ok.... so this one is gonna be a tough one to exp,ain, cause well to be honest, its really all a blur now, so i think what im gonna do is just make a bulleted list of what i remember,
so to start out i should atleast freashen you memories, last post i was right a bout to leave o a trip with all of the exchange students again for ten days, and we were gonna travel all over the northeast of thailand in a big bus, and basically stop at a new hotel every other night!
sooo
hm i dont even know where to begin...
well to start off, we went to go a nd ride elephants again, every time i do it, its awesme, the one we went to that day was a pretty sweet it was an elephant sanctuarry, it had a hospital with newborns and every thing, and the elephant that i rode was someting like 50 years old!!
and on the way back the handler said the elephant was really tierd, and asked if it would be cool if he let the old guy ford the river on his way back so it could cool off, uumm let me think, yes!!!
so here i am having to pull up my feet so i wont get wet while this 20ft beast takes a bath with me on his back!!
hmm what else, oh yeah, so one day we go to this place called the "white temple" and it suposedly really famous, so we go there and, surprise surprise the palce is white and silver, so it would glitter in the sun, it was beautiful and all, but when we went to enter the plce it got pretty fraky, first there was athis little walkway over a sculpture, but the sculpture was just tons of white hands reaching up to grab the people on the walk way, some were deformed, others had claws, ans even others had eyeson the palms, ad let me tell you this was one of the scariest pieces of art ive ever seen(second to what was inside the temple) it just looked so realistic, don right to the lines on thier palms!
but so i moved on(quickly) and when i got inside it seemed everyone was looking through the door i had just came through, i turned around o see a massive mural that took up the entire wall, on the top was buddha looking dwn on everything, but underneath it was pictures of pain and suffering, there were sillouettes of guns and ammo painted in evey where, the wolrd trade center in flames, people dying, rape, and just terrible images all over the wall, and spread through out the entire painting were scenes from western cultere, movies, and such, but one of the most disturbing things was that below buddhas face wasa massive demon(eveything else was painted ontop of that) inside the left and right eyes were two figures, at first we couldent make them out, but once we stepped back we realized that it was osama bin laden, and george bush, it was an incradibly beautiful, yet terrifying painting, and it wasnt even finished yt the artist still had two walls to go, from my understanding the mural was all about how buddha is above all of the suffering and pain in the world, it was just a vrey intresting temple, and it made us all wonder what the thai people really thought about western cultre..
oh how could i forget!!
so theres this girl there named megan, she also plays guitar,, weve started up a two person band called "sex in the rain" umm its kind of an inside joke that none of us get, but its catchy and bold, so dont ask questions,
so any ways we were talking, on the bus about how cool it would be to sit on the side of the road and try to get money by palying music, so that day as soon as we got off the buss we snagged our guitars, and walked don the marketplace in chang rai, found a stoop, sat down with my case open and started to paly, an something cool happened....poeple started throwing money in!!!
one fun thing was(megan plays for her church back home, so we both know alot of christian songs)while we were palying blessed be your name, a family from canada ran from around the corner, literally ran! to come and sing with us!
at the end of our hour or so of playing we headed back to the hotel tosnag some dinner and count our money, to find out that we got
370 baht!!!
which is like 12 bucks or so american, butin thailand where meals are like maybe 30 baht, 370 is a very nice amount of cash! we were sooo pumped!!!
oh another place we visited which was very cool was this village up in the mountains, a long neck tribe, and yes, they were the peole who put the brass rings around thier necks and calves to steatch them out!
IT WAS WILD!
im not exagerating here, but the wemons necks were atleast a foot long and they would just be chillin there making blankets, like nothing was wierd at all
what i gather from one of my friends is that the tribe isnt actually accepted but the thai gov, so thier forced to stay in thier villages on the mountzins, and the only way for them to earn money is to sell things theve made, and its kinda sad, cause whenever farangs come its like the circus is in town, but overall meeting those people was incradible, i mean ive only seen them on national geographnc you know!
oh we also went to a thai zoo, it was perty cool, i mean they had animals there that i didnt even know what they were, the only was i can describe one of them was ber-cat, at first i thought i was a really hairy thai dude hanging from the trees, so i fraked, and of course all of the descriptions are in thai, so i still have no idea wat it was,,,
oh another funny thing, you know how in america we have all those fences and stuff to keep stupid people out of the cages, well there arent any in thailand, i mean the only thing stopping me from riding a giraffe, was a four foot gap made to look like a river, in thailand, if you can jump four feet, you could kidnap an ostrich!
hmm oh we wentto aother palce called the golden triangle, where a river seperates bruma, laos and thailnad, that was sweet, i wasnt ble to head over thoug which was lame!
oh i also found out that bangkok ist the THE capitol of thaiand, thaind actually has three, we visited the first one which is a ruin city, called i think(the names kinda blend to gether lay off me!)sukhothai, the second city is ayuttya and third is bangkok, and our leader was telling us that in a hundred years orso thiell change it again!
well im sorry but thts all i can remember right now, but its not the end of my blog, because as soon as i got back i was blown away!, i had a ridiculous amout of gifts and cards waiting for me at my house!!!
THANKYOU SOOOOO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!
thank you to everyone who sent me cards and gifts, especially to everyone at revoultion youth group!!!
i loved them, here i am opening up a pkg only to find it has over 30 cards stuffed into it from all of my friends, it was soo awesome! ilove you guys!!!(oh and whoever put thier finger print in a card as a signature... im sorry i have no idea who you are!)
oh today i played at a concert at school, i played bubble toes by jack johnson, and collide by howie day, but..... i played it on my brand new guitar, so ive been saving for a while, also with my parents help i was able to aford an acoustic/electreic guitar, it beautiful! its got the cutaway, abalone and pear inlay and sound increadible, i named her, just like my old one, but i had to give her a thai name, so i went with
tep lek-lek
it literally means "tiny angel"
hmm well i think that covers it for now, this is my last bog of the year you know....
tommorow ive gotta get up bright and earyl to meet my friend in khon kaen at 7, then well take a 5hr bus ride to ubon ratchatani,to see a band called bodyslam on newyears eve!!!
look at my youtube profile, and in my favories, you see two music videos! thier awesome!!!
so that about does it fr now, merry christ mass and happy new year!!!
Friday, December 28, 2007
Sunday, December 16, 2007
happy christmas! ....actually thats how my host mom says it, wierd, they dont celebrate christmas in thailand!
alright so i just got off the most AWKARD! songtail ride of my life!
(a songtil is kinda like a bus in thailand, they are reallly just pickup trucks with roofs on them and benches in the back, but to get from khon kaen to my first host moms house i have to rideo no one for 1hr, and since i took the last buss out, i had 24 thai people crammmed, no smushed into, no, perforating that picup truk!)
so i got on, and it was already wierd, cause therewere tons of people coming on, so i gave up my seat, and wento stand on the edge of the bed, holding onto a pole that connects to the roof and bottom corner of this little welded on satircase(im actually not in the truck right now, im suspended above the asphalt on a flimsy metal grate, thats about a foot above the ground, while the driver whizzez down the freeway)
when a kid, must have been mybe 12 or so hopps on right before we take off, hes looking for a place to hold onto, so he doesent hall out, awkward,y the oly place for him to grab onto a the two poles about half a foot behind me, and this kid is on the botom step facing me,
soooo, wierdly enough instead of moving next to one of the poles he decides to reac out with both hands and hold onto both of them......
ok i dont know if your getting the picture, here i am on the top step of the staircase facing backwards holding onto the rail on the celing, this kid is on the bottom step(which makes his head just above belly button range facing me while he holds onto two poles on either side of me about a foot or so back... the end result, i end up having a 1hr long hug from this dude, and because of the bumpy road, he was continually getting hit in the chin wth my optimus prime belt buckle!
ok enough ranting
sooooooo
oh, thats right i was in the hospital this week,
its really fun in the hospital now, cause basically whenever people come in needing stiches the doc lets me do them, one gut got nine in the foot, case he hit it with his axe(you shouldent do yard work in sandals aparently)
another dude got two in his chin, cause "somehow" after a party last night he ended up with buckshot in his face, and i would have done 5 on this 4 year old girl, but i opted not to, cause one she was thrashing all over the place, and 2 shes 4! if i mess something up id rather have her not lose that finger because of me!(it was a pretty gnarly gash! it went all the way p the side of the middle finger, and down to the bone(little kids= skinny fingers))
so the nurse asked me if id hold her down(im not bragging or any thing, but im pretty much the biggest guy in the ER, the nurses say i look like a bear because im about a good six inches taller than any of them)
those were the only really cool things in the ER
but i also shadow in the or too!
i got to see the s mastectomy(removal of part of the breast)
and this thing where they fix this dudes hernia(sorry must have missed that day in class)
AND HERES THE BEST PART!!!!!!!
OK YOU READY????
I
GOT
TO
SEE
THREE
C-SECTIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
they were literally the COOLEST, most discusting surgerys i have ever seen!!!!!!!1
and let me tell you, honestly when a baby is first born, it is one of the most hideous things ive ever seen!
it was like i rolled over a rock and this nasty bleach white hairy gooey baby rolled out from under it!
so let me walk you through the first one, cause i serously jumped back, this thing scared me so bad!
so the doc makes his incision, goes pAast skin fat, and muscle until he reaches the massive uterus(this things big!)
he stars making a cut into it, and while hes cutting, the uterus is full of blood vessles, so blood is coming out like crazy! he cut al the way throu until you can see the amniotic sac( ok picture a huge translucent water balloon, with an alien monkey looking thing floating around inside!)
ok when we got to this step, i looked into the likke window thig the baby had goin on, i was lookin for the baby or any thing for that matter, and all of a sudden
A FACE PRESSED UP AGINST THE WALL OF TH SAC!!!!!!!!!
i jumped back, and yelled out, beacause it honesly didnt look human!!!!!
after i calmed dow, the doc popped the sac(kinda kide po the ballon win a prize games at the carnaival..... only this time the prize is a thai baby!)
he pops it, and fluid actually jets out of the uterus, and not just a litte bit, NO but a very healthy amount of murky fluid comes rushing out and all over the tabl(the second time i was standing a little close and it shot all over my hands an arms..... gross!
then he, quite forcfully byt the way snatches the baby by its head and shoulders and hauls it ou of th mommy, it looks like some thing out of aliens.
he then anounces wheather its a puying or a puchai and hands it off to two ladies to clean it off(on the thrid operation, the actually turned and handed me the baby i told the mom it was a girl....and then i handed it of to the ladies(kinda like hot potato i guess)
then the doc, sews up the uterus, and oddly enough tied thier tubes, and gave them an apendectomy before he closed them up, where he would teach me to do surgical stiches after he closed up all the other layers!
and that my friens is how, in a nutshell you perform a c-section....please dont read this and try it at home, things could get messy....
and well that was pretty much the most excitng part of my week!
hmm what else did i do
man, now every thing sounds lame compared to that!!!
i mean the only thing worth mentioning is how i went shopping for guitars with a friend today, and i think i found one, but honestly one one hand i have shopping, and onthe other i have fuidy babys and sutures! imean hell!
no contest!!!
hmm well sorry to have a short entyr this week, but ive gotta go and pack right now, cause tommoro im leaving on another rotarytrip to chaing mai(its in the north east of thailand, about 12 hr away, and the 38 of us ar gonna, hmm well i guess you find out in like 10 days or so, sorry but next weeks is gonna be a late one!
hmm the thing posted early on me i didnt even get to say good bye
oh well hopefully it doesnt post twice!
where was i oh yea...
so ill be gone for 10 days, then one day after i get back, my school is having a bunch of bands play for a new year party, and they want me to play, which i have no idea what im gonna do, i guess ill just wing it, and one day after that im heading out with some friends to go down south to see a band called bodyslam on new years eve!
so ive got a busy next three weeks!
and the real reason i wanted to fix this thing was because i didnt get a chance to say merry christma to all of you, and i wish i could be with my frieds and famil over tha holidays, but well its agains the rules!
oh well,
no worries
i hope you all have a great time and know that i miss you all very musch!
love,
ryan
HAPPY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!
(a songtil is kinda like a bus in thailand, they are reallly just pickup trucks with roofs on them and benches in the back, but to get from khon kaen to my first host moms house i have to rideo no one for 1hr, and since i took the last buss out, i had 24 thai people crammmed, no smushed into, no, perforating that picup truk!)
so i got on, and it was already wierd, cause therewere tons of people coming on, so i gave up my seat, and wento stand on the edge of the bed, holding onto a pole that connects to the roof and bottom corner of this little welded on satircase(im actually not in the truck right now, im suspended above the asphalt on a flimsy metal grate, thats about a foot above the ground, while the driver whizzez down the freeway)
when a kid, must have been mybe 12 or so hopps on right before we take off, hes looking for a place to hold onto, so he doesent hall out, awkward,y the oly place for him to grab onto a the two poles about half a foot behind me, and this kid is on the botom step facing me,
soooo, wierdly enough instead of moving next to one of the poles he decides to reac out with both hands and hold onto both of them......
ok i dont know if your getting the picture, here i am on the top step of the staircase facing backwards holding onto the rail on the celing, this kid is on the bottom step(which makes his head just above belly button range facing me while he holds onto two poles on either side of me about a foot or so back... the end result, i end up having a 1hr long hug from this dude, and because of the bumpy road, he was continually getting hit in the chin wth my optimus prime belt buckle!
ok enough ranting
sooooooo
oh, thats right i was in the hospital this week,
its really fun in the hospital now, cause basically whenever people come in needing stiches the doc lets me do them, one gut got nine in the foot, case he hit it with his axe(you shouldent do yard work in sandals aparently)
another dude got two in his chin, cause "somehow" after a party last night he ended up with buckshot in his face, and i would have done 5 on this 4 year old girl, but i opted not to, cause one she was thrashing all over the place, and 2 shes 4! if i mess something up id rather have her not lose that finger because of me!(it was a pretty gnarly gash! it went all the way p the side of the middle finger, and down to the bone(little kids= skinny fingers))
so the nurse asked me if id hold her down(im not bragging or any thing, but im pretty much the biggest guy in the ER, the nurses say i look like a bear because im about a good six inches taller than any of them)
those were the only really cool things in the ER
but i also shadow in the or too!
i got to see the s mastectomy(removal of part of the breast)
and this thing where they fix this dudes hernia(sorry must have missed that day in class)
AND HERES THE BEST PART!!!!!!!
OK YOU READY????
I
GOT
TO
SEE
THREE
C-SECTIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
they were literally the COOLEST, most discusting surgerys i have ever seen!!!!!!!1
and let me tell you, honestly when a baby is first born, it is one of the most hideous things ive ever seen!
it was like i rolled over a rock and this nasty bleach white hairy gooey baby rolled out from under it!
so let me walk you through the first one, cause i serously jumped back, this thing scared me so bad!
so the doc makes his incision, goes pAast skin fat, and muscle until he reaches the massive uterus(this things big!)
he stars making a cut into it, and while hes cutting, the uterus is full of blood vessles, so blood is coming out like crazy! he cut al the way throu until you can see the amniotic sac( ok picture a huge translucent water balloon, with an alien monkey looking thing floating around inside!)
ok when we got to this step, i looked into the likke window thig the baby had goin on, i was lookin for the baby or any thing for that matter, and all of a sudden
A FACE PRESSED UP AGINST THE WALL OF TH SAC!!!!!!!!!
i jumped back, and yelled out, beacause it honesly didnt look human!!!!!
after i calmed dow, the doc popped the sac(kinda kide po the ballon win a prize games at the carnaival..... only this time the prize is a thai baby!)
he pops it, and fluid actually jets out of the uterus, and not just a litte bit, NO but a very healthy amount of murky fluid comes rushing out and all over the tabl(the second time i was standing a little close and it shot all over my hands an arms..... gross!
then he, quite forcfully byt the way snatches the baby by its head and shoulders and hauls it ou of th mommy, it looks like some thing out of aliens.
he then anounces wheather its a puying or a puchai and hands it off to two ladies to clean it off(on the thrid operation, the actually turned and handed me the baby i told the mom it was a girl....and then i handed it of to the ladies(kinda like hot potato i guess)
then the doc, sews up the uterus, and oddly enough tied thier tubes, and gave them an apendectomy before he closed them up, where he would teach me to do surgical stiches after he closed up all the other layers!
and that my friens is how, in a nutshell you perform a c-section....please dont read this and try it at home, things could get messy....
and well that was pretty much the most excitng part of my week!
hmm what else did i do
man, now every thing sounds lame compared to that!!!
i mean the only thing worth mentioning is how i went shopping for guitars with a friend today, and i think i found one, but honestly one one hand i have shopping, and onthe other i have fuidy babys and sutures! imean hell!
no contest!!!
hmm well sorry to have a short entyr this week, but ive gotta go and pack right now, cause tommoro im leaving on another rotarytrip to chaing mai(its in the north east of thailand, about 12 hr away, and the 38 of us ar gonna, hmm well i guess you find out in like 10 days or so, sorry but next weeks is gonna be a late one!
hmm the thing posted early on me i didnt even get to say good bye
oh well hopefully it doesnt post twice!
where was i oh yea...
so ill be gone for 10 days, then one day after i get back, my school is having a bunch of bands play for a new year party, and they want me to play, which i have no idea what im gonna do, i guess ill just wing it, and one day after that im heading out with some friends to go down south to see a band called bodyslam on new years eve!
so ive got a busy next three weeks!
and the real reason i wanted to fix this thing was because i didnt get a chance to say merry christma to all of you, and i wish i could be with my frieds and famil over tha holidays, but well its agains the rules!
oh well,
no worries
i hope you all have a great time and know that i miss you all very musch!
love,
ryan
HAPPY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!
