a tug of war, both of which we lost brutally. What's strange to me is that Thai students don't seem to exercise much while they eat unhealthily, but somehow they're all in amazing shape! I'd love to know their secret!. After the soccer and games we went back to take showers, and I discovered how brutally sunburned and bugbitten I was! The mosquitoes at RYLA were super aggressive!

The fifth day was the last day, and we basically just sat through an assembly and got on our buses. It was so sad to leave everyone! I'm definitely looking forward to the trip in November, and I might try and visit people before that as well! The bus ride back wasn't as fun as the ride there because people wanted to sleep, but I wasn't tired and my phone was out of battery, but a few of us stayed awake and talked, which was good!

I'm heading to Bangkok on the fourteenth through the seventeenth, and I'm very excited about that! When I get back, school starts up again, so it'll be back to the normal schedule. Hopefully I can fit some fun things int though!

[uberubon]

Storms & Studying

To be honest, I haven't updated that recently because there hasn't been much going on. I teach English on the weekends at a local community center, which is good. I've been more of a teacher's assistant while a graduate student from Oregon, Siri, teaches the main class. She came here specifically to teach and has some Thai training as well, so she has a pretty easy time getting messages and translations across. Unfortunately, she's leaving this weekend to return home to Oregon after a year of being in Thailand, and I'll have to take the class over myself! Hopefully it will be good for my Thai skills and I can pick up some new phrases. Here's a picture of me teaching with Siri, the one writing on the board, and the Thai woman smiling at the class is Pilaiporn, who is the official English teacher of the class and she asked me for my help. She has really good English, but basically leaves me and Siri to our own devices when we teach!

October is the big rainy month here in Ubon, and there's pretty much a thunderstorm every day. Streets flood and we can't even drive many places! I have the rest of September and October off school, which is actually really nice because I'm getting some much needed studying in on my online classes that I need for US credit. Today I finally completed the first semester of my US History course, which has been quite the journey. Now I'm moving on to American Literature, and hopefully I'll be able to complete that soon! I spend most of my days in cafes studying, because sitting alone in my room is just really depressing and I end up feeling homesick and also eating way too many Goldfish. Sitting in cafes has been surprisingly helpful with the diet troubles I've been having. My host family is sometimes rather forceful during mealtimes, insisting that I try every single dish, and giving me huge portions of each dish as well. It's not exactly bad food, but it is all either deep-fried, soaked in oil, or made entirely of rice. Not exactly my idea of healthy food, especially since I spent the summer before coming here trying to change my eating habits and become healthier. I've found that if I sit in a coffee shop from eleven till six, I can avoid every meal at home. I really like the food that they serve me, but at the end of each meal, I am so full that I feel like I'm going to throw up, which is definitely not a good sign. I tried to ask my host family if I could go on a diet, but they insisted that I would get stomach ulcers and therefore needed to drink more chocolate milk. I've kind of given up on the effort. Besides, I'm now best friends with the barista at the one Starbucks in Ubon (which, by the way, does not have free wifi. How annoying!). Continuing on the subject of eating, September 16th was Mexican Independence day, and the two Mexican exchange students in my city and I did our best to cook a Mexican feast. After hours of searching, we found an Old El Paso Taco Kit that the Mexicans groaned at, decided it would not be good enough for tacos, and then concluded that we could break the taco shells up to make nachos. The end result was reasonably good, and the dinner we had made me feel truly international! We ate both Mexican food and Korean Barbeque at a Korean Barbeque resturaunt in Thailand with people from Mexico, Germany, Taiwan, the United States, and Thailand. It was tons of fun! Viva Mexico!

Another celebration we had was Claire's birthday party! We had a great time bowling and then we ate ice cream cake, which was really just a solid block of ice cream from Dairy Queen. It was tons of fun, and afterwards we all hung out at the night market by my house for a while.

Rotary has planned a homestay near the cliff paintings starting on October 11th, which I'm very excited for, and right after that I get to go to Bangkok with my host family, which I'm even more excited for! I can't wait to get a better look at Bangkok, last time I was there it was just for a few hours to stop and sleep! Hopefully I'll finish my American Lit class before I leave on my homestay, so I'll be stress-free for a few weeks. In the meantime, I'm looking forward to more cafe time!

