Second host family time!

Friday, I was at school most of the day. The morning was pretty boring, minus a kid with a baby squirrel, but the afternoon was spent being thoroughly entertained by random groups of Thai friend-people, of both age groups. After school, me, Alex, and Mama Sea all went to dinner and met Pat plus her mother at Fuji, and ate yummy food, and then headed back to our seperate homes. At home, I had like half an hour to finish packing, and then all my stuff got trucked out to the sidewalk, where we met my second host parents + host cousins, Marut and Namwan, who are staying at the house. We all drove to my new house, in two cars, and then my stuff got trucked into my new room, and then I said goodbye to Mama Sea, and... yeah. I spent a few hours putting all my stuff away, and then I went to sleep.

Saturday I woke up pretty late, and was given some sandwich thing for breakfast. Soon after I was finished eating that, my Mama Bu was like "Oh, we're going to lunch~" Um, okay then, haha. So she, my host cousins, and I all went to lunch, where we had... noodles whose name I can't remember (the white ones in sauce), plus pad mee, som tum, and fried chicken. Woo. Then we went home. Later, we all went to the mall, and had dinner-- with my host dad, at sizzler. This is now the second time I've gone to sizzler on the first day with a new host family. After that, me and Mama Bu went food shopping, and got cereal and milk and juice and some other things. Later in the evening, at home, I tried to go on the internet, but for some reason... my computer doesn't seem to work with the internet here. skgbsegbrstjgsbsjkrgbr.

Sunday, I ate cereal for breakfast. Exciting. After that my host mom was like "Want to watch TV?" and I was like "Sure, why not." I have nothing at all better to do. So I spent a while flipping through channels, watching a couple of minutes of anything that seemed entertaining, and then continuing on. After a while my cousins came in and were like "Hyuu mai?" And I was like "Um, it doesn't really matter, I'll go eat." Which is not really what I said, but it's what I want to say every time somebody asks me that. But anyway, we went and ate grilled meat and sticky rice and som tum, and it was quite delicious, and then we went to the mall. We were going to watch 2012, in Thai without subtitles or anything... which we did. It was like 3 hours long, too. It was probably still the right movie to choose to watch in Thai, though, out of any there-- because the good parts of that movie had nothing to do with the acting, but more with the ridiculousness, which was pretty sweet. After the movie we kind of wandered around for like 2 minutes, and then we saw somebody who was introduced to me as "a doctor." After a bit I realized that this was somebody they somehow knew from school, as they are both studying to be pharmacists. He, apparently, was treating us to some kind of snack. As we were walking, Marut whispers in my ear "He is interested in her, but she does not like him." Hahaha. But he took us to eat donuts, which... I didn't really want. Lame timing, Doctor Man. But whatever, then we went home, and then, it was now. And I am writing this.

Not super interesting, but I am with a new family, so oh well. Tomorrow I have school again, which should be nice. I really like my new family, but spending all of multiple days with people you barely know, and speaking a fair amount of thai with them, is just kind of exhausting.

Note from when actually posting this-- after dinner: Today we were talking about fruit, and then they were like "Pineapple and tomato..." "What?" "If you eat pineapple and tomato together, it tastes like apple." "Really?" So I tried it... and it didn't really taste like apple. But oh well.

Lately, things have been pretty good. A few of my classes have turned out entertaining, and I've been going places, and I've actually been getting pretty friendly with some Thai kids-- although I'm still far from being real friends.

So, to start where I left off, I'm thinking dress making will be okay. I'm now almost done with making my first article of clothing from that class, a skirt, and although I think my teacher is starting to think I'm a little tiresome, she's still helping me and stuff.

Way back on November 14th I went to a festival at Pimai, the crazy khmer ruins. Mama Sea took me, her sister (my aunt), and Alex. It was pretty cool. We got there in the evening, and immediately after walking into the park we ran into the Mexicans + the Korat AFS exchange students. They were watching a traditional Thai dance/play performance thing, so we stopped and hung out with them for a bit. Eventually my host mom was like "Sopaaaa, bai gin khao" so me and Alex broke off from the rest to go eat dinner. I got pad mee, and it was pretty delicious. I love you, Korat, and your pad mee. Yum. After that, we went back, through the market thing there. On the way we stopped and got cotton candy, which was pretty delicious, and then... larvae? Me and Alex finally decided to eat bugs. And eat bugs we did. They were not aroi, thank you. But we did it. Success. Then we went back and met up with the other exchange students, plus Julia and Hannah, and watched a parade. After that came the main attraction, a seated, ticketed performance celebrating Pimai. Before it started we saw Dana and Elise in the audience. The performance was mostly traditional Thai dance, with a narration nicely translated into English on these little audio guide things you could pick up for free. After you've seen Thai dance a couple times, it ceases to be fascinating, because it doesn't vary much, but it was still pretty, and altogether an entertaining show. Oh, and I forgot to mention, earlier that day me and Alex were hanging out in Korat, and we decided to try the ridiculous 7/11 sticky rice burger. ( http://www.stevengoh.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/free_n_easy_hatyai_trip12.jpg ) It was surprisingly not too bad.

