Can't Think of a Title

Sorry for the hiatus of sorts.  I was away for the weekend and the week has been busy.

Gifts From School

Friday I went to school for the first time.  It was a part day, I saw my classroom and met the students.  Then the all the exchange students at the school (4) went to the gym to give speeches (which I was not aware of until that moment).  The school gave us some flowers and Thai Bean Cake, very welcoming.  I was only at the school for two hours but by the end of it I had melted.  The uniform has long sleeves and a long skirt, who came up with that?  I've seen other school uniforms, they get short sleeves and short skirts, and the guys at our school get shorts and a t-shirt, its not fair!

First Night Resort

Nori Seaweed Flavour

After that we left for Korat, to go to a Rotary Inbound Orientation.  We took a half bus - half van, there were 8 of us and the driver.  Everyone in the car was shorter than me, so they had a comfortable ride because the seats are made for small people.  The top of the headrest, when I leaned back, was at my neck.  It is very hard to sleep like that.  On the way we snacked on butter cake, seaweed flavoured Lays and orange mango juice.
We live 6 hours away from Korat, so we went 5 hours to a resort on Friday and the rest of the way in the morning.
The orientation was fun, made lots of friends.  Mingles, networked, talked about my favourite things.  We learned a song about fruit and one about elephants.

Loom

Octopus thing

We visited a silk weaving factory and at one of the dinners I had like baby octopus or something, it was just so cute with its little tentacles that I had to eat it.

View from the second floor of my school building.
There's more than one building.
I'm on the third floor.

That Monday, I had my first real school day.  The students and the teachers are all very nice.  They made a sign for me that said "Welcome to Thailand and Streemandapitak School."   I am "taking" regular school courses at the moment (physics, chemistry, biology, history, etc), however the school is working on getting the exchange students into "not-classes" like cooking, Thai dance, etc.
I'm working on learning the alphabet mostly in class, and they give me books to read (in English).  School here is much more relaxed, sometimes the teachers just don't show up for class and then we play dominoes, chat or just hang out.

Bag-o-Pepsi

There's a market in the parking lot of the school that opens at the end of the day.  You can buy snacks, noodles, drinks and ice cream.  I bought a Pepsi, which they drink in bags with a straw.
A thing I found amusing to see on the way home from school was a young boy riding in the bed of a pick up truck eating noodles.

Saturday we had a party for my host sister, Preaw, because she is leaving on Wednesday for BC, Canada.  We went to the department store (a cross between a Walmart and a Costco).  There we bought meat.  They don't have their meat prepackaged for the most part.  It's just a cold table thing (like we would use for fruit) filled with raw meat.  I also saw a pile of pig heads for sale.  Later we ate the most delicious pasta I have ever had and I learned how to make sushi.  Then we did karaoke.

Park

Bridge to Park

Cafe across from Park

Today, Sunday, my younger host brother, older host brother, his girlfriend and Preaw took me to a park to see a victory monument for King Takshin (something like that) who freed Thailand from Myanmar's rule.

There's my poorly written blog for today.  I'll probably update weekly from now on.
Cheers

Flower from park

PS. I must reiderate how hard it is to put pictures where you want them in this blog

Victory Monument

Fifth Day

Lizard from car (same as kitchen and bathroom)

Back to the regular title, I've exhausted my creativity.

One thing I forgot to mention yesterday was that I had my first encounter with the local lizards.  The first was in the trunk of our car.  Maa plucked it out with a grocery bag glove.  The second was on the kitchen floor, we chased it out the door.  Done and done, no animals were harmed in the making of the blog.  Today there was also one in the downstairs bathroom.  And they always seem to be in the doorway.

Doorway lizard.

Breakfast was a familiar one, Frosted Flakes and toast.  Also I had guava.

Flood. 

Real Pad Thai.

Lunch I went to a restaurant called (I think) Pad Thai 100 and guess what I had...Pad Thai!! (shock and awe) It was real pad thai and it was soooooo good.  On the way there we went past a small contained flood, from when it was raining, everyday...
Then we picked up my uniform.  When we got home I tried it on and the skirt was too big, but def-con 1 was temporarily averted by the use of a safety pin.  Safety first.  I can only describe how I look in the uniform as frumpy, cause its a good word.