[uberubon]

The First Sunset in Thailand

Earlier this week, I started at my new school, Benchama. It's a much better fit tham my last school, which barely ever had class and most of the classes that were available weren't necessarily helpful (such as baking class and fruit and vegetable carving class). Finally starting at a real academic school has made a huge difference! I'm in the foreign language program, studying English and Chinese. My classmates are amazing at both languages, so keeping up my Chinese won't be too much of a problem anymore! Though the classes are uneventful and I sleep through most of them other than English and Chinese, just getting out of the house for most of the day makes my mood so much better!

On the weekends, I've been teaching English at a local community center for students of all ages (ranged from about 9 to like 70... by all ages, they mean all ages). It's fun to hang out with the students all day, and they're super eager to learn. The adults are so funny! They try super hard to get pronunciations right, but have a hard time with most words. I'm doing my best to help them though! Coming up with lesson plans is really challenging as well. I don't normally find out the lesson topic until the morning of, and then I'm expected to teach two two-hour classes on the topic, and normally the second class is full of repeats who just spend the whole day at the community center! I don't want to bore them, but I want to make sure they all know what I'm teaching. It's a really delicate balance. It's also nice to go out to lunch with Pilaiporn, the Thai woman who helps me teach the classes (she's a retired English teacher from a vocational college). She's super nice, and didn't force me to eat on Yom Kippur, as many Thai people had a hard time understanding that I would fast for one day. But thankfully, I made it through successfully! I even got to break the fast with spaghetti-- a welcome change after having fried meat and curries for every meal!

Today, my host parents and I got in the car for a two hour drive up to Pha Taem National Park. Since the shop is closed on Sundays, they were free to take me! On our way out, we even decided to pick up Claire, an exchange student in my area from Chicago. After about an hour riding, we stopped at this cool horse farm and checked it out! It was super cool (though I was wearing the wrong shoes. my host parents said that we weren't hiking, and I should just wear normal clothes, but the horse farm was covered in horse poop and mud! Sperrys weren't the best choice for today!). Claire was super excited about the horses because she rides every week back home and really missed it! 

After the horses, we went to a restaurant that was floating on the Mekong river for lunch. It was delicious! Normally when I've had seafood here, it tastes extremely fishy, but here it was much more mild and I really liked it! We also got a coconut milk and chicken soup that was fantastic! I'm always a fan of both coconut and chicken, so there was no way to go wrong with that! The river itself was so cool. Bright orange, and you could see how strong the current was! On the other side of the river is Laos. We were basically right on the border!

After lunch we finally went to Pha Taem park! First we stopped at some cool rock formations, and there was a gorgeous view over the Mekong River (the blue sky made it even better!) and there was a sign that advertised Pha Taem as "The First Sunset in Siam" 

After getting to see the scenic view, we climbed down the cliff on some steep stairs to go see the cave paintings, which were crazy! They're from roughly 1,000 BCE, and they were just how you imagine cave paintings, but they were on a cliffside. They were a reddish color and kinda faded, but still amazing! The cliff had water running down some parts of it, so it was hard to stand in one place because you would get rained on, even though it was sunny out!

On our way home, we found a spectacular rainbow that we could see both ends of! It was super bright for a few minutes and it was the perfect end to our day. 

[uberubon]

One Month!

I'm not exactly sure exactly what "one month" is defined as, especially taking time differences into account, but then again, punctuality isn't exactly one of Thailand's strong suits! So much has changed since I've arrived. The homesickness is finally calming down, though pictures and videos of my cats will always get the best of me. 

Since my last post, tons has happened. I feel really bad that I haven't posted in quite a while, especially since I forgot a lot of the details of things I probably wanted to write about on here. Oh well... I'll see what I can remember!

