District Conference

     I know this is kind of late, but my district of Rotary had a district conference in the middle of December. The conference was held in the northern city of Chaing Rai. Well the other exchange students from my city and I arrived late, because on the way up we stopped by the city of Chaing Mai. There we went to it's walking street and say some pretty strange stuff.

Just a random statue near a restaurant in the walking street. 

We found some lady boys who found a fancy for the Mexican exchange student Raul.

    Needless to say we finally arrived to the conference and were reunited with our friends, and made some new ones as well. The exchanges students from one other district came as well.

They gave us some weird snack food, but it didn't kill us.

     That evening we came back and had a nice dinner with our friends, but then we had to perform once again for the Rotarians. Luckily we weren't the only ones; the other district also had a group that would be performing, but I'd have to say they were much better than we were.

I still didn't get to keep the costume!

They had guy dancers too, but they only danced for a short time while the girls danced the whole time.

    The next day, the Rotarians who took us told us we could skip out on the rest of the activities and go with them to the northern border and Thailand's famous white temple. Who would disagree with that? 

This was at the border crossing. There is a river behind us.

This is the river that was behind me. There was some random kids that happened to run into my picture as well.

This is the awesome white temple. It was actually kind of weird, as you can see by the skull topped cones beside me.

This was just like a small pond of hands, and if you look closely you can find a hand that has the middle finger up.

Just a great group picture.

This was inside the temple (a place where you are not suppose to take photos).  On the walls they had painted famous movie characters. There were most of the superheros (Spider man above), supervillains made an appearance as well, and just some random ones like Neo from the Matrix and the Predator from Aliens vs. Predator.

This temple looking building was actually the white temple's bathroom!

    It was an amazing trip, and I met many new friends from the other district. Hope all enjoy the photos.

The Holidays in Thailand

         Thailand, a place of wondrous beauty, easy going peoples, and... religiously Buddhist! When people from my home talk about the holidays, they normally are talking either about Christmas or Hanukkah (depending on religion) and the New Year. Well here in Thailand they basically skip the part about Christmas and Hanukkah and only think about the New Year, because they are Buddhist (Buddhism is considered the practical atheist). So the only Christmas spirit I received here in Thailand was that of the local shopping centers, who use the Christmas theme as a great selling technique, a package from home carrying home baked goodies and a few small presents (thanks mom and dad), and a nice Christmas eve dinner with some of the other exchange students in my city.

We ate an Italian restaurant where we were served a 4 course meal. It was ok, but nothing like homemade Christmas eve dinner.

The two ladies in the middle are family of the workers in the restaurant. Fabio (the guy next to me) is partially Italian and can speak Italian, so he knew the people pretty well.

    So after Christmas comes the New Year. It was at least more celebrated. I saw on the T.V. that there was even a count down in some of the bigger cities of Thailand. As for me, I got to spend some quality time with my new host family in a place called Radburry (pronounced really weird, so that even I haven't completely mastered the pronunciation). We left on New Years house with the whole family, even the cat came a long! We stopped a few places a long the way, like an aunt's house and other family members' houses. We finally arrived at Radburry at around 9 or 10 at night, and we were fed a bunch of food.

See the fish? Well it just happened to be the best fish I had ever had! This was where I have come to find out I love fresh fish! It was delicious.

    Well we all stayed up for the countdown, but the biggest celebration was locals shooting of fireworks near enough to hear. After the countdown I was pretty tired and just headed to bed. The next day I woke up and one of the family members took me to the river near by. There he showed me the process of selecting fish to sell that had already been caught.

They catch the fish and then bring them up in buckets from the river.

Then they weigh the fish and dump them into large tubs in the back of trucks for transportation.

   After that we went into town (which was right next to the river) for lunch. It wasn't that exciting, but it had a great view. The next day turned out to be the most interesting. We went to a floating market (my second one), but this one had stuff for sale that you could buy right out of a boat! It was an awesome experience, and I had a lot of fun watching other foreigners look like complete tourists.

Now I know some of these pictures are turned sideways, but I have found no way of rotating them with "Blogger". So if you can stand of few minutes of neck cranking I hope you enjoy the pictures.

I went with my whole family. My host mom is sitting behind me.

My host brother and host cousin look at the cool stuff to by, while my host mom looks for my other host cousin.

The canals got crowded toward the end of our boat ride. But it made it that much more interesting to see how the Thai navigate their boats.

This guy had a huge snake with him. I don't really know what he was doing, but I hope he never looses sight of the snake!

After the floating market we went back to the house and packed up. We took a lot of stuff to deliver to family on the way, and we even took and extra passenger home with us...

Our new dog, named Brown (but pronounced blow with Thai accent).

Second Host Family

      After four months in Thailand I have switched host families. This host family consists of my host dad, who runs a motorcycle retail and repair shop, my host mom, who helps out my host dad in the shop, my host brother, who is the same age as me, two younger cousins, and a sister, who is actually on exchange in Mexico right now. O, yeah, and I have a cat called seafood as well, but she is pretty elusive and doesn't appear on the video. We live above my host dad's Suzuki Motorcycle shop, and the house consists of four stories plus a roof that you can walk on. Enough explanation! Here is a video tour.

Ayutthaya and the Floating Market

   A few days ago my host father came to me and told me to pack my bags... I asked for what (naturally), and he said that I was going to go to Ayutthaya the next day! So, me being the good Exchange Student that I am I went straight away and packed. I found out the reason for going the next day. We were going because one of the host families had a friend who passed away, and that friend lived near Ayutthaya. Ayutthaya is really far away from where I live, so we were going to be spending one night there as well. So the host family took this extra time to give Joao, Raul (for reference to who these two are, look at previous blogs), and I a great experience of Ayutthaya.

