Thai people are really weird.
They will wear sweaters and jackets outside when it is 100 degrees just becasue they don't want to get sun. They wear shirts that have words in english but half the time don't even make sense. Farting and picking your nose here is acceptible out in public. and when there eating making all these weird gross grunting noises. But they are still usually very nice people even know they a lot of times annoy the hell out of me...but I am fine with that.
I changed host families at the end of December, and I really love my new family. This family is so much different than my last one. My last family I really liked but I rarely ever saw them. I lived in a huge house and my host mom and most of the time no one was even home. But who I saw most in that family was my host sister, she worked at the restaraunt that my host dad owned. My new host family was a big change. I moved from a really quiet house to usually being the only one in there to a smaller house but with a lot more people. There is my host mom, host dad, two host brothers, host aunt, uncle, and two cousins that usually leave later at night, some lady that stays at the house and goes back to hers at around midnight and a bunch of other people. Plus I there is a printing business on the bottom floor so of course there will always be a lot of people around. But I really love this family. They have taken me out to eat lots of times, to the market, and just trying to talk to them in thai and them helping me a lot with the language.
Life is pretty boring right now. School got out on February 17 and since then I have been to the pool, the park, phimai, palio, and of course the mall. Gonig to the pool now is kind of like an everyday thing. I will tell my family "Pai wai nam" Which means i'm going to the pool and they look at me weird and say "you go to the pool everyday!!"...but yep that is the only thing really to do during the day considering it is soooo hot outside and I don't really want to sit in my room all day long.
At the beginning of January after I got back from Bangkok for 10 days I got home and was really homesick for about a week. I was also dreading the 3 months till the next Rotary trip. I new I had school till February 17th but school is just a joke. I wish I was allowed to travel more without everything being a huge deal. It felt like 3 long months was never going to pass by and I had all the time in the world to learn Thai and try to travel places but now it is March 9th and there is 21 more days till the Rotary trip up north to Chiang Mai for 10 days and then my mom comes for 3 weeks. I have learned more Thai in the last 2 months but defiently not as much as I wished. I feel like I should know way more Thai than I do know...I guess I have the next 20 days to learn as much as I can. It is really hard though because all my friends can speak English and I have only one Thai friend and then there is my family but still it is hard to learn..even if I do study when I go to speak I just end up forgetting about everything.
I have been sick here already 3 or 4 times in the past seven months. I get sick maybe only once a year back in Florida but here is is a monthly accurance and it is really annoying. When I get sick it's not like a little cold and I am all better in a couple days its like my throat hurts really bad and gets swollen, which then liquid pushes on my ear drum, then I can barely hear and it is the worst pain ever for about a week and has burst twice....I swear I am geting more and more deaf each time this happends. It sucks sooo bad because the same.exact.thing has happened each time so when I get sick I already know what is going to happen...so I just load up on the medicine. Maybe it is the super hot weather that is making this happen or just I don't know..
So for the past five months I have done a lot of things and traveling. But I will explain a little about each month:
November:
I had a Rotary trip Phu Kradung Mountain and we celebrated the Loy Krathong Festival aka Festival of Lights. Loi Krathong is set on the full moon night of (usually) November. The word Loi means "to float" while a krathong is something made of flowers and leaves that it set into the water as an offering to the water spirits as thanks for allowing the Thai people to use the waters. I floated 3 krathong that night. They were absolutely beautiful. Even more beautiful than those, however, were the floating lanterns. Many of us lit them together at the festival, watching them float into the air with their soft orange glow. We have so many pictures of the hundreds that were sent up that night. There was also a beauty contest in which an inbound was chosen to represent Rotary, and then there was a brilliant fireworks display.
