This past week has been a bit of a bi-polar week for me. The extreme up moments and the extreme down moments, Definitely interesting to say the least.
Also sorry about my last blog, I was so out of it.
Way back to Tuesday,
I got he chance to get out of the house/compound. I was allowed to go over to Alayna's for two night after going to Pattaya with my Grandparents and Alayna first.
So we picked up Alayna at her house first and headed out. We were going to see both a large temple and mini-Siam. The drive there was just me and Alayna swapping new kpop we had found and also gushing about Glee. I got her hooked on Glee and even started watching from the beginning myself. I am so in love with it. Watched the first episode of season to and I'm already in love with one of the new characters. and my favourite character finally has some lines!!!! woohoo
enough about Glee.
The reason we we're heading to Pattaya was so my Grandpa could check on one of his various plots of land, he's having it developed so he was checking up on the clearing process. He didn't want us bored sitting in the car so he dropped us off at an orchid nursery. The smell there was intoxicating there and so many beautiful flowers. Too bad I forgot my Pantex at home. There were so many different colours and styles. I can across one that had the most beautiful colour. It's a rustic looking red thats hinting at orange. I fell in love with that colour years ago looking at roses in Costco and I found it in an orchid, my favourite flower, HECK YES!! I got excited to say the least. Seriously I love that colour.
We sat around the nursery a good 20 minutes. Alayna told me about tis trip that I was invited on. A week going out to the island Got-See-Chan and staying at a spa with one of Alayna's mom's friends where we would learn thai massage, thai cooking, have daily thai lessons and such. I got excited.
After we were picked up we headed to the temple, yet we never got out of the car when we got there. It looked, well closed for the day, which doesn't happen at a temple, either way we didn't really see it.
We then headed to mini-Siam, I had no clue what the heck it was.
My Grandparents didn't go in, just let us explore by ourselves which is a super bonus. We headed past the gates to see... model versions of famous buildings and such from around the world. It was awesome. It's a little known fact about me, but I love miniatures. I love looking on DA at the miniature food sculptures for al the detail put into something. These models were mainly as tall as me and Alayna and the detail was pretty dang good on some of them. First there was Europe. I'm not good with remembering castles.
The roman colosseum was really well done and made me really want to play Godzilla with all these miniatures... I am such a little kid
The second part was all the temples or famous building in Thailand which are a lot. It was kinda interesting at first but I have to say, I like mini Europe more then mini Siam. We had fun though looking at all the temples.
At the end there was all of 2 things from America, Mount Rushmore and The Statue of Liberty. Alayna was a meanie and made fun that there was nothing from Canada, I could only save our country by saying all our amazing things were natural and you can't make a natural Niagara Falls could you? or at least that was my excuse.
When we made it back to Sri Racha, my Grandpa dropped us off at the mall, where we would walk to the park. I had done it before at the night market so I was confident I could do it again.
Well heck it's true what they say, everything does look different in the daylight. I was able to lead us to the park just fine, proving that I can do something on my own.
We decided to do a lap of jogging/walking. It's a really nice park and a good place for people watching. We met up with Alayna's mom who would be joining us for an aerobic dance class. While we were waiting for the class to start we talked about the trip to the Island. I found out my Grandpa had already decided before talking to me that I was not allowed as it was "too dangerous". This hit a little bit.
Anyways the class started, I had no clue what was going on and the music was unbelievably fast, so I dropped out and continued to jog instead. I kinda got sidetracked by a beautiful sunset that was happening underneath a lighting storm. t was wicked to watch. Beautiful contrasting colours and the ocean just calmed me down. Sitting there and watching the waves just does it for me. give me and ipod, and the dean. I could sit there for a good few hours. I finally went back to Alayna and her mom who were waiting for me. We ran into a few Rotary people which was nice. Wile the parents talked we went and did cartwheels in the grass. I both rolled my ankle and did something to m knee which now has given it a painfully numb feeling, fun right?
We headed for Alayna's house, man her house smells of something funky. I have no clue what it is, but funky is a world I would use to describe it. We settled in on her computer while looking at videos on youtube and such. mostly just sitting around until 1 in the morning.
Next morning was us heading off to Robinsons for the day where we would meet Alayna's mom at 5 and then go shopping.
We first started with lunch at at the food court...interesting. They make you get these coupons to give to each store. I think the coupons are pretty damn useless, but hey I have no clue why they are there in the first place so I can't say anything. The food there wasn't that great, I've had better food. Anyways So I've decided the mall is actually kind of tiny. We had already plucked through everything in the department store so we checked out everything else we could think of. The highlight for me was finding a movie store set up on one of the floors with super cheap movies. I got Prince of Persia for a mere 179 baht. Thats just under 6 dollars for a newly released movie. I got four movies there for 2 baht under 500. That was all the money I had brought and I has spent it wisely. Since I'm a complete movie guru I have decided I'm going to spending a lot more time scouring the movie racks.
We spent the rest of our time puttering around. At one point when we were in a donut shop, Our school's awesome ladyboy walked boy (not dressed up) and we couldn't help but wave franticly, looking like lunatics of course. We think he is the cutest thing ever.
Instead of waiting at the mall for another hour we walked to the park again, this time just sitting on the rocks looking at the ocean. When Alayna's mom finally arrived we were rearing to go. We headed to this elite country club sort of place that Alayna's parents were members of.
On the drive there we passed a chinese cemetery. It was beautiful in a really creepy sense. It's hard to explain what the graves look like, I'd have to say go google it. I'd love to go back there for photos though.
Once at the country club we changed and hit the pool. Finally I got to go swimming here, thank you god. we had the pool all to ourselves which was nice. we were in there a few hours just playing around. Alayna's favourite thing was to yell "man and wife", part of a game we played at camp. She would then promptly throw herself at me and I'd have to hold her up as well as not drowning myself.
After we went t dinner at the club where we talked with a family who was there. The daughter of that family who was 6 years old was able to say perfectly the first part of a shortened version of
peter Pan. it was ADORABLE. she was so shy and so cute.
When we got back to Alayna's house we snuggled in for a movie marathon. We got through My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Prince of Persia, A movie about a mountain, and we started a movie on youtube called Philadelphia before hitting the sack at 3am. I woke up at 10 ready to go, Alayna though is not a morning in person in anyway and stayed in bed for another hour or so. Once she was up we finished the one movie then watched Whip It. when we were finally ready we hit the park again. I jogged about one circuit before my knee started screaming. I then did a lot of walking. While Alayna took part in the Aerobics class again, I instead sat and watched a dozen boys break dance. some of them were actually pretty good. It was really cool to watch and I'm definitely brining my camera one time to get photos of them.
Anyways I got taken home to my house pretty late so I didn't get to ask for the chance to go on the island trip with Alayna, I also found out Meena and Jo would both be going so I wasn't going to let it slide.
The next morning when I asked, well lets just say I'm not on the trip while Alayna is.
Nothing else much happened for a fews days, until yesterday.
Toy, my next door neighbour offered to bring me along to Bangkok for a ay of shopping. I was pumped
I went to their house relatively early and heard the entire plan. We were going to first drop off dozens of orchids at this one place, then head to Toy's cousins house to see her knew niece who is less then a week old.
The house alone was nice, the first truly modern looking house I've been in. The baby though was the most precious thing ever. completely melted my heart. Though you look at pictures of the day the baby was born and you see there was a scar surrounding her eye that looked like Zuko's from avatar, it's the only thing I could think of. I snickered so hard
When Toy and I finally headed out (we were going my ourselves) It was pretty hot. We made it to the train unscathed and boarded.
Alright so shopping centre=HUGE 5stories spanning over at least 2 huge buildings. When we entered we walked in on a audition for male models and man I nearly keeled over. I don't know how many of them there were but hot dang. Those boys were gorgeous, and when I say it I mean truly from the bottom of my heart I could have sat there all day. Asian boys kind of do it for me in every way...so pretty looking.
Of course I didn't buy anything. those stores were super expensive by thai standards, so I was willing to wait for the night market. I did see lots of cute things though. I would like to spend a whole day just venturing around though, since we only had a few hours I saw very little of the mega-mall.
We did hit up this ice cream parlour at one point called Swensons. it's an american company and man I love ice cream. So I had a hard time choosing something.
hmmm We finally hit the night market and guess what the first stall was, a dvd stall. I bought no movie over dollars. Was able to get Princess Diaries but it won't play on my computer as it's in a different DVD region then my player..wtf? Got Chicago for just ver 2 dollars, I like the songs even though the movie is a little slow. I also had the happiest moment ever when I found a Koizora dvd that had english subtitles. Koizora is a manga I dearly love and was made into a live action movie. I haven't tried playing yet so we shall see how it goes later.
I also bought a book, I'm glad I did. It pretty awesome. vampires, swords, what could be better, I also stayed up till 4 in the morning reading it...my bad.
Anyways I saw some pretty interesting shirts sold at the night market
the sayings were things like "screw me and you get a free breakfast" or "(insert another word for cat), the breakfast of champions" man they have weird shirts. I saw I tie I really wanted but I didn't want to spend all my money so I resisted.