Sunday, December 9, 2007
This Is Thailand...
hmmm ok so, man what happened?
let me think for a sec,
alright
wow its been a while
ok, so i had an early one last week cause i went to pukaung with all of the opther exchange students, and i was taking off again for bkk the next day ok i remember now!
so it was early in the morning like 4 or so when we took off, it was me, carol sarah, freya, and maria(four khon kaen girls) the maid, thier host mom and the like7ish year old daughter named star,
so its 4am and we start to leave, on the 6hr road to bkk in our big van, but thats ok, cause we see what we all think is a dvd player and i brought my big book of movies(ive got a nice collection going)
when we try to start a movie only to find out that its not a dvd player, but a VCD player!
ok.
seriously, befor comeing to thailand i had no idea what a vcd was, and for all you tech nologically advanced dudes, its baically cassete movie on a cd, and thiers 2 disks per movie,
of course i dont have any vcds...
but star does(oh i gotta tell you one thing about star, in thailand people rub massive amounts of baby powder on thier kids, to make them look whiter, dont ask,for thai people pale skin is beautiful and tan is ugly, any ways, star is ALWAYS absolutly COVERED! in white powder ever time i see her,its actually kinda scary, cause she looks like that little zombie girl from the grudge, it kind freaks me out some times cause that movie was scary, i mean im half ecpecting her toc crawl backwards down the stairs and on the celing and eat me!) TIT
where was i oh yeah star has vcds, but all that she has is HOURS of this one tv show clled pan and james, or something like that, and hour after hour all that we watched was a chimp and a monkey run around thailand and do errands for some creepy old man honestly if it wasnt for the stimulating conversation of the girls, i might of opened that door and tossed myself out of that van and taken my chances on the streets of thailand!
anyways we got thatere, and my friend daniel metus there and we went shopping for a while in a market the we were really excited because for lunch we hit up a subway(we ar in BANGKOK!) best lunch this month!
oh so that night was very cool, we went to this national geographic event, and went on a night time bike tour of bangkok, we went to the grand palace, all kinds of temples, we rode around in and out of trafic right next to the cars trying to keep up with the tour guide(whi i couldent understand by the way)
so all in all it was awesome bankoks really pretty at night and we had a great time
the next dy, all 6 of us went out to go and see the floating market, basically its this ummmm.... market, uh that is floating, like all of us are in this morotboat canoe thingie right, and all the stands shops and places are like these likke ports that come off of the canal waterway thing were sailing around in, it was fun to go to and see, but daniel and i didnt buy anything, cause well everything there is so freaking EXPENSIVE!!!
its like this major tourist trap right and well were not tourists any more, and i know it sounds bad, but when we see americans in like khon kaen, its like i think "aww man look theres another dumb farang in my city" and trust me, i know how hipocryitical that sounds!
vbut anyways bottom line, im not stupid enough to pay 2800 bhat for that sword.
oh they also had a sweet floating temple that we went to pray at, it was right on the water and it had some pretty sweet gold statues of buhdda there!
alright dudes im just gonna save this and finish tommoro, soory but this is gonna be a late post im just really tierd...................click save(the sreans in thai, so all i know is the blue button means save.....
ok good to be back, sorry about that , where was i
ok
oh so that night we went to some palce it was like the hundred year celebration and what not, really it was just a huge party!
ok the main event, so the rest of the trip was cool and all, but what hapened on our last day was by far the greatest!
so we stayed at this sweet hotel that where our room was actually floating on the water(its like a pattern) and our porch was like a little raft with an awning and chairs tied to the room!
so we drive for a while till we come to this place out in the middle of nowhere where we then hop into the bac of a pickup truck and he whisks us away to the mouth of a massiv-in-the-middle-of-the-freakin-jungle-river!!!
im serious it was like arnold swarzenager would bust out of the vines with the perdator on his shoulders any min!
TIT
so were standing at the river bank, and jack sparrow(this dude LOOKED like a pirate) tells us to get on his raft, and its not some infaltable thing, nonono its a super thin swatch of stringed up bamboo, this thing looked like it wouldent float star, letalone me!
but we got on, surpringly it worked, and were rafting down this river when he says(in thai of course) you guys can hop in if you want!
sweet, witout thinking i launch myself off of the raft and into the JUNGLE RIVER,keyword, jungle!
then i start thinking, snakes, hmm crocs, hmmm penis fish(c'mon you knowthose fish that swim up you whoo-hoo when you pee in the river)and suddenly swiming didnt sound like so great an idea, but i had to tough it out ad look like a strong dude!
after we rafted the river we got out and he drove us to this place whit a big ladder thing, and then an elephant with a seat on it comes round to the other side!
so we hop on, andride the elephatn, after a while, we as the dude if we can sit where hes sitting, nt the neck behingd the ears, sure he says, and he doesthis crazy thing where he jumps off, swungs down the tusks and lands like a cat after a 20 fot fall, so we swithch plces and it was awesom!!!
i dont even know how to describe it now, just picture me on an elephants neck yelling and holding on for dear life an youll get the gist of it!
after that, we took them into the riveer to wash them, im still on the neck here and the elepahnt is in the water so deep now that it has its trunk above the water like periscope so it can breathe!, the dude toses me a brush and soap,,,,so i wash the elephants head, it was fun, and it ket oing this wierd dive thing, where weed both go under water for lke five seconds, then it would hop back to norman=l!
TIT
so that was our trip, well the interesting parts anyway
sorry about being abrupt, but ive still got a while to go!
so i get back home shower, and clean my clothes, and the next day, im going to p/u my friend zach in khon kaen, and were gonna stay the next couple nights iny first host moms house and wrk at the english camp at my school the next 2 days, so the night befoer was fist off the kings b-day, wich was huge cause he turned 81 the were celbrations and everything, and faters day, so we went out to eat at this resturaut with my family and some of thier friends, and they kept asking me to eat this wird shellfish nastly looking stuff, so of course, havent gotten sick yet, so i minght as well try it, it turs out it tasted exactly th way it looked, and i didnt think my more of it........until round 3am the next day, i wake up sweating, and i feel absolutly terrible!
so i stagger dow to the hognam ad do some buiesess, feeing doesent go away, im looking at myself in the mirror and i think to my self i wont spew, i havent spewed since like 6th grade!
LTERALLY as soon as i finsh that thought it all comes up on the bathroom flor!
and oh no its not over yet, them myface gets supper hot, then cold, and i collapse, ive never really felt that weak before, so there i am its 3-4ish am and im laying on the bathromm floor yaking something nastly for about an hour and a half or so,
ok ill skip the gory details, but because of that tom yam, i didnt get to bed again until around 6, after id barfd something like 5-6 times
oh well TIT
the next day, i was supposed to p/u zach, but my host mom after seeing the buket by my bed, told me i was going to the hospital,you know the best thing about being friends with the er and docs, is that when you get sick, your pushed to the front of the line and geven all your meds for free, id like to see that happen in the states.
TIT
long story short, then i went home, my host mom picked up zach and i crashed for a good period of that day, then i met zach, and we hung out watched movies until way to late, the next m orn, we woke up late, and got to the school only to find out tht... they reallydidnt need us at all, all we did was teach them a song in english(ming was the ants go marching one by one.....HURRAH)
so after we finished the 6 of us started wndering the srteets of namphong, only to find ourselves at the firework store, and mom, thats all i have to say about that.
rmember... TIT
tht nigh was basically the same, exept it was the docs b-day, and he asked if zacha and i could come and chill and eat some fried fish with him them we met up with the girls, and watched movies(i told you ive got a good stash)
and wel the next day we did the same exact thing all over again, i really dont know what to say, oh i cut my hair but thats about it, oh did you know in taiand, its really bad luck to cut your hair on a wednesday?
i treid, and both my host moms actually stopped me saying it was bad luck then my hm asked if zach wnated to stay another two nights so he could see this chinese festival in the town tommoro night, the festival was sweet, we actually rode bumber cars!, they had like a fair going on and every thing, ad they had people all dressed up in costume donign plays anout anchiet china, it was a blast!
hmm ok im spent sorry bout the late post, but thos is all ive got for you right now,
ok till next week..
ryan
ps, and if you still dont know what TIT is nd you think im ust being dirty look at the title of the blog!
peace!
let me think for a sec,
alright
wow its been a while
ok, so i had an early one last week cause i went to pukaung with all of the opther exchange students, and i was taking off again for bkk the next day ok i remember now!
so it was early in the morning like 4 or so when we took off, it was me, carol sarah, freya, and maria(four khon kaen girls) the maid, thier host mom and the like7ish year old daughter named star,
so its 4am and we start to leave, on the 6hr road to bkk in our big van, but thats ok, cause we see what we all think is a dvd player and i brought my big book of movies(ive got a nice collection going)
when we try to start a movie only to find out that its not a dvd player, but a VCD player!
ok.
seriously, befor comeing to thailand i had no idea what a vcd was, and for all you tech nologically advanced dudes, its baically cassete movie on a cd, and thiers 2 disks per movie,
of course i dont have any vcds...
but star does(oh i gotta tell you one thing about star, in thailand people rub massive amounts of baby powder on thier kids, to make them look whiter, dont ask,for thai people pale skin is beautiful and tan is ugly, any ways, star is ALWAYS absolutly COVERED! in white powder ever time i see her,its actually kinda scary, cause she looks like that little zombie girl from the grudge, it kind freaks me out some times cause that movie was scary, i mean im half ecpecting her toc crawl backwards down the stairs and on the celing and eat me!) TIT
where was i oh yeah star has vcds, but all that she has is HOURS of this one tv show clled pan and james, or something like that, and hour after hour all that we watched was a chimp and a monkey run around thailand and do errands for some creepy old man honestly if it wasnt for the stimulating conversation of the girls, i might of opened that door and tossed myself out of that van and taken my chances on the streets of thailand!
anyways we got thatere, and my friend daniel metus there and we went shopping for a while in a market the we were really excited because for lunch we hit up a subway(we ar in BANGKOK!) best lunch this month!
oh so that night was very cool, we went to this national geographic event, and went on a night time bike tour of bangkok, we went to the grand palace, all kinds of temples, we rode around in and out of trafic right next to the cars trying to keep up with the tour guide(whi i couldent understand by the way)
so all in all it was awesome bankoks really pretty at night and we had a great time
the next dy, all 6 of us went out to go and see the floating market, basically its this ummmm.... market, uh that is floating, like all of us are in this morotboat canoe thingie right, and all the stands shops and places are like these likke ports that come off of the canal waterway thing were sailing around in, it was fun to go to and see, but daniel and i didnt buy anything, cause well everything there is so freaking EXPENSIVE!!!
its like this major tourist trap right and well were not tourists any more, and i know it sounds bad, but when we see americans in like khon kaen, its like i think "aww man look theres another dumb farang in my city" and trust me, i know how hipocryitical that sounds!
vbut anyways bottom line, im not stupid enough to pay 2800 bhat for that sword.
oh they also had a sweet floating temple that we went to pray at, it was right on the water and it had some pretty sweet gold statues of buhdda there!
alright dudes im just gonna save this and finish tommoro, soory but this is gonna be a late post im just really tierd...................click save(the sreans in thai, so all i know is the blue button means save.....
ok good to be back, sorry about that , where was i
ok
oh so that night we went to some palce it was like the hundred year celebration and what not, really it was just a huge party!
ok the main event, so the rest of the trip was cool and all, but what hapened on our last day was by far the greatest!
so we stayed at this sweet hotel that where our room was actually floating on the water(its like a pattern) and our porch was like a little raft with an awning and chairs tied to the room!
so we drive for a while till we come to this place out in the middle of nowhere where we then hop into the bac of a pickup truck and he whisks us away to the mouth of a massiv-in-the-middle-of-the-freakin-jungle-river!!!
im serious it was like arnold swarzenager would bust out of the vines with the perdator on his shoulders any min!
TIT
so were standing at the river bank, and jack sparrow(this dude LOOKED like a pirate) tells us to get on his raft, and its not some infaltable thing, nonono its a super thin swatch of stringed up bamboo, this thing looked like it wouldent float star, letalone me!
but we got on, surpringly it worked, and were rafting down this river when he says(in thai of course) you guys can hop in if you want!
sweet, witout thinking i launch myself off of the raft and into the JUNGLE RIVER,keyword, jungle!
then i start thinking, snakes, hmm crocs, hmmm penis fish(c'mon you knowthose fish that swim up you whoo-hoo when you pee in the river)and suddenly swiming didnt sound like so great an idea, but i had to tough it out ad look like a strong dude!
after we rafted the river we got out and he drove us to this place whit a big ladder thing, and then an elephant with a seat on it comes round to the other side!
so we hop on, andride the elephatn, after a while, we as the dude if we can sit where hes sitting, nt the neck behingd the ears, sure he says, and he doesthis crazy thing where he jumps off, swungs down the tusks and lands like a cat after a 20 fot fall, so we swithch plces and it was awesom!!!
i dont even know how to describe it now, just picture me on an elephants neck yelling and holding on for dear life an youll get the gist of it!
after that, we took them into the riveer to wash them, im still on the neck here and the elepahnt is in the water so deep now that it has its trunk above the water like periscope so it can breathe!, the dude toses me a brush and soap,,,,so i wash the elephants head, it was fun, and it ket oing this wierd dive thing, where weed both go under water for lke five seconds, then it would hop back to norman=l!
TIT
so that was our trip, well the interesting parts anyway
sorry about being abrupt, but ive still got a while to go!
so i get back home shower, and clean my clothes, and the next day, im going to p/u my friend zach in khon kaen, and were gonna stay the next couple nights iny first host moms house and wrk at the english camp at my school the next 2 days, so the night befoer was fist off the kings b-day, wich was huge cause he turned 81 the were celbrations and everything, and faters day, so we went out to eat at this resturaut with my family and some of thier friends, and they kept asking me to eat this wird shellfish nastly looking stuff, so of course, havent gotten sick yet, so i minght as well try it, it turs out it tasted exactly th way it looked, and i didnt think my more of it........until round 3am the next day, i wake up sweating, and i feel absolutly terrible!
so i stagger dow to the hognam ad do some buiesess, feeing doesent go away, im looking at myself in the mirror and i think to my self i wont spew, i havent spewed since like 6th grade!
LTERALLY as soon as i finsh that thought it all comes up on the bathroom flor!
and oh no its not over yet, them myface gets supper hot, then cold, and i collapse, ive never really felt that weak before, so there i am its 3-4ish am and im laying on the bathromm floor yaking something nastly for about an hour and a half or so,
ok ill skip the gory details, but because of that tom yam, i didnt get to bed again until around 6, after id barfd something like 5-6 times
oh well TIT
the next day, i was supposed to p/u zach, but my host mom after seeing the buket by my bed, told me i was going to the hospital,you know the best thing about being friends with the er and docs, is that when you get sick, your pushed to the front of the line and geven all your meds for free, id like to see that happen in the states.
TIT
long story short, then i went home, my host mom picked up zach and i crashed for a good period of that day, then i met zach, and we hung out watched movies until way to late, the next m orn, we woke up late, and got to the school only to find out tht... they reallydidnt need us at all, all we did was teach them a song in english(ming was the ants go marching one by one.....HURRAH)
so after we finished the 6 of us started wndering the srteets of namphong, only to find ourselves at the firework store, and mom, thats all i have to say about that.
rmember... TIT
tht nigh was basically the same, exept it was the docs b-day, and he asked if zacha and i could come and chill and eat some fried fish with him them we met up with the girls, and watched movies(i told you ive got a good stash)
and wel the next day we did the same exact thing all over again, i really dont know what to say, oh i cut my hair but thats about it, oh did you know in taiand, its really bad luck to cut your hair on a wednesday?
i treid, and both my host moms actually stopped me saying it was bad luck then my hm asked if zach wnated to stay another two nights so he could see this chinese festival in the town tommoro night, the festival was sweet, we actually rode bumber cars!, they had like a fair going on and every thing, ad they had people all dressed up in costume donign plays anout anchiet china, it was a blast!
hmm ok im spent sorry bout the late post, but thos is all ive got for you right now,
ok till next week..
ryan
ps, and if you still dont know what TIT is nd you think im ust being dirty look at the title of the blog!
peace!
Friday, November 30, 2007
WHY YES I ACTUALLY HAVE CLIMED THE TALLES MOUNTAIN IN THAILAND IM GLAD YOU ASKED.
hey this ones an early one again!!
luck you!!!!!
so last time i left you dudes i was just about to head out to phrukadung, on our first rotary trip, so after alot of boring details of driving and ecetra....ecetra....ecetra!!!!
carol, sarah, maria, freya and i arrived in some kinda resort/ campground place, only to find we were the only ones there!!!
so after waiting for like 2 hrs or so, other exgn students started to trickle in, people were from france sweden, germany, brazil, canada, south africa, and rando parts of the us, and get this, a gil from claifornia! it was cool, joelle is from tahoe, and its funny cause we both use the same slang, its good to hear other people say dude!, sweet! and hecka!, you know.....
instead of just me.(from this point on, im just gonna say the persons name when im talking bout them,cause thats easy)
i cant begin to explain how cool it was to meet allt hose dudes, it was like wherever we where from and wahtever our differences were, we always had one thing in common, we were in freaking thailand!!!
so after we hung out and got to know eachother we went with some rotarty dudes and helped distribute blnkets and jackets to kids at the local school(its very cold were we wer)wich was really fun, after that we went back and gin cowed while listening to papart, hes the hole head of the rotary thing, tell us the rues and basically give us a preempive butt-chewing before we did any thing stupid!
so then we basically hung out that night singing karyoke, playing guitar and BSing, until past curfew, wich i kinda regret, cause that ountain almost killed me.
en cerrio.
