Statues of a revered monk in Thailand, and the small statue in the middle is covered in little golf leaf papers, because if you give wealth (the gold) to another, you will received good fortune in turn.

 Ashamed floating market. We stopped here on our way back to Bangkok.

 Food at the Ashamed market, I believe it is shrimp.

 This is the view from the front of our hotel in Pran Buri.

 Well more food, but these are oysters covered with a sweet red paste, a bitter tasting leaf, fried onion and then drizzled with a spicy sauce. They are delicious and we ate this three days in a row this past weekend.

 I found some traditional Thai clothing to try on!!

 Phra Nakhon Khiri, the palace at the top of the mountain.

The monkey stealing our drinks, it was quite a hot day so I don't blame them for wanting something cool to drink!

Life Outside of Korat

Almost twenty days are up of my exchange, I can’t believe it is going by so fast! This week has brought a whole new set of challenges, I now have enough vocabulary that I can say words, but I still cannot from sentences, so the problem with only stating words is that people do really understand that you are actually trying to ask them a question.  It is great fun seeing them laugh hysterically at my failed attempts to roll my r’s but I will get there, soon hopefully.

Well enough with the language, and on to my first trip around Thailand, I had the pleasure this past weekend to travel with my host cousin and her friends down to Pran Buri and Hua Hin, on the coast about 3 hours away from Bangkok.  We stayed on night at each place, and in Pran Buri, my wake-up call my “come on lets go for a swim”, in the lovely warm water and sandy beach.  Also on the way down to Pran Buri we stopped at Phra Nakhon Khiri, the first palace and temple to have been built on the top of a mountain.  The design was absolutely beautiful, a mix between Thai and Chinese architecture with 19^th century European pieces inside.  Oh and there were wild monkeys everywhere on that mountain and they “attacked” (came up to one of the people I was travelling with, but who is very scared of monkeys) causing her to drop her water bottle and the monkey proceeded to open it and drink the remaining water, it was quite a sight.  Seeing as we were on our way to the sea, seafood was a main attribute to the trip and we had it every day we were there, even the night we went to a night market and saw an open air production of traditional Thai life, we left to market without going to the food stalls to search out a better seafood restaurant on the beach!  So all in all a very fun trip and they were able to help me learn a lot more Thai, because they would say everything in Thai and English.

Finally, this week I have also met another exchange student, surprisingly from Burlington, Ontario and she is going to the same school as I am, and the excitement increases as tomorrow is our orientation and this will be the first time bringing the exchange students together.  Also, Thursday will be my first Suranaree Rotary Club meeting, so lots of first’s this week, but hopefully that continues! 

My first week

This week saw me through my first school week.   In two words it was very different, but a great learning experience.  Here, they start school and 8:20 and go to 4:20 so it is a very long day, and seeing as most classes are taught by Thai teachers, I do not always understand what is happening.  The great part, however, is that the class I am in all know a bit of English and love teaching my Thai words so there help in learning the language which is awesome and they are really nice so I have no complaints there!  The one thing about this school is that you are required to wear a uniform, which consists of thick fabrics that do no breathe and massive black shoes that will be really hot in the hot season, but it makes getting ready for school really easy.  So a little bit about my school, it is an all-girls school and they have grades 7-12 and grades 7-9 have to have short hair and wear neck ties around their neck, whereas 10-12 can have long hair but it has to be up in a ponytail with a white ribbon, and we have nicer shirts, but I can’t actually lift my arms over my head in it, so only one minor setback.   Well one more thing about school is that everyone loves to get me to introduce and talk about myself not only in front of my class but in front of any number of students even if they do not actually tell me they want me to talk and just push me to the front with no explanation, but I guess I should be welcoming every challenge as a way to improve my Thai skills and public speaking!

Enough about school, getting home from school is always fun.  They have these “buses” here which are pretty much trucks with two benches in the back and a cover over them, that are usually full so I get to hold on at the back and watch as the town goes by as hope no one hits us from behind, but don’t worry it is perfectly legal!

This week has been full of new experiences, and I can`t wait to see what the next one brings! 

 Well here it is, the uniform!!!

 We have these little guys inside and outside of the house they are very entertaining when they try to run away, because they hide and then you can scare them again.

 With my class from school we visited a boarding school/orphanage for kids with disabilities and spent a few hours with them and got to serve them ice cream from a huge container it was a lot of fun!

This photo actually proves it is rainy season here, because so far this is the first major rainstorm, of the three or so that I have seen that lasted more than 20 minutes and was actually a down pour!!

My food is the close, pale one with a little bit of spice and the back, red one was my classmate's with quite a bit of spice and then they add more, so I am working my way up to that!

 Well here it is the first temple, this one however was only made a few years ago by a very rich superstar, but apparently it is one of the biggest well know ones around Korat and it has a free food market, which I thought was great!

So I know I will have to trust these wires for a year, but this just doesn't look safe, and this is a relatively  uncluttered junction.

The Start :)

Thailand, I finally made it after 19 hours of flying time not including layovers, but it was most definitely worth it! My host mom, sister and cousin met me at the airport with a welcome sign and a mango, rice dish (very delicious) and we spent that evening at their condo, in Bangkok.  When we drove up to Korat, the following day I had my first taste of Thai cuisine, it even had huge pieces of mushrooms in it, but I ate them and loved it!! We also stopped off at a huge temple that a famous superstar had built not too long ago, they had a huge golden statue and a smaller one, on which you can stick gold leaf paper to it and it is supposed to bring you luck and riches, because if you give riches (the gold paper) to someone else them you are supposed to receive good fortune in return. At least that is how it was explained to me. Once we finally arrived in Korat, I met my host father and grandma, and my host dad wanted to keep feeding me fruit, which was delicious but we had just had lunch.  There is no shortage of food to be eaten here.

Well to kind of official start my exchange we visited my new school today and learnt was I am supposed to do next Tuesday, my first day, it is a huge school but seems very well organized.  Every evening the is an open air market called Save One and I was introduced to it my first day, well, all I can say is that I am going to be buying everything there( well a lot of things as it is the cheapest place to find anything you would like.  They have food, clothes, movie, puppies, turtles, jewellery, shoes etcetera, etcetera.  So all in all this has been a pretty fantastic first full day in Thailand.

Well I got my uniform for my school today, with huge black shoes, white, plain, flat running shoes that I have to wear for gym; however, the most interesting part is probably the pants that I have to wear for gym!  I also say my first Thai movie, it was quite bizarre, a lot of cutting right in the middle of scenes, but it was still good.  Also an interesting fact about Thailand their Mother’s Day is whenever the Queen’s birthday is and it happened to be this Sunday, so in a form of respect they give flower wreaths to all the mothers and wish them health in the coming year.  So every Mother in the house yesterday was honoured with these flowers and good wishes from everyone younger then them, it is actually a very nice gesture.

Well I know this was a long post, but I had no access to the internet since I arrived, so here is the start of my year in blog format!!