Week Wrapup

It’s been a long time since my last blog update. I guess I just haven’t had that many exciting things to share.

This week was pretty much your average week. Class, Internship, go home, do nothing. Yep…same old same old. It’s kinda crazy to think that parts of my time in Thailand have become that…same old thing. On Tuesday it is officially the ½ way point of my trip. It’s just so insane. I’ll be home in less than 2 months. Wow.

I can’t remember if I told you all this, but I have discovered the English channels on the TV. My family now has let me watch TV. So every now and again I catch an episode of monk on TV. It’s actually quite exciting. I have not been able to watch the Olympics… L sadly the TV doesn’t get that channel. It has Fox News which is good, but it’s basically all just political debates so it’s not exactly the news headlines. To get the news headlines I watch Aljezera TV. Yes…the Taliban network. Haha. But it gives pretty decent world news. Who would have thought?

This week we had art class again. It was much better than my experience with the watercolors. But not that much better. We did ceramics. It was a lot of fun. We toured a pottery village and then were able to make our own bowls with animals on them. After sticking my thumb through the bottom of the bowl 2 times, an art student decided I needed some special attention. So he called over another art student who helped me make a wonderful looking elephant bowl. Then later in the week we painted 2 plates and carved a mug. The painting doesn’t look all that great, but the mug looks good. I had an art student draw a fish on it and then I carved it. I’m excited to get them back. Hopefully nothing bad happens in the firing.

This week we also finished up our Thai language class!! What a wonderful feeling. My brain has been done learning Thai since week 2 of class, but now it’s all done. Tomorrow we have our final exam. We have to do a skit with a group…in Thai. We had to write it and then perform it. So hopefully that goes well. And then I have a final speech. I still need some help with that and it’s 12 hours away. So hopefully my host mother will be able to help me soon.

This is our last week of internship. We have only 3 days this week because tomorrow…Monday….is a national Buddhist holiday. It’s Maka Buja Day. It celebrates the spontaneous gathering of 1500 monks in front of the Buddha and the Buddha gave the rules of conduct for them. So no school for everyone else in the country. . We just have classes. Sunday…today is actually the holiday but tomorrow is the bank holiday.

This past Saturday we had one of our Agape Saturdays! They are always fun. We just went to Agape in the morning and hung out with the kids until lunch. We play jump rope and did balloons and face painting and Aj Mike came and played Santa and did magic tricks. Then after all that we had ice cream! So yummy!! J I’ll post pictures on dropshots! Dropshots is all full on videos so I’m gonna try to upload a select few to my blog! I can’t write the kids names online so that’s why the Agape kids won’t have names. But they are super cute kids!!

Today we had Thai cooking class. It was so much fun. We learned how to make green curry and pad thai and for dessert we made deep fried bananas. It was so delicious! When I get home I am cooking it all! We had the class at the university cooking school so every group of three had their own kitchen area to make it. So I actually got to do the work and learn how to make it.

I have 2 more weeks living with my Thai family. Which in some ways is a really nice thing. Recently it’s been kinda rough. I think my host family has just had too many prior host students and they’ve just given up getting to know people. So they don’t really know me and they are not really making an effort. It was like that all along but now I feel like they are just waiting for me to leave.

I’ll go from feeling really discouraged and then they will do something out of the blue…like invite me to watch Avatar with them. It’s so nice to be invited to do something like that with the family. It’s such a rare occurrence that it makes me feel so special.

I think that’s about it. I wrote a paper on the culture of my family which is pretty interesting if I do say so myself. So if you’re interested in reading it let me know. That’s all for now. Now it’s time for dinner…rice and ___.