I arrived back from Pattaya on a Saturday night (or early Sunday morning, however you want to look at it) and spent most of Sunday unpacking my stuff and resting after the longest bus ride of my life. On Sunday night, Alejandra (another exchange student in Ubon. She's from Mexico!) invited all of the exchange students in town to "dinner" with her. I was really excited, because after the school bus trip, I definitely needed some time with people I could successfully communicate with! However, after we got to the meeting spot, Alejandra's host mom guided all the students into an extravagantly decorated hallway. It was like a red carpet-- everyone was in gowns and there were dancers in costumes and when we entered the room we were to eat in, it was basically a ballroom, with a huge stage and tons of music, balloons, and streamers. I finally figured out it was a Lions Club meeting, and I was blown away by how spectacular a simple meeting was for them. Waiters kept bringing trays of food and soda to our table, while a huge show was put on, including an amazing tango to Adele's Skyfall. I was kind of in shock by how cool the whole thing was. The night just kept getting stranger though, because soon enough the waiters brought out a huge bowl of shark's fin soup to the table. Alejandra's host mom served it to all of us, and wouldn't shut up until we each too a bite. I didn't even know it was shark's fin soup, all I knew was that it was weird looking and gelatinous. I took a bite, and immediately decided I hated it. Then Alejandra's host mom explained that it was shark's fin soup, and my stomach felt even worse since I now knew what it was. Overall, I can't decide if it was a good or bad night, considering I had been hoping to chat and get to know the other exchange students better, and in actuality we ended up sitting awkwardly at a table trying to decide if anything was okay to eat. 

The following week was pretty slow (except for all the news about the movie adaptation of my favorite book, but that has nothing to do with Thailand. I'm just really excited about it). I also went with Rotary to a local school to donate books, which was fun! Though we didn't get to interact much with the little kids at the school, it was nice to see the smiles on all their faces! One thing that I've noticed is that Thai people never seem to smile in photos, which is kind of annoying, because I feel like all my pictures would be a lot better if people actually smiled! It's strange to look back at photos and see people with completely serious faces. 

My host mom also took me to a fish market out of the blue on day. It wasn't a fish-for-eating market, though. There were bags of small guppies and even turtles! There were also some small eel-like things and bigger fish, like koi. We bought two bags of silver guppies and got back in the car. I had no idea what was going on, but I was up for whatever, after getting sent home from school again because class was cancelled. We drove to a riverside Buddhist temple, and walked down a set of stairs completely covered in pigeons, to a floating platform on the river. There were fish everywhere. I'm not exaggerating when I say that you could reach in and grab one with your bare hands... you would just have to be careful! Many of the fish were humongous and honestly rather frightening. We ended up buying a loaf of bread, dumping the fish we bought at the market into the river, and then feeding the bread to the fish and some pigeons. The fish went insane over the bread, jumping over each other to get it! And the pigeons weren't scared of humans, which was really weird and admittedly pretty freaky because they would brush up against you sometimes and I don't want to catch any weird pigeon diseases!

After the fish feeding, and of course the obligatory daily Magnum ice cream bar, my host mom took me to the Ubon Ratchathani Museum. It was pretty small, but also very intersting! Its exhibits ranged from geography to cave paintings to the growing industrialism in Ubon. Overall it was super cute and totally worth a visit!

During that week I also went over to one of my Thai classmates houses and she had five (5!!!!) cats, two of which were the tiniest kittens ever and three of which were also the most adorable things. I just really like cats. I don't even know why. But she offered me one to take home because she has too many and it's really a shame my host parents would have freaked out (and also that my house is pretty open-air and the cat could just leave whenever). But one of the kittens fell asleep on my lap and it was one of the cutest things I've witnessed in a while.

The next weekend we had a real exchange student get together! We all went out for a way more casual dinner and it even included the people down in Sisaket, which is like an hour drive away. It was super fun and way less awkward than some of our other meet ups! We also arranged to go to Central Plaza (the big fancy mall) this past Thursday, and it was super fun! Though I ate way more junk food than I should have, it was comforting to have some American food in my system. I never eat McDonalds in the US, but I sure am thankful they have them here!

We all got together again yesterday for a work out session after eating all that McDonalds the day before! It was good to get some physical activity in, even though I did fall straight on my butt and get a pretty nasty bruise. It wasn't really my fault that someone called me as I was on a treadmill and it didn't stop when I pressed the stop button! After the work out, we all went to the night market that's conveniently right outside my house on weekends (including Fridays). I met a super nice girl from Oregon who invited me to come help teach English with her at a community center today. I went and it was super great to hang out with her and a Thai English teacher all day. I finally got to try Som Tam, which is papaya salad, and it was delicious! Plus, it looks like I'll get to teach English there pretty often, especially after Siri (the girl from Oregon) leaves in about three weeks. She's been in Thailand for over a year! I'm going to teach again tomorrow. Though it means getting up at 8 on a weekend, it also makes sure that I'm busy all day, which is completely worth the early rising time. 