Hot Pot. (Suki)

Uniform.

Supper was a hot pot.  For those of you who don't know what that is (which included me) you have a pot of boiling water and then food stuff (like raw meat, vegetables and noodles) you put the stuff in the boiling water, then take it out and eat it.  Today was also the first day I tried something spicy, a really small amount of sauce, and all was well.  This success is likely attributed to my friend's mom's Indian cooking, delicious Indian cooking (or should I say aroi).
So I start school tomorrow and will finally know my schedule.  Later tomorrow we head out to Korat for an inbound orientation conference, so I will finally sort of know what the heck I'm doing.  (also adding pictures here is hard)

Day Four

We went shopping today, groceries and my shoes and socks for school.  In the mall I heard a bunch of songs I knew, including: YMCA, Rhythm is a Dancer, The Pink Panther Theme Song and Everything I do I do it for You.  Now Rhythm is a Dancer has been stuck in my head all day.
I also found a neat saying thing on a notebook:
Let your mind start a journey thru a strange new world.
Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before.
Let your soul take you where you long to be.
Close your eyes let your spirit start to soar, and you'll live as you've never lived before.
I had rice with chicken and pork for breakfast and lunch and pizza and pasta for supper.  I enjoyed it not only because I love pasta and pizza, but because I got to eat with a knife and fork again.  Here they eat with a spoon and fork.  You use the fork to put food on the spoon, which you then bring to your mouth for consumption.
The pizza place was like a Pizza Hut and they had a Canadian Bacon Style pizza.  It had cheese, bacon and corn on it.
At the end of dinner my older brother bet my younger brother 100 baht that he couldn't eat the last piece of pizza.  He ate it.  Classic times.

That's it for today, I'm quite tired so its rather short.  Also I'm watching Doctor Who at the same time, so the post is a bit disjointed.  I do love Doctor Who, and also Thai dramas are amazing.  I have no idea what's being said, but it's so dramatic!  I watched one for like 12 twelve minutes and 20 people died, including two good guys.  The comedy shoes here are also awesome, hilarious whether you speak Thai or not.

Day the Third

Changing up the self-explanatory titles.  Oh yeah!
So first day in Chanthaburi.  I had delicious khao with bped for breakfast (that's rice with duck for you non Thailanders) and really sour soup with some kind of gourd in it.  Preaw and I watched half of Black Hawk Down (English with Thai subs) and half of Kate and Leopold (Thai, no subs), while waiting for Pun (I think, who is my younger brother) to get up, he skipped school because he had a bad headache and for Maa and Por to come back from work for lunch (they can do this because the shop is like right outside the front door).
For lunch we went to a noodle shop that is famous in Chanthaburi and ate, you guessed it noodles!  We also had corn bread, which was more corn than bread and the strangest texture of corn I've ever had, and a Thai dessert which was some kind of coconut cream and jelly cake thing with corn.

The restaurant is in the background.

Then us girls headed to Streemandapitak school to get my uniform.  On the way, we stopped at the hospital to visit a sick Rotarian and meet all the other Rotarians, who were also visiting.  I met the other exchange student, a girl form Quebec named Audrey.  She came with us to get her uniform as she will be at the same school.  I start school on Friday, with a half day and then my first full day is on Monday.
We went home and I got a tour of the shop and learned some more Thai.
Then we went out for dinner at a seafood place by the sea.  Had crab, shrimp. squid, seafood fried rice, white rice and garlic chicken.  The meal reiterated to me my disdain of  eating things with eyes still attached.  I had the opportunity to look into the eyes of the shrimp that I was eating.
By then I was really tired, and I slept in the car on the way home.

I keep forgetting to mention that I was given a Thai name and a Thai nickname.  My name in Thai is Wanida and my Thai nickname is Bpin.