     Now enough with the long explanations, and on with short ones with pictures! The night before I left I went over and slept at the host family's (the one taking us to Ayutthaya) house. The first morning we woke up around 4 A.M. and got into a bus to basically sleep for the 8 hours it took to get to Ayutthaya. I'm sorry to say that I didn't take any pictures of the funeral, but in short: the body is cremated, the hold the funeral at a normal Thai temple, and it's basically like a visitation for an American funeral (but all in Thai). After the funeral we drove for another hour or so until we got to the floating market. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves (well with captions too).

Just to be able to say I was there!

A restaurant on water.

We even got to see the cook in action.

Joao, Raul, and I getting ready for the boat ride.

The boat ride was a basic tour of the floating market and surrounding area, but it was at night! It made me almost think I was in Italy.

That's what we probably looked like.

Even the host mom decided to come along for the boat tour.

   The boat tour was the last one of the night, and it was late in starting besides. So to say the least, it was very late when we finally got to the hotel for the night. But it was well worth it! The next day we headed for the elephants! On our way we went to the elephant... farm I think... But it wasn't the main attraction. We headed to the elephant place of work, and got to have one of the best experience: elephant rides!

The elephant place of work from the outside. 

They had baby elephants for a first impression.

The most common look of elephants anywhere: the trunk (nose) in an upward angle.

Yes, we are all wearing the same shirt. A friend gave us each one and we thought it'd be cool to wear them that day.

And now for the elephant ride!!!!!!

It was actually rather short, only 10 minutes or so. But still getting to ride that animal was pretty amazing.

After our rides there was even an elephant show. They did some cool tricks like this one. It was an awesome spectacle to see. 

This was the biggest elephant they had. To give you an idea, where it is standing now anyone can walk under it without hitting there head. It was BIG!

   After the show we had the long journey back home, full of sleeping and well sleeping. We got home and basically went straight to bed with dreams full of dancing elephants (that was part of the show).

Pattaya

           About a week ago I went on a trip with Rotary to a city with the name of Pattaya. Now if you look it up on google images the first things you will see are a bunch of half naked women and bars, but that is NOT the reason Rotary took us there. The main purpose of the trip was for our group of Exchange Students to continue their efforts with raising money for the flooding relief in Bangkok. Now, granted, we did get some free time, so it wasn't all work and no play.

    First off the two other Exchange Students from my Rotary club and I decided not to go straight to Pattaya. Instead we headed to Kohn Kean, another city of Thailand, and joined the Exchange Students there in practicing for a performance for the fundraising. It was an interesting start to our trip, but it was very entertaining seeing as we got to be with so many other Exchange Students. The next day we woke up, got into two different buses and headed off to Pattaya.

Our bus consisted of a bunch of guys: (from back to front) Emiliano (American), Diego (American), Raul (Mexican),  Me (American, lol), Joao (Brazilian), Alejandro (Mexican).

    When we got there we went through some Rotary stuff, but then we found out that the evening was ours to do whatever we wanted. To give you an idea, Pattaya has a beach(!), Subway (hard to find here), and out hotel had its own pool. So as you could imagine we were overjoyed. That evening I headed to the beach for some salty fun. We decided public transportation was too expensive so we walked...

(from back to front) Ken(Japanese), Victoria(Canadian), Clarissa(American), Kayla(American) 

The street was quite interesting actually. The white slopy things you see are actually benches!

   This event seemed to be less stressful than usual Rotary gatherings, because the next day we were allowed to sleep in. Once we woke up we ate breakfast and headed for the road (walking not driving) and began our own parade to try and raise money along the streets.

Some of the outbounds and I even stopped at some businesses along the way, hoping they would give. 

In action, holding the box high, and asking random foreigners for money.

    At the end of our personal parade we came to a stage, and found out it was time to present what we had been practicing in Kohn Kean: our dances. I'd have to say it was actually pretty fun, and we raised over 50,000 baht! (Now you can convert that to your own currency, but I think it sounds more impressive in baht.)

The Americans did the Cha Cha Slide, and well anyone else who thought they could do it joined as well. 

The Brazilians amazed us all with the native dancing, but in the end they couldn't resist asking others join them.

This was interesting dance, (if i remember correctly: The Tango). It was well done, and the audience really enjoyed it.

  After we got another few hours of free time, and the same outbounds I was walking with in the parade pulled me along for another excursion to the beach. I was completely unready for it, but I went anyway and had a great time.

The outbounds convinced the Japanese student, Ken, to let them cover him with sand... 

The group of Thais, plus a Japanese and an American... Hmmm..  Can you guess which one is me???

   At dinner we found out we were presenting the same show as we had earlier that day, but this time it was for a bunch of Rotarians. And also this time we added the traditional Thai dance, which I'm proud to say I got to take part in.

Traditional wear for a Thai dance. (And no we didn't get to keep the outfits, but I did ask for one for Christmas and might just get it.) 

The full group plus a few extras.

    The last day I woke up early and, with a few others, went out to view a temple. But this temple was on the beach, and to get to it we got a free ride in a horse in buggy (in Thailand!).

It was a small buggy, so we put the fourth guy (who took the photo) next to the driver. 

To get any closer we had to pay an extreme amount of money, so we settled for this. I think it turned out all right.

   That evening we spent another night in Kohn Kean, but we were so tired that we didn't do anything. The next day I basically woke, got into my host dad's car, and headed back to Udon Thani.