After that things were uneventful. just a long drive back home
Thats all I can think of right now so I guess I'm done
Kyouhei
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
Night Markets are my love
I said I would do a tiny blurb about the weekend, so here it is
Saturday was started when my next door neighbour Toy came over and invited me to go to Robinson with her which perked me right up from my massive unhappy bubble I was in.
It some how worked that Alayna was also going to meet us there which as always is pretty awesome. First at the mall we went and got some Japanese food which was really good as always, then something awesome happened
Toy and her mom let me and Alanya go off on our own. no one following us, watching us from a few steps away, we were completely on our own. We high fived and everything over it, this is what I want on the exchange a chance for freedom to be...a normal Thai teenager. We ran to the women's clothing department. low and behold the two items that I wanted were not meant to be mine. The torn shirt was cheap grade and didn't fit right. The black jacket had disappeared all together which made me cry on the inside. Alayna tried on tons of things and my god all of it looked good on her.
After Robinson, we decided to hit up a Thai Starbucks, thankfully everything was English first in the store and we were able to get frappacinos without a problem. They were good as always.
We then went to some smaller stores a few floors down and wow there were some cute clothes. I was able to get two shirts and a vest thingy.
We finally had to meet up with Toy and her mom, then headed for home, Toy offered to take us to the night market which is famous for cheap things
While waiting around for it to go dark Alayna and I just watched random videos on youtube.
fast forward to us actually getting to the night market. It was awesome I only went there with 500 baht and still was able to get 3 t-shirts and a bag. The night market was just awesome. hundreds of stalls and so many things to look at.
Sunday was a ton of sitting around and situations I'd rather not remember ever, lets just say me and my Grandpa aren't on the best terms right now
anyways thats my short blurb
Saturday was started when my next door neighbour Toy came over and invited me to go to Robinson with her which perked me right up from my massive unhappy bubble I was in.
It some how worked that Alayna was also going to meet us there which as always is pretty awesome. First at the mall we went and got some Japanese food which was really good as always, then something awesome happened
Toy and her mom let me and Alanya go off on our own. no one following us, watching us from a few steps away, we were completely on our own. We high fived and everything over it, this is what I want on the exchange a chance for freedom to be...a normal Thai teenager. We ran to the women's clothing department. low and behold the two items that I wanted were not meant to be mine. The torn shirt was cheap grade and didn't fit right. The black jacket had disappeared all together which made me cry on the inside. Alayna tried on tons of things and my god all of it looked good on her.
After Robinson, we decided to hit up a Thai Starbucks, thankfully everything was English first in the store and we were able to get frappacinos without a problem. They were good as always.
We then went to some smaller stores a few floors down and wow there were some cute clothes. I was able to get two shirts and a vest thingy.
We finally had to meet up with Toy and her mom, then headed for home, Toy offered to take us to the night market which is famous for cheap things
While waiting around for it to go dark Alayna and I just watched random videos on youtube.
fast forward to us actually getting to the night market. It was awesome I only went there with 500 baht and still was able to get 3 t-shirts and a bag. The night market was just awesome. hundreds of stalls and so many things to look at.
Sunday was a ton of sitting around and situations I'd rather not remember ever, lets just say me and my Grandpa aren't on the best terms right now
anyways thats my short blurb
Friday, September 17, 2010
Thats Not Chocolate
So I felt it was time for that update as quite a few things have happened since the last update. I feel like I'm doing this way to often and people will get bored, but I want to remember everything, the good, and bad.
Wow Monday literally seems like a life time ago. huh what happened on monday... (goes and digs out schedule from backpack)
I'm running out of things to draw, We literally have so many classes where we sit and do nothing or spares where we sit in an air conditioned room doing nothing. The only class I look forward to on mondays is dance class. We've learn at least 4 dances, The teacher is really awesome except for when you mess up, because he thinks you don't understand the dance at all and shows you everything all over again... Alayna is always grabbed by the teacher to be the demo girl in front of everyone, she comes back blushing and covering her face in embarrassment, though she's actually pretty good.
Also last thursday, Howard wanted us to actually do something in his class for once so he handed us a blank page and said, write about Thailand. I wrote a good page or so about all the random things i could think of.
He handed them back to us on this monday and it was really cool, he wrote back replies to each on of ours, he said mine was personal, fascinating, gave an insight to my personality, and he also said I'm a horrible speller. It was nice to hear what he thinks as I really respect him as a person and a teacher. the notes made us both happy and we had fun laughing about things we wrote. These random notes have now become a regular thing between us. he really enjoys us blabbing about anything we can think of, and it gives us something to pass the time with.
Tuesday's highlight English camp.
we were playing telephone with sayings like "Damn, it feels good to be a gangster" Then we watched as Matt and Steve get into a bickering match, two 20 year olds bickering like Aaron and me. It made us laugh
I also got a drawing lesson from Steve and for some reason when he looked at my art all pride in it evaporated, like the jumping off the cliff sound effects in the old cartoons. Dino tried to give me a drawing lesson on male crotches with " It's too small, you need to make it bigger, much bigger" thanks Dino I really needed that advice.
That night I was sitting, watching some kpop music videos and talking to other kids in my district when Grandpa came is saying we were going to a Rotary party, I thought okay, be a good Rotary kid. When we arrived at the house it was pouring rain, we were about 20 steps from the house. I was gung-ho to walk right up to the house, my grandparents got mad, and I mean actually mad and said I wasn't allowed as I would catch a cold. My grandpa grabbed my arm hard and did not let me step out of the car until and umbrella was put up... seriously that made me angry. It's the rain, Big whoop, my Grandparents said I'm not allowed to play in the rain during the rain, fat chance I'm going to listen. I love the rain, they are not taking that away from me.
Wednesday was a ton of fun, during on of our frees me and Alayna started talking about food we missed. waffles, steak, chilli, grilled cheese then we got on the subject of Japanese food, and dang a craving started up and would not go away, so we phoned our parents and were able to go to Robinson for Japanese food. HECK YES. It was so delicious, I had some pork udon and we shared dumplings. There was a majorly cute guy sitting behind us, though he turned out to be gay which was a tad disappointing.
After dinner we went into Robinson department store and started looking at clothes. I turned into a complete girl. Everything was so...CUTE. or punky, stylish. I loved it. There are two pieces that I absolutely must get. a shirt with tears in it, and a black jacket that I literally fell in love with. It's super expensive but I am getting it without a doubt. The night was just a lot of fun. Thank god my grandparents actually let me out of the house to go in the first place.
Wednesday was awesome. It felt like a true exchange day.
At lunch Matt decided to join us and my friends. Me and alayna were complaining about how Thai food never really fills you up, just satisfies you for an hour, then your hungry again. Matt joined in and we dreamed of McDonalds, matt suddenly cocked his head and said "Let's go to McDonalds then" we laughed at the joke. "No, I'm serious lets go right now, we can make it before lunch ends" We jumped on the chance, something adventurous, exciting, SPONTANEOUS. Matt walked off to get this transportation while me and Alayna walked to the front gate where we would meet him.
I was so happy when Matt pulled up on a moped/ motorcycle. We both climbed on and we were off. In thailand mopeds are huge, seeing 3 people on 1 is pretty common. I wouldn't trust a thai person with one for a second but I trust Matt, Steve and Howard, I trust them more with my safety then I do with my Grandma when she drives. Literally I fear for my life when she drives. literally.
We decided on the way that McDonalds was too expensive, we instead headed to a hole in the wall thai place that had awesome food, yeah it wasn't the cleanest place but if Matt can eat there, I can. We talked about a ton of random things while eating mysterious veggie dishes. He then took us out to a pier and i got a good whiff of sea air...happiness
As we were driving back Alayna leaned over my shoulder and said "this is the sort of thing that makes the exchange" and it's so true I'm here to have adventures like that, I'm not here to be just a student. I want to be an explorer. We got back just in time for our next class too. good fun. riding a motorcycle got checked off my list of things to do.
Now we hit Friday, Friday has not been my day.
it started off good. I found out Howard is a Star Wars freak, hell he even knew who Wedge was, which no one else has ever known when I've asked. He was an original Episode 5 movie poster at his house in England signed by the original Obi-wan....JEALOUS. I think we shall have many good star wars convos in the future.
Then howard mentioned that All the English teachers were getting together at a Thai buffet that night. Again Alayna and I jumped on the chance, why not? real thai food, able to get out of the house, and hanging out with some of the coolest people in all of thailand, downside? nothing
I phoned my grandpa about it and he seemed a little sceptical, then when I said Howard had even offered to drive me home, Grandpa had to ask how, and course I was the idiot who told the 79 year old Howard used a motorcycle. I think I experienced the Thai equivalent of a raging hissy fit. He freaked out saying I was in no way allowed to ride a motorcycle ever that it was dangerous. I told him I trusted the english teachers and that they were good drivers, but nope, nothing would calm him down. he said if he ever saw me riding a motorcycle he would phone my headmaster and from what I got, he would have me suspended from school. I didn't mention he fact I'd all ready ridden one. He then went on to saying I had to come home instead of going to Alayna's like originally planned and he wanted to talk to Howard at the restaurant, he also was wondering if the resturaunt was clean enough for me to eat at and such. Let just say this put me into a bad mood.