(seriously, for all yous spanish speakers out there!)
so next mornign got up off of my board that i had been sleeping on(apparently in thailand, thai people have some wierd aversion to a soft bed, imean my bed was litterally a pice of wood with a sheet over it, its like that evrywhere!)
where was i?
sorry.
um got up, then showered (no hot water, figures...)
after drinkin some milo acive b(its like hot chocolate with vitamins in it, actually tastes prettly good) we set off to conquor phukradung!!!
we get to the base and they tell all of us its something like 5.5 k to the to, thats not bad, i think to my self SHUT UP TOKAY!!!!
sorry...5k is something like 2-3 miles ill be up in like an hr and half at most right?
wrong.
dead wrong...
so we start climbin this thing, itstarts at like a 25 degree angle and then out of nowhere the angle rockets to like 75, and here i am in my sweatshirt and beanie covered in sweat, while the porters have all of out bags suspended on bamboo poles while they carry every ting to the top on thiere shoulders!!!!
these dudes were absolute beasts!!!
i mean iter shoulders were as big and my thighs, and it wasnt just big guys, it was littlethai wemon too, wich made we feel reeeal many you can bet here i am, taking breaks evry couple mintes while some skinny guy with a tiger tatooed on his chest carrys my guitar, and4 other bags past me!!
so soon we get to our first rese stop, zach and i are one of the last to pull in, so we decide that making it up the mountain first istn that high on our prority list, and if were not comin in first, we might as well be last, wed rather fail miserably than succed marinally you know what i mean, so we just go at our own pace, we actually hiked with thiw one rotary dude, the funny thiong was a pretty big guy, and he was even more tied than us, but hed keep on puffin on those cigarettes, the entire time, after a cigarette break, he go right on wheezing up the mountain, we actually gave him a nickname, "somkey the bear" we named his kid "second hand"
so after getting passed by like for porters with the bags, zach and i decided we wanted to know what it felt like, so w ent and broke off two massive poles of bamboo, threw our jakets and caera bags over them and continued our COO-OONQUEST!
terrain evened out and returned to around 40/50 degrees, for about 2 k, by this time we know for sure we were coming in dead last!
we finnaly get to the last leg of te trip, we take like a 15 20 min break, then start up it to realize that the last km and a half is almost VERTICAL!!! im not joking at all, we could only use one hand to climb though, cause we had our bamboo poles, heck no we werent gonna wuss out and leave them behind, so finnaly after a good 5-6hrs we reach the top huffin and with smokey and second hand puffin right on our tails, thats when we wuss out, we find out its another 4 k across this pleatu to our campsite, so we look around, and find out that theres a bike rental place around the corner, so we rent ourselves a couple of bikes, still managing to cary our 15 foot poles bike to camp(i took a nasty fall, casue since i was using only my left hand to steer, when i used the brakes i wen tover the handlebars, luckly i didnt impale myself!, my knee and pride got pretty thrashed though...
and then we strut(limp) into camp like the concuors we are!
only to be greeted by questions like where the heck were you guys, weve been chillin here for like 2 hours!
whatev
that night we got settled in, ate our barbegued food(we cooked it on a little grill ourselves, i think i had a couple of pieces of what i like to call dry and sushi
after dinner, joelle and i taught every body how to play mafia!(very complicted mystery game) she knew about it to cause well shes from california!
we get to bed round 12/1 ish, only to be waken up 3 hrs later, apaently we were going to go and "greet the sun!"
so all 40 of us roll out bed and whinin and bitchin the entier way make the 4 k trek to sunrise clif!
i have to admit though once we got there and the sun started to tome up it was pretty cool, the view was absoulutly gorgeous, and we were on top of theentire mountain, looking out nothun was higher han us, and we could see the jungle srteaching out for mile tousands of feet below us!
after lunch then they wanted us to see all the clifz in phukradung, so we set off in a massive 20+ k loop around the plateu that woud bring us to sunset clif right around 6-7 o clock, i gotta evplain the landscape up there, cause it was soo wierd, in camp the place actually looked like northern california!
there were pine trees and shade everywhere, it had something to do with how only those plants grow cause of the elevation or something, but out in the trail, it looked like yosemite meets the savanah, i was evpectiong a cheetah to bolt out of the tall grass ad just take out yogi while hes stealing picanic basketsnext to the watefalls!
the only wild life we saw were leaches, and these crazy dear moose things, i mean these were huge, they couldent just be deer, they were built like amoose, and werent afraid of us, someone actually fell asleep in ahamock to wake up to one of those beasties sniffing her hat, we could even feed them aples if we wanted!
the people say that thiers elephants out there, but we didnt see any, and if there were, how ded they get up the mountain???? all that we saw were big piles of poop, so we figured the porters brought ti up to scare the farangs.
after a day of breathtaking sights we ll returned literally breathless and exhasted to camp to eat our self cooked shishkabobs again stayed up way too late and fell asleep freezing.
the next day we goke up at the godly hour of 11:30, to three german girls bangin on our door telling us we had to get up to play soccer after w chewed em out explaining how AMERICANS DONT PLAY SOCCER!
i settled with reffereeing(my god how do you spell that)only problem is i didnt know the rules, so i just kinda made em up as i went along it was fun that was our free day so all we reallydid was hangout and play guitar. i played with this girl named megan, shes been playing for like five years and is just one of those musical freeks, but still it was cool to learn songs and even teach her some like lola and tears in hevan, late that night we were playing outsde of the food store when one of the shopkeepers, busted out his harmonica t play with us it was very cool, thts realy all that happenend that night, i got to brush up on my spanish with oswaldo(brazil) and jullian(hes from oregon, but lives every other year in mexico or something like that)
if only my thai sills and mastery of the spanish language were flipped, id be a freakin rock star you know?
the next morn we packed ate some mama and started down, zach daniel and i all had this amazing plan to rent bikes again and be the first to get to the path, so we got the bikes, but cause we were so tierd from the days before and the bikes were so bad we acually got there last, and had to cath up with everyone already goin down, going down was way easier, but on the way i was making a particular jump, and at that exact point in tiome my very stury looking walking stick decides to snap crlean in two!
i eat it big time.
i fall flat on my back and slide a couple feet, and some how my sandals go flying like 15 yards down the trail(oh did i mention during the entire trip i was rockin my rainbow sandals), in the end i imaple my thigh on a broken bamboo shaft and tear up the back of my forearm pretty good,
then we decide to take our time, stopping at every rest stop to eat watermellon, and chill, eventually we make it down to the base all of us sore in placesw we didnt even know we had!
after lunch we all said our tearful goodbys(were hanging out for like ten days on the 17th so we dont really have to wait long)
i really dont reember much of the ride home or getting home for that matter, it was all ablur, really thers not mush interesting left to say, only that todays an early blog day cause im taking off for bangkok tommoro at 5am and coming bak on thurs, aparently the girls host moms want them to bike bangkok with them but need a studly man to keep them safe, now where the heck are they gonna get one of those?????
goodinght im tierd
see you in a week!
ryan
luck you!!!!!
so last time i left you dudes i was just about to head out to phrukadung, on our first rotary trip, so after alot of boring details of driving and ecetra....ecetra....ecetra!!!!
carol, sarah, maria, freya and i arrived in some kinda resort/ campground place, only to find we were the only ones there!!!
so after waiting for like 2 hrs or so, other exgn students started to trickle in, people were from france sweden, germany, brazil, canada, south africa, and rando parts of the us, and get this, a gil from claifornia! it was cool, joelle is from tahoe, and its funny cause we both use the same slang, its good to hear other people say dude!, sweet! and hecka!, you know.....
instead of just me.(from this point on, im just gonna say the persons name when im talking bout them,cause thats easy)
i cant begin to explain how cool it was to meet allt hose dudes, it was like wherever we where from and wahtever our differences were, we always had one thing in common, we were in freaking thailand!!!
so after we hung out and got to know eachother we went with some rotarty dudes and helped distribute blnkets and jackets to kids at the local school(its very cold were we wer)wich was really fun, after that we went back and gin cowed while listening to papart, hes the hole head of the rotary thing, tell us the rues and basically give us a preempive butt-chewing before we did any thing stupid!
so then we basically hung out that night singing karyoke, playing guitar and BSing, until past curfew, wich i kinda regret, cause that ountain almost killed me.
en cerrio.
(seriously, for all yous spanish speakers out there!)
so next mornign got up off of my board that i had been sleeping on(apparently in thailand, thai people have some wierd aversion to a soft bed, imean my bed was litterally a pice of wood with a sheet over it, its like that evrywhere!)
where was i?
sorry.
um got up, then showered (no hot water, figures...)
after drinkin some milo acive b(its like hot chocolate with vitamins in it, actually tastes prettly good) we set off to conquor phukradung!!!
we get to the base and they tell all of us its something like 5.5 k to the to, thats not bad, i think to my self SHUT UP TOKAY!!!!
sorry...5k is something like 2-3 miles ill be up in like an hr and half at most right?
wrong.
dead wrong...
so we start climbin this thing, itstarts at like a 25 degree angle and then out of nowhere the angle rockets to like 75, and here i am in my sweatshirt and beanie covered in sweat, while the porters have all of out bags suspended on bamboo poles while they carry every ting to the top on thiere shoulders!!!!
these dudes were absolute beasts!!!
i mean iter shoulders were as big and my thighs, and it wasnt just big guys, it was littlethai wemon too, wich made we feel reeeal many you can bet here i am, taking breaks evry couple mintes while some skinny guy with a tiger tatooed on his chest carrys my guitar, and4 other bags past me!!
so soon we get to our first rese stop, zach and i are one of the last to pull in, so we decide that making it up the mountain first istn that high on our prority list, and if were not comin in first, we might as well be last, wed rather fail miserably than succed marinally you know what i mean, so we just go at our own pace, we actually hiked with thiw one rotary dude, the funny thiong was a pretty big guy, and he was even more tied than us, but hed keep on puffin on those cigarettes, the entire time, after a cigarette break, he go right on wheezing up the mountain, we actually gave him a nickname, "somkey the bear" we named his kid "second hand"
so after getting passed by like for porters with the bags, zach and i decided we wanted to know what it felt like, so w ent and broke off two massive poles of bamboo, threw our jakets and caera bags over them and continued our COO-OONQUEST!
terrain evened out and returned to around 40/50 degrees, for about 2 k, by this time we know for sure we were coming in dead last!
we finnaly get to the last leg of te trip, we take like a 15 20 min break, then start up it to realize that the last km and a half is almost VERTICAL!!! im not joking at all, we could only use one hand to climb though, cause we had our bamboo poles, heck no we werent gonna wuss out and leave them behind, so finnaly after a good 5-6hrs we reach the top huffin and with smokey and second hand puffin right on our tails, thats when we wuss out, we find out its another 4 k across this pleatu to our campsite, so we look around, and find out that theres a bike rental place around the corner, so we rent ourselves a couple of bikes, still managing to cary our 15 foot poles bike to camp(i took a nasty fall, casue since i was using only my left hand to steer, when i used the brakes i wen tover the handlebars, luckly i didnt impale myself!, my knee and pride got pretty thrashed though...
and then we strut(limp) into camp like the concuors we are!
only to be greeted by questions like where the heck were you guys, weve been chillin here for like 2 hours!
whatev
that night we got settled in, ate our barbegued food(we cooked it on a little grill ourselves, i think i had a couple of pieces of what i like to call dry and sushi
after dinner, joelle and i taught every body how to play mafia!(very complicted mystery game) she knew about it to cause well shes from california!
we get to bed round 12/1 ish, only to be waken up 3 hrs later, apaently we were going to go and "greet the sun!"
so all 40 of us roll out bed and whinin and bitchin the entier way make the 4 k trek to sunrise clif!
i have to admit though once we got there and the sun started to tome up it was pretty cool, the view was absoulutly gorgeous, and we were on top of theentire mountain, looking out nothun was higher han us, and we could see the jungle srteaching out for mile tousands of feet below us!
after lunch then they wanted us to see all the clifz in phukradung, so we set off in a massive 20+ k loop around the plateu that woud bring us to sunset clif right around 6-7 o clock, i gotta evplain the landscape up there, cause it was soo wierd, in camp the place actually looked like northern california!
there were pine trees and shade everywhere, it had something to do with how only those plants grow cause of the elevation or something, but out in the trail, it looked like yosemite meets the savanah, i was evpectiong a cheetah to bolt out of the tall grass ad just take out yogi while hes stealing picanic basketsnext to the watefalls!
the only wild life we saw were leaches, and these crazy dear moose things, i mean these were huge, they couldent just be deer, they were built like amoose, and werent afraid of us, someone actually fell asleep in ahamock to wake up to one of those beasties sniffing her hat, we could even feed them aples if we wanted!
the people say that thiers elephants out there, but we didnt see any, and if there were, how ded they get up the mountain???? all that we saw were big piles of poop, so we figured the porters brought ti up to scare the farangs.
after a day of breathtaking sights we ll returned literally breathless and exhasted to camp to eat our self cooked shishkabobs again stayed up way too late and fell asleep freezing.
the next day we goke up at the godly hour of 11:30, to three german girls bangin on our door telling us we had to get up to play soccer after w chewed em out explaining how AMERICANS DONT PLAY SOCCER!
i settled with reffereeing(my god how do you spell that)only problem is i didnt know the rules, so i just kinda made em up as i went along it was fun that was our free day so all we reallydid was hangout and play guitar. i played with this girl named megan, shes been playing for like five years and is just one of those musical freeks, but still it was cool to learn songs and even teach her some like lola and tears in hevan, late that night we were playing outsde of the food store when one of the shopkeepers, busted out his harmonica t play with us it was very cool, thts realy all that happenend that night, i got to brush up on my spanish with oswaldo(brazil) and jullian(hes from oregon, but lives every other year in mexico or something like that)
if only my thai sills and mastery of the spanish language were flipped, id be a freakin rock star you know?
the next morn we packed ate some mama and started down, zach daniel and i all had this amazing plan to rent bikes again and be the first to get to the path, so we got the bikes, but cause we were so tierd from the days before and the bikes were so bad we acually got there last, and had to cath up with everyone already goin down, going down was way easier, but on the way i was making a particular jump, and at that exact point in tiome my very stury looking walking stick decides to snap crlean in two!
i eat it big time.
i fall flat on my back and slide a couple feet, and some how my sandals go flying like 15 yards down the trail(oh did i mention during the entire trip i was rockin my rainbow sandals), in the end i imaple my thigh on a broken bamboo shaft and tear up the back of my forearm pretty good,
then we decide to take our time, stopping at every rest stop to eat watermellon, and chill, eventually we make it down to the base all of us sore in placesw we didnt even know we had!
after lunch we all said our tearful goodbys(were hanging out for like ten days on the 17th so we dont really have to wait long)
i really dont reember much of the ride home or getting home for that matter, it was all ablur, really thers not mush interesting left to say, only that todays an early blog day cause im taking off for bangkok tommoro at 5am and coming bak on thurs, aparently the girls host moms want them to bike bangkok with them but need a studly man to keep them safe, now where the heck are they gonna get one of those?????
goodinght im tierd
see you in a week!
ryan
Saturday, November 24, 2007
badmition fight culb, fish murder and thanksgiving!(in that order)
welll ok heres my early blog, since im heading out tommoro for pukadung(rotary trip, all 38 of us are gonna go hiking nd camping at on of the highest peaks in thailand!)
hmm so befoer we get into the main things that happenexd this week ill just say that these are the most exciting things that appened, all the rest was usuall id ide my bike to school(180km on that bike now, the plastic parts of the pedal keep snappin off, im on my 3rd set now i think i just pedal to hard or something, i didnt go to school on monday i was feeling a little sick, cough cough...)
so anyways schools the same, on friday, we didnt have class, monks came to school to recive money frm all of the students for the temple,the cool thing was when we give the money we make this christmas type thing where the money hangs off of the branches then we give the tree to monks while they chant and pray over it it was pretty cool!
so on teusday, my host dadasks me f i like wan to go and play some badminton with him and some friends, sure sounds like fun, badminton is fun to play every now and then, and im not bad at it, zso why not?
my host dad goes upstairs to get redy, while i stay downstairs, he comes back five min later weraring TINY(these shorts are absoulutly idiculous!) baby blue storts and a green polo that was abot two sized to small, i started to burst out laghing, but quickly turned it into a massive coughing fit!
so after my coughing subsided, my host bro and i hop into the dads truck at around 8 or so so its really dark when when were driving, we drive for quite a while, and when we finnaly stop im lookng up at one of the scariest looking wharehouses ive ever seen, i mean this place is out in the middle of nowhere, its pitch black in side and this place looks like its been condemed!!!
so i was a little bit on edge as you can imagine, but m host dad gets out of the truck, ad tells us to follow him inside the creepy wharehouse, so we slide open the doors, and y host dad goes over to one of those circut breaker things, flips a toggle and flood lights start to flicker on revealing two badminton nets in the middle of this huge room that has trash and random odds and ends littered throughout, as if on cue the doors screeched open again, and 5 more thai old guys start to come throug the doors, decked out in the same bad 80s workout atire!
the first thing that pops into my head is
"dear god, ive wnderd into a badminton fght club" iwas just waiting for brad pit to step out of the shadows and start telling me how we dont talk about badmiton club, i mean these dudes were serious!
so i play for a while with my host bro while the other guys go through streaches to make sure they dont pull anything i guess, once they finished up, they took the court, and well these dudes were,,,
INCREADIBLE!!!!
these were the best badimnton players ive ever seen, i mean every hit was a spike! they were darting around the court like crazy!!
so while i ws watchin them, since i didnt know any of thier names i started to manke up names for the teams.
first off we have
the nudists- these guys both wore shorts that were actually shorter than thier shirts, making them look like they werent wearin any pants!
next was croughin tiger/hidden dragon, my host dad was crouchin tiger, hed be in front of his partner in a croughed position dodging the other teams spikes while hidden dragon would jump out of nowhere and make increadible returns!
and lastly we had the nam phong globe trotters, these dudes were all about the trick shots, behing the back, between the legs, you name it, and these dudes could do it!
so that was my night, sitting on top of an old table with my host br while these guys put on a awsome display of thier mastery of the game after it was over, my host dad shut off the breaker locked up the whare house and went on home like 6 grown men playing a kids game in an abandoned wharehouse in the midle of the night was perfectly normal!
sowendesday and thursday passed normally, but then on friday night after the thing with the monks, my host dad comes to me and tell me that were having a barbecue(oh whenever i tell you guys about interactions between me and people who only speak thai, im giving you the abridged version, my translation, you know?)
so i ask him what were eaitng, he takes me to the backyard to a buket, and inside IS THE BIGGEST FISH IVE EVER SEEN!!!
and its not a normal fish either, this is one of those fish tht doesent have gills, and is able to crawl around on land!
my host dad tell me that i have to kill it
uhhh no thanks
no you have to
no id actully rather not!
ryan you have to kill it
so i guess i was about to commit fish murder
my host dad goes to the house and brings me back a hammer, he tell be just to pick it up and whack it on the head!
one problem.... how?
imean the fish HAS NO GILLS!!!
how the heck to do i pick this thing up????!!!
he says just grab it by the tail, so well i rech for this beastie and some how it senses me coming and manages to JUMP out ot the foot tall bucket and, actally starts to CRAWL away from me, like a person!!!
at this point i feel terrible about killing man-fish, so my host had grabs it off of the ground an holds it out for me to smak on the head
i tell itim sorry, nd then i hit it, which sends man-fish into convulsions, whic means i have to whack it again!
i felt terrible.
i dont know why i felt bad either, i mean i go fishing all the time no problem, maybe it was just that i didnt catch the fish, so it wasnt my right to kill it, or tht the thing was actully able to crawl on dry land that fraked me out....
so i bet your all wondering "how did man-fish taste?"
well so my hd was grilling it, but then i guess he realized he was hungry NOW!
at this point im in the other room with my host bro, when i realize i cant hear the fish being cooked any more, so i go to chek it out, and i see my host dad bent over infront of the microwave smiling hungrily. and i realized that theres no fish on the grill anymore, i go to se what hes looking at and in the microwave if a halfcooked fish thats been choped in half(too big to fit you know) slowly spinning int he orange light.
awww no.
my host dad looks up at me and asks if it smells good, i kinda shake and nod my head at the same time, and he asks whats wrong, i point at the spinning fish halfs and try to xplain how a microwave isnt how you cook a fish, he tought i was just being funny, so when we sit gown to eat he keeps on urging me to try the fish(i was perfectly happy with my plate of white rice) but i had to try some, so wouldent insult him, so i take a bite, nd well...
it was basiclly warm sushi, you know how fish is supposed to flake apart in your mouth, this was slimy and i had to chew on it, i said it was delicious, but sadly i ate a big lunch at school sooooo, im gonna have to passs on this meal
my hd looked a little ssad, but i sure as heck wasnt eating ny more, so i politleyexcused my self from the table(later that night i sunck down for some dry ramen noodles, its called "mama" here)
ad that brings me to thanksgiving,
so i was pretty bummed about missing thnks giving, so today i prsuaded the girls to skip fruit carving class with me, then wed go to lotus(its kinda like a thai costco)and buy a bunch of food and just hangout at marias house, fter a bit of pleading they all agreed, and we set off to raid lotus
one hr later maria and i are staning in akitchen sauteeing onions mashing potatoes peeling carrots and carving pecooked chickens(no turkeys in thailand) having a blast, it was awesome, we made the food(it actually tasted alright, maria works in a kitchen in a hotel back home, so you know she helped me out a little bit while i did my rachel ray thing.
anyways food was good company was great,all in all, we had a really fun thanksgiving!
man its late!
uhhhhh ok ive got time for a thai lesson
ok
so this isnt really thai you can say, but thats kinda nitpicky
555
thats it.
