It's been a while.

Two months later, and I'm really very happy with my second host family. I finally speak almost completely in Thai to them, and only fall back on English for the occasional word that I don't know, or in case of a minor emergency. Both of my host parents are also very fun, nice people, and one of the few annoyances that I had with living here-- that I was not allowed to walk from the street, through my neighborhood, to my house-- has just, in the past few days, been solved. (I explained to my host mom that "maa rak Sopa!" [dogs love Sopa!], and that "chan mai gowa maa!" [I'm not afraid of dogs!], and so she decided it was okay.) Unfortunately, my host cousins, who were both very nice, left a couple of weeks ago, but that's not too bad. Just a little sad. Otherwise, unsurprisingly, I've really settled in.

At school, things haven't changed much. I have a few more friends, and have changed a couple of classes, and have actually learned some people's Thai names (people never introduce themselves to us properly!), but otherwise, things have been normal, every-day, Thai vocational college. Or, my school's proper name, Wittayalai Achiwa Suk Sa Nakhon Ratchasima.

Sometime in December I went with some of my rotary club to Chiang Mai, and some other places in the north, for 5 days. That was pretty exciting. We went to quite a few temples, and also some other interesting places. For a while we went up to Chiang Rai, way up north, which I really liked. We stayed at a homestay in a small village, very high in the mountains, and drank some very nice tea-- something Chiang Rai is known for. Also in Chiang Rai was my favorite temple so far, whose name I can't remember, but it was all bright white and very cool. It isn't finished being built yet, and isn't supposed to be until around 2080, but I think it's already pretty magnificent. We also stopped at a temple that is supposed to have the most beautiful buddha statue in the world. It did not seem particularly amazing to me, but it was located in Phitsanulok, where my American Thai tutor was from.

The most exciting recent event was most definitely my school's Wan Nak Kila, or something. AKA Sports Day. Or, in reality, sports 2 days. It was last Thursday and Friday. Now let me tell you, a field day at a vocational college in Thailand is like none you have ever seen before.

Most of the school (there seemed to be a portion that wasn't participating) was divided into 6 teams, each one a different color, and I'm pretty sure the teams were decided by major. (Because entire classes we recognized were together.) There were red, yellow, green, blue, pink, and orange teams. Technically, I was part of team yellow, but since I didn't actually participate in anything, it didn't really matter. Thursday morning, around 8:20, I walked onto campus, and after walking in a little, I glanced back at the side of the field, and noticed the entire side was covered with 6 bleachers, already full of people, each bleacher devoted to a team. The day started with a huge parade, which covered the entire field, once everybody in the parade had gone and lined up there. Big groups of people were wearing flamboyant costumes. After the parade, I understood why, when all of the groups simply had a huge cheer session, involving lots of cheerleaders, large portions of which were men, doing silly dances in said costumes. The cheerleading, on its own, starting at about 9 in the morning, went on until about 11:30. Finally, then, some actual sports were played. Girls handball, I think. Even then, though, the dancers continued to dance, while all the kids in the bleachers continued to do their hand movements and some other seriously fancy manouvers. (Pink was doing some crazy stuff.) After that point, most of the day had intermitent sporting-activity, while the cheerleaders continued to cheer. They must have been exhausted by the end of the day, because it ended at 6.

Friday, I walked in around the same time, to find the same thing as the first day, plus some very loud Thai music playing. Mauricio and Rianna came after a little bit, and then some girl walking by told us we should go sit in the teacher's tent, which was pretty nice, because it was in the shade and had a good view. While the teams had plenty of time to show off their dances in the day's new flamboyant costumes, on Friday they actually started with sports things at a reasonable time. Although, the first thing that was done was a walking race. We were like "Really? Really? A walking race??" But soon after that some real races were done, and all of the people in the walking race ended up doing other things too. I had a couple different Thai friends doing the 50 meter dash, and one or two other races. Eventually Dana showed up, and then Alex, and by then they were on to other things. After lunch, Erin came and joined us too, just in time to see some ridiculous... joking races, I guess? One of which seemed to involve eating your way through some disgusting things, and another in which two people had to carry the rest of their team across. After that they went on to soccer, and by the late afternoon the sports were finished, and Erin had to leave. After that, each team had a special dancing/cheering show, some of which were incredibly boring, and some of which were pretty cool. Entertainingly, even though the red team had been one of the lamest teams, cheering-wise, all of both days, their last performance was the best.

After the performances, music came on, and a dance party started, there on the field. Thai kids dancing, by the way, are hilarious. For this dance we all decided to just throw ourselves into it. We danced our way all the way around the field. The Thai kids were kind of baffled, like "Wait, the foreigners are actually into it, and they want to dance? WITH US? Sweet!" And that was, of course, pretty fun.

Today, Saturday, almost all of the exchange students in Korat got together, including the new girl from South Africa (!), to kind of celebrate Rianna's birthday (which is tomorrow). It was not particularly eventful, although we went and got ice cream cake, and got to go eat on the second floor of Swensen's!!! Score!!

Red, Yellow, Blue, Green, Pink, Orange, with some of their dancers out.

Students vs. Teachers soccer

The walking race, looking about as stupid as it really was, hahaha.


ONE of the yellow team's, my team's, set of dancers.


An actual race. I know the guy in flourescant green.


Amazingly enough, the dancers had a race, too. It was wonderful.


The green team's final performance.

The pink team's final performance, complete with ENORMOUS BUTTERFLY WINGS.


But red still took the cake. They finished with REAL FIREWORKS. Like, the kind that you see in fancy fireworks shows.


Me, at the beginning of the party, with a man who I love but who has never told me his name.
Seriously though, this guy is great.