Spent the rest of the fuming and hoping i could talk to him about this. I felt like I was a china doll, not allowed to get dirty.
When I got home I wasn't in...a calm place of mind t talk to him. i went and cooled down, listened to some kpop and just bummed on DA. The drive there was bad I did what my mom always called "being snarky" i couldn't help it after the telephone call I was not ready to be all happy. He didn't give me a chance or anything. He even phoned Alayna's mom saying it was some sort of rule, not a district rule as we discovered, just his rule.
I thought I was going to die when he tried to find a parking spot, sideswiped at the least with his driving skills. He got honked at at least a dozen times.
We finally found the place, my grandpa looked like he was about to steer me out, he didn't, instead he interviewed Howard. gave him the big speech that he was responsible for us, and asked him if he knew the four Ds of Rotary, all these things. He didn't seem to think Howard would be very responsible. He also said he would be there directly at 9:30 to pick me up, I couldn't even take a tuk tuk home, no sir.
While this was going on Alayna filled me in on some things her mom had told her. US going out with some males after dark is very un Thai like since we're students and such. She also said that her mom felt bad for me as she think my Grandpa is way to strict.
Anyways we finally got down to the food. man it was good, you cooked your own good and this weird water/grill thingy. I was never meant to be a chef and burned almost everything. The water also just loved to burn me. Thank god there was ice cream at this buffet, again with the eating my weight in food.
found out some cool things like Howard's girlfriend is pregnant and expecting in February and he wants the kids nickname to be Latte...I feel sorry for that kid lol, it was going pretty good. We heard all these funny stories about Howard hitting on women in uniform, Steve being asked if he was gay, and such. At one point i was listening too hard to the stories while getting Alayna chocolate ice cream. i give it to her. "...this isn't chocolate" "wha? wait..shoot" good fun
Then Alayna gave me some news which sent me into a break down literally.
I said I wanted a breather and went outside and just cried, I would have screamed till I was hoarse, If there had been something a little softer then brick around i would have wanted to wail on it i was so angry. All I could think is "I'm not a bad kid, am I?"
I went back in when I thought I was good, i was able to sit there for a few minutes before I almost started to cry again Howard noticed something was wrong even said " Is there something wrong sweetie?" that made me laugh through he tears, I've never been called sweetie aside from my mom, weird for hear it from a teacher.
Alayna offered to come out for a breather with and I needed a friend, When we got out i started crying in anger and just arg. Then guess who decided to come help. Howard. We all sat down, while he had a smoke i explained everything and just... he helped he really did. I stopped crying and just He was a big hand... He even kinda told me what I have to do, and I guess I get to tackle that this weekend. I just i can't thank him enough. This is the first real breakdown I've had here and I'm so glad I had him there to help me, same with Alayna. I was able to calm down enough by the time Grandpa got there. Howard kind of gave me a smile, wouldn't let us pay our bills, and promised to bring us back some awesome England chocolate. He also texted us his email so we can talk during the break. We are going to keep up the note thingy while we're on break and he's in England, should be fun.
He also spoke to my Grandpa while I went inside to get my purse and I wish I knew what he said.
Anyways saying goodbye to Howard, Steve, and Matt was actually kind of depressing. These guys are really awesome and kinda really good friends. I'm going to miss them for the next month.
Driving home was quiet expect for my Grandpa saying he almost didn't let me eat there because it was too dirty, Alayna's parents were fine with it though so he let me (thank you Alayna's host parents) and I cried, out of happiness this time that I have people that care for me so much here, like Alayna, Howard, Matt, Steve. Now I'm sitting here crying as I write this.
So if something exciting happens over the weekend I'll write a small entry on monday and then try to keep entries to every monday
Kyouheikutie
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Baby Powder Creates A Great Game
so here I am almost a month into my exchange, time has just flown by, I can still remember the day I left perfectly, the texts, the goodbyes everything, and it feels like it was only yesterday.
Yes I miss Canada and the people in it, but I'm not homesick I don't cry over it, I don't sit in my room just thinking about home. I have facebook to talk to the people, Usually I don't really feel gone from people's lives. I'm just somewhere else.
anyways now that I can erase that thought from my mind.
So this week hmmm way back to Monday I go.
This was Alanya's and mine second week on our new schedule, I'm getting used to the changing of so many classes, and always going to classes with different people.
I've finally got down pat the campus of my school. There is 6 different buildings, not including the gym and workshops, all at least 3 stories tall and all my classes seem to be on the 3rd story.
On Wednesday We have double computer with my home class 4/7 and can I say this is a memory I will hold until the end.
With a double class of any subject, the first class you sit around while the teacher isn't there and talk, more like a spare then anything. As we were waiting for the classroom to be opened, my close thai friends started teasing and picking on (all in good fun) the resident gay boy, Poupay. 10 girls tackling him, pinching, elbowing him outside the classroom while we stared in awe and watched.
Once we got into the classroom, things escalated from there.
The girls were chasing him up and down the the aisles between computers, screaming, grabbing and generally looked like a good old fashion gang beating.
Then Poupay turned the tides and went "blind-monk-karate-ninja" sound effects and everything. There was pinching, slapping, and everything in between. It was priceless, me and Alayna were on the floor gasping for breath because we were laughing so hard. My class is something else. I love them all to death, and I wish I could have caught it all on tape.
Other then that my week was pretty quiet, just school and life.
Now on to the main event of this blog.
English Camp
now I know it sounds kind of strange, I'm pretty sure I'm fluent in english, so why go to a camp for it?
(when I say we in this section I mean Alayna and I)
We were told last week that we should take part in english camp where kids go who enjoy or want to further themselves in the english language. It's a weekend thing that is hosted at the school by a company called Media Kids.
So I arrived at the school at around 8am on Saturday to no one being there yet. I had to wait around until people I actually knew arrived. I mostly sat and listened to music while watching the school's local puppies running around and playing.
Thank god Alayna finally showed up. We headed into the cool air conditioned room in Building 3 and learned what the heck was going on, for this weekend we were neither student or teacher, but an in-between. We got to meet two teachers from Bangkok, Adam and Laura who are both amazingly nice. Adam seems more like a goofy teenager then a teacher and Laura always had a smile on her face.
We also met the Media Kids company reps. The leader of it was a very flamboyant guy named Porsche. I thought he was kinda nice at the start, but that went downhill pretty fast.
We also saw the familiar faces of the 3 white english teachers and before I go any further I want to talk about the three teachers because we hung out with them almost the whole weekend.
Let's start with Matt.
He's taller then anyone else in the school, shaved bald and has a Riddler-like question mark on his right calf. He has a good sense of humour and you can carry a good conversation with him without effort, I don't have him as a teacher so I haven't really talked to him outside a few occasions. He's not exactly quiet but he's not loud either. He also has an endless stomach that reaches down to his toes.
Now Steve,
How can I describe him, He looks like Clark Kent. He has more fangirls (and boys) at this school then I can count. They all his name as Su-teve which really makes him mad so he now tunes out anyone trying to call his name. He's super quiet and an art student which boosts him in my books.
Last but not least, Howard
He's a bad a$$ 37 year old from England with tattoos and a shaved head. We have class with him 5 times a week and man I love to push his buttons. He hates Shakespeare and thinks his plays are the most useless things ever created. He's let the F word slipped more then once and has a wicked sense of humour. He's very strait forward and will tell anyone what he's thinking and he doesn't spare people's feelings, it's kind of great to be around someone like that. He's my favourite teacher out of the three.
Back to Camp.
Once everyone had arrived we started with an energizer, the classic BANANA song, a little different tune and a few different versus but holy crud, the same song from 4-H camp was on the other side of the world, that made me want to cry in bittersweet happiness. Then we played some games to get them into the 'spirit' of camp, the games were mostly explained in thai, from from the get go, there wasn't much english at english camp.
After about an hour, us and the teachers went into a back hallway to paint the teachers faces for their tribes (supposedly thai people would do crazy things to first nations people, they are crazy about them). I painted Adam and Laura's faces, who were Eagle and King Cobra respectively, how do you face paint a king cobra? Steve was a tiger that didn't turn out too bad. Then Matt walked out of the washroom and the first words said was Howard saying "why so serious?". Matt looked like the joker, he was supposed to be a polar bear... No worries, I got pictures.
Then there was Howard who shouldn't have said the joker comment, because karma came back and bit him hard, I offered to paint his face but he laughed and said he didn't trust me, he instead let on of the thai teachers paint his face. Lets just compare Batman villains, if Matt was the Joker, Howard was the Scarecrow. There was in no way a wolf on his face. He was a little grumpy about it afterwards. Me and Alayna decided to battle the good old fashion way, Canada vs. America.
The first thing to do in tribes (which we were not part of) was to create cheers and dance.
the highlight was Matt's group doing a very "abstract" and "natural" cheer.
by this time Howard was already angry about certain things, especially angry at Porsche for some things. The whole thing was a bit of a mess and really didn't have anything to do with english.