555
ok so its actually thai internet slang
555
ok in thai the word for the #5 is "ha"
sooooo....
555=hahaha
get it?
its now my favorite thing to use in emails, well its oficially almost one in the morning on november the 25th, i gotta go, ive got a mountain to climb tommoro!
until next issue
ryan
555
hmm so befoer we get into the main things that happenexd this week ill just say that these are the most exciting things that appened, all the rest was usuall id ide my bike to school(180km on that bike now, the plastic parts of the pedal keep snappin off, im on my 3rd set now i think i just pedal to hard or something, i didnt go to school on monday i was feeling a little sick, cough cough...)
so anyways schools the same, on friday, we didnt have class, monks came to school to recive money frm all of the students for the temple,the cool thing was when we give the money we make this christmas type thing where the money hangs off of the branches then we give the tree to monks while they chant and pray over it it was pretty cool!
so on teusday, my host dadasks me f i like wan to go and play some badminton with him and some friends, sure sounds like fun, badminton is fun to play every now and then, and im not bad at it, zso why not?
my host dad goes upstairs to get redy, while i stay downstairs, he comes back five min later weraring TINY(these shorts are absoulutly idiculous!) baby blue storts and a green polo that was abot two sized to small, i started to burst out laghing, but quickly turned it into a massive coughing fit!
so after my coughing subsided, my host bro and i hop into the dads truck at around 8 or so so its really dark when when were driving, we drive for quite a while, and when we finnaly stop im lookng up at one of the scariest looking wharehouses ive ever seen, i mean this place is out in the middle of nowhere, its pitch black in side and this place looks like its been condemed!!!
so i was a little bit on edge as you can imagine, but m host dad gets out of the truck, ad tells us to follow him inside the creepy wharehouse, so we slide open the doors, and y host dad goes over to one of those circut breaker things, flips a toggle and flood lights start to flicker on revealing two badminton nets in the middle of this huge room that has trash and random odds and ends littered throughout, as if on cue the doors screeched open again, and 5 more thai old guys start to come throug the doors, decked out in the same bad 80s workout atire!
the first thing that pops into my head is
"dear god, ive wnderd into a badminton fght club" iwas just waiting for brad pit to step out of the shadows and start telling me how we dont talk about badmiton club, i mean these dudes were serious!
so i play for a while with my host bro while the other guys go through streaches to make sure they dont pull anything i guess, once they finished up, they took the court, and well these dudes were,,,
INCREADIBLE!!!!
these were the best badimnton players ive ever seen, i mean every hit was a spike! they were darting around the court like crazy!!
so while i ws watchin them, since i didnt know any of thier names i started to manke up names for the teams.
first off we have
the nudists- these guys both wore shorts that were actually shorter than thier shirts, making them look like they werent wearin any pants!
next was croughin tiger/hidden dragon, my host dad was crouchin tiger, hed be in front of his partner in a croughed position dodging the other teams spikes while hidden dragon would jump out of nowhere and make increadible returns!
and lastly we had the nam phong globe trotters, these dudes were all about the trick shots, behing the back, between the legs, you name it, and these dudes could do it!
so that was my night, sitting on top of an old table with my host br while these guys put on a awsome display of thier mastery of the game after it was over, my host dad shut off the breaker locked up the whare house and went on home like 6 grown men playing a kids game in an abandoned wharehouse in the midle of the night was perfectly normal!
sowendesday and thursday passed normally, but then on friday night after the thing with the monks, my host dad comes to me and tell me that were having a barbecue(oh whenever i tell you guys about interactions between me and people who only speak thai, im giving you the abridged version, my translation, you know?)
so i ask him what were eaitng, he takes me to the backyard to a buket, and inside IS THE BIGGEST FISH IVE EVER SEEN!!!
and its not a normal fish either, this is one of those fish tht doesent have gills, and is able to crawl around on land!
my host dad tell me that i have to kill it
uhhh no thanks
no you have to
no id actully rather not!
ryan you have to kill it
so i guess i was about to commit fish murder
my host dad goes to the house and brings me back a hammer, he tell be just to pick it up and whack it on the head!
one problem.... how?
imean the fish HAS NO GILLS!!!
how the heck to do i pick this thing up????!!!
he says just grab it by the tail, so well i rech for this beastie and some how it senses me coming and manages to JUMP out ot the foot tall bucket and, actally starts to CRAWL away from me, like a person!!!
at this point i feel terrible about killing man-fish, so my host had grabs it off of the ground an holds it out for me to smak on the head
i tell itim sorry, nd then i hit it, which sends man-fish into convulsions, whic means i have to whack it again!
i felt terrible.
i dont know why i felt bad either, i mean i go fishing all the time no problem, maybe it was just that i didnt catch the fish, so it wasnt my right to kill it, or tht the thing was actully able to crawl on dry land that fraked me out....
so i bet your all wondering "how did man-fish taste?"
well so my hd was grilling it, but then i guess he realized he was hungry NOW!
at this point im in the other room with my host bro, when i realize i cant hear the fish being cooked any more, so i go to chek it out, and i see my host dad bent over infront of the microwave smiling hungrily. and i realized that theres no fish on the grill anymore, i go to se what hes looking at and in the microwave if a halfcooked fish thats been choped in half(too big to fit you know) slowly spinning int he orange light.
awww no.
my host dad looks up at me and asks if it smells good, i kinda shake and nod my head at the same time, and he asks whats wrong, i point at the spinning fish halfs and try to xplain how a microwave isnt how you cook a fish, he tought i was just being funny, so when we sit gown to eat he keeps on urging me to try the fish(i was perfectly happy with my plate of white rice) but i had to try some, so wouldent insult him, so i take a bite, nd well...
it was basiclly warm sushi, you know how fish is supposed to flake apart in your mouth, this was slimy and i had to chew on it, i said it was delicious, but sadly i ate a big lunch at school sooooo, im gonna have to passs on this meal
my hd looked a little ssad, but i sure as heck wasnt eating ny more, so i politleyexcused my self from the table(later that night i sunck down for some dry ramen noodles, its called "mama" here)
ad that brings me to thanksgiving,
so i was pretty bummed about missing thnks giving, so today i prsuaded the girls to skip fruit carving class with me, then wed go to lotus(its kinda like a thai costco)and buy a bunch of food and just hangout at marias house, fter a bit of pleading they all agreed, and we set off to raid lotus
one hr later maria and i are staning in akitchen sauteeing onions mashing potatoes peeling carrots and carving pecooked chickens(no turkeys in thailand) having a blast, it was awesome, we made the food(it actually tasted alright, maria works in a kitchen in a hotel back home, so you know she helped me out a little bit while i did my rachel ray thing.
anyways food was good company was great,all in all, we had a really fun thanksgiving!
man its late!
uhhhhh ok ive got time for a thai lesson
ok
so this isnt really thai you can say, but thats kinda nitpicky
555
thats it.
555
ok so its actually thai internet slang
555
ok in thai the word for the #5 is "ha"
sooooo....
555=hahaha
get it?
its now my favorite thing to use in emails, well its oficially almost one in the morning on november the 25th, i gotta go, ive got a mountain to climb tommoro!
until next issue
ryan
555
Sunday, November 18, 2007
i live with dr doolittle
ok.
its wierd, i can never really think of what to ay right off the bat, i have to make nonsensical banter for a bit before i can jump into a topic, so dont mind me.....
hmmm
well i finnaly started school again this week, so i might as well start there, so as you might of read earlier, my school is 10km away from my new house, so iet up early in the orning to ride my bike(they offred to let me use the bus, but i wanted to see if i could o it you know?)
any ways, t this point i have officially rode 100km on that bike!
i could tell you what that is in miles, but lets face it km sounds way more impressive!
so school btw is still as boring as usual, i really do try, and i know its not the teachers faulst, but well my thai isnt exacktly to the point where i can understand whats goin on in our calculus(i only got to algebra 2, and i scraped by) or history lessons
but school isnt without its high points, one of my friends brings his guitar all the time, he also brings a uge book of thi songs, so during lunch and off periods hell teach me thai songs, its wierd, thai people LOVE to sing, and if they hear a song that they know, theyll just randomy brst out into song, so my friend will show me the strum pattern, and point at the chords then im supposed to chnge while the class sings along, its pretty fun actually, i just wish i knew what they were sayin!
another fun thing to do is play football, my mom and dad sent me an american football, so i could teach my friends
its funny, cause most thai people have only seen footballs on tv, so they have no clue how to throw one,
in thailand im a football god.
so while i teach them football, they teach me soccer(im errible) they have this game where one person stands in the middle and treis to steal the ball while everyone else stand in a circle passes th ball around, and laughs a the sorry dude in the center
im that sorry dude.
oh at school there are 2 other farang, its a husband and wifein thier 20s and thier from chile, ther names are cloudio and laurena, they live on campus like to watch movies and play guitar hero, you might have guessed but we have at least 2 things in common, so friday they invited me to coe over and play gh3(oh yeah guitar hero 3! im such a nerd) any ways they kicked my butt pretty well, and we were just hangin out in the "living room"(thier house is more or less a 2 story shack, which means a cornicopia of bugs and animals have free rieghn to come and go as they please)when laurena reaks out and points to the rafters, sitting right ove us is litterally the BIGEST spider i have ever seen! like i said she freaks and demands we kil it!
cloudio turs to me and goes, hey ryan i bet you cant kill that spider,
oh your on!
so i grab a shoe and take a swing at the celing and connect pretty solidly, i pull away the shoe and the spider isnt even phased! it goes to the other side of the rafter(imagine the hand from the adams family movie, hats how this thing moved!)
then jumps down onto the couch and somehow wedges itself into the cussions!
right now im scared out of my mind, that spider just took a hit from a very big shoe and shrugged it off like some greek mythical beast!
but i still hadto kill it, i could see itslegs(they are the lengthof my fingers) peekingthrought the cushions, so i thought quickly and grabbed a pai of kitchen sicors(i have no idea how to spell that word!) and shoved em in the space and chopped that beastie right in half!
i felt so hard core!
those scisors deserve to be mounted on a wall or something like that!
any ways then we went back to me losing in guitar hero.
hmm oh ill tell you more about my new house!
basically i live with dr doolittle, there are animals EVERYWHERE!
there are these tow little raty dogs, they honestly discust me, theres this beautiful golden retriver(which is wierd, cause in thailand 90% of dogs are thes nastly resident evil zombie dogs, their worse than mexican dogs) her name is coa neo, (which in thai means sticky rice)
then there are these 2 rotwiller gaurd dogs, that re locked up in cagesuntil night time, when they prowl the outside and gaurd the wharhouse(thes ones scare the hell out of me! they go nuts whenever i walk near the cages, one time i was playingcatch with my host bro, when i missed the ball andit rolled right next to the cage, the biggest dog reached out its arm and slammed it down on my football, you know just like in the sandlot!
i dont play catch in the backyard now.
then, since the downstairs is a machine parts store and its roll up doors are open all day animals find t hier way in all the time, we have an INFESTATION of tukays(ive told you about them before, but there thes huge lizards, just this short of being an iguana! they bite and make this sound that goes toooh-kaaay, in the middle of the night its kinda scary!) along with gekos and every insect imaginable!
the other night i was checking my email late at night,i was just about to go to bed when a CAT jumped off a shelf and landed on my desk!
the only problem is WE DONT HAVE A CAT!
apparently it got locked in when my host dad shut the doors.
i dont go into the itchen past 11o clock, cause THINGS live in there and im a pansy.
my week has been prety uneventful sorry bout that
it happens sometimes ya know oh hey i just remembered i got my hair cut, by another exchange student, i relly didnt want to pay 100 baht, so megan did it, not to bad considering we were both distracted by watchin greys anatomy.
oh hey i just finishe d downlowding some new videoson youtube check em out, this is the address
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=rynalias
hope ya like them.
so oh ive gotta teach you a thai phrase right? let me think
hey i cant belive i havent taught you guys this....
chai, and mai
chai=yes
mai-no easy enough, just remember mai means mai
ok im spent sorry bout the lame blog
until next week
mcstudly aka ryan
(lenters, that ones for you)
its wierd, i can never really think of what to ay right off the bat, i have to make nonsensical banter for a bit before i can jump into a topic, so dont mind me.....
hmmm
well i finnaly started school again this week, so i might as well start there, so as you might of read earlier, my school is 10km away from my new house, so iet up early in the orning to ride my bike(they offred to let me use the bus, but i wanted to see if i could o it you know?)
any ways, t this point i have officially rode 100km on that bike!
i could tell you what that is in miles, but lets face it km sounds way more impressive!
so school btw is still as boring as usual, i really do try, and i know its not the teachers faulst, but well my thai isnt exacktly to the point where i can understand whats goin on in our calculus(i only got to algebra 2, and i scraped by) or history lessons
but school isnt without its high points, one of my friends brings his guitar all the time, he also brings a uge book of thi songs, so during lunch and off periods hell teach me thai songs, its wierd, thai people LOVE to sing, and if they hear a song that they know, theyll just randomy brst out into song, so my friend will show me the strum pattern, and point at the chords then im supposed to chnge while the class sings along, its pretty fun actually, i just wish i knew what they were sayin!
another fun thing to do is play football, my mom and dad sent me an american football, so i could teach my friends
its funny, cause most thai people have only seen footballs on tv, so they have no clue how to throw one,
in thailand im a football god.
so while i teach them football, they teach me soccer(im errible) they have this game where one person stands in the middle and treis to steal the ball while everyone else stand in a circle passes th ball around, and laughs a the sorry dude in the center
im that sorry dude.
oh at school there are 2 other farang, its a husband and wifein thier 20s and thier from chile, ther names are cloudio and laurena, they live on campus like to watch movies and play guitar hero, you might have guessed but we have at least 2 things in common, so friday they invited me to coe over and play gh3(oh yeah guitar hero 3! im such a nerd) any ways they kicked my butt pretty well, and we were just hangin out in the "living room"(thier house is more or less a 2 story shack, which means a cornicopia of bugs and animals have free rieghn to come and go as they please)when laurena reaks out and points to the rafters, sitting right ove us is litterally the BIGEST spider i have ever seen! like i said she freaks and demands we kil it!
cloudio turs to me and goes, hey ryan i bet you cant kill that spider,
oh your on!
so i grab a shoe and take a swing at the celing and connect pretty solidly, i pull away the shoe and the spider isnt even phased! it goes to the other side of the rafter(imagine the hand from the adams family movie, hats how this thing moved!)
then jumps down onto the couch and somehow wedges itself into the cussions!
right now im scared out of my mind, that spider just took a hit from a very big shoe and shrugged it off like some greek mythical beast!
but i still hadto kill it, i could see itslegs(they are the lengthof my fingers) peekingthrought the cushions, so i thought quickly and grabbed a pai of kitchen sicors(i have no idea how to spell that word!) and shoved em in the space and chopped that beastie right in half!
i felt so hard core!
those scisors deserve to be mounted on a wall or something like that!
any ways then we went back to me losing in guitar hero.
hmm oh ill tell you more about my new house!
basically i live with dr doolittle, there are animals EVERYWHERE!
there are these tow little raty dogs, they honestly discust me, theres this beautiful golden retriver(which is wierd, cause in thailand 90% of dogs are thes nastly resident evil zombie dogs, their worse than mexican dogs) her name is coa neo, (which in thai means sticky rice)
then there are these 2 rotwiller gaurd dogs, that re locked up in cagesuntil night time, when they prowl the outside and gaurd the wharhouse(thes ones scare the hell out of me! they go nuts whenever i walk near the cages, one time i was playingcatch with my host bro, when i missed the ball andit rolled right next to the cage, the biggest dog reached out its arm and slammed it down on my football, you know just like in the sandlot!
i dont play catch in the backyard now.
then, since the downstairs is a machine parts store and its roll up doors are open all day animals find t hier way in all the time, we have an INFESTATION of tukays(ive told you about them before, but there thes huge lizards, just this short of being an iguana! they bite and make this sound that goes toooh-kaaay, in the middle of the night its kinda scary!) along with gekos and every insect imaginable!
the other night i was checking my email late at night,i was just about to go to bed when a CAT jumped off a shelf and landed on my desk!
the only problem is WE DONT HAVE A CAT!
apparently it got locked in when my host dad shut the doors.
i dont go into the itchen past 11o clock, cause THINGS live in there and im a pansy.
my week has been prety uneventful sorry bout that
it happens sometimes ya know oh hey i just remembered i got my hair cut, by another exchange student, i relly didnt want to pay 100 baht, so megan did it, not to bad considering we were both distracted by watchin greys anatomy.
oh hey i just finishe d downlowding some new videoson youtube check em out, this is the address
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=rynalias
hope ya like them.
so oh ive gotta teach you a thai phrase right? let me think
hey i cant belive i havent taught you guys this....
chai, and mai
chai=yes
mai-no easy enough, just remember mai means mai
ok im spent sorry bout the lame blog
until next week
mcstudly aka ryan
(lenters, that ones for you)
Sunday, November 11, 2007
a sexy 21 (thankyou health academy!)