The next morning, we climbed a mountain: Mount Phu Kradung. The first 5th of the climb was deadly, and we had to rest so many times, but it felt better and better the high you climbed as the air got cooler and a gentle breeze flowed through, not to mention the amazing view. I hiked up with a group of friends (who I pretty much spent the whole trip with) who called our group "The Adventure Gang". At one of the stores on top of the mountain we bought little road signs that say “The Adventure Gang” on them to put on our blazer. Over the next few days, we hiked to several different cliffs and waterfalls, looking for elephants and avoiding what we ended up calling "Jennies" or as more commonly known, leeches. So many people got bit by them, it was ridiculous. I actually ended up being the first person attacked by a leech, but luckily I avoided the giant spiders that one of my friends woke up beside. This was an amazing trip that I will never forget, thanks Rotary.December:
One word for December = HOT. In Thailand in December it is the “cold” season. It’s funny how it will get down to like 75 degrees and the Thai people break out there winter coats and scarves. There was a Rotary Joint District Conference that only lasted for TWO days and it was a 15 hour drive! Thank god my host family and me went and picked up a guy in another city and traveled around up in Chiang Rai (where the conference was) for about a week. While there we went to the White Temple, which is by far the prettiest and most amazing temple I have ever seen.
The whole entire thing is white and when the sun reflects off of it, it sparkles. We then went to The Black House which was really...interesting. There was all these really freaky art every where and like skeltons of animals and snake skins. Hmm also when I was there we went to a farm where I got to ride an.......OSTRICH! Now that was different! I didn't even know you could ride them..After that we went to the top of a mountain for the night and woke up the next morning to ride in the back of the truck with a bunch of thai people to the very top to a cliff to watch the sunrise in like 60 degrees weather! It was really pretty up there and the weather felt amazing....but we didn't see the sun rise unfourtunetly because it was really cloudy and fogy out. We went to the golden triangle and the opium museum on the last day. Then there was the district conference in Mae Sai which is the most northern district in Thailand and right next to Myanmar. We didn't do much there at all except walk down the middle of a row of people with our country flag..woohoo. When I got home it was almost Christmas! There were Christmas decorations set up at the mall, which was cool but it still did not really feel like Christmas at all. Me and my friend were in the store and saw a little Christmas tree so of course we had to buy it!! We took it to my house and decorated it! On Christmas we had a lunch at my friends house and I ended up having to take the tree, huge backpack full of food, about five bags of food…including a duck onto the sawng tao (bus) which of course was crowded -.-. I´m used to getting weird looks but it was even worse with carrying a Christmas tree. Me and three other friends had our own little Christmas party and ate a lot of food. January:
Sooo in January I was in Bangkok and There was the Chinese Festival that is about all in this month. Aislinn, Vale, and I went to Bangkok for 10 days and stayed with Jason!!! finally got to see him in Thailand. While we were there we defiently did a lot of shopping. We went to a couple different malls, but the coolest one I think is Terminal 21. One each floor of that mall is a different country. We went to the Jim Thompson House which I thought was really boring...Khao san road which is a place that all the backpackers usually stay, when we went out at night that was defiently my favorite place and during the day had alot of little stores and clothes and things to buy. We also went Ice Skating one day at one of the malls which was a lot of fun! On new years we went to a rooftop party called lush which was soooo much fun! Then after ten days we had to take the bus back home to Korat....yay.
Chinese New Year pics - http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AaMmbli1aOGjpw
February:
hmmm what did I do this month..hmm I went to a volleyball game and went kayaking with friends and school ended finally! lol....exciting month.
March:
It is only the beginning of March right now but about five days ago me and two friends went to Phimai which is the ancient city from Khemer. It was really amazing walking around the old ruins that are like 900 years old and that people used to actually live in. Two days ago me and flore and her brother and cousin went to Palio which is like a little Italy. We just walked around for about two hours eating cheesecake, drinks, and delicious fries, cheesesticks with chili on top!Phimai Pictures - http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AaMmbli1aOGjlA
Palio Pictures - http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AaMmbli1aOGjjY
This has defiently have been and probably will be the longest post I have ever made. But I am so thankful I got the chance to come here to Thailand. It has not been the easiest thing ever but it really has changed me as a person, I have a better view of the world and different countries now. It is one of the best decisions I have ever made.
Hope you enjoyed this long boring post....if anyone even reads this...probably not.