After the cheers they broke into smaller groups and went to 5 different stations competing against other teams. We opted to help Matt out with tug-of-war. I think we picked the wrong station. The rope was horrible, it burned our hands and mine are now blistered and chaffed. yet it was still fun. Matt was a good sport about it and always had to call on me to help one team or another, though I don't think I did much help.
Then came lunch, rice and some soup-stuff-thingy that wasn't too bad. Listened to Steve chastise Howard for getting on Porsche's bad side. man Howard did not like that guy. After lunch there were more games, and the quote of the weekend which I cannot write because it was kind of inappropriate but it involved Howard grumbling about getting face paint on his boxer shorts. Me and Alayna keeled off our chairs with that. Howard laughed with us then said something that got to me. "I normally wouldn't say anything like that to a student, but I don't think of you guys as students really" That made me pretty happy because I don't look at the english teachers as teachers, but as people I can be on equal ground with, laughing, joking, and conversations.
Then at 3 the teachers left to go shower at their own houses and left me and Alayna to amuse ourselves for 3 hours until dinner while everyone else practiced for the talent show and singing competition. I taught Alayna how to play chess, showed her all the dances I could remember. We still had an hour to go before dinner.
We started talking to Jo, one of the singers, Alayna's friend, and gay. Really adorable and generally good guy. He also had to really good looking friends, including another of the singers, a really sexy guy nicknamed 'fame', really sexy. Anyways Jo tried to get me to be a back up dancer for one of the other girls as a joke, no way was I getting in a puffy, ruffled red sparkly dress and go dance on stage in front of 150 kids. It was pretty funny.
Out of no where about 10 minutes before dinner Steve and Matt walk in. Steve looks like a dirty hipster and Matt looks like a golf Caddy, this was their ideas of "dressing smart". They had to for their role as judges for the singing competition. Thankfully the rest of the English teachers looked normal. Dinner was...rice and soup-stuff, spicy stuff. yet good, and some really awesome chinese donuts for dessert.
After dinner we headed up stairs for the competitions. The talent competition was not in english so I was lost and it wasn't talents, it was skits, including the thai classics of English camp such as drag queens, gay love, steve, and Snow White. man, the drag queen or Gitoy as they are called here made such an amazingly cute girl. I wanted to go and give her a hug. though I got sidetracked watching Fame sing.
They also sung all Thai songs, everything was also announced in Thai. kind of lame.
Neither Fame or Jo won the singing competition, but it was fun all the same.
After that all wrapped up we went off the go to bed, yes we slept at the school, we all slept in rooms in building 4, girls on the second floor and boys on the third floor.
I learned something very new while going to bed. how to bath in public in thailand.
It is crazy. on one of the girls bathrooms there are giant tubs filled with water, and people put up tarps blocking off view from the street. then over top of your clothes you slip on a well dress sort of thing that has an elastic in the top.
then underneath you slip off your clothes but not your undergarments, remember, these people are very modest. you then bath with the cloth on, scooping water on to yourself, we had more of a water fight then anything. when you want to get into your pyjamas you put your pjs on over top of your soaking under garments and under the soaking cloth thing, then slip out of the cloth cover. While we were doing that we had the surprise of having a gay boy come and shower with us, that was funny. as we were changing it also started to rain that beautiful heavy rain. so I walked back to building 4 in the rain, trying to keep my clothes dry.
For sleeping I borrowed a sleeping bag from my Grandparents, it was paper thin yet still stinking hot when we were i the class room yet i slept like a rock after we sat for 20 minutes testing Meena on how to say difficult english words.
Gotten woken up at 6:30 by all the movement from the other girls already getting up to go exercise. Then it was off to brush the teeth in our pjs while boys looked and talked about us, You always hear your name being said and you know they are talking about you. just not idea what they are saying
Waited around for breakfast, which was a rice and squid soup, yummy. Alayna, along with half the student body was still asleep, so when we headed to the stage, all the teachers led warm up of much stupid looking dancing. It woke me up just watching everyone else do all the moves. right after that we went into a nice round of limbo. the finalist were all boys and man they must have been going under a 2 foot space, which was redonkulous, yeesh did I feel unflexable or what.
Then came a game involving marbles and tubes.
THEN CAME THE POWDER GAME!
so everyone sat in a circle. a dozen or so bottles of baby powder were handed out. Baby powder is big here to decrease the sweat and make you look nice and white. When the music starts you pass the bottle around the circle, then when the music stops the people with the bottles stand up and put a whack load of powder into one of their hands, then Adam would call out a direction like "put the powder on the face of the person three to the left" of "put the powder on Steve" which you would follow diligently, then by the end it turned into a big powder war, me and Alayna were prime targets along with all the teachers.
We came out looking like abominable snow men.
After the game was the total count for scores that had been kept over the weekend, Matt's team ended up winning which was good, much sheering was had.
pictures were taken, certificates handed out, candy, food. then a goodbye video.
After everything was said and done and all the kids were out of the rom the first thing I noticed was Howard ripping off, and yes literally ripping off the Media Kids shirt he had to wear today...he really did not like the way the camp was run, actually I talked to one of the Thai teachers after and she confirmed that the students said there was a huge change from last year to this year, and not for the better.
Even though there was a ton of things that weren't the best, the camp was genuinely fun, It was nice to get to know the english teachers better and I got to meet more students and got closer to others. I also met Fame which is a bonus enough all on it's own =P
anyways thats all I can think of for the moment...
tomorrow is school, I just spent the weekend at school, not even a day's break from it...save me
Kyouheikutie
Yes I miss Canada and the people in it, but I'm not homesick I don't cry over it, I don't sit in my room just thinking about home. I have facebook to talk to the people, Usually I don't really feel gone from people's lives. I'm just somewhere else.
anyways now that I can erase that thought from my mind.
So this week hmmm way back to Monday I go.
This was Alanya's and mine second week on our new schedule, I'm getting used to the changing of so many classes, and always going to classes with different people.
I've finally got down pat the campus of my school. There is 6 different buildings, not including the gym and workshops, all at least 3 stories tall and all my classes seem to be on the 3rd story.
On Wednesday We have double computer with my home class 4/7 and can I say this is a memory I will hold until the end.
With a double class of any subject, the first class you sit around while the teacher isn't there and talk, more like a spare then anything. As we were waiting for the classroom to be opened, my close thai friends started teasing and picking on (all in good fun) the resident gay boy, Poupay. 10 girls tackling him, pinching, elbowing him outside the classroom while we stared in awe and watched.
Once we got into the classroom, things escalated from there.
The girls were chasing him up and down the the aisles between computers, screaming, grabbing and generally looked like a good old fashion gang beating.
Then Poupay turned the tides and went "blind-monk-karate-ninja" sound effects and everything. There was pinching, slapping, and everything in between. It was priceless, me and Alayna were on the floor gasping for breath because we were laughing so hard. My class is something else. I love them all to death, and I wish I could have caught it all on tape.
Other then that my week was pretty quiet, just school and life.
Now on to the main event of this blog.
English Camp
now I know it sounds kind of strange, I'm pretty sure I'm fluent in english, so why go to a camp for it?
(when I say we in this section I mean Alayna and I)
We were told last week that we should take part in english camp where kids go who enjoy or want to further themselves in the english language. It's a weekend thing that is hosted at the school by a company called Media Kids.
So I arrived at the school at around 8am on Saturday to no one being there yet. I had to wait around until people I actually knew arrived. I mostly sat and listened to music while watching the school's local puppies running around and playing.
Thank god Alayna finally showed up. We headed into the cool air conditioned room in Building 3 and learned what the heck was going on, for this weekend we were neither student or teacher, but an in-between. We got to meet two teachers from Bangkok, Adam and Laura who are both amazingly nice. Adam seems more like a goofy teenager then a teacher and Laura always had a smile on her face.
We also met the Media Kids company reps. The leader of it was a very flamboyant guy named Porsche. I thought he was kinda nice at the start, but that went downhill pretty fast.
We also saw the familiar faces of the 3 white english teachers and before I go any further I want to talk about the three teachers because we hung out with them almost the whole weekend.
Let's start with Matt.
He's taller then anyone else in the school, shaved bald and has a Riddler-like question mark on his right calf. He has a good sense of humour and you can carry a good conversation with him without effort, I don't have him as a teacher so I haven't really talked to him outside a few occasions. He's not exactly quiet but he's not loud either. He also has an endless stomach that reaches down to his toes.
Now Steve,
How can I describe him, He looks like Clark Kent. He has more fangirls (and boys) at this school then I can count. They all his name as Su-teve which really makes him mad so he now tunes out anyone trying to call his name. He's super quiet and an art student which boosts him in my books.
Last but not least, Howard
He's a bad a$$ 37 year old from England with tattoos and a shaved head. We have class with him 5 times a week and man I love to push his buttons. He hates Shakespeare and thinks his plays are the most useless things ever created. He's let the F word slipped more then once and has a wicked sense of humour. He's very strait forward and will tell anyone what he's thinking and he doesn't spare people's feelings, it's kind of great to be around someone like that. He's my favourite teacher out of the three.
Back to Camp.
