I am sitting in the lobby of my apartment building because it gets a better internet connection than my room. There is a loud echo because of the flooring. Cait and Sha said I sounded like I was talking from Heaven when we were skyping the other night. I wanted details about how Shannon was voted by her 750 classmates both "most likely to succeed" and "most likely to be a hip-hop mogul." I hope there is not a picture of a sweaty king, a stack of mysterious cardboard boxes, or multiple lizards on the walls of my apartment in Heaven, but the rest would be okay, I suppose.
Last weekend, Meredith, Alison and I went on a little girl-bonding adventure to Chaiyaphum, which is about two hours by bus from Khon Kaen. Alison and I had seen a show at U-bar on Friday night, so we yanked ourselves out of bed bright and early Saturday and forced ourselves onto a bus. The bus ride was amazing; the windows were down and I got a window seat early on in the trip. The scenery was undeniably Asian: rice paddies and their workers in circular, pointed hats. It was very green and pretty rural, despite a couple towns that pretty much all looked the same. Chaiyaphum, too, looked very similar to Khon Kaen, but smaller. We splurged on a really nice hotel, which cost us about 7 dollars each for the night. Saturday, we went looking for this traditional village where you can see people making silk the way they have for many, many, years. How many? I have no idea because we never made it to our destination. We bought some silk and we walked through some village, but we never actually found THE silk village until we passed it on the way home on the last departing song-tao...oh well. Saturday night, the hotel bar turned into the Chaiyaphum hotspot and we saw a live band and danced until the wee hours with all of the rest of Chaiyaphum's teens and twenty-somethings and one really friendly but slightly creepy old man who I have pictures with. Sunday, we went to a national park and saw Tad Ton Waterfall. Unlike Costa Rica, where half of the thrill was the hour long hike/climb to the scenic falls, Thai people don't like the outdoors, the heat, or exercise (okay, maybe aerobics). Thus, you can almost drive right up to the falls and get in. Even though the travel nurse told me not to swim in fresh water in Thailand, the current was moving swiftly, although not dangerously swiftly, and I assessed the situation as only mildly dangerous; I hopped right in and swam under the waterfall. The park's brochure makes the tiny thing look like Niagara falls, but it would have been easily jumpable if there were not so many jagged rocks below.
I had been planning on going to Laos this weekend because Meredith had to renew her visa, which requires leaving Thailand and I said I would accompany her. Since I will be traveling the next two weekends, I decided to lay low instead. Meredith ended up coming home yesterday and we went on another Saturday mall excursion with the crew (Neuki, Ing, Toffee who is Neuki's boyfriend, Leng who is Neuki's brother's friend and a potential boyfriend for Ing). It seems to be becoming a pattern to eat huge sundaes at the mall on Saturdays with that crew. After the ice cream, we had a little Guitar Hero session in the arcade, which was fun for me since I kept winning...which only makes sense since there is no possible way that Neuki or Toffee could have accumulated as many hours in the arcade playing Guitar Hero as I have in the dorm or my house over the past years...or it would have been a pretty pricey feat at 10 baht a game. After the mall, it was torrentially raining, so we rented some movies and went to Meredith's for my first home-cooked Thai meal. We made suki, which is the same thing as a hot pot, like I talked about in my previous blog. It was even more delish at home, but we were all dripping with sweat since the house does not have air conditioning downstairs and we were inhaling soup like there was no tomorrow. Today, I ate some vegetarian food, graded some papers, sat and read at the most marvelous coffee shop, went to the campus night market and went on a "run" if you can call jogging for fifteen minutes before my body gave out a run. Good Sunday.
I began lessons with my Thai tutor on Friday. I have homework, too. I have to memorize some possible answers to the question "khun ja pai nai?" which literally means "where are you going?" and "pai nai maa?" which is "where have you been?" These are common greetings in Thailand, like "How are you?" for us. Right now, I could say "pai talaat maa kha" and "chun ja pai rian kha" which would be "I came from the market" and "I am going to study," which I really should since I had to look at my sheet to figure out how to say that. Everything in Thailand ends with kha (for women) or khrap (for men), which makes the sentence more polite, but is used most times. There is a lot of respect around these parts. For instance, we call Leng "Pi Leng" which is a sign of respect for someone even slightly older than you. I told Neuki that I would call her "Pi Neuki" if she wanted me to since she is 23, but she said no. She also lets me touch her head which is not allowed in Thailand either. She's a real nonconformist, haha.
My love to all of you.
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