Adventure!

The rest of yesterday (a quick summary) we spent going to a school and then going back home. I went to the market and bought some sort of weird spikey fruit and had a meal then pretty much went to bed.

Today (Friday) was really awesome as we finally got to work on our projects. But before even that I woke up and realized that I had locked Rachel out of the room for the entire night. I'd gone to bed early because I was not feeling well and needed to sleep. I am feeling 100% once again she didn't seem to mind too much so it wasn't a big deal but I felt pretty bad.

My group is hoping to tackle the issue of child poverty / child homelessness by looking into a lack of sex education and lack of access to contraceptives. We made an appointment to meet with an orphanage to talk to the director about why kids are being sent there. The director wanted my whole group to come so we can talk and play with the kids.

Outside of school was even better as we had been making plans with Mint, Mu, and Nut for three days to hang out. First of all let me say that Thai people are just flipping crazy. Honestly. They get around everywhere via motorbike and do anything but drive defensively. So when they came to our hotel I was more than psyched to hope on the back of a motorbike (Julie, Kelsey, and I) to go to our destination.

Our first stop was a school for the deaf because Julie is a sign language major. It was really really interesting watching her communicate with the Thai students who had very similar signs. We then were introduced and each given a name sign. Julie gave me the sign for "big heart" which was so nice and so flattering! The children (ages 4-11?) were so excited to see Julie and to be able to sign with an American. Nut commented that she "wants to learn how to sign now because it's a very beautiful language." I had to agree with her as it was just so tremendously cool that despite being from very different places, they were able to communicate just fine.

After we went to one of the biggest mall's I have ever seen. 7 stories. I'm talking huge. The weird thing was, however, that most of it was food stalls. Thai people love their food and yesterday I learned a Thai idiom that means "we must eat soon so we can keep having fun" though literally translates to "The army must march on, but first we must eat!"

At the mall, we went to a place to do karaoke. I felt bad because I feel like a lot of our fellow American students wanted to come but Nut, Mu, and Min specifically asked us not to invite other people because they are very shy. I got pinned with having to tell everyone that, no, sorry you can't come...I tried my best to be polite but I still felt bad.

Anyways karaoke was a blast. You get to the venue and you pick which type of booth you want to be in. We choose hip-hop. The room was supposedly decorated with a hip-hop theme. I'm not quite sure how to describe it. There was a chain-link fence on one wall and on the others there were these big toxic waste barrels and a picture of the Gorrilaz.

We looked through books and then picked out songs to sing. It was absolutely hilarious. We sang I Will Survive, Oops....I did it again, Bye Bye Bye, Barbie Girl, Crazy in Love, they sung a mixture of Thai and American songs and introduced us to their favorite Thai rapper called Titanium who randomly broke into English with phrases like "Pow-Alcohol" and "It's time to slow slow slow"

Thai rap is entertaining and the music video was hilarious and I guess Titanium is very popular. It has to be such a hard language to rap in....I can't really imagine doing it.

After Karaoke, we got back on the motorbikes and Nut and I got lost for about 20 minutes so we drove around trying to find where we are going. I used to think biking in Boston and weaving in and out of cars was dangerous... That's got nothing on Thai motorbiking.

Nut commented "my mom likes me to go slow but I like to go FAST!" In the end we found out destination. It was this place where one of their friends worked and we got a delicious meal. I think I got chicken with basil. Whatever it was, it was delicious.

Then they drove us back home on our motorbikes and Kelsey, Julie, and I hung out for the remainder of the night. Good times.

I finally finished the book I was reading. "The Riddle" by Alison Croggon. It's book #2 in the Pellinor series and really well written for anyone who likes good language and fantasy writing. I've enjoyed the series thus far because of it's expansive nature and the woman writing it has obviously spent time outside doing things like hiking and riding horses and being in a country where she doesn't know the language. I guess you could say I appreciate her getting the details right. If you want the first book, its called "The Naming." I will say that the books, while they are not written slowly, they are not written at a fast-pace either. Despite that, I find myself hooked on them.

Ok well time for me to get dressed for the day.
Ciao.