The Month of October

     I know it's been a long, long time since I posted, and for that I am sorry. But I have extremely busy, making any free time I have had a time to be lazy and recuperate. So for a little intro into what I've done over the past month: (the past month has been a school vacation, so I didn't just skip) I went to Phuket (probably the second most tourist spot in Thailand after Bangkok), I went to a Rotary event called RYLA, I went to a city up north and spent time with some exchange students raising money for the flood relieve, and finally I've been trying to get over the fact that Halloween in Thailand is almost nonexistent.

     So, first off I went to Phuket. It is, as I said before, probably the second most tourist spot. It is right next to the coast, and has some beautiful places to see. Now saying all of that, I am sorry to have to say that I have no personal pictures. My camera was unusable at the time, but I did find pictures that will help me describe what I did there. The first day we (we being my Rotary club and I) traveled to lots of temples, but these were Chinese temples instead of Buddhist.



Most of the temples look somewhat like this, with different stations that we prayed at.

 That first day we also got lucky enough to see fire walkers. They seemed to be extremely crazy, but it was actually quite interesting.


The fire walkers actually seem to run across a bed of burning coals, but it was still intense.

 The only bad thing about the first day was that it rained almost the whole time, with the exception of when we finally arrived at the fire walkers. The next activity was kind of a combination of the first and the second day. It started around 10 at night and ended around 1 or 2 in the morning.  It was a parade, but like no parade I have ever seen before. The whole parade involved people dressed in weird costumes walking down the street while the onlookers got to through any numerous amount of firecrackers at them that they wanted. And I got to participate in it!


This is the best picture I could get. It shows the guys in weird costumes, and the fire behind them is hundreds of firecrackers exploding all at once. I know: CRAZY!

    The next day we got to take a small tour of Phuket, and we even got to go to the beach! Then we spent the rest of the day recuperating. The next day we headed home, and when I got there I prepared for my next trip, which was literally two days after I got back.
    The next trip was the Rotary event that some of you might have heard of before: RYLA. If you haven't heard of it before RYLA stands for Rotary Youth Leadership Awards, and it is basically a leadership building event that Youth Exchange Students usually get invited to. This RYLA in Thailand was based out of a zoo, yes a zoo, and they used huge military trucks to transport the some 300 kids around. We slept in cabins at the zoo, and only really spent one of our four days at the zoo. The other days we traveled to a city shrine, an entertainment park that had lots of cool stuff, to the top of a small mountain to plant trees, and a placed dubbed "Little Italy". To be honest I didn't learn much about leadership, seeing as most of the information and activities were done in Thai, but I did gain some new friends that are future outbound exchange students.



I really like this picture. It was the fasted way to get up the small mountain and plant our trees.



"Little Italy", and yes it was raining half that day too.



This was one of the many activities we were allowed to do at the entertainment park: 4-wheeling. We only had enough time to do one activity and I got lucky enough to have Rotary say it was ok for me to drive one (and it was muddy and wet with rain!).




These were the huge military vehicles that took us anywhere outside of the zoo.




This is one of the "cabins" we stayed in. They were more of apartment buildings with smaller rooms that we stayed in.




These were some of the friends that I met at RYLA. They are both future outbound Exchange Students, and they told me they wanted to go somewhere in North America. Alright!



This was the top of the mountain were we got to plant trees.

This is one of the chang, or elephant, that we got to see at the zoo (even though I have elephants that walk down the street in my city).

This was the final day, and we gathered for a big group picture. Luckily I was able to represent America with it flag out front.

        The next weekend I went to a near by city and got to hang out with some of my exchange students. Hanging out with exchange students involves a lot of fun, but we are also apart of Rotary and get to participate in any Rotary event that we happened to be near. So I got to participate in a (I guess you would call it...) dance off, a trip to a dinosaur park, and flood relief, non of which I new about before I went.

Luckily we got time before the so named "dance off" to practice.



Two of the Mexicans had their traditional wear with them, and they put on a traditional Mexican dance for the whole audience.



The Exchange Students were not the only ones who preformed. We were allowed a break while some break dancers came in and basically showed us all up.

This is what we carried around to collect money for the flood relief at the "dance off"

At the dinosaur park we all took a picture in front of a giant T-Rex head. Me being me took a picture of the photographer, Raul, the exchange student from Mexico.

The Exchange Students at a place of flooding, with food bags to the left.

Some of the friends that I met at RYLA came to the flood area too.

    And of course, Halloween... They don't have anything major here in Thailand, no little kids trick or treating, no house decorations, no big shops devoted to Halloween costumes. All they have is a few restaurants that decorate, because foreigners visit them frequently. The only real reminder I've had of Halloween is my mother's last package that she sent me. It was stuffed full of little fun toys and candy all to do with Halloween. Thanks Mom!

     Well, this draws to the end of this post. Again I do apologize for not posting for basically a month, but my posts in the future we be more frequent. Thanks for following.