Also, not too far back, on the 22nd of November, Khunmae Nii, Rianna's host mother, took her, me, and Alex to Surin, for their anual elephant festival, which was sweeeeet. It started early in the morning, so the day before me and Alex both went to Rianna's house and then slept over. We had to wake up at 4:30 in the morning, and left the house at 5:30. The drive there was pretty uneventful, but the first thing we saw when we got out of the car in Surin was a whole bunch of elephants. Then we walked to where the "Elephant Roundup" was happening, passing the many, many men hawking the sugar cane sticks you can feed to their elephants. Passing them with a little difficulty, because they would actually come up to you and push the sugar cane at you, like "BUY THIS." But we managed. Me, Alex, and Rianna all sat down-- a little ways away from Rianna's Khunmae Nii and Rianna's host father, and waited a while. First a line of like 10 elephants came out, some of which had very small baby elephants trailing them. Very small elephants being like 3 feet tall or something. They had some kind of ceremony, and some official things went on, and then the elephants went back, off the field that the show was on. The show was a series of shorter, unrelated performances, the first of which was some kind of ceremony honoring one of the Hindu gods that has made its way into Thai culture, being a god who rides an elephant. At some other point probably 100 or more elephants came out onto the field, and just walked around in circles. There were a lot of elephants. Later, they had the elephants come out and do silly tricks. They did things like standing and walking on their hind legs, and... painting t-shirts. When they started selling the t-shirts to the audience, I couldn't resist. I'd wanted one since I first saw them here, and then getting to buy one I just saw the elephant paint-- too sweet. They were only like $9, anyway. After that, they had only one elephant on the field, equipped to play tug of war. First they had 60 young Thai men play with the elephant. They lost terribly. Then they were like "We'd like foreigners to come out and try." So, of course, the three of us ran like mad onto the field, and grabbed onto the rope. Good thing we went and grabbed onto the middle of the rope, because they only let 60 people play. So all 60 of us farangs went and played tug of war with this one elephant. I tried holding onto the rope and not walking for a couple seconds while we were in the midst of losing terribly, and I slid with my feet dragging. There was no stopping it. Elephants are crazy. The last real performance was a reenactment of some crazy battle that involved elephants, hundreds of years ago. It also involved horses, though, which was somehow very confusing. After the main riding animal for me for like 4 months has been the elephant, horses look silly and ridiculous. Look at their crazy flailing legs! What!? At the end all of the human performers came out and sang some songs, including the king's song and the national anthem, and then we left. Rianna's host parents took us to lunch, which was not bad, and happened to be right next to a place where you get onto elephants so you can ride them. You know what that means. Me, Rianna, and Alex climbed up this rickety ladder onto this weird platform, and then onto an elephants back, and onto the bench placed there for our enjoyment, and then proceeded to spend an enjoyable 5 or 10 minutes riding around the area on an elephant's back. It made me want an elephant so bad. I wish I could manage being a crazy animal lady. I would so buy an elephant for myself. You can buy them here for like $600, too. After finishing up lunch, we all piled back into the car, and drove off into the middle of nowhere. And after a while, we ended up on the border to Cambodia. Hellooooo, Cambodia. If we'd crossed, our visa's would have been voided for some reason, so we couldn't go visit Cambodia-- but we went up to about 6 inches from the country. And then we went to a "Cambodian market" about a mile away, but it really just seemed like a normal, not-very-good Thai market with lots of young children begging adamently for money. Depressing. After getting away from that, and driving for like 45 minutes on a road that was more pot hole than road (really really) we ended up at another khmer ruin at the top of a mountain, whose name I can't currently remember, but I actually liked it a bit more than Phimai. It was better preserved, and had a more interesting set up. Plus, we were there at sunset, and it was very pretty. After spending some time there, we all got back in the car, and slept most of the way home, except for a low-key dinner stop which included crazy cucumber som tum. Yum.