A few observations before I go to sleep:
There are dogs walking around all over the place here
Mickey Mouse, Stitch, Disney, Winnie the Pooh and Hello Kitty are big here
American Standard is a big company here
and Hospitals are depressing in any language

Second Day

Judging by the title I'm sure you're all intelligent enough to figure out that a) I'm not very creative and b) this post will be about the second day.
I didn't really sleep last night, don't know why, probably a sensory overload thing.  Preaw (my sister) had to wake up early, 5am to get to her VISA interview and I "slept" later until about 7am and hung out with khun maa (mom).  Preaw did not return until about 11am, apparently, there was a lot of standing in line.  Maa and I met Preaw and Khun Por (Dad) at a Japanese restaurant, right next to the one we ate at yesterday.  It was there I learned that tofu is slippery when wet and miso soup adds no flavour to it at all.  However, unintentionally dropping it in rice, with teriyaki sauce form your chicken, helps to rectify the utter blandness that is tofu.
Then Preaw and I went shopping and she bought us matching elephant coin purses.  Then it started raining, hard.  After waiting out the rain for a few minutes, it just got worse, then it got a little better and we decided to book it across the street and back to the safety of the condo.  When I say raining, I mean the streets were flooded rather quickly.  I am not used to running in a foot of water and, being the graceful beast that I am I tripped (in the process almost losing my sandal, having to go back a little ways to get it).  So my foot is scratched and my ankle is swelling (noticeably, Mother), but not too bad, took an Advil and will sleep it off (auto correct turned Advil into anvil, well that's one way to get to sleep).
Then we set off to Chanthaburi.  I have no good pictures of this drive as 1) it was rainy 2) it was dark and crucially 3) I was asleep for most of it.
About 40 minutes away we stopped at a restaurant.  The first table we stopped at had a frog on it and like the thick idiot I am, I once again forgot my camera (note to self: read your "notes to self" otherwise they are useless).  We didn't sit at the table with the frog, but I don't think its because there was a frog, I think it was because the table was getting wet from the rain.  There we ate rice with various toppings, curry if some sort and pork and sour mango stuff and so on.  They ordered the curry not spicy, but it still burned my tongue.  I also need to work on my rice to curry ratio, I think I was using too much rice (but it was spicy).
The toilets at the restaurant were squatters.  You stand on the sides of the toilet, squat, do your business, throw the toilet paper in the garbage and then pour water from a pot beside the toilet to flush it.  Is that what it's like in Italy?  I don't know.

My own awesome room.

Anyway, we get to the house (awesome house, really nice house) and I get my own awesome room and my own awesome bathroom and I get to stay the whole year. :)

Still having a great time.  And I once again promise pictures, when I figure out how to put them on here.

First Day

 After 24 hours of travel from Toronto to Tokyo to Bangkok, I was tired.  But meeting my host mom, dad and sister, YEO and the district chair-woman perked me up, for a little while.  We drove to their condo in Bangkok, making a stop at 7/11 for snacks and drinks and we'll be staying in the condo for a few days before moving on to their home in Chanthaburi.  We chatted for a little while and then went to sleep.
They let me wake up late and so the first meal of the day was lunch.  We crossed the street to the Central Plaza mall in Bangkok and ate Ramen at a Japanese restaurant.  Also, I forgot my camera in the condo (note to self: never do this again), so I wrote some notes about what I saw instead.  Here is a copy of my quickly written notes:
  Bangkok not much different than other big cities.  Has really steep roads.  Have not seen any speed     limits.   Saw guy selling things in the street.  In the middle of the street.  In stopped traffic.  Wearing a ninja mask.    Colourful taxis (pink, green, blue, yellow).  Lots and lots of people at bus stops.

These notes were from a ride to a hardware/home decor store.  After looking around, we went to a cafe next door.  I had hot chocolate (much richer than the stuff at home) and white chocolate cake (so good).  While we were at the cafe it started to rain pretty hard, we tried to wait it out but it didn't stop quickly.  So we called over some men carrying large umbrellas and they walked us to the car, that's their job.
Then we headed home and us girls went shopping at the Central Plaza mall, I didn't but anything.
Back in the condo, we're eating snacks, using the internet and watching TV.  The snacks are delicious.  I'm eating some kind of dried pulled pork, coconut cream flavoured peanuts and really spicy grilled seaweed.

Some words, I learned today:
Su-wai --> Beautiful
Aroi --> Delicious
Saa-bai --> sort of like comfortable, well
Dee --> good
Yin dee tee dai roo jak --> Nice to meet you
Mai --> question word (like "ka" in Japanese) and negative
             i.e.  Su-wai mai --> Is it beautiful?
                   Mai su-wai --> Not beautiful.

I am having an awesome time here and I promise there will be pictures soon.