Once everyone had arrived we started with an energizer, the classic BANANA song, a little different tune and a few different versus but holy crud, the same song from 4-H camp was on the other side of the world, that made me want to cry in bittersweet happiness. Then we played some games to get them into the 'spirit' of camp, the games were mostly explained in thai, from from the get go, there wasn't much english at english camp.
After about an hour, us and the teachers went into a back hallway to paint the teachers faces for their tribes (supposedly thai people would do crazy things to first nations people, they are crazy about them). I painted Adam and Laura's faces, who were Eagle and King Cobra respectively, how do you face paint a king cobra? Steve was a tiger that didn't turn out too bad. Then Matt walked out of the washroom and the first words said was Howard saying "why so serious?". Matt looked like the joker, he was supposed to be a polar bear... No worries, I got pictures.
Then there was Howard who shouldn't have said the joker comment, because karma came back and bit him hard, I offered to paint his face but he laughed and said he didn't trust me, he instead let on of the thai teachers paint his face. Lets just compare Batman villains, if Matt was the Joker, Howard was the Scarecrow. There was in no way a wolf on his face. He was a little grumpy about it afterwards. Me and Alayna decided to battle the good old fashion way, Canada vs. America.
The first thing to do in tribes (which we were not part of) was to create cheers and dance.
the highlight was Matt's group doing a very "abstract" and "natural" cheer.
by this time Howard was already angry about certain things, especially angry at Porsche for some things. The whole thing was a bit of a mess and really didn't have anything to do with english.
After the cheers they broke into smaller groups and went to 5 different stations competing against other teams. We opted to help Matt out with tug-of-war. I think we picked the wrong station. The rope was horrible, it burned our hands and mine are now blistered and chaffed. yet it was still fun. Matt was a good sport about it and always had to call on me to help one team or another, though I don't think I did much help.
Then came lunch, rice and some soup-stuff-thingy that wasn't too bad. Listened to Steve chastise Howard for getting on Porsche's bad side. man Howard did not like that guy. After lunch there were more games, and the quote of the weekend which I cannot write because it was kind of inappropriate but it involved Howard grumbling about getting face paint on his boxer shorts. Me and Alayna keeled off our chairs with that. Howard laughed with us then said something that got to me. "I normally wouldn't say anything like that to a student, but I don't think of you guys as students really" That made me pretty happy because I don't look at the english teachers as teachers, but as people I can be on equal ground with, laughing, joking, and conversations.
Then at 3 the teachers left to go shower at their own houses and left me and Alayna to amuse ourselves for 3 hours until dinner while everyone else practiced for the talent show and singing competition. I taught Alayna how to play chess, showed her all the dances I could remember. We still had an hour to go before dinner.
We started talking to Jo, one of the singers, Alayna's friend, and gay. Really adorable and generally good guy. He also had to really good looking friends, including another of the singers, a really sexy guy nicknamed 'fame', really sexy. Anyways Jo tried to get me to be a back up dancer for one of the other girls as a joke, no way was I getting in a puffy, ruffled red sparkly dress and go dance on stage in front of 150 kids. It was pretty funny.
Out of no where about 10 minutes before dinner Steve and Matt walk in. Steve looks like a dirty hipster and Matt looks like a golf Caddy, this was their ideas of "dressing smart". They had to for their role as judges for the singing competition. Thankfully the rest of the English teachers looked normal. Dinner was...rice and soup-stuff, spicy stuff. yet good, and some really awesome chinese donuts for dessert.
After dinner we headed up stairs for the competitions. The talent competition was not in english so I was lost and it wasn't talents, it was skits, including the thai classics of English camp such as drag queens, gay love, steve, and Snow White. man, the drag queen or Gitoy as they are called here made such an amazingly cute girl. I wanted to go and give her a hug. though I got sidetracked watching Fame sing.
They also sung all Thai songs, everything was also announced in Thai. kind of lame.
Neither Fame or Jo won the singing competition, but it was fun all the same.
After that all wrapped up we went off the go to bed, yes we slept at the school, we all slept in rooms in building 4, girls on the second floor and boys on the third floor.
I learned something very new while going to bed. how to bath in public in thailand.
It is crazy. on one of the girls bathrooms there are giant tubs filled with water, and people put up tarps blocking off view from the street. then over top of your clothes you slip on a well dress sort of thing that has an elastic in the top.
then underneath you slip off your clothes but not your undergarments, remember, these people are very modest. you then bath with the cloth on, scooping water on to yourself, we had more of a water fight then anything. when you want to get into your pyjamas you put your pjs on over top of your soaking under garments and under the soaking cloth thing, then slip out of the cloth cover. While we were doing that we had the surprise of having a gay boy come and shower with us, that was funny. as we were changing it also started to rain that beautiful heavy rain. so I walked back to building 4 in the rain, trying to keep my clothes dry.
For sleeping I borrowed a sleeping bag from my Grandparents, it was paper thin yet still stinking hot when we were i the class room yet i slept like a rock after we sat for 20 minutes testing Meena on how to say difficult english words.
Gotten woken up at 6:30 by all the movement from the other girls already getting up to go exercise. Then it was off to brush the teeth in our pjs while boys looked and talked about us, You always hear your name being said and you know they are talking about you. just not idea what they are saying
Waited around for breakfast, which was a rice and squid soup, yummy. Alayna, along with half the student body was still asleep, so when we headed to the stage, all the teachers led warm up of much stupid looking dancing. It woke me up just watching everyone else do all the moves. right after that we went into a nice round of limbo. the finalist were all boys and man they must have been going under a 2 foot space, which was redonkulous, yeesh did I feel unflexable or what.
Then came a game involving marbles and tubes.
THEN CAME THE POWDER GAME!
so everyone sat in a circle. a dozen or so bottles of baby powder were handed out. Baby powder is big here to decrease the sweat and make you look nice and white. When the music starts you pass the bottle around the circle, then when the music stops the people with the bottles stand up and put a whack load of powder into one of their hands, then Adam would call out a direction like "put the powder on the face of the person three to the left" of "put the powder on Steve" which you would follow diligently, then by the end it turned into a big powder war, me and Alayna were prime targets along with all the teachers.
We came out looking like abominable snow men.
After the game was the total count for scores that had been kept over the weekend, Matt's team ended up winning which was good, much sheering was had.
pictures were taken, certificates handed out, candy, food. then a goodbye video.
After everything was said and done and all the kids were out of the rom the first thing I noticed was Howard ripping off, and yes literally ripping off the Media Kids shirt he had to wear today...he really did not like the way the camp was run, actually I talked to one of the Thai teachers after and she confirmed that the students said there was a huge change from last year to this year, and not for the better.
Even though there was a ton of things that weren't the best, the camp was genuinely fun, It was nice to get to know the english teachers better and I got to meet more students and got closer to others. I also met Fame which is a bonus enough all on it's own =P
anyways thats all I can think of for the moment...
tomorrow is school, I just spent the weekend at school, not even a day's break from it...save me
Kyouheikutie
Sunday, September 5, 2010
What a Weekend!!!
Alright I've been trying to keep the blogs to once a week but I have to get all that has happened because the past few days have been so busy.
all the way back to thursday
So I caught a cold from Alayna the day before and had a really bad sleep, so going to school was a pain but it's just a cold, the same thing everything Canadian catches from time to time so I really did not care, get through the day then go and sleep
When i got to school one of my friends noticed I was sick and immediately told one of my teachers that I had a fever. this earned me a one-way ticket home, with a pit stop for lunch that the teacher bought for me, (this being the same teacher that took me to sushi). The meal was really good and after we went to a cake cafe with AMAZING cakes, after that I would have felt bad about protesting her taking me home, so I went quietly. I spent the rest of the day sitting around watching tv, snoozing, and looking up TZP online. It was time well wasted. I got to go back to school the next day after a good sleep, my grandma was freaking out thinking I shouldn't go because I might still be sick..very over protective...
Friday I had a real good argument with a british teacher about Shakespeare and why it's still taught in schools when it isn't relevant, it all started with a question on a work sheet saying "we mustn't be late, must we?" who is the world says that?
Saturday morning I had to wake up early and pack as we headed to Bangkok for the night to visit Grandpa's son, so I guess that would make him my host dad, and his family. It's about an hour drive to get from our house in Sri Racha to my host Dad's house in Bangkok. We reached his house without problem, and might I say nice house, 80's style, but nice. the first thing you notice when you walk in is literally the wall of trophies surrounding the tv.
I'll back up a little and explain. My grandpa has two grandsons. the older one who is 16 is an international go kart champion who has raced in Japan, UAE, Italy, and other countries. HE was picked by Thailand's racing committee to represent them for the past two years, he's even sponsored by
Toyota. Now he's also on the Rotary exchange and is in Tokyo Japan (lucky), the wall was his trophies, most of them being 1st place trophies.
alright now that we have that little back story out of the way.