[uberubon]

a picture I forgot to include in the last post-- wai-ing with Ronald Mcdonald!

(I got the cool elephant pants on my field trip to Pattaya-- they're the comfiest things ever! It's nice to have a pair of long pants to wear that are really light and flowy, because it protects your legs from mosquitoes, and when meeting people that you need to be extra respectful towards (such as rotarians), long pants are mandatory, even if they're really casual looking!)

[uberubon]

Sorry I haven't posted in a while-- finally got somewhat busier! I'm planning on writing another long post withing the next few days. 

1 month old kitten that fell asleep in my lap at a classmate's house!

McDonalds feast with fellow exchange students... stuffed, but happy to have some American cuisine!

At Central Plaza-- the big mall-- with other exchange students

Donating books to a nearby school. Got lots of cute looks from the younger students. They don't see a lot of girls that aren't Thai!

Fun dinner/ Rotary meeting with all of exchange students within an hour drive from Ubon

More from that dinner (dftba/ nerdfighter "gang sign" that I got everyone to put up, if you don't know what that is, look up the vlogbrothers on youtube!)

A very formal Rotary meeting where I had to give a presentation about Seattle!

Group picture from the Rotary meeting-- Thai people don't smile in pictures!

Another kitten from my classmate's house

Elephant statue from a local park-- elephant statues are everywhere, but I have yet to find a real elephant!

[uberubon]

Pattaya Field Trip

On my first day of school, my Hotel Business teacher told me that our class would be taking a trip to Pattaya to tour hotels, and I've been looking forward to the trip ever since! We left on Thursday morning at 7:30, in the craziest looking bus I've ever seen. Double decker, with the sides painted with anime characters. Inside the bus, super loud music was playing, and I was hoping that it would stop or at least quiet down when we started driving, but the my Thai classmates successfully spent 13 hours singing karaoke. The music was so loud that even if I put in my earphones on full blast I couldn't tune it out! The air conditioning was broken, so that was one of the most difficult bus rides of my life. 

Once we arrived in Chon Buri (where we would stay the night), the whole class was surprised to discover that four people had to share each room. The rooms only had one full sized bed in it, so two people ended up on the floor! I got half the bed thankfully, which is one of the perks to being an exchange student: people are extra nice to you! After we settled in, people came pouring into our room. One of the funniest things about Thailand is that whenever I meet a boy, they are introduced as a "lady-man". So I ended up in a room with about 3 lady-men, 2 lesbians, and only one other straight girl. Though I definitely don't have a problem with it (they lady-men are really funny and friendly) it was weird being in a room with more gay people than straight! That's Thailand for you! Anyways, the lady-men were all very excited by my hair, which had been in a bun for the past day and was rather weird looking when taken out of the bun. They insisted on straightening it, so I showered and shampooed and then braced myself to have three guys working on my hair at the same time. They got it really straight, which was super impressive! But of course, when I woke up the next morning, it was already getting wavy again. Too bad! 

Day 2 of the trip meant stopping at a temple before heading to some hotels! We lit incense and found some cool animal sculptures, like a sea serpent and an elephant! But best of all, we found a cat!

  Next, we visited a hotel, but I didn't understand much of what was being said, and we didn't even go inside the hotel! After that, we finally got to our main hotel, Ambassader City Hotel. It was nice to finally see the beach! We put our bags in the room, which fit three people this time, with two twin beds. We pushed the beds together to make a nice big one! Then, it was finally time for swimming! Though my Thai classmates initially didn't want to go in the ocean, I convinced them to hop in quick after taking a dip in the pool. It was so nice! There are some more pictures of that, but my phone was out of battery, so I have to get them from classmates and hopefully I'll be able to post them sometime during the week. 

The next day, there was what seemed like a class that we had to sit in. A few people got up to talk, but I had no idea what was going on! It was short though, and soon we got to go back to the beach (no swimming this time, unfortunately!). We got more ice cream and a soda before getting back on the bus for a long journey home. At about 8pm, when we still had about four hours of bus ride left, the bus turned into a full on party bus. About ten kids got up and started dancing in the aisle, and they kept falling over when the bus had to stop short or take a sharp turn. I was amazed that they kept dancing for the whole four hours, when I just wanted to sleep! When we finally got back to Ubon at midnight, I was nice to have a room to myself again. Especially since I got to sleep in this morning!