ATTENTION THIS IS A RECAP
hey dudes its me again, so let me recap, lasime i rote i had just got to move in with my new host family and the next day i would work in the namphong hospitals ER
END OF RECAP
so my fist night right after i finished rithin my blog, i was chillin dowstairs just hangin out with my little host bro, watchin tv and whatever, for a couple of hours, the whole while my host dad is knockin back thai beer like a champ, hey whatever he does what he wants right?
so it gets around 11ish, my host bro has gone to bed, and i have to be up early for the hospital, so i go to put my guitar away, when my hd(host dad) , atthis point liberally inebreated stops me and sits me down, then he starts trying to speak english, try ing to tell me to sit there and not move after he was certain i wasntgonna excape he meandered over to his stereo and put on some thai music(its usually very poppy and upbeat) and comes back to me points at my guitar, and says you play.
now.
hmmm ok might as well i mean hes drunk so whatever i play wot sound too bad i guess, so i strted paying this blues kinda progression thingie i learned last week in the same key, and loe and behold it didnt sound half bad!
so here i am sitting in the kichen, beer bottles everywhere with my hd basting bad thai music, playing my guitar at arount 11:30 at night!
my hd was having a blast!
he was like clapping laughun and wavin his arms everywhere!
whenever id try to go upstairs hed be like mai mai! one more!
so i ended up playing for like 40 min with this guy in his kitchen before i finnaly got him to let me go upstairs and go to bed!
that was my first night with my hd.
the next day i strted work at the hospital and i met the doc id be folowing around, and this dude was hillarious, first off hes a ladyboy, and secondly he was psyhched to have a farang hngin out with him all day,!
he speaks increadible english, so we were able to talk about all of the cases that came in and out, nothing amazing happened that day, so im not gonna punish my fingers with the details, but the main thing was he promised to teach me to do some sutures when a case would come in!
hmm you know what in not gonn a go day by day anymore, cause welll im gonna write on the fly! be more freein my bogs! size the day! pee into the wind from now on!
(a little melodramatic?)
so befoer my hospital stories, i have to tell you gys about these things in america called "regulations" and "malpractice lawsuits" pretty much in ameica an eighteen year old whose worked in an er and or before might know some thingsdue to trainig an what not, but for the most part is there to observe, not to do the things that im about to tell you, man i love thailand!
and if you didnt know ive worked as an intern in the er in mercy san juan, and in the or at kaiser roseville, ive been trained in basic procedures and graduated the health academy at oakmont, so i know a bit about whats goin on in a hospital, and im not flying blind in there.
any ways i come into the ER on wednesday night(i went into kk earlier that day)
i drop off my bag change into some shoes, and walk in the door only to find the luckiest accident in the wrld(for me, not fo the drunk thai dude) here layin on a table in front of me is an already sedated motorcycle crash victim, well HE was drunk, would you still call him a victim?
idk
anyways this guy had 5 perfect looking lacerations all about 4-5inches long all over the middle of his left leg!
the doctor comes over says im right on time and pull me over to this gy, he does two stiches, looks at me asks "do you remember how i did that?"
i say yeah, he tell me to put some gloves on ans hands me the needle and tweezers!
ahhh!!!!!
i was so pumped i did a few, a little shakey, but after about four or so i started doin them no problem, the doctor just went back to reading the paper and let me finish up!
21.
21 stiches
he had 23 done, but the doctor did the first two.
i did 21 freakin stiches on this guys leg! and they looked very nice!
i mean it was almost sexy how cool it was!
right after that he asked if i wanted to scrubin on an apendectomy(take out the apendix) i said sure, so i scrubbed got dressed in the sterile gowns and everything, and stood right next to him as he pulled this ladys apendix out!
he said the next day he had a c-section to do and asked if i wantdto be the one to recive the baby from him, duh! oh yeah i said!
but it turns out she went into labor at like 1 am so so he let me scrub in on a srgery the next day where he tied this ladys tubes(ironic huh?)
just as he was finished befoer he closed the skin up he turned to me ag said hey i feel bad about you not being able to see the c section, so do you want to learn how to stich her up?
like i said before
so cool it was almost sexy...
so right there he taught me how o do surgical sutures, which are alot harder, but i mnaged to figure it out,
hmm
while im on the topic i might as well tell you about my other hospital experiance, he asked for my phone # so he could cll me if there were any surgerys that id want to see, so late sat night he calls telling me that theres a guy whos apendix has probably ruptured and he has to take it out, he wants me to come in, i say sure, i get there, scrub in, he starts operating, turns to e and askes me to hold the retractors(they keep the incision open while he does his thing) for him while he operates!
ok that was downright sexy, hot even!
ok enogh hospit al talk
ket me intro duce you to my new host family
Ma, is a very quiet thai woman shes nice to me
pa, likes the sauce, its great when hes drunk i mess with him and teach him english some how the words "refrigrator", and "vegetable" just get him every time! but you know atleast hes consistent....moving on
Maid: yeah how awkward is that! we have a maid! i go downstair to eat b-fast,fully intending to clean my room after i get a bite to eat, i come back and things are folded! i hate it, i can never find my clothes,and she puts them on hangers its frustrating, but she is a very nice lady all things aside
Ja: ive taken the libertly of givin this 13 year old an english name, i call him jack, it just rolls of th tongu easier you knoe?
ja sounds so abrupt and unfinished, like a hiccup, but jack is more pourpusefull i think. any ways hes a cool kid speaks good english, i sahre a room with him, he snore suprisingly loud for a kid that small
Non: honestly idk much about this dude, other than hes 18 like me, he just does. not. talk. to me at least, but im serous! this kid has not spoken five words the entire week ie been here, last night i tryed tosatrt a conversation, about vidoe games of all things!
and he just looked at me, put his headphones back on and went back to the computor!
whatever. jack and i are tight
hmm oh so today, we were supposed to have dance lessons again, buttye got cancelled, so i took that oprotunity to hook all the other exchange students on greys anatomy, i bought it on dvd, we must have watched atleast 7 episodes today!, we just hund out at marias house bought ice cream and veged from like 1030 till 530!
good day in my book!
hmm what else
i watched 3:10 to yuma last night, it was glorious
oh so a thai lesson i for got last week too
well here we go im only gonna give one phrase this time, cause i use it a great deal, and is almost as cool as mai pen rai(see 2 weeks ago)
alright redy?
ไม่รู้
ok its pronounced may-rhoo catchy huh?
and it means
"i dont know."
see a key phrase for any exchange student!
ok well ive gotta get up early tomoro, cause ive gotta go back to school, and my new house is 10k away and guess what im ridin my bike!it seemed like a good idea at the time
well
untill next week
ryan
AKA
lance armstrong!
hey dudes its me again, so let me recap, lasime i rote i had just got to move in with my new host family and the next day i would work in the namphong hospitals ER
END OF RECAP
so my fist night right after i finished rithin my blog, i was chillin dowstairs just hangin out with my little host bro, watchin tv and whatever, for a couple of hours, the whole while my host dad is knockin back thai beer like a champ, hey whatever he does what he wants right?
so it gets around 11ish, my host bro has gone to bed, and i have to be up early for the hospital, so i go to put my guitar away, when my hd(host dad) , atthis point liberally inebreated stops me and sits me down, then he starts trying to speak english, try ing to tell me to sit there and not move after he was certain i wasntgonna excape he meandered over to his stereo and put on some thai music(its usually very poppy and upbeat) and comes back to me points at my guitar, and says you play.
now.
hmmm ok might as well i mean hes drunk so whatever i play wot sound too bad i guess, so i strted paying this blues kinda progression thingie i learned last week in the same key, and loe and behold it didnt sound half bad!
so here i am sitting in the kichen, beer bottles everywhere with my hd basting bad thai music, playing my guitar at arount 11:30 at night!
my hd was having a blast!
he was like clapping laughun and wavin his arms everywhere!
whenever id try to go upstairs hed be like mai mai! one more!
so i ended up playing for like 40 min with this guy in his kitchen before i finnaly got him to let me go upstairs and go to bed!
that was my first night with my hd.
the next day i strted work at the hospital and i met the doc id be folowing around, and this dude was hillarious, first off hes a ladyboy, and secondly he was psyhched to have a farang hngin out with him all day,!
he speaks increadible english, so we were able to talk about all of the cases that came in and out, nothing amazing happened that day, so im not gonna punish my fingers with the details, but the main thing was he promised to teach me to do some sutures when a case would come in!
hmm you know what in not gonn a go day by day anymore, cause welll im gonna write on the fly! be more freein my bogs! size the day! pee into the wind from now on!
(a little melodramatic?)
so befoer my hospital stories, i have to tell you gys about these things in america called "regulations" and "malpractice lawsuits" pretty much in ameica an eighteen year old whose worked in an er and or before might know some thingsdue to trainig an what not, but for the most part is there to observe, not to do the things that im about to tell you, man i love thailand!
and if you didnt know ive worked as an intern in the er in mercy san juan, and in the or at kaiser roseville, ive been trained in basic procedures and graduated the health academy at oakmont, so i know a bit about whats goin on in a hospital, and im not flying blind in there.
any ways i come into the ER on wednesday night(i went into kk earlier that day)
i drop off my bag change into some shoes, and walk in the door only to find the luckiest accident in the wrld(for me, not fo the drunk thai dude) here layin on a table in front of me is an already sedated motorcycle crash victim, well HE was drunk, would you still call him a victim?
idk
anyways this guy had 5 perfect looking lacerations all about 4-5inches long all over the middle of his left leg!
the doctor comes over says im right on time and pull me over to this gy, he does two stiches, looks at me asks "do you remember how i did that?"
i say yeah, he tell me to put some gloves on ans hands me the needle and tweezers!
ahhh!!!!!
i was so pumped i did a few, a little shakey, but after about four or so i started doin them no problem, the doctor just went back to reading the paper and let me finish up!
21.
21 stiches
he had 23 done, but the doctor did the first two.
i did 21 freakin stiches on this guys leg! and they looked very nice!
i mean it was almost sexy how cool it was!
right after that he asked if i wanted to scrubin on an apendectomy(take out the apendix) i said sure, so i scrubbed got dressed in the sterile gowns and everything, and stood right next to him as he pulled this ladys apendix out!
he said the next day he had a c-section to do and asked if i wantdto be the one to recive the baby from him, duh! oh yeah i said!
but it turns out she went into labor at like 1 am so so he let me scrub in on a srgery the next day where he tied this ladys tubes(ironic huh?)
just as he was finished befoer he closed the skin up he turned to me ag said hey i feel bad about you not being able to see the c section, so do you want to learn how to stich her up?
like i said before
so cool it was almost sexy...
so right there he taught me how o do surgical sutures, which are alot harder, but i mnaged to figure it out,
hmm
while im on the topic i might as well tell you about my other hospital experiance, he asked for my phone # so he could cll me if there were any surgerys that id want to see, so late sat night he calls telling me that theres a guy whos apendix has probably ruptured and he has to take it out, he wants me to come in, i say sure, i get there, scrub in, he starts operating, turns to e and askes me to hold the retractors(they keep the incision open while he does his thing) for him while he operates!
ok that was downright sexy, hot even!
ok enogh hospit al talk
ket me intro duce you to my new host family
Ma, is a very quiet thai woman shes nice to me
pa, likes the sauce, its great when hes drunk i mess with him and teach him english some how the words "refrigrator", and "vegetable" just get him every time! but you know atleast hes consistent....moving on
Maid: yeah how awkward is that! we have a maid! i go downstair to eat b-fast,fully intending to clean my room after i get a bite to eat, i come back and things are folded! i hate it, i can never find my clothes,and she puts them on hangers its frustrating, but she is a very nice lady all things aside
Ja: ive taken the libertly of givin this 13 year old an english name, i call him jack, it just rolls of th tongu easier you knoe?
ja sounds so abrupt and unfinished, like a hiccup, but jack is more pourpusefull i think. any ways hes a cool kid speaks good english, i sahre a room with him, he snore suprisingly loud for a kid that small
Non: honestly idk much about this dude, other than hes 18 like me, he just does. not. talk. to me at least, but im serous! this kid has not spoken five words the entire week ie been here, last night i tryed tosatrt a conversation, about vidoe games of all things!
and he just looked at me, put his headphones back on and went back to the computor!
whatever. jack and i are tight
hmm oh so today, we were supposed to have dance lessons again, buttye got cancelled, so i took that oprotunity to hook all the other exchange students on greys anatomy, i bought it on dvd, we must have watched atleast 7 episodes today!, we just hund out at marias house bought ice cream and veged from like 1030 till 530!
good day in my book!
hmm what else
i watched 3:10 to yuma last night, it was glorious
oh so a thai lesson i for got last week too
well here we go im only gonna give one phrase this time, cause i use it a great deal, and is almost as cool as mai pen rai(see 2 weeks ago)
alright redy?
ไม่รู้
ok its pronounced may-rhoo catchy huh?
and it means
"i dont know."
see a key phrase for any exchange student!
ok well ive gotta get up early tomoro, cause ive gotta go back to school, and my new house is 10k away and guess what im ridin my bike!it seemed like a good idea at the time
well
untill next week
ryan
AKA
lance armstrong!
Sunday, November 4, 2007
i honestly dont have ny wittly titles this time...sory
ok, i really dont know how to start this one or open the topic or what not, so i think im just gonna jump into it toady alright?
thanks, this one might be a little jumbled up, cause i dont really remember the time line so ill just type it as it comes to me...
alright
ok.
just a sec.
got it.
so in thailand people dont celebrate halloween, and well the other exchange students and i really could not let it go uncelebrted, so maria(im just goin to start using my friends names, cause"my friend", is simply to hard to type and i have to admit im kinda lazy...
any ways she organized a scavenger hut/ race across the entire city of khon kaen using all th places that we hang ut at, it was awesome, we were running all over town, jumping ito busses, taking pics with our cab drivers, basically being idiot farangs!
my team won,any ways, we took the lead at the guitar hereo/kareoke stop!
and we won free swensons from maria, swensons is amazing, have i never told you guys about it?
its like leatherbys. and its a major chain thats in like evey mall!
oh so on wednesday nights i usually have to attend a rotary meeting(i say usually beacause sometimes ill plead my host mom and i wont have to go)
but i HAD to go to this one, cause some big-wig rotary dude was sowing up, and he HAD to have a picture with me!
ok whateve, these things USUALLY last like an hour and a half, ill just take a book, and itll be over befoer you knoe it right?
WRONG!
i am not joking or exagerating in any way(not that i do that anyways)
but i ended up sitting in the corner of the resturaut, trying to to read(drunken that kareoke kan get on your nerves) for 4 hours and 29 min, the 30th min i took the picture and got the hell out of there!after about three hours my host mom asked if i was bored or if iwas having fun, i looked at her balnk faced and made the shoot-myself-in-the-head-motion to her, she thought that was hillarious aparently...
hey ive got good news though, ready
IM NOT GOING TO SCHOOL NEXT WEEK EITHER!!!!!!
I KNOW WHAT YOUR THINKING, BUT ACTTUALLY MY HOST MOMS FRIEND IS A NURSE AT THE LOCAL HOSPITAL, SO NExt(oops left the caps lock on)week instead of goin to schol i get to folow her and othr doctors aroung and learn from them!
thats awesome for me, cause i interned in the er at mercy san juan in sac, and i really miss the hospital!
what else, ill be right back, im gonna get some water
o im back
what else, oh so ive started to take dance lessons with the other exchnge students, marias host mom ows a dance studio, and were learning the cha-cha(i recently found out that i can move my hips around quite well acually, i impressed her host mom i think) why, cause well thi dances honestly bore the snot out of me, its wierd in thai dance, you bendyour fingers back as far as you can, and wave your hands around, ok that was a little calous, but thats what it looks like, and its really bad for yur hands, and i have noiclination to do that to my self.
next subject
oh also we have fruit carving lessons!
wierd huh?
here i guess its like some kina art form, carving a cantolope to look likre a rose, sounds cool, but really im the worst student out of the 5 of us, somehow all of my carrots, cucumbers and melons turn out to be jackolanterns, when they should be mountains and swirls and flowers
but thats ok, cause the teacher likes me, she gets a good laugh out of the faces and random things i carve so its all good i guess
last thing on the list is since ive now been here for THREE MONTHS!(one third of the w done i guess)
i change host familys, i hung out with one of my new host bros the other day, and we started talking, and
1 he speaks english surprisingly well
2 we like the same cartoons
3 i have the maturity of a 13 year old, and he IS a 13 year old
good match huh?
my new house is like 3 stories, my host parents have a scooter shop dowstairs, the familys great, the other bro is 18, but hes really shy i guess, cause we havent talked that much,the only downside is i have to share a room with older bro, and that this house is about 10 km away frm the school, they were gonna put me on a bus, but i told them no id just bike it!
its not too bad, i did it this morning nd realy impressed my host om, she was betting agains me aparently!
oh and alo i live within walking distance of the BIGGEST and coolest ninght market ive ever been to!
anyways i should probably get off the comp and get to know my new family more, so untill next week..
ryan
oh i just remembered i got to got to the border of laos and thailand the other day to visit the thailand govt office for my visa, vietnamese food rocks!
hmm thats all
bye
man i need a haicut.
thanks, this one might be a little jumbled up, cause i dont really remember the time line so ill just type it as it comes to me...
alright
ok.
just a sec.
got it.
so in thailand people dont celebrate halloween, and well the other exchange students and i really could not let it go uncelebrted, so maria(im just goin to start using my friends names, cause"my friend", is simply to hard to type and i have to admit im kinda lazy...
any ways she organized a scavenger hut/ race across the entire city of khon kaen using all th places that we hang ut at, it was awesome, we were running all over town, jumping ito busses, taking pics with our cab drivers, basically being idiot farangs!
my team won,any ways, we took the lead at the guitar hereo/kareoke stop!
and we won free swensons from maria, swensons is amazing, have i never told you guys about it?
its like leatherbys. and its a major chain thats in like evey mall!
oh so on wednesday nights i usually have to attend a rotary meeting(i say usually beacause sometimes ill plead my host mom and i wont have to go)
but i HAD to go to this one, cause some big-wig rotary dude was sowing up, and he HAD to have a picture with me!
ok whateve, these things USUALLY last like an hour and a half, ill just take a book, and itll be over befoer you knoe it right?