My host Mom is really nice and has offered to take my to all these places in Bangkok including shopping, which I might even like with the prices here. Also while we were waiting for my host dad to arrive we got on the topic of tattoos which are super cheap here (like everything else) and also super sketchy. I told my Grandpa and mom that I wanted a few, Grandpa asked if I would be getting one here. It's against rotary rules so I had to decline, then he said if he somehow got it cleared by Rotary would I do it? wow a 79 year old man basically allowing me to get a tattoo, I laughed out loud, then shook my head saying if I came back to Canada with a tattoo that I didn't leave Canada with, my Dad would disown me.
We were interrupted by the arrival of my host dad. My host dad is kind of quiet but still nice and my host brother(? I think) who is the younger of the two brother and 9 years old is a computer wizz and kind of shy around me.
So we all piled into a van and headed out into Bangkok.
Our first stop was a museum, most recognized by the gigantic 3 headed elephant statue that sits on top of the museum. The basement floor was a downer which didn't give me high hopes for the rest of it. A lot of tea pots, some marble statues that you couldn't get near etc.
Then we went into the the base of the elephant statue and my breath was taken away. It is a two story room with winding staircases that lead up to a huge stained glass roof of a world map. but that's not even the cool part. Everything was decorated... ugh I can't explain it properly, I'll have to get the photos up on facebook so you can understand it but it was... truly and utterly beautiful.
Then we headed inside the elephant where there was a buddha shrine. the roof of the shrine was covered in constellations I could only name a few yet that was the coolest part of the shrine for me. It was very...alive almost. That's the difference I've found between Thai temples and Japanese temples. Japanese temples are so calm and it feels like they are part of the earth, like they are meant to be there. Thai temples , they almost feel alive with an energy they give off. I personally like the japanese temples better but these ones are still shiny and flashy.
After we emerged from the temple my host brother who's nick name is Pangpang, bought me and himself two lotus flowers in bowls of water, we then kneeled in front of a stream that ran around the chorus of the museum. we then released them into the stream, The water represented life and the lotus represented love, Your supposed to make a wish when you release the lotus involving marriage so I made a wish for Aaron and Carolyn, hope it comes true =)
We left the museum and went to the "ancient city". It has replicas of temples and other famous building from all over Thailand, not real sized but big enough. I really hope to see some of these in real life while I'm here. I was getting sleepy though from another bad night's sleep so I missed the last few statues.
Headed back to my Dad's house, eat some lunch (spaghetti), then left to go to my Grandparent's house that they own in Bangkok. It's in a gated community, very nice house and fro some reason I was given the master bedroom to sleep in. For dinner we had hamburgers, frozen hamburgers. g-r-o-s-s-e-s-t t-h-i-n-g EVER. those were not hamburgers. those were pure ick.
Well our after dinner entertainment we heading into central Bangkok for a play. when I got out of the car they THEY were, two of them, so beautiful, I wanted to run up and hug them, thats right my first two elephants. along with dozens of dancers doing pre show entertainments. I was so happy, but the batteries in my camera started to die so I didn't get any focused pictures. By the way Evangeline eats batteries, just destroys them in hours... Very painful for someone like me.
When the doors opened for the play and we headed inside to find our seats. the stage is a Guinness
World Records for highest stage, the seats start on the second story.
The show depicted the different kingdoms that made up Siam hundreds of years ago. Then it talked about hell, heaven, and the in between, then it talked about all the festivals that happen during the year.
It was gorgeous. It was entirely dance and music, no talking. The costumes, the sets, the set changes. everything was amazing. I was in awe. I cannot describe how well done everything was, Hell and the world in between were most likely my favourite scenes.
At one point a river suddenly appeared. along the front of the stage and I mean a river. a man was able to jump in and submerged himself completely, it also had boats float down it, jets shoot up, and have it rain down upon it. I was just flabbergasted. They also had 4 goats, 3 chickens, 2 elephants, and a dragon in a pear tree on stage at different times during the play. Ms. Stonewall would have been proud of them.
Sunday was another early wake up. We headed out to visit the Imperial Palace. So when you look up Thailand everyone says wear full length pants to the palace or your be given a skirt to wear over top. guess who packed pants then forgot to wear them? that's right. me. The skirt was really pretty though and I definitely want to buy one for myself.
First we saw one of the largest temples in Thailand that is attached to the Palace. Everything was shiny, every surface seemed to reflect the sun. wow it was alive. Definitely a list topper for something people need to see when in Thailand. One thing I'd like to point out. I hate being in front of the camera (cosplay being the only exception) I especially hate the touristy of standing in front of building or such by myself, guess what my Grandpa loved to do every 2 minutes...rawr stomp stomp stomp, does not make me a happy camper.
The palace is something I got to see only a little of. most is behind closed gates. The inauguration building was the only one without a gate and you were not allowed inside.
I noticed right away all the buildings were love-childs between Thai and European architecture, definitely interesting.
Everyone in thailand loves their king and are very patriotic. every building flies thai flags as well as the flags of the king and queen. The royal couples pictures are everywhere, everyone truly respects and adores them. Very unlike the Queen in Canada
After the palace we took a couple of took-tooks (taxi like things similar to ones in central america) to a museum near by. This was a history of Thailand, Siam, and the country that came before Siam.
It was really interesting and i actually stopped to read all the info instead of just browsing like I normally do. It talked about all the kingdoms that used to be at war with each other until one king was able to unite them all which was more or less the territory that makes up Thailand today. When that rule was over taken by a different ruler the country was finally named Siam. The complete monarchy was booted out around... I forget. The king here is exactly like Queen Elizabeth, just a figure head more then anything
When North American and European influence came into Siam it was huge. in the early 20's Thailand went a bit ultra national, banning all other ways of life except for the thai way of life. This is when the country was renamed Thailand. the ultra nationalists weren't Hitler or Stalin thank god, but they still had the belief that Thais were the superior race to all others.
This ended by the time the cold war came around. Thailand even sided with the US (capitalism) to show that they believed in joining the world and allowing people to see how amazing Thailand is.
sorry for that class about thailand history I just wanted to get it out.
After leaving the museum we went to my grandma's sister's house for the sister's granddaughter's birthday.
We rolled up to what I imagined houses in Beverly Hills look like. fountains, sculpted bushes, 3 huge houses on one piece of property. Marble floors, everything. Grandma said that she is the 'poorest' of the 5 sisters. My grandparents are very well off to say the least. the birthday party had about 50 guests, all family members in some way or another. Everyone was really nice to me and a few people asked questions and such. Then I bumped into a guy from New York who's parents were Thai. He was really nice and we had a good conversation. I also met his girlfriend who was from California. She's a sushi chef who's half Japanese and half Mexican, also thrown into her gene pool is some Russian, German, and Irish, oh and she was drop dead stunning.
I wandered around mostly, talked to the birthday girl a little, tried some real Thai food which was pretty good, and some...different Thai dessert.
After the party we had to part ways with my host parents and Pangpang. We headed home where I now am sitting typing this. I'm also downloading "If I Had You" which plays a ton over here. go Adam.
I'm out
Kyouheikutie
p.s sorry mom for another confusing blog entry that you can't make any sense of.
all the way back to thursday
So I caught a cold from Alayna the day before and had a really bad sleep, so going to school was a pain but it's just a cold, the same thing everything Canadian catches from time to time so I really did not care, get through the day then go and sleep
When i got to school one of my friends noticed I was sick and immediately told one of my teachers that I had a fever. this earned me a one-way ticket home, with a pit stop for lunch that the teacher bought for me, (this being the same teacher that took me to sushi). The meal was really good and after we went to a cake cafe with AMAZING cakes, after that I would have felt bad about protesting her taking me home, so I went quietly. I spent the rest of the day sitting around watching tv, snoozing, and looking up TZP online. It was time well wasted. I got to go back to school the next day after a good sleep, my grandma was freaking out thinking I shouldn't go because I might still be sick..very over protective...
Friday I had a real good argument with a british teacher about Shakespeare and why it's still taught in schools when it isn't relevant, it all started with a question on a work sheet saying "we mustn't be late, must we?" who is the world says that?
Saturday morning I had to wake up early and pack as we headed to Bangkok for the night to visit Grandpa's son, so I guess that would make him my host dad, and his family. It's about an hour drive to get from our house in Sri Racha to my host Dad's house in Bangkok. We reached his house without problem, and might I say nice house, 80's style, but nice. the first thing you notice when you walk in is literally the wall of trophies surrounding the tv.
I'll back up a little and explain. My grandpa has two grandsons. the older one who is 16 is an international go kart champion who has raced in Japan, UAE, Italy, and other countries. HE was picked by Thailand's racing committee to represent them for the past two years, he's even sponsored by
Toyota. Now he's also on the Rotary exchange and is in Tokyo Japan (lucky), the wall was his trophies, most of them being 1st place trophies.
alright now that we have that little back story out of the way.
My host Mom is really nice and has offered to take my to all these places in Bangkok including shopping, which I might even like with the prices here. Also while we were waiting for my host dad to arrive we got on the topic of tattoos which are super cheap here (like everything else) and also super sketchy. I told my Grandpa and mom that I wanted a few, Grandpa asked if I would be getting one here. It's against rotary rules so I had to decline, then he said if he somehow got it cleared by Rotary would I do it? wow a 79 year old man basically allowing me to get a tattoo, I laughed out loud, then shook my head saying if I came back to Canada with a tattoo that I didn't leave Canada with, my Dad would disown me.