Otherwise... school. It pretty much consumes all of my time these days. But I've been getting along with some of the kids. Exciting.

In sewing all of the kids are okay, but a couple of them are particularly nice, and I could conceivably some day hang out with them outside of school, but who knows. Either way, I like them.

The kids in photography are kind of great. As none of them have told me and Rianna their names before, we've given them our own nicknames to refer to them as, but that's okay because we still love them. I mean, questionable gender child is just the best.

Questionable Gender Child is the far right.

Our nicknames tend to be kind of ridiculous... but a lot of the time, that's just because the kids who go to our school are kind of ridiculous, in the best way. Also, it is not unusual for the first thing I learn about a person to be their sexuality. For one, my school is like 50% ladymen, men who are women, and tomboys, women who are men. They're flamboyant, so you know. Honestly, I kind of love it, hahaha. But anyway, even if they're not flamboyant, if we're having muay thai and a Thai student says anything to our teacher, he'll introduce them to us by pointing to them and going "tomboy!" Hence, the creation of one of our nicknames. There was a tomboy who was helping our muay thai teacher out a few times during the first semester, and when he introduced them he pointed to them and went "Tomboy!" and the tomboy pointed to themselves and went "Boy-boy! Boy-boy!" And thus, the creation of Boy-Boy, who is a boy, and not a girl. Also, when me and Rianna first saw QGC, we thought he was a tomboy, and then we saw QGC wearing the guy's uniform, so apparently QGC is a ladyman. And so, seems to have a questionable gender. Child.

Anyway, rambling a bit. So, lots of kids in photography class have ridiculous names (Salt, Pepper, Questionable Gender Child, Number Five, 'Taemus, etc.) but they are also mostly really nice and entertaining, so I like them a lot, although hanging out with them outside of class might be a little ridiculous.

Anyway, third friend making ridiculousness: Monday afternoon, we were supposed to have muay thai, but when we went to have it... our teacher wasn't there. After searching around for a while, we were told that our teacher had somehow cut his hand really badly, and had gone to the hospital, so we wouldn't be having class. Of course, right as we're walking past the field on the way out of school we see him, and he shows us how his hand is all bandaged. Apparently he'd gotten like 7 stitches. We clearly couldn't beat him up, but he told us that we could have practice the next day and beat eachother up. So then we were kind of like "Well, we could go home..." and Dana did actually, but Alex, Rianna, and I decided that we didn't really want to go home yet, so we went to just chill out in one of the crazy huts and and ended up sort of watching some guys playing soccer on the field. Of course, the guys noticed that we were hanging out there, so when they were done playing they came over and were clearly like "Ooh, let's talk to the foreign girls." We had some pretty entertaining psuedo-conversations.

Anyway, yesterday we did actually have muay thai, but Dana left first, and then Alex, and then me and Rianna left together. As we were walking out, we noticed that a bunch of the kids from the day before were playing volleyball with a bunch of ladymen, a few of which we also knew, on the field. Then we noticed that Alex was playing with them. We were like 30 feet away, but I was very confused so I started yelling "ALEX, WHY ARE YOU PLAYING VOLLEYBALL WITH THEM? HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?" She answered that she'd been walking by, and they'd invited her, and then that we should play too. Now, neither me nor Rianna is any good at volleyball, but it would have been kind of odd to just stand there and watch, so we kind of joined. I kind of failed and looked terribly stupid. Unsurprising. But then the game kind of split into two, and half of them kept playing, while the other half kind of just chilled out, and we talked to them. In ridiculous Thaiglish. They seem to think my Thai is pretty good though. Score one for Sopa. Anyway, a bunch of the kids playing soccer ended up inviting us to come to their soccer game at another school the next day, so we said we could come at like 11, after massage class ended.

Sooooo, today, Rianna, Alex, Dana and I ended up getting to the other school at 12, and finally found the field! to see them walk off of it. Ouch, missed it by minutes. They made fun of us for being slow. But that's okay, because then we kind of hung out with them while they ate, and then caught a ride back to school in a teacher's car with one of the kids, who Rianna also knows from art class. So it was amusing.

Anyway, those are our most recent friends, hahaha. After getting back to school, the four of us kind of just bummed around the library, and bummed around the klang plaza 5th floor food court, and then bummed around my house, and then everyone left and... yes.