WRONG!
i am not joking or exagerating in any way(not that i do that anyways)
but i ended up sitting in the corner of the resturaut, trying to to read(drunken that kareoke kan get on your nerves) for 4 hours and 29 min, the 30th min i took the picture and got the hell out of there!after about three hours my host mom asked if i was bored or if iwas having fun, i looked at her balnk faced and made the shoot-myself-in-the-head-motion to her, she thought that was hillarious aparently...
hey ive got good news though, ready
IM NOT GOING TO SCHOOL NEXT WEEK EITHER!!!!!!
I KNOW WHAT YOUR THINKING, BUT ACTTUALLY MY HOST MOMS FRIEND IS A NURSE AT THE LOCAL HOSPITAL, SO NExt(oops left the caps lock on)week instead of goin to schol i get to folow her and othr doctors aroung and learn from them!
thats awesome for me, cause i interned in the er at mercy san juan in sac, and i really miss the hospital!
what else, ill be right back, im gonna get some water
o im back
what else, oh so ive started to take dance lessons with the other exchnge students, marias host mom ows a dance studio, and were learning the cha-cha(i recently found out that i can move my hips around quite well acually, i impressed her host mom i think) why, cause well thi dances honestly bore the snot out of me, its wierd in thai dance, you bendyour fingers back as far as you can, and wave your hands around, ok that was a little calous, but thats what it looks like, and its really bad for yur hands, and i have noiclination to do that to my self.
next subject
oh also we have fruit carving lessons!
wierd huh?
here i guess its like some kina art form, carving a cantolope to look likre a rose, sounds cool, but really im the worst student out of the 5 of us, somehow all of my carrots, cucumbers and melons turn out to be jackolanterns, when they should be mountains and swirls and flowers
but thats ok, cause the teacher likes me, she gets a good laugh out of the faces and random things i carve so its all good i guess
last thing on the list is since ive now been here for THREE MONTHS!(one third of the w done i guess)
i change host familys, i hung out with one of my new host bros the other day, and we started talking, and
1 he speaks english surprisingly well
2 we like the same cartoons
3 i have the maturity of a 13 year old, and he IS a 13 year old
good match huh?
my new house is like 3 stories, my host parents have a scooter shop dowstairs, the familys great, the other bro is 18, but hes really shy i guess, cause we havent talked that much,the only downside is i have to share a room with older bro, and that this house is about 10 km away frm the school, they were gonna put me on a bus, but i told them no id just bike it!
its not too bad, i did it this morning nd realy impressed my host om, she was betting agains me aparently!
oh and alo i live within walking distance of the BIGGEST and coolest ninght market ive ever been to!
anyways i should probably get off the comp and get to know my new family more, so untill next week..
ryan
oh i just remembered i got to got to the border of laos and thailand the other day to visit the thailand govt office for my visa, vietnamese food rocks!
hmm thats all
bye
man i need a haicut.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
so i missed my buss stop, and i find my self trudging through downtown nam phong trying to get to my hose, when i take stock of myself,
i realize
1 im carrying a massive backpakers backpack full of wet clothes and my guitar
2 i havent showered like 2 days
3 ive got jungle mud in my hair and on my clothes
4im wearing the cleanest clothes ive got (which are not clean at all)
5 i smell terrible
6 my nalis are painted
7 ive gotta be at a meeting in one hr to renw my visa, or i get sent home
8 the last thing i ate was boilded chicken feet over 15 hours ago
9 and i couldent be happier
how did i get in this position
well let me enlighten you
(and mom dont worry i made it to the meeting)
so this week was pretty much the same as the last, only i finnaly started to take thai lessons my name in thai is
the lessons are ok, im still learning the alpha bet, theres 47 characters! so it might take a while!
anyways, at the end of the week,i was told i was going to some trip with the other exchange students, we really didnt know where we were going at all, but we had an ideqa that we were going camping and i was kinda afraid of what that ment, seeing as we were in thailand, and the only place we could really camp was the jungle!
so friday, i went to khon kaen to stay the night with the other exchange students and leave in the morning, so that night, we went to this carnavale that was going on at the lake, first we lit candles in these bouquts, and floated them down the lake(its a buddhist tradition and looked beautiful) they only do it twice a year, then and in november!
then we had the brilliant idea to go into a haunted house thing that was set up,
for those of you who know me, you know that underneath this manly physique im pretty much a pansy, so anyways w go in and they have things dropping from the celings (which are scary on its own) but the scariest thing there was this thai dude who had bones painted on this body(there was a blacklight on) who chased and came pretty close to molesting me until i threw that thai carnie into some 12 year olds and ran away!
ok i over reacted, but theres nothin scarier that a thai carnie!
the next morning we left and had a very long boribng bus ride to some ladys house, well actually they played some movie that was dubbed in thai, and those kind of movies are hillarious !(all the voices sound the same
hmmm when we got there it was a massive house, but what really drew my attention was thw yard, beside its beaing huge and full of plands fountains and a gazeebo, there were about ten little two man tents piched uyp all ove the lawn!
so i guess i didnt have to worry about the tigers, as much as i had to worry about the sprinkler system!
after exchanging pleasentries with our hosts we took off again to visit this massive resort(owned by the lady who owned th house) and our rotary guides decided, that instead of sleeping in the tents weed stay there, (finne by me!)
so after that we went out hiking, which led us to this massive river that we were alowed to plya in!
so pretty much i have to ad mit i am now ryan the rver king, becasue basically i forded the freezing watters and when i got suck, i actually CLIMBED VINES THAT WERE HANGING FROM A TREE and swung to the side of a massive iverturned tree, climbed the stump(it was like a ten foot climb in serious!!!!) and used the thing as a bridge to get to the other side!!!!!!!!
oh yeah i felt like freakin' indianda jones!!!!!!
after my conquest we went to a memorial for a some battle ontop of this one hill, it was awesome it overlooked the valley down below, and the place was absolutly increadible!
later that night we had dinner at the resort then all the exchange students went to a spot by the lake to hang out, play guitar and cards,snd after that, i was walking back to my room with my guitar when i ran into this dude with a guitar, he asked me if i wanted to play with him, i said sure, we started talking and his nmae was ryu(awesomw, just like street fighter!!!) he lives in bkk, hes chinnesse and has been playing guitar for 13 years and let me tell you this dude was amazing!!!
he was a little bit drunk, and he would periodically take his shirt off to play certain songs, but he was so cool!
the funny thing was he could play amazingly and everything, but he didnt know any of the words to the american songs,hed just make up words that ryhmed, so id sing and play my guitar like a jimbae, while he shredded his way through tears in heavean, texas flood, hotel california(this son had an awesome drum part that was fun to play) wonderwall, and just tons more, around midnight, i was tierd, so i said sawahdee krup and left him to his shirtless guitar playing and went to bed!
the next morning right befoer we took off to go hiking again i ran into Ryu again, words to me were ryan, i think im a little sick, was i drunk last night?"
i laughed and told him yes, and piled into the van to go to this waterfall!
when w got there, we foud out the place had a cave, so we went to explore, this place was huge, it went about 10km into the mountain, we couldent go the whole way, cause the thai dude that was leading us said that rains made it flodded!
but the part that we went to was amazing, there were bats, stalagtite/mites and in some spots was pitch-cant-see-your-hand-infront-of-your-face-balck!
after we left the cave we wentout to swim in the waterfall, and inderneath the fall, we found an underwater cave and it was soooo cool!(we carved out intitals on the wall!)
so we swam and fed the fish and swung on vines for a couple of hours before we headded home,thuis time to the tents, after dinner some monks came to pray the lady wo owns the houses mom, she died 100 days ago, and its tradition for monks to come and pray after 100 days, pretty sweet!
after that the five of us(sarah, maria, freya and cart(art is our thai friend hes cool)) started to get bored hangin out...
this is where i got my nails painted...
pink and lime green, the girls all agreed that i have very pretty feet, so i went ahead with the toenails too(i had to remove the paint on my finger nails for the meeting, but the toes remaim!)
after that we went hunting for fire flys, but wereunsuccesful in our mission and went to bed losers....
the next morning i woke up and had a breakfast of dragonfruit(its this awesome fruit thats pink and green on the outside, but white black on the inside! delicious!)
and we left to go and visit some mountain temples, the second one was way up in the mountains, and had this old monk that was literaly tatooed head to toe in charge.
then we went to another waterfall, this one was even cooler thatn before this one we had to wike over this rock bed, but the cool thing was that the rock bed wasnt total rock, it was more like honeycombed rock bridge that is 10 feet over the raging water, you had to hop from rock to rock to get to the water fall, until we got to the water falland climbed down to the bottem and swam for a while, after that we were allowed to ride in th back of this safari like pickup as it took us the 20km to the highway, the waterfall was in the middle of a valley, so to get out we had to go over a mountain or two, and every bend we turned around was higher than the last, and the view just kept on getting better and better as we flew(i really mean that this driver was nuts!)across the mountainside, calling out to the villagers!
after that we were all beat, so we got back in the vans and drove home, we got back to khon kaen around 8 o clock, and i was exhasted, so i stayed the night at carts house, and he showed me his favorite food, and that is, gai tao, boiled chicked feet!!!!!
they actually werent half bad, considering i was eating skin and cartilage, kinda tasted like chiken!
i imeadiatly konked out abd woke up late, threw on dirty clothes and hauled myself into the bus(th "busses" are actually pickups with benches and roofs on them)and well thats my story, you know the end already!
hmmm oh yeah a thai word/ phrase
oh hers one i use often!
"ไปนอน"
"pai nohn krup/kaa" (kaa if your a girl and krup if your a dude)
what it means is
"im goin to bed!"
i use it alot, cause welll... i get tierd!
there you go another thai lesson!
well that about sums it up
oh i met a girl,
but i bet you dont want to hear about that though
till nex time!
ryan
i realize
1 im carrying a massive backpakers backpack full of wet clothes and my guitar
2 i havent showered like 2 days
3 ive got jungle mud in my hair and on my clothes
4im wearing the cleanest clothes ive got (which are not clean at all)
5 i smell terrible
6 my nalis are painted
7 ive gotta be at a meeting in one hr to renw my visa, or i get sent home
8 the last thing i ate was boilded chicken feet over 15 hours ago
9 and i couldent be happier
how did i get in this position
well let me enlighten you
(and mom dont worry i made it to the meeting)
so this week was pretty much the same as the last, only i finnaly started to take thai lessons my name in thai is
the lessons are ok, im still learning the alpha bet, theres 47 characters! so it might take a while!
anyways, at the end of the week,i was told i was going to some trip with the other exchange students, we really didnt know where we were going at all, but we had an ideqa that we were going camping and i was kinda afraid of what that ment, seeing as we were in thailand, and the only place we could really camp was the jungle!
so friday, i went to khon kaen to stay the night with the other exchange students and leave in the morning, so that night, we went to this carnavale that was going on at the lake, first we lit candles in these bouquts, and floated them down the lake(its a buddhist tradition and looked beautiful) they only do it twice a year, then and in november!
then we had the brilliant idea to go into a haunted house thing that was set up,
for those of you who know me, you know that underneath this manly physique im pretty much a pansy, so anyways w go in and they have things dropping from the celings (which are scary on its own) but the scariest thing there was this thai dude who had bones painted on this body(there was a blacklight on) who chased and came pretty close to molesting me until i threw that thai carnie into some 12 year olds and ran away!
ok i over reacted, but theres nothin scarier that a thai carnie!
the next morning we left and had a very long boribng bus ride to some ladys house, well actually they played some movie that was dubbed in thai, and those kind of movies are hillarious !(all the voices sound the same
hmmm when we got there it was a massive house, but what really drew my attention was thw yard, beside its beaing huge and full of plands fountains and a gazeebo, there were about ten little two man tents piched uyp all ove the lawn!
so i guess i didnt have to worry about the tigers, as much as i had to worry about the sprinkler system!
after exchanging pleasentries with our hosts we took off again to visit this massive resort(owned by the lady who owned th house) and our rotary guides decided, that instead of sleeping in the tents weed stay there, (finne by me!)
so after that we went out hiking, which led us to this massive river that we were alowed to plya in!
so pretty much i have to ad mit i am now ryan the rver king, becasue basically i forded the freezing watters and when i got suck, i actually CLIMBED VINES THAT WERE HANGING FROM A TREE and swung to the side of a massive iverturned tree, climbed the stump(it was like a ten foot climb in serious!!!!) and used the thing as a bridge to get to the other side!!!!!!!!
oh yeah i felt like freakin' indianda jones!!!!!!
after my conquest we went to a memorial for a some battle ontop of this one hill, it was awesome it overlooked the valley down below, and the place was absolutly increadible!
later that night we had dinner at the resort then all the exchange students went to a spot by the lake to hang out, play guitar and cards,snd after that, i was walking back to my room with my guitar when i ran into this dude with a guitar, he asked me if i wanted to play with him, i said sure, we started talking and his nmae was ryu(awesomw, just like street fighter!!!) he lives in bkk, hes chinnesse and has been playing guitar for 13 years and let me tell you this dude was amazing!!!
he was a little bit drunk, and he would periodically take his shirt off to play certain songs, but he was so cool!
the funny thing was he could play amazingly and everything, but he didnt know any of the words to the american songs,hed just make up words that ryhmed, so id sing and play my guitar like a jimbae, while he shredded his way through tears in heavean, texas flood, hotel california(this son had an awesome drum part that was fun to play) wonderwall, and just tons more, around midnight, i was tierd, so i said sawahdee krup and left him to his shirtless guitar playing and went to bed!
the next morning right befoer we took off to go hiking again i ran into Ryu again, words to me were ryan, i think im a little sick, was i drunk last night?"
i laughed and told him yes, and piled into the van to go to this waterfall!
when w got there, we foud out the place had a cave, so we went to explore, this place was huge, it went about 10km into the mountain, we couldent go the whole way, cause the thai dude that was leading us said that rains made it flodded!
but the part that we went to was amazing, there were bats, stalagtite/mites and in some spots was pitch-cant-see-your-hand-infront-of-your-face-balck!
after we left the cave we wentout to swim in the waterfall, and inderneath the fall, we found an underwater cave and it was soooo cool!(we carved out intitals on the wall!)
so we swam and fed the fish and swung on vines for a couple of hours before we headded home,thuis time to the tents, after dinner some monks came to pray the lady wo owns the houses mom, she died 100 days ago, and its tradition for monks to come and pray after 100 days, pretty sweet!
after that the five of us(sarah, maria, freya and cart(art is our thai friend hes cool)) started to get bored hangin out...
this is where i got my nails painted...
pink and lime green, the girls all agreed that i have very pretty feet, so i went ahead with the toenails too(i had to remove the paint on my finger nails for the meeting, but the toes remaim!)
after that we went hunting for fire flys, but wereunsuccesful in our mission and went to bed losers....
the next morning i woke up and had a breakfast of dragonfruit(its this awesome fruit thats pink and green on the outside, but white black on the inside! delicious!)
and we left to go and visit some mountain temples, the second one was way up in the mountains, and had this old monk that was literaly tatooed head to toe in charge.
then we went to another waterfall, this one was even cooler thatn before this one we had to wike over this rock bed, but the cool thing was that the rock bed wasnt total rock, it was more like honeycombed rock bridge that is 10 feet over the raging water, you had to hop from rock to rock to get to the water fall, until we got to the water falland climbed down to the bottem and swam for a while, after that we were allowed to ride in th back of this safari like pickup as it took us the 20km to the highway, the waterfall was in the middle of a valley, so to get out we had to go over a mountain or two, and every bend we turned around was higher than the last, and the view just kept on getting better and better as we flew(i really mean that this driver was nuts!)across the mountainside, calling out to the villagers!
after that we were all beat, so we got back in the vans and drove home, we got back to khon kaen around 8 o clock, and i was exhasted, so i stayed the night at carts house, and he showed me his favorite food, and that is, gai tao, boiled chicked feet!!!!!
they actually werent half bad, considering i was eating skin and cartilage, kinda tasted like chiken!
i imeadiatly konked out abd woke up late, threw on dirty clothes and hauled myself into the bus(th "busses" are actually pickups with benches and roofs on them)and well thats my story, you know the end already!
hmmm oh yeah a thai word/ phrase
oh hers one i use often!
"ไปนอน"
"pai nohn krup/kaa" (kaa if your a girl and krup if your a dude)
what it means is
"im goin to bed!"
i use it alot, cause welll... i get tierd!
there you go another thai lesson!
well that about sums it up
oh i met a girl,
but i bet you dont want to hear about that though
till nex time!
ryan
Monday, October 22, 2007
an adventure cut short
ok so last time I left off, I had just gotten into Bangkok,
so heres what happened, so I got there the first night, ind I had 2items of business that I had to take care of,
1ticket(for te concert)
2 a place to stay, so I was supposed to stay with another exchange student, but he was called away last minite to go to an English camp early the next morning(he would miss the concert)
so after I go there, I met up with him, got my ticket, and set out looking for a place fot me to stay the week, “I know he says, you cvan stay on khosarn road!
