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.