Also: BIG THING. I am switching host families on Friday! Yes, that is the day after tomorrow!! I have to pack up SO MUCH STUFF. But yeah. On Friday I will be moving to the house of Papa Utai, Alex's old host family, and I do not know his wife's name. Oh well, I will learn soon. So, faretheewell, Mama Sea, I will miss living with you a lot! But I will still see you all the time, anyway, because Rianna is moving to this house which is very conveniently placed in the middle of everything. Still... sad.

Also, carving is getting kind of dreadful. I spend hours and hours on something that I just throw onto my desk and leave there until it dries and crinkles up and kind of dies. Since Rianna's advisor, who is in charge of us, told us we could change our schedules if we want, I might ask her about that.

Goings on.

So, things have happened since November second! School has started! And things!

First of all, we went to school again for the first time in more than a month on Monday, November 3rd. We didn't have any classes yet at that point, but we did meet with the woman who is essentially in charge of us, and we figured out this semester's schedules. I only have one class alone, but the only class we have all together is Thai massage, which was speically set up for us, so that doesn't count. Plus, most of my classes only have one other farang in them, and I think that's actually a good set up. I think sometimes we almost look friendlier when we're with one other English-speaker, because Thai kids can see that we're not just quiet, sullen, scaryyyyy foreigners. I feel like I've already made a lot more headway into at least being friendly and comfortable with the Thai students, even if it will still be a long time until I make any real friends. (I mean, for one, Thai is friggin difficult. I have lived here for 3 months and still speak about the same as an infant. Possibly worse.)

Anyway, after school that Monday was really fun. That night was when most of the real loi krathong celebrations occurred. Me and Rianna went together to the biggest festival in Korat, at bungtaloowa (the same place as the beauty pageant), which was pretttty fun. There were enormous, gorgeous krathong rafts floating in the water, and some stalls selling some pretty cool clothing and stuff. I actually spent like 1000 baht, $30, there, which is a LOT in Thailand. I mean, t-shirts are usually 100 baht, $3 , and generally the most I will pay for a t-shirt, one I really, really like, is like 200 baht, $6. So yeah, there was some cool stuff. Also, while we were waiting to be picked up we realized we were kind of hungry, so we browsed around the food area near the entrance, and picked up some mini eggs. I'm pretty sure they were quail eggs, but neither of us had ever had quail eggs before anyway, so we were a little suspicious-- but they were AROI DII! AKA yummy! We also found this bottled peach tea that was delicious. Anyway, after going to the bungtaloowa festival, Rianna's mom picked us up and took us both back to my house-- where there was another festival going on right in front of my house. There we actually took part in the loi krathong traditions, and floated our rafty things in the canal in front of my house. It was pretty cool. After that we walked around the market area with our host mothers, and then we both went home.

Since then not much has been going on-- except, of course, going to classes. As of today I've finally been to all of my classes, so I guess I can kind of just describe them all a bit.

• Thai language: The same as always, really.
• handicrafts: This would be pretty nice if it were in an air conditioned room, I think. Kind of relaxing... but it's not. So it's kind of unpleasant.
• photography: So far the teacher's just been talking about technique, etc., most of which I couldn't understand anyway. But we'll be taking some pictures at some point, I think, so we'll see.
• "carving" aka I have no idea: Well, we made something crazy out of banana leaves last time. This is not actually carving, I have no idea what it is though.
• Thai massage: I think this should be good. We learned how to do like 20 minutes of foot massage today, and of course, we practiced on eachother. Pleasant.
• dress making: This will either be fantastic, or miserable. I'm hoping fantastic, at least. I'm just a little worried, because everyone else in the class has clearly taken sewing classes before or something. Everyone else can already draft patterns-- something I've never learned. This doesn't bode well for their actual sewing skills. They will probably kick my sewing skills' ass. But I'm hoping, even if that's the case, that it won't matter.
• fruit carving: Oops, I forgot, I actually haven't had this one yet. Oh well, I'll talk about it once I've had it. The teacher, however, is the same as the one for handicrafts and "carving," so I think I have some idea of what it will be like.

Yeah, so, that's about all that's going on. Second dress making class tomorrow, so I'm a bit nervous ( :c ), but hopefully I'll be able to figure things out or whatever. I'm supposed to be bringing in a design for a blouse and a skirt I want to make, but I can't find any pictures of things like what I want to make, and I am awful at fashion drawings, so I'll probably have to embarrass myself with some awful art, but whatever. This isn't a fashion illustration class! Bah!

I guess I'm not very good at this whole blog thing.

Considering it's been more than a month since the last time I wrote.

So much has happened since then.