(khosarn road is basically were all the backpackers stay, it’s a road with youth hostels and shops, its like a major street party!
Sop when we arrived there, I was blown away! It was like dreadlocks and sandals as far as the eye could see, this was hippie central(I LOVED IT!!!)
There were shops, resturaunts and dance clubs all down the road, so we set out to look for a hostel for me to sleep in,when we finnaly found one, it was called the MARCO POLO YOUTH HOSTEL, and was 300 bhat a night(like 9 bucks, also the room had a/c which I paid alittle extra for, so my friend and I went to see the room after i checked in(in hindsight we probably should have looked at it BEFORE i checked in)
we got to the room to see it, i opened the door and burst out laughing!
the room was entirely taken up by the bed inside, there was a 2x2 square for the door to swing in to stand on, but other than that, the room was a bed!
then i turned to look at the bathroom, first off there was no door it was a broom closet with a toilet in the middle(no sink) so i was puzzled, "where was the shower?"
i looked up, and a shower head was poking out the wall right over the toilet!
talk about 2 birds with one stone!
haha!
so whatever, its a place to sleep, and it does have a/c so itll do...
after that alex and i walked down the road, just taking in the sights, things like that, after dinner we went to a to some dance place, that was fun, after dancing like crazy with wierd thai people till like 3am
we went our seperate ways, me to my cubicle, and him to his acutally nicer and cheaper room across the road, the next day id try to change hostels and get his room.
so i woke up early the next day bought banna waffles from some old lady in the street for breakfast, and got a new room across the road, since i was in bangkok, i decided to go and see the city, and see the sights, and the best way to to get aroud is the bts.
whats the bts?
im glad you asked
i think it stand for bangkok transport system, or "Big Train in Sky" or sokmething like that
but what it is is a SKYTRAIN!!!
its basically a faster version of the monolith at disney land, is it called the monolith, or am i getting cofused, no matter you know what i mean!
but so i got on this thing and rode for quite a while, just seeing bkk form like 5 stories up, until i got to a shopping center, then bought some english books and went looking for a place to eat, after lunch i walked all over bkk, just following the tracks of th bts, so id be able to find my way back,
that night i got a table right at the street line, and just read ate my pad-thai(its famous there)and did some serious people watching, it was funny you could tell which people just got there, cause they were draggin massive backpacks around and looking hopelessly lost, and you could tell the people that had been there too long cause they had massive beards, dreadlocks and were wearing clothes that looked like they haddent seen a washer in a month!
i would of gone out again that nigh, but i didnt have my wingman with me you know so
i just checked in early, and started to think(scary huh?)
what id do tommoro, when i checked my bank accnt, and reaklized that if i were to stay for the next4 days until the concert, there was a good chance id runout of money and end up getting stuck in bkk!
so after some agonizing decision making i realized that id just have to cut my losses(my ticket)and go home early..
which was pretty lame and i was kinda bummed out about losing 20 bucks for the ticket, but i started thinking, and i realized i couldve lost that 20 bucks on a bad date, and i wouldent be sad about it, sowhy ami i gonna let this get to me?
(also if you look at it this way i happen to have a very expensive piece of cardstock in my pocket! whooohooo!)
so the next day(like a pro might i add)i found my way to the buss station and in broken thai explaind where i wanted to go, bought my ticket(you can travel almost any where in thailand by bus for under 15 dollars, pretty cool) rode six hours, found another bus, and arrived at mydoorstep by 6'oclock and scared the heck out of my host mom
(oh yeah my phione broke while i was in bkk, so i wasnt able to contact her)but after i explained what happened, she was glad i came home
and that ladies and gentlemen is my grand bkk adventure, a little brief isnt it? oh well atlest i learned how to travel thailand on my own, and get around bkk by myself, its like a wise dude i know said, im here till june, therell be plenty of concerts in the next 8 months or so, so dont sweat this one!
so i got back mid week, since then things are actually getting kinda.....
boreing,
i mean its wierd for me to say this, but i actually am looking forward for school to start, so you know i have things to do more people to meet!
one of the big things that happened though, is i was able to start putting videos on youtube!
to view them just go to youtube, and search for"thai chronicles"(without these"")
and you should be able to find some videos, to view the rest, there will be a link next to the movie that is playin that says more from this user, click on that, and itll take you to a page with all of my vidoes on it, enjoy!
wait heres the link
http://youtube.com/user/rynalias
so i had a thought the other daywhile i was trying to learn more thai, why dont i teac you guys some while your reading my blogs
welcome to
RYANS THAI WORD O' THE WEEK!!!
this week the prase/word ill teach will be
ไม่เป็นไร(cool trick huh?)
it is pronounced "Mai-Ben-Rai"
this is one of my favorite prases to use, and due to the laid back nature of thai people i hear it alot, what it means is
"whateva"
in short, its a dismissal phrase like "no problem" or "no worries"
and i can use it to pretty much get out of any situation!
so next time you guys are feeling forgiving, in trouble, or just dont care anymore just think "what would ryan say"
and go
Mai-Ben-Rai!
wel there you have it, my week, a video link and a lesson!
Alias Out!
so heres what happened, so I got there the first night, ind I had 2items of business that I had to take care of,
1ticket(for te concert)
2 a place to stay, so I was supposed to stay with another exchange student, but he was called away last minite to go to an English camp early the next morning(he would miss the concert)
so after I go there, I met up with him, got my ticket, and set out looking for a place fot me to stay the week, “I know he says, you cvan stay on khosarn road!
(khosarn road is basically were all the backpackers stay, it’s a road with youth hostels and shops, its like a major street party!
Sop when we arrived there, I was blown away! It was like dreadlocks and sandals as far as the eye could see, this was hippie central(I LOVED IT!!!)
There were shops, resturaunts and dance clubs all down the road, so we set out to look for a hostel for me to sleep in,when we finnaly found one, it was called the MARCO POLO YOUTH HOSTEL, and was 300 bhat a night(like 9 bucks, also the room had a/c which I paid alittle extra for, so my friend and I went to see the room after i checked in(in hindsight we probably should have looked at it BEFORE i checked in)
we got to the room to see it, i opened the door and burst out laughing!
the room was entirely taken up by the bed inside, there was a 2x2 square for the door to swing in to stand on, but other than that, the room was a bed!
then i turned to look at the bathroom, first off there was no door it was a broom closet with a toilet in the middle(no sink) so i was puzzled, "where was the shower?"
i looked up, and a shower head was poking out the wall right over the toilet!
talk about 2 birds with one stone!
haha!
so whatever, its a place to sleep, and it does have a/c so itll do...
after that alex and i walked down the road, just taking in the sights, things like that, after dinner we went to a to some dance place, that was fun, after dancing like crazy with wierd thai people till like 3am
we went our seperate ways, me to my cubicle, and him to his acutally nicer and cheaper room across the road, the next day id try to change hostels and get his room.
so i woke up early the next day bought banna waffles from some old lady in the street for breakfast, and got a new room across the road, since i was in bangkok, i decided to go and see the city, and see the sights, and the best way to to get aroud is the bts.
whats the bts?
im glad you asked
i think it stand for bangkok transport system, or "Big Train in Sky" or sokmething like that
but what it is is a SKYTRAIN!!!
its basically a faster version of the monolith at disney land, is it called the monolith, or am i getting cofused, no matter you know what i mean!
but so i got on this thing and rode for quite a while, just seeing bkk form like 5 stories up, until i got to a shopping center, then bought some english books and went looking for a place to eat, after lunch i walked all over bkk, just following the tracks of th bts, so id be able to find my way back,
that night i got a table right at the street line, and just read ate my pad-thai(its famous there)and did some serious people watching, it was funny you could tell which people just got there, cause they were draggin massive backpacks around and looking hopelessly lost, and you could tell the people that had been there too long cause they had massive beards, dreadlocks and were wearing clothes that looked like they haddent seen a washer in a month!
i would of gone out again that nigh, but i didnt have my wingman with me you know so
i just checked in early, and started to think(scary huh?)
what id do tommoro, when i checked my bank accnt, and reaklized that if i were to stay for the next4 days until the concert, there was a good chance id runout of money and end up getting stuck in bkk!
so after some agonizing decision making i realized that id just have to cut my losses(my ticket)and go home early..
which was pretty lame and i was kinda bummed out about losing 20 bucks for the ticket, but i started thinking, and i realized i couldve lost that 20 bucks on a bad date, and i wouldent be sad about it, sowhy ami i gonna let this get to me?
(also if you look at it this way i happen to have a very expensive piece of cardstock in my pocket! whooohooo!)
so the next day(like a pro might i add)i found my way to the buss station and in broken thai explaind where i wanted to go, bought my ticket(you can travel almost any where in thailand by bus for under 15 dollars, pretty cool) rode six hours, found another bus, and arrived at mydoorstep by 6'oclock and scared the heck out of my host mom
(oh yeah my phione broke while i was in bkk, so i wasnt able to contact her)but after i explained what happened, she was glad i came home
and that ladies and gentlemen is my grand bkk adventure, a little brief isnt it? oh well atlest i learned how to travel thailand on my own, and get around bkk by myself, its like a wise dude i know said, im here till june, therell be plenty of concerts in the next 8 months or so, so dont sweat this one!
so i got back mid week, since then things are actually getting kinda.....
boreing,
i mean its wierd for me to say this, but i actually am looking forward for school to start, so you know i have things to do more people to meet!
one of the big things that happened though, is i was able to start putting videos on youtube!
to view them just go to youtube, and search for"thai chronicles"(without these"")
and you should be able to find some videos, to view the rest, there will be a link next to the movie that is playin that says more from this user, click on that, and itll take you to a page with all of my vidoes on it, enjoy!
wait heres the link
http://youtube.com/user/rynalias
so i had a thought the other daywhile i was trying to learn more thai, why dont i teac you guys some while your reading my blogs
welcome to
RYANS THAI WORD O' THE WEEK!!!
this week the prase/word ill teach will be
ไม่เป็นไร(cool trick huh?)
it is pronounced "Mai-Ben-Rai"
this is one of my favorite prases to use, and due to the laid back nature of thai people i hear it alot, what it means is
"whateva"
in short, its a dismissal phrase like "no problem" or "no worries"
and i can use it to pretty much get out of any situation!
so next time you guys are feeling forgiving, in trouble, or just dont care anymore just think "what would ryan say"
and go
Mai-Ben-Rai!
wel there you have it, my week, a video link and a lesson!
Alias Out!
Sunday, October 14, 2007
life in general!
sorry about the late post again, ill tell you why later!
so this past week, as you know ive been on vacation from school, things havent been too exciting, id wake up in the morning, shower, get dressed in my thai clothes(baggy capris, a t-shirt and sandals...everyday Ilove thailand) go downstairs, find out what i was eating(its really a surprise every day... it almost feels like christmas!)
then id go and chill with my host brother, maybe weed watch some tv, or go into town and eat lunch, then ill go and play guitar(thankyou mom and dad!),thats basically how monday and teusday whent, ive also been reading alot, ill just pull a chair onto the lawn in the front yard, and you know.. become one with nature and read my books, (i finished pride and prejudice the other day, and i have to ad mit, i actually liked it!)
hmm oh, sdo then the other exchange students got back to khon kaen, so each day id take the bus out there, and just hang out in the big city, one of the things that i love to do there is go to the tukom(it means paradise in thai, and is a massive mall) and play GUITAR HERO!(if your not familliar with what could possibly be ther greatest video game since mario! its got a controller shaped like a guitar, and you play rock songs on it) at the arcade, ok ryan sounds like fun, but wheres the twist?
glad you asked, the twist is, NO THAI PERSON KNOWS HOW TO PLAY!!!
\basically the machine sits there and collects dust, until a forienger like me comkes along, and the cool thing is, since nobody knows how to play, people crowd around the machine and and are like an audiance(oh yeah they clap and everything!), for americans like me, so i play that with some of the other exchange students, and i teach them skills that ive learned in the countryside
ie. the kids at school taught me how to open a coke bottle with my teath, thats pretty hot right?
hmm, the next day, we were just sitting around trying to think of something to do when one of the girls said something about her hair color, then the idea was bourn(may not have been the greatest) that weed all go out and color our hair(you dye easter eggs, you color hair)
so long story short, i no have black/blue tinged hair, my host mom thought it was awesome she said that i dont look like an american anymoe(yeah right)so that was fun,
earlyier that week i learned of a concert in bangkok, As I Lay Dying(another band my dad loves) so i pleaded my host mom to let me take a bus to meet my friend there, so i could go, after a little deliberation, she aggreed, and i was able to ride in a buss acros thailand by my self tosee an amazin concert, the shows on the 18, and i think ill leave my blog off with my leavin for bangkok yet again, cause techincly that was the start of a new week, asnd im in an tiner net cafe,and im just about out of time, all i can say is that i stayed in a youth hostel last night!
it was glorious, i had about a cubicles worth of space!
Agian sorry for the brevity of this one, next blog ill be at home, so itll be nice and long
till then
ryan
aka
world traveler extrordinaire
so this past week, as you know ive been on vacation from school, things havent been too exciting, id wake up in the morning, shower, get dressed in my thai clothes(baggy capris, a t-shirt and sandals...everyday Ilove thailand) go downstairs, find out what i was eating(its really a surprise every day... it almost feels like christmas!)
then id go and chill with my host brother, maybe weed watch some tv, or go into town and eat lunch, then ill go and play guitar(thankyou mom and dad!),thats basically how monday and teusday whent, ive also been reading alot, ill just pull a chair onto the lawn in the front yard, and you know.. become one with nature and read my books, (i finished pride and prejudice the other day, and i have to ad mit, i actually liked it!)
hmm oh, sdo then the other exchange students got back to khon kaen, so each day id take the bus out there, and just hang out in the big city, one of the things that i love to do there is go to the tukom(it means paradise in thai, and is a massive mall) and play GUITAR HERO!(if your not familliar with what could possibly be ther greatest video game since mario! its got a controller shaped like a guitar, and you play rock songs on it) at the arcade, ok ryan sounds like fun, but wheres the twist?
glad you asked, the twist is, NO THAI PERSON KNOWS HOW TO PLAY!!!
\basically the machine sits there and collects dust, until a forienger like me comkes along, and the cool thing is, since nobody knows how to play, people crowd around the machine and and are like an audiance(oh yeah they clap and everything!), for americans like me, so i play that with some of the other exchange students, and i teach them skills that ive learned in the countryside
ie. the kids at school taught me how to open a coke bottle with my teath, thats pretty hot right?
hmm, the next day, we were just sitting around trying to think of something to do when one of the girls said something about her hair color, then the idea was bourn(may not have been the greatest) that weed all go out and color our hair(you dye easter eggs, you color hair)
so long story short, i no have black/blue tinged hair, my host mom thought it was awesome she said that i dont look like an american anymoe(yeah right)so that was fun,
earlyier that week i learned of a concert in bangkok, As I Lay Dying(another band my dad loves) so i pleaded my host mom to let me take a bus to meet my friend there, so i could go, after a little deliberation, she aggreed, and i was able to ride in a buss acros thailand by my self tosee an amazin concert, the shows on the 18, and i think ill leave my blog off with my leavin for bangkok yet again, cause techincly that was the start of a new week, asnd im in an tiner net cafe,and im just about out of time, all i can say is that i stayed in a youth hostel last night!
it was glorious, i had about a cubicles worth of space!
Agian sorry for the brevity of this one, next blog ill be at home, so itll be nice and long
till then
ryan
aka
world traveler extrordinaire
Sunday, October 7, 2007
bangkok, its the capital of thailand you know...
ok...
so when i left you guys last time, i was just about to head out for bkk(thats how the locals abreviate it, so that tats what ill do to sasve time... isnt it ironic how abreveate is such a long word?)
ok, so forst things frist, the drive to bkk is bout 6 hour, thats not that big of a deal to me now, cause ive been travelin alot recently, so that was just fine by me, but unbeknownst to me, my host mom had a few( when i say few im lying) stops for me to look at, ok, t=hats a bit of a hinder but hey im cool, the first place we stoped at, was actually pretty cool, it was a 1000 year old(ogh yeah one thousand years) buddist temple, it was actually the ruins of it, and walking through it made me feel like i w2as indianna jones or in some video game ready to doge a giant boulder or some thing!
ok off track...
oh yeah, so were goin through this thing, it was really intrestin, and really beautiful land scape and all, then i thought to myself, how cool it would be to have a piece of this to take withme, so ummm i "liberated" a few pebbles that had broken of of the foundation, andthen we took off, thats all i have to say about that...
so weed drive, stop, drive, and stop, i dont think we were on the road for a hour and a half continuously, wed stop for drinks then for food, then for snaks, than bathroom again, then to look at the countryside ect!