We were interrupted by the arrival of my host dad. My host dad is kind of quiet but still nice and my host brother(? I think) who is the younger of the two brother and 9 years old is a computer wizz and kind of shy around me.
So we all piled into a van and headed out into Bangkok.
Our first stop was a museum, most recognized by the gigantic 3 headed elephant statue that sits on top of the museum. The basement floor was a downer which didn't give me high hopes for the rest of it. A lot of tea pots, some marble statues that you couldn't get near etc.
Then we went into the the base of the elephant statue and my breath was taken away. It is a two story room with winding staircases that lead up to a huge stained glass roof of a world map. but that's not even the cool part. Everything was decorated... ugh I can't explain it properly, I'll have to get the photos up on facebook so you can understand it but it was... truly and utterly beautiful.
Then we headed inside the elephant where there was a buddha shrine. the roof of the shrine was covered in constellations I could only name a few yet that was the coolest part of the shrine for me. It was very...alive almost. That's the difference I've found between Thai temples and Japanese temples. Japanese temples are so calm and it feels like they are part of the earth, like they are meant to be there. Thai temples , they almost feel alive with an energy they give off. I personally like the japanese temples better but these ones are still shiny and flashy.
After we emerged from the temple my host brother who's nick name is Pangpang, bought me and himself two lotus flowers in bowls of water, we then kneeled in front of a stream that ran around the chorus of the museum. we then released them into the stream, The water represented life and the lotus represented love, Your supposed to make a wish when you release the lotus involving marriage so I made a wish for Aaron and Carolyn, hope it comes true =)
We left the museum and went to the "ancient city". It has replicas of temples and other famous building from all over Thailand, not real sized but big enough. I really hope to see some of these in real life while I'm here. I was getting sleepy though from another bad night's sleep so I missed the last few statues.
Headed back to my Dad's house, eat some lunch (spaghetti), then left to go to my Grandparent's house that they own in Bangkok. It's in a gated community, very nice house and fro some reason I was given the master bedroom to sleep in. For dinner we had hamburgers, frozen hamburgers. g-r-o-s-s-e-s-t t-h-i-n-g EVER. those were not hamburgers. those were pure ick.
Well our after dinner entertainment we heading into central Bangkok for a play. when I got out of the car they THEY were, two of them, so beautiful, I wanted to run up and hug them, thats right my first two elephants. along with dozens of dancers doing pre show entertainments. I was so happy, but the batteries in my camera started to die so I didn't get any focused pictures. By the way Evangeline eats batteries, just destroys them in hours... Very painful for someone like me.
When the doors opened for the play and we headed inside to find our seats. the stage is a Guinness
World Records for highest stage, the seats start on the second story.
The show depicted the different kingdoms that made up Siam hundreds of years ago. Then it talked about hell, heaven, and the in between, then it talked about all the festivals that happen during the year.
It was gorgeous. It was entirely dance and music, no talking. The costumes, the sets, the set changes. everything was amazing. I was in awe. I cannot describe how well done everything was, Hell and the world in between were most likely my favourite scenes.
At one point a river suddenly appeared. along the front of the stage and I mean a river. a man was able to jump in and submerged himself completely, it also had boats float down it, jets shoot up, and have it rain down upon it. I was just flabbergasted. They also had 4 goats, 3 chickens, 2 elephants, and a dragon in a pear tree on stage at different times during the play. Ms. Stonewall would have been proud of them.
Sunday was another early wake up. We headed out to visit the Imperial Palace. So when you look up Thailand everyone says wear full length pants to the palace or your be given a skirt to wear over top. guess who packed pants then forgot to wear them? that's right. me. The skirt was really pretty though and I definitely want to buy one for myself.
First we saw one of the largest temples in Thailand that is attached to the Palace. Everything was shiny, every surface seemed to reflect the sun. wow it was alive. Definitely a list topper for something people need to see when in Thailand. One thing I'd like to point out. I hate being in front of the camera (cosplay being the only exception) I especially hate the touristy of standing in front of building or such by myself, guess what my Grandpa loved to do every 2 minutes...rawr stomp stomp stomp, does not make me a happy camper.
The palace is something I got to see only a little of. most is behind closed gates. The inauguration building was the only one without a gate and you were not allowed inside.
I noticed right away all the buildings were love-childs between Thai and European architecture, definitely interesting.
Everyone in thailand loves their king and are very patriotic. every building flies thai flags as well as the flags of the king and queen. The royal couples pictures are everywhere, everyone truly respects and adores them. Very unlike the Queen in Canada
After the palace we took a couple of took-tooks (taxi like things similar to ones in central america) to a museum near by. This was a history of Thailand, Siam, and the country that came before Siam.
It was really interesting and i actually stopped to read all the info instead of just browsing like I normally do. It talked about all the kingdoms that used to be at war with each other until one king was able to unite them all which was more or less the territory that makes up Thailand today. When that rule was over taken by a different ruler the country was finally named Siam. The complete monarchy was booted out around... I forget. The king here is exactly like Queen Elizabeth, just a figure head more then anything
When North American and European influence came into Siam it was huge. in the early 20's Thailand went a bit ultra national, banning all other ways of life except for the thai way of life. This is when the country was renamed Thailand. the ultra nationalists weren't Hitler or Stalin thank god, but they still had the belief that Thais were the superior race to all others.
This ended by the time the cold war came around. Thailand even sided with the US (capitalism) to show that they believed in joining the world and allowing people to see how amazing Thailand is.
sorry for that class about thailand history I just wanted to get it out.
After leaving the museum we went to my grandma's sister's house for the sister's granddaughter's birthday.
We rolled up to what I imagined houses in Beverly Hills look like. fountains, sculpted bushes, 3 huge houses on one piece of property. Marble floors, everything. Grandma said that she is the 'poorest' of the 5 sisters. My grandparents are very well off to say the least. the birthday party had about 50 guests, all family members in some way or another. Everyone was really nice to me and a few people asked questions and such. Then I bumped into a guy from New York who's parents were Thai. He was really nice and we had a good conversation. I also met his girlfriend who was from California. She's a sushi chef who's half Japanese and half Mexican, also thrown into her gene pool is some Russian, German, and Irish, oh and she was drop dead stunning.
I wandered around mostly, talked to the birthday girl a little, tried some real Thai food which was pretty good, and some...different Thai dessert.
After the party we had to part ways with my host parents and Pangpang. We headed home where I now am sitting typing this. I'm also downloading "If I Had You" which plays a ton over here. go Adam.
I'm out
Kyouheikutie
p.s sorry mom for another confusing blog entry that you can't make any sense of.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Thai Speaking Barbie is Quite Amusing
They are so cool to watch, then again so is any american tv show translated. Right now for some reason there is a Mickey Mouse Christmas special on... whaaaaa? is all I can think
Alright where should I start?
hmmm lets start with last week
Sports week ended on friday with a huge parade of all 5 teams, starting in town and working it's way all the way to our school in oh lets estimate at 30 degree weather. I didn't envy them having to walk in that weather. Some of the costumes were gorgeous, from traditional thai outfits to what appeared to be slutty halloween outfits. When I say slutty, it was slutty for Canadian standards, Don't want to think what it was in thai standards. The parade was really nice and really interesting to see what all the teams had put so much effort into, also the cheerleaders got all dressed up and preformed there full routines with their cheering sections to match. some of the groups had lifts and spins and really good moves, my team (green) was the worst T_T oh well. over all it was really really cool to experience something like this with my friends.
After school on friday on of the teachers who's name is very long and very hard to spell took my out along with four other teachers to a sushi buffet at the mall. I've only been to the mall once before so it was nice to see more of it. Its about 6 stories high and really big (oh and theres a Wranglers store...why wranglers???)
The sushi bar was really good, we all so had a sort of a steam pot where you put in tons of veggies and dumplings and cool it, then serve everyone, it was different but really good, oh and did I mention the sushi BUFFET part? I ate my weight in sushi and ice cream (which they also had as part of the buffet) I could not have eaten another bite by the end.
The teachers were all really nice. My Japanese teacher was there also, she only comes up to my chin, but she's so adorable and funny, yesterday in our double class with her we watched Totaro, a Ghibli classic, The teacher is so awesome,
anyways back to dinner, after when everyone hit the bathroom I noticed one of the arcade games had Cloud Strife as the background (how great is that?) after we went and looked through Robinsons, the major department store that the mall is named after. going through that store made me learn something, so mom, know all that shopping looking for shirts that covered my shoulders. not worth it, that rule really doesn't apply. They have tons of cute tops, half of them not covering the shoulders....ffffff all that work for nothing.
This past weekend I got to know Alayna a lot better(I finally found out how to spell her name properly)
On Saturday we picked her and her mom up nice and early to go to Pattiya, a town about half an hour way.