I'll list some of the more outstanding events of October (plus my birthday, so the very end of September, and then today, the first day of November.)

1. My birthday party (September 28): happened on my birthday, was kind of silly. Something interesting about kid's parties in Thailand: if they're thrown by their parents, they're essentially thrown for their parents. From what I've seen, parties thrown for children tend to have like 2 of the kid's friends, and then many of their parents friends, and dinner is always where the parents choose, eating what the parents choose. (Example: the one dish I've told my host mom I don't like at all is genkiowan [NO idea how to spell that, so whatever], and one of like 2 dishes she ordered for my party was genkiowan.) Even so, my party was fun and I did enjoy it and I still very much appreciate my host mom for throwing it for me. Present-wise... it was an interesting birthday. I got essentially nothing useful, but some very odd things, so at least it was interesting.
   
2. Me and Rianna's hilarious Rotary get together experience (October 3-4): Mama Sea: "Mama Sea mao!!" End of story.
   
3. Korat's BBQ Festival (October 5): Me and Mario watched as Dana and Mauricio dressed up as coyboys and got to stand on stage for 45 minutes. Free so-so food.
   
4. RYLA (October 11-15): A long, long 5 days. Exhausted the entire time. Wayyyy too many squats involved. BUT I GOT TO MEET THE DIRECTOR OF ONG-BAK. SCORE ONE FOR SOPA. Prachya Pinkaew was a nice guy, too.
   
5. Staying at Pat's house for a week while my host mom was in Japan (October 16-22): Not a big deal, just a little inconvenient.
6. GOLF MIKE CONCERT (October 20): FRIGGIN GOLF MIKE CONCERT. AMAZING. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA OHHHH GOLF. So, remember when I danced for Golf Mike tickets all those weeks ago? Yeah, well, I actually got those. I actually got them. And me and Alex went to the Golf Mike concert. It was awesome. The concert was properly ridiculous, and me and Alex both made eye contact a bunch of times with both members, which we properly giggled about. And then we waited for forever after the concert because everybody else was, and oh my god, it turned out there was an AUTOGRAPH SESSION OH MY GOD SCORE. The line for the autographs was weird and kind of C shaped, in that you had to pass in front of the table Golf and Mike were sitting at before you went around and got your autographs. And me and Alex were, of course, being proper fangirls and going "oh my god oh my god I'm so excited oh my god" etc. etc. etc. while we were standing in the far part of the C. And clearly we were being pretty obvious, because, if I remember correctly, Mike looked over at us and chuckled. Then we went around the C and got our stuff signed and Mike was like "How was the show?" and Alex was like "It was amazing!!" and I was like "It was fantastic!" and Golf laughed and quietly repeated Alex saying "Amazing!" Then we shook their hands and some random staff their each took our pictures shaking Golf's hand. Later, we realized Golf and Mike went/go to international school and are clearly fluent in English. Then slightly later we were like "Wait, Golf is 19 and Mike is 17. Why are we not all besties and chilling out together right now? They're popstars, we're cool foreigners, we should already all be best friends!" Unfortunately it was not to be. (At that time, at least.)
   
7. Pattaya (!) (October 23-24): Not quite what was promised, but also not bad. The whole reason we were going to Pattaya, initially, was because we were told we would ride elephants there. This did not happen. However, we did some other cool stuff. The night before me an Rianna slept over at Alex's house, and then on the first day we picked up Dana, Mauricio, and Elise and drove 5 hours in one of those crazy rented vans rotary always has. The ones that have crazy air conditioning so that it gets FREEZING COLD inside and you have to remember to bring sweatshirts and things with you. When we first got to Pattaya we stopped at this ridiculous pink and blue place. I don't even know what it was, but it was ridiculous. And cotton candy pink and blue. And some of the buildings had enormous photos of fruit printed on the walls inside. It made no sense. Then we went to the resort we were staying at and got to go pet tigers and leopards (I wish owning a leopard as a pet would work out, because I want one really badly, it was gorgeous :C), and sort of fed some of the FISH THAT I HATE, and watched a "Thai cultural show," and neglected to watch the elephant show (apparently a big mistake.) Then in the evening there was a "fancy party" or something, which was another rotary party with lots of karaoke etc. By this time we'd met up with the other few exchange students that were there from other cities. The second day we all got up crazy early, and ate breakfast, and then got on a crazy almost party bus, and drove off. First we went to a sea turtle conservation center, which had lots of seaturtles, and it was pretty cool. Then we went off to a dock somewhere, where we all took a ferry to a small nearby island. This island had a beach. We all went swimming and snorkeling and it was amazing. The water was warm! This is a novelty I have never before experienced! Anyway, after we all had a nice time looking at almost nothing on the sea floor through our snorkeling masks, and were all sufficiently sunburned, we got all our stuff, took the ferry back to the dock, then took the bus back to the resort, and got back in our freezing van for the ride home. An interesting ride, I would say. After a bit we stopped at 7/11 and all got lots of junk food and tea, after which silliness ensued. Which included seeing if (/how long) an oreo can stick on someone's face. The answer: a long, long time. Actually. Probably like half an hour at least, even if the person's moving around a bit.
8. Mexican food (October 29): YUM. Mario and Mauricio finally decided it was time to cook. So we all bought ingredients and things, and then went to Mario's host family's restaurant. And then we all helped make tacos. This was a good, good, good idea. Yum.
9. Halloween (Halloween): Every year the Khunying Mo Korat rotary club has a Halloween party. And I'm pretty sure every year the inbounds are set to decorate the party. Well, we did that. And we did a pretty damn good job of it, especially considering we're in THAILAND, a country where they don't celebrate Halloween. So the only premade Halloween decorations we could find were a string of pumpkin lights and a lame flag thing. But it was still good. I'm pretty proud of us. Anyway, this year for Halloween I was... my fallback costume, because I didn't really have time to care this year. So, a fairy princess. Still, an awesome fallback costume. ;] Dana was a cat, Rianna was a cowgirl, Alex was a Geisha, and Mauricio was a Samurai. A samurai without a sword. The food was actually not too bad, and Peter was there being "a hobo"/definitely Lenny Kravitz. Plus: we got cake. Ohhh, did we get cake. An average sized sheet cake with a picture of mickey mouse dressed as a tourist on it. Half of the exchange students there were around one table, so when they got out the cake they put it there. Then, as we were expecting a knife and lots and lots of plates, they brought out one plate... and lots and lots of spoons. We were like "Wait, really? You really just want us to just eat this?" And they were like "Yeah!" So... we did. That was a GOOD CAKE. Really. Thailand's got a thing for very light, fluffy cakes, but this one was actually dense and delicious, and that made it AMAZING. We can pretend that the whole cake was divided between 13 or so people. (Which might have been sort of reasonable.) But actually, there were only about 8 people who really ate more than a few bites of that cake. That means that the 8 of us all ate way too much cake. I don't regret it. Yum.
10. Loi Krathong Beauty Pageant (November 1-- today): Me, Dana, and Alex all slept over at Rianna's house after the Halloween party, and then ate brunch, and then went home. Rianna, however, went to meet her mom when we went home, because she was signed up for a beauty pageant that was supposed to be that afternoon and then tomorrow afternoon. Once I got home I was ready to just chill out all afternoon, because I was pretty tired, but at like 3:15 my host mom came in and was like "Oh, Sopa, do you want to go to the park to go jogging?" And I was like "Oh... jogging... alright..." and she was like "Walking, walking!" And I was like "Okay, what time?" "Four." There went the rest of my afternoon. But after we got in the car, before my host mom started it up, she was like "Oh, Sopa, where do you want to go for Loi Krathong? Baa Yuun's house, or near us?" and I was like "Oh... I want to see Busaba." (Rianna.) And my host mom was like "Oh, okay, I'll call KhunMae Nii!" (Rianna's mom.) So she called, and realized that the pageant was today too, at the park we were going to, so we went. Me and Rianna chilled out for 4 hours, punctuated with her getting up on stage a few times. She made it to the top 50, but just missed the last round of the night, the top 20. After that we went to dinner together with our host moms, and got really good lemon tea and kanom pan, along with food, and then sat there for a really long time, and then went home, and now I'm writing this. Woo.

This is all not counting the many minor outings the exchange students have had, including zoo trips and other fun Korat things. And we had a lot, considering we spent almost every single day together.

Tomorrow is... OUR FIRST DAY OF SECOND SEMESTER. That means SCHOOL STARTS AGAIN. This is actually quite exciting. We all know at this point that we need to split up and meet Thai people and just stop spending all of every single day together. As much as I love all the other exchange students, I've spent a little too much time with them. We're supposed to all actually be in seperate classes this semester, so I'm excited.

Plus: more Loi Krathong festival goings on tomorrow.

PS: Sorry this is so sketchily written. I'm tired and braindead right now. (I guess it's not really the best time to be writing this, then, but it's the time I had.) So, yeah, oh well!