Our first stop was a temple over looking all of Pattiya which was really stunning for looking at a ton of buildings. I have some pictures which will be up on facebook soon enough. Then we headed to a chinese Buddha museum. we were greeted by a huge gate covered in dragons and phoenixes, very chinese. Chinese architecture and art styles are so completely different, it's kind of crazy, I lean towards liking the thai style better...and I'm off track whoops
There had to have been dozens of statues outside let alone inside. the outside ones were carved out of bronze and painted black, they were so...mesmerizing... When we went in there must have been every kind of Buddha statue there, mix in a few emperors and some terra cotta warriors and you got one spiffy collection. There were also stories through paintings like how Buddha was born and such.
Outside on the second level how the floor and the statues lined up it reminded me of the giant harry potter chess board except the players weren't castles and knights, oh no, these were monks fighting with a variety of weapons. (some of the statues made me think of characters from the Avatar the last airbender). When we hit the third floor, it started to rain outside and I mean that heavy rain, like the stuff I played in last week. Alayna and I was both gung-hoe for running outside and playing in it, my grandpa denied us of our fun, Thai people really do not like the rain. Since we had time to spare Alayna and I tried out the whole pray-meditaite thing in front of a prayer Buddha statue. Buddhism is certainly not for me, I couldn't even attempt to concentrate on "just breathing". I had to stop after about a minute, it really just wasn't something I could do. Alayna lasted a few minutes longer, though she also said it's not a religion she could fully appreciate
It was still raining lightly when we left the museum so we got to play in the rain. IOn the distant we could see a giant Buddha carved into the side of a mountain and painted gold. This made me think of the statue in Brasil, which i incidentally didn't think that the peticular statue was jesus, Alayna has yet to let me live it down that I didn't know. I won't let her live down the fact she didn't know Canada is in Afghanistan.
We had to head home after that due to the rain but Alayna came over for the night. Stayed up watching Romeo and Juliet. She now hates me for laughing at all the supposed to be funny parts, they are just so bad that I couldn't help it.
Sunday in the morning Alayna and I asked to walk to the temple literally two buildings away from my house. Grandma wouldn't let us go alone so Grandpa joined us. It's a very small temple but it was really small but cool none the less.
After lunch Alayna's family came and picked us both up and we headed to an Aquarium at a university in Pattiya. It wasn't flashy or anything but nice. They did have a huge tank with a window that took up a full wall. Also they had a museum section that included dried sharks. There was even two dried whale sharks, I couldn't help but keep coming back to the whale sharks, I'm in love with whale sharks.
After the museum we headed to the beach (though we didn't know we'd be going to the beach so neither of us had bathing suits). We grabbed seafood and ate as we watched people play in the waves. After dinner me and Alayna went and got our feet wet in the waves. Had a drunk guy talk to us (he was swimming in his jeans and expensive watch), I wouldn't doubt we spent at least 2 hours playing in the water up to our knees. I'm so calmed by the ocean, and this ocean was even pretty but it was still the ocean. half the time I just stood there watching the waves and the sunset... one of those times that just seemed so right... once I was dropped off at home I kerplunked strait into bed though had a really weird dream including those worms from 'Tremors'...
This week at school has been interesting, I switched around my time table to classes like Art, Japanese, English (I didn't choose it, but I have it 4 times a week), Ball room dance, music etc. My favourite classes so far this week is Japanese and Dance class. Alayna also has the exact same schedule. She and Poupay (the gay boy) have become fast friends and she also knows way more thai then me, but I'm starting to learn words. I'm trying to teach her how to draw anime people, it's kind of funny, I'm not the best teacher.
That's about all I can think of for the moment... If I can think of anyone else I'll do an extra blurb thinngy
Kyouheikutie
Alright where should I start?
hmmm lets start with last week
Sports week ended on friday with a huge parade of all 5 teams, starting in town and working it's way all the way to our school in oh lets estimate at 30 degree weather. I didn't envy them having to walk in that weather. Some of the costumes were gorgeous, from traditional thai outfits to what appeared to be slutty halloween outfits. When I say slutty, it was slutty for Canadian standards, Don't want to think what it was in thai standards. The parade was really nice and really interesting to see what all the teams had put so much effort into, also the cheerleaders got all dressed up and preformed there full routines with their cheering sections to match. some of the groups had lifts and spins and really good moves, my team (green) was the worst T_T oh well. over all it was really really cool to experience something like this with my friends.
After school on friday on of the teachers who's name is very long and very hard to spell took my out along with four other teachers to a sushi buffet at the mall. I've only been to the mall once before so it was nice to see more of it. Its about 6 stories high and really big (oh and theres a Wranglers store...why wranglers???)
The sushi bar was really good, we all so had a sort of a steam pot where you put in tons of veggies and dumplings and cool it, then serve everyone, it was different but really good, oh and did I mention the sushi BUFFET part? I ate my weight in sushi and ice cream (which they also had as part of the buffet) I could not have eaten another bite by the end.
The teachers were all really nice. My Japanese teacher was there also, she only comes up to my chin, but she's so adorable and funny, yesterday in our double class with her we watched Totaro, a Ghibli classic, The teacher is so awesome,
anyways back to dinner, after when everyone hit the bathroom I noticed one of the arcade games had Cloud Strife as the background (how great is that?) after we went and looked through Robinsons, the major department store that the mall is named after. going through that store made me learn something, so mom, know all that shopping looking for shirts that covered my shoulders. not worth it, that rule really doesn't apply. They have tons of cute tops, half of them not covering the shoulders....ffffff all that work for nothing.
This past weekend I got to know Alayna a lot better(I finally found out how to spell her name properly)
On Saturday we picked her and her mom up nice and early to go to Pattiya, a town about half an hour way.
Our first stop was a temple over looking all of Pattiya which was really stunning for looking at a ton of buildings. I have some pictures which will be up on facebook soon enough. Then we headed to a chinese Buddha museum. we were greeted by a huge gate covered in dragons and phoenixes, very chinese. Chinese architecture and art styles are so completely different, it's kind of crazy, I lean towards liking the thai style better...and I'm off track whoops
There had to have been dozens of statues outside let alone inside. the outside ones were carved out of bronze and painted black, they were so...mesmerizing... When we went in there must have been every kind of Buddha statue there, mix in a few emperors and some terra cotta warriors and you got one spiffy collection. There were also stories through paintings like how Buddha was born and such.
Outside on the second level how the floor and the statues lined up it reminded me of the giant harry potter chess board except the players weren't castles and knights, oh no, these were monks fighting with a variety of weapons. (some of the statues made me think of characters from the Avatar the last airbender). When we hit the third floor, it started to rain outside and I mean that heavy rain, like the stuff I played in last week. Alayna and I was both gung-hoe for running outside and playing in it, my grandpa denied us of our fun, Thai people really do not like the rain. Since we had time to spare Alayna and I tried out the whole pray-meditaite thing in front of a prayer Buddha statue. Buddhism is certainly not for me, I couldn't even attempt to concentrate on "just breathing". I had to stop after about a minute, it really just wasn't something I could do. Alayna lasted a few minutes longer, though she also said it's not a religion she could fully appreciate
It was still raining lightly when we left the museum so we got to play in the rain. IOn the distant we could see a giant Buddha carved into the side of a mountain and painted gold. This made me think of the statue in Brasil, which i incidentally didn't think that the peticular statue was jesus, Alayna has yet to let me live it down that I didn't know. I won't let her live down the fact she didn't know Canada is in Afghanistan.
We had to head home after that due to the rain but Alayna came over for the night. Stayed up watching Romeo and Juliet. She now hates me for laughing at all the supposed to be funny parts, they are just so bad that I couldn't help it.
Sunday in the morning Alayna and I asked to walk to the temple literally two buildings away from my house. Grandma wouldn't let us go alone so Grandpa joined us. It's a very small temple but it was really small but cool none the less.
After lunch Alayna's family came and picked us both up and we headed to an Aquarium at a university in Pattiya. It wasn't flashy or anything but nice. They did have a huge tank with a window that took up a full wall. Also they had a museum section that included dried sharks. There was even two dried whale sharks, I couldn't help but keep coming back to the whale sharks, I'm in love with whale sharks.
After the museum we headed to the beach (though we didn't know we'd be going to the beach so neither of us had bathing suits). We grabbed seafood and ate as we watched people play in the waves. After dinner me and Alayna went and got our feet wet in the waves. Had a drunk guy talk to us (he was swimming in his jeans and expensive watch), I wouldn't doubt we spent at least 2 hours playing in the water up to our knees. I'm so calmed by the ocean, and this ocean was even pretty but it was still the ocean. half the time I just stood there watching the waves and the sunset... one of those times that just seemed so right... once I was dropped off at home I kerplunked strait into bed though had a really weird dream including those worms from 'Tremors'...
This week at school has been interesting, I switched around my time table to classes like Art, Japanese, English (I didn't choose it, but I have it 4 times a week), Ball room dance, music etc. My favourite classes so far this week is Japanese and Dance class. Alayna also has the exact same schedule. She and Poupay (the gay boy) have become fast friends and she also knows way more thai then me, but I'm starting to learn words. I'm trying to teach her how to draw anime people, it's kind of funny, I'm not the best teacher.
That's about all I can think of for the moment... If I can think of anyone else I'll do an extra blurb thinngy
Kyouheikutie
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