(by this time i was going alittle nuts), the last place she had us stop at was a COW FARM! yes you read that right a COW FARM, and my host mom was just ecstatic that there were actually real live cows there, my host bro realized that i didnt adtually share her excitement, i broken english he asked why, and i replid "dude, i live about an hour out of Davis, do you realize whats in Davis, cows- hordes of them loathsome scores actually, thats alll there really is!oh yeah they have a college too i think"
of course he couldent understand my rant, so we bought some ice cream,and i got back ito the car with them
so we left the house at eight in the morn, by the time we actually got in to bkk, and stopped at the gas station to meet my hm's(host mom takes too long)friend it was EIGHT PM!!! it took 12 hrs to drive a six hour trip!
but then some thing wonderful happened, when we pulled into the gas staion in bkk to mee her friend, i saw some thing that i was sure was a mirage, or daydream- so i rubbed my eyes and looked out the window again, and sure enough, there was an A&W resturaunt connected to the gas station!
so with rapturous delight i lept from the car and bolted into the sanctuary of rootbeer to buy a float( i havent had rootbeer, in two months,layoff me!)
so after that episode i had to explain to my shocked host mom that i love rootbeer
and that i was sorry for scaring her by jumpin out of the moving car like that(mom its fine, it was like five mph she was parking it!)
so we met her friend at dinner, she was with her 10 yr old daught er, and the introduced her to me, sayin her name was Nam-than, i nodded, then my hm told me that in thai nam-than means sugar, at that i snorted into my pad thai, and asked her to repeat that last part, she did, and asked me what was so funny, how do you say term of endearment in thai?
i just laughted and said nothing, but always felt wierd calling her that!
ok so my hb(you guessed it, host brother)and i stayed in a hotel room, while my hm stayed with her friend
they next day they took me on a whirlwind tour of bkk visiting all these crazy temples and sites(ant this piont i still had a pretty bad headache and was recovering from sinusitis, see last blog for details, so that day was kinda a blur.
the next day we went to an english book shop, which was awesome for me, cause bkk is the only place where you can buy english books, after i bought a few, we went shopping agin, or should i say my hm and her friend went shoppin, my hb and i just got dragged along ha!
that night i checke my email and everything online, and was done at 10, then my hb wanted to play this online game, you know the ones that you pay money for and can eventuall suck the life out of you if your not careful, any ways i played a little guitar, read then fell asleed, i woke up the next morning to the sounds of swords clashing and monsters screaming to find my hb still at the computer with empty water bottles laying all around him STILL PLAYING THE GAME 9 HOURS LATER!!!
so i put and end to this self destructive behavior and promptly kicked his butt out of the chai, befor he passed out on the bed, he asked me very nicely to not tell his mom that the had done that, what can i say i guess im an enabaler!
that day, my host mom had a meeting, soatom and i were with my hms friend, and she said we were goin to a funpark, ok sounded... fun
so we arrived out side a rainbow colored disney looking castle and went into a pretty shady looking amusement park good thing tough was they had a pretty sweet roller coaster, one of those suspended-nothing-under-your-feet things with double corkscrews and flips the works, so when i said hey i want to try this thing, for some reason my hms friend and host brother would direct me to some other ride, or distract me from the BEAST with something else, after a while iasked what was goin on, they looked at eachother and connfessed that my hm, sincewe were at the hospital and i told her that i had heart surgery, told them not to let me on the roller coaster, i one weord i was well... pissed, i calmly explaind to my host brother that only one mom knows whats best for me, and that would be my real mom and since tuk(thats her name) is not her i was goin on that ride, by myself if i had to(ok i kinda overreacted, but i mean whose gonna know my limitations better, the person whose been living with them for 18 years, or they lady who ive been living with for 2 months?)
my hb was actually relived cause he wanted to do the coaster too, so we rode it, and went on with our day.
our next activity was going to be, ice skating(i hadent ice skated in almost 2 years, and when i did i almost broke my butt by falling, sadly to say after all this time my ice skating skill and reflexes had barely improved, and i clung to the wall like a sissy, but my hb was worse than me, so i didnt feel too lame(the rink was on the top floor of a mall, malls here are absolutly ridiculous, there atleast 6-7 stories and have basically anything you could need)
the next day we went shopping again, i bought some thai elepahnt riging pants, thier basically these super lose and flowy pants that come down to your mid calf, its what people in the countryside whear, and ther are the most comfortable pants ive ever worn!
the next day we drove home, it took about 11 hrs this time, we stopped often, and the roads home were flooded, so i guess its lucky we made it home that night, any ways that concludes my trip, i had a good time, and want to go back soon
this past week, and till the 24th im out of school(the semester just ended here) so ive just been hanging out with my hb watchin movies, reading playing guitar, and lighting off fireworks, so nothing too exciting has been going on since ive gotten home, well except for this massive lizard called a toukay in my living room that i had to chase out last night, they bite, so i was scared out of my mind!
but i cant complain, i ejoy it alot here and im having a good time, oh yeah the second marks two months gone by, wow thats wierd, im like a fith the way done..
oh well see you all next week
ryan
ps, if any of you were in jr high youth group with me, the title is a dave constance refference, if you dont remember ask him about it, im sur hed love to tell you!
so when i left you guys last time, i was just about to head out for bkk(thats how the locals abreviate it, so that tats what ill do to sasve time... isnt it ironic how abreveate is such a long word?)
ok, so forst things frist, the drive to bkk is bout 6 hour, thats not that big of a deal to me now, cause ive been travelin alot recently, so that was just fine by me, but unbeknownst to me, my host mom had a few( when i say few im lying) stops for me to look at, ok, t=hats a bit of a hinder but hey im cool, the first place we stoped at, was actually pretty cool, it was a 1000 year old(ogh yeah one thousand years) buddist temple, it was actually the ruins of it, and walking through it made me feel like i w2as indianna jones or in some video game ready to doge a giant boulder or some thing!
ok off track...
oh yeah, so were goin through this thing, it was really intrestin, and really beautiful land scape and all, then i thought to myself, how cool it would be to have a piece of this to take withme, so ummm i "liberated" a few pebbles that had broken of of the foundation, andthen we took off, thats all i have to say about that...
so weed drive, stop, drive, and stop, i dont think we were on the road for a hour and a half continuously, wed stop for drinks then for food, then for snaks, than bathroom again, then to look at the countryside ect!
(by this time i was going alittle nuts), the last place she had us stop at was a COW FARM! yes you read that right a COW FARM, and my host mom was just ecstatic that there were actually real live cows there, my host bro realized that i didnt adtually share her excitement, i broken english he asked why, and i replid "dude, i live about an hour out of Davis, do you realize whats in Davis, cows- hordes of them loathsome scores actually, thats alll there really is!oh yeah they have a college too i think"
of course he couldent understand my rant, so we bought some ice cream,and i got back ito the car with them
so we left the house at eight in the morn, by the time we actually got in to bkk, and stopped at the gas station to meet my hm's(host mom takes too long)friend it was EIGHT PM!!! it took 12 hrs to drive a six hour trip!
but then some thing wonderful happened, when we pulled into the gas staion in bkk to mee her friend, i saw some thing that i was sure was a mirage, or daydream- so i rubbed my eyes and looked out the window again, and sure enough, there was an A&W resturaunt connected to the gas station!
so with rapturous delight i lept from the car and bolted into the sanctuary of rootbeer to buy a float( i havent had rootbeer, in two months,layoff me!)
so after that episode i had to explain to my shocked host mom that i love rootbeer
and that i was sorry for scaring her by jumpin out of the moving car like that(mom its fine, it was like five mph she was parking it!)
so we met her friend at dinner, she was with her 10 yr old daught er, and the introduced her to me, sayin her name was Nam-than, i nodded, then my hm told me that in thai nam-than means sugar, at that i snorted into my pad thai, and asked her to repeat that last part, she did, and asked me what was so funny, how do you say term of endearment in thai?
i just laughted and said nothing, but always felt wierd calling her that!
ok so my hb(you guessed it, host brother)and i stayed in a hotel room, while my hm stayed with her friend
they next day they took me on a whirlwind tour of bkk visiting all these crazy temples and sites(ant this piont i still had a pretty bad headache and was recovering from sinusitis, see last blog for details, so that day was kinda a blur.
the next day we went to an english book shop, which was awesome for me, cause bkk is the only place where you can buy english books, after i bought a few, we went shopping agin, or should i say my hm and her friend went shoppin, my hb and i just got dragged along ha!
that night i checke my email and everything online, and was done at 10, then my hb wanted to play this online game, you know the ones that you pay money for and can eventuall suck the life out of you if your not careful, any ways i played a little guitar, read then fell asleed, i woke up the next morning to the sounds of swords clashing and monsters screaming to find my hb still at the computer with empty water bottles laying all around him STILL PLAYING THE GAME 9 HOURS LATER!!!
so i put and end to this self destructive behavior and promptly kicked his butt out of the chai, befor he passed out on the bed, he asked me very nicely to not tell his mom that the had done that, what can i say i guess im an enabaler!
that day, my host mom had a meeting, soatom and i were with my hms friend, and she said we were goin to a funpark, ok sounded... fun
so we arrived out side a rainbow colored disney looking castle and went into a pretty shady looking amusement park good thing tough was they had a pretty sweet roller coaster, one of those suspended-nothing-under-your-feet things with double corkscrews and flips the works, so when i said hey i want to try this thing, for some reason my hms friend and host brother would direct me to some other ride, or distract me from the BEAST with something else, after a while iasked what was goin on, they looked at eachother and connfessed that my hm, sincewe were at the hospital and i told her that i had heart surgery, told them not to let me on the roller coaster, i one weord i was well... pissed, i calmly explaind to my host brother that only one mom knows whats best for me, and that would be my real mom and since tuk(thats her name) is not her i was goin on that ride, by myself if i had to(ok i kinda overreacted, but i mean whose gonna know my limitations better, the person whose been living with them for 18 years, or they lady who ive been living with for 2 months?)
my hb was actually relived cause he wanted to do the coaster too, so we rode it, and went on with our day.
our next activity was going to be, ice skating(i hadent ice skated in almost 2 years, and when i did i almost broke my butt by falling, sadly to say after all this time my ice skating skill and reflexes had barely improved, and i clung to the wall like a sissy, but my hb was worse than me, so i didnt feel too lame(the rink was on the top floor of a mall, malls here are absolutly ridiculous, there atleast 6-7 stories and have basically anything you could need)
the next day we went shopping again, i bought some thai elepahnt riging pants, thier basically these super lose and flowy pants that come down to your mid calf, its what people in the countryside whear, and ther are the most comfortable pants ive ever worn!
the next day we drove home, it took about 11 hrs this time, we stopped often, and the roads home were flooded, so i guess its lucky we made it home that night, any ways that concludes my trip, i had a good time, and want to go back soon
this past week, and till the 24th im out of school(the semester just ended here) so ive just been hanging out with my hb watchin movies, reading playing guitar, and lighting off fireworks, so nothing too exciting has been going on since ive gotten home, well except for this massive lizard called a toukay in my living room that i had to chase out last night, they bite, so i was scared out of my mind!
but i cant complain, i ejoy it alot here and im having a good time, oh yeah the second marks two months gone by, wow thats wierd, im like a fith the way done..
oh well see you all next week
ryan
ps, if any of you were in jr high youth group with me, the title is a dave constance refference, if you dont remember ask him about it, im sur hed love to tell you!
Monday, October 1, 2007
how the health academy saved my life...
hey guys welcome to my somewhat exciting week, i dont think this one will be that long, but here we go!
So this was supposed to be mylast week IN school(as a student) before the month log break that thailand has in october(OH YEAH!!!!!)
but this week they were doing finals, so when i got to school on monday, the teacher took one look at me and said go "go home."
well he didnt have to tell me twice,
i was halfway out the door before he started to explain why, and basically, its because, i cant read thai at all, or speak it too well, and ive already graduated highschool(my favorite) so it would be pointless to to take finals, that i would fail and would make no difference to my academic standing!
so it looks like i was out of another week of school!!!
oh i mean um... lame...
so i went back to teaching english at the elementry school, and that was awesome, its way better than goin to school, and i get to relax at the house when ive finished teachin my classes for the day, also my favorite part, is that i can go into the market and buy my own lunch, and well ive had pad thai FOUR TIMES this week a personal best might i add!!! ive found the best place for it too, a little hole in the wall(hmm i guess they all kinda are)and i have no idea what its called, i just know how to say pad thai with pork!
oh! how could i forget?!
this week i found out where they sell thai fireworks in the market, and well, my host brother and i bought asmany as we possibly could,(roman candles and m-80s are like 20 cents american!!!) we went home and, with the utmost saftey and caution, turned our front yard into armmageton!!
So you know those fire works that spin really fast and kinda look like a ground floer or something, well i lit one of those off, about 2 feet from me, but apparently in thailand, after thier done spinning and lookin all pretty, the thing EXPLODES! and sends flaming shrapnel everywhich way!
end result, my arm had a nice little burn and my nose turned bright red due to scorchmarks, i could go on about the bottle rockets, but my mom reads this thing too, so id better not!
the whole week i was feeling a little under the wheather, probably due to what happened in my last blog, but so i woke up friday morning and somehow overnight my my little headache that i had all week grew to a gigantic mind-numbing-axe-in-the-forehead-brainache( oh i have to say this, cause i find it hillarious, but that night i had a dream i was in lord of the rings fightin off tons of orcs and bad-dudes, but i died in battle cause i got shot in the head with 2 arrows, so the first thing i thought when i woke up was "dude! those orcs are gonna get it, those arrows hurt!" and then i realized i wasnt dreamin anymore, and that sucked)
so i stumbled down stairs, where my host mom took one look at me and anounced that i was goin to the hospital(shed been tryin to make me go all week, here in thailand they go the hospital for colds all the time) i was in no shape to argue, so i somehow showered and got in the car, i dont really remember the trip there,but i do remember once i got there they had to get me a wheelchair, cause i kept falling asleep, they took me to a specialist, who proceeded to hit me in the head and aked if i was in pain, i could of whaked that doctor, if it didnt feel like my brains were on the floor,
then after some test, which consited of stickin ametal tube up my nose and doin blood tessts they diagnosed me with sinusitus, my sinuses were infected, lame huh?
the doctors decided to keep me overnight, so that consisted of them giving me an IV, after that was over i was enjoying pain meds and thai cartoons im my room, when my host mom started freeking out and pointing at my IV hand, i looke over, and i saw that my blood was going out of my hand into the line, the nurse forgot to turn my drip on, no biggie, so i called her over and started to explain that she needed to turn the drip on, but she just gave me a look like i just asked her the square root of something... apperently she didnt speak english
so i pointed at the blood in the tube, she freaked out at first,she got the ideawhen i started pointin at the IV bag, she started to fiddle with the control for the IV flow, the control is a very basic piece of equipment, thers a little wheel thingie, that when rolled down compesses the tupe and closes the line, when rolled up it opens the line, min was currently in the down position, and this nurse for some reason forgot how to work the thing and was trying as hard as she could to roll it down further, so i let her go at it for about 20 seconds before i finnaly snatched the control away fromk her and started my drip on my own!
lookin back on the whole experiance, i realize that she may have not been the nurse at all, i may have just taught the cleaning lady how to use a iv control
ha! i love pain meds!
in short the next day they realeased me, and gave me a huge bag of antibiotics meds to take with me, along with some saline that i have to use to flush out my sinuses 4 times a day with(i almost drowned the first time i tried it)
the next day i left for Bangkok......
and thats where ill leave you guys, my trip will be in my next blog!
muahahaha!
ryan
(sick boy)
So this was supposed to be mylast week IN school(as a student) before the month log break that thailand has in october(OH YEAH!!!!!)
but this week they were doing finals, so when i got to school on monday, the teacher took one look at me and said go "go home."
well he didnt have to tell me twice,
i was halfway out the door before he started to explain why, and basically, its because, i cant read thai at all, or speak it too well, and ive already graduated highschool(my favorite) so it would be pointless to to take finals, that i would fail and would make no difference to my academic standing!
so it looks like i was out of another week of school!!!
oh i mean um... lame...
so i went back to teaching english at the elementry school, and that was awesome, its way better than goin to school, and i get to relax at the house when ive finished teachin my classes for the day, also my favorite part, is that i can go into the market and buy my own lunch, and well ive had pad thai FOUR TIMES this week a personal best might i add!!! ive found the best place for it too, a little hole in the wall(hmm i guess they all kinda are)and i have no idea what its called, i just know how to say pad thai with pork!
oh! how could i forget?!
this week i found out where they sell thai fireworks in the market, and well, my host brother and i bought asmany as we possibly could,(roman candles and m-80s are like 20 cents american!!!) we went home and, with the utmost saftey and caution, turned our front yard into armmageton!!
So you know those fire works that spin really fast and kinda look like a ground floer or something, well i lit one of those off, about 2 feet from me, but apparently in thailand, after thier done spinning and lookin all pretty, the thing EXPLODES! and sends flaming shrapnel everywhich way!
end result, my arm had a nice little burn and my nose turned bright red due to scorchmarks, i could go on about the bottle rockets, but my mom reads this thing too, so id better not!
the whole week i was feeling a little under the wheather, probably due to what happened in my last blog, but so i woke up friday morning and somehow overnight my my little headache that i had all week grew to a gigantic mind-numbing-axe-in-the-forehead-brainache( oh i have to say this, cause i find it hillarious, but that night i had a dream i was in lord of the rings fightin off tons of orcs and bad-dudes, but i died in battle cause i got shot in the head with 2 arrows, so the first thing i thought when i woke up was "dude! those orcs are gonna get it, those arrows hurt!" and then i realized i wasnt dreamin anymore, and that sucked)
so i stumbled down stairs, where my host mom took one look at me and anounced that i was goin to the hospital(shed been tryin to make me go all week, here in thailand they go the hospital for colds all the time) i was in no shape to argue, so i somehow showered and got in the car, i dont really remember the trip there,but i do remember once i got there they had to get me a wheelchair, cause i kept falling asleep, they took me to a specialist, who proceeded to hit me in the head and aked if i was in pain, i could of whaked that doctor, if it didnt feel like my brains were on the floor,
then after some test, which consited of stickin ametal tube up my nose and doin blood tessts they diagnosed me with sinusitus, my sinuses were infected, lame huh?
the doctors decided to keep me overnight, so that consisted of them giving me an IV, after that was over i was enjoying pain meds and thai cartoons im my room, when my host mom started freeking out and pointing at my IV hand, i looke over, and i saw that my blood was going out of my hand into the line, the nurse forgot to turn my drip on, no biggie, so i called her over and started to explain that she needed to turn the drip on, but she just gave me a look like i just asked her the square root of something... apperently she didnt speak english
so i pointed at the blood in the tube, she freaked out at first,she got the ideawhen i started pointin at the IV bag, she started to fiddle with the control for the IV flow, the control is a very basic piece of equipment, thers a little wheel thingie, that when rolled down compesses the tupe and closes the line, when rolled up it opens the line, min was currently in the down position, and this nurse for some reason forgot how to work the thing and was trying as hard as she could to roll it down further, so i let her go at it for about 20 seconds before i finnaly snatched the control away fromk her and started my drip on my own!
lookin back on the whole experiance, i realize that she may have not been the nurse at all, i may have just taught the cleaning lady how to use a iv control
ha! i love pain meds!
in short the next day they realeased me, and gave me a huge bag of antibiotics meds to take with me, along with some saline that i have to use to flush out my sinuses 4 times a day with(i almost drowned the first time i tried it)
the next day i left for Bangkok......
and thats where ill leave you guys, my trip will be in my next blog!
muahahaha!
ryan
(sick boy)
Sunday, September 23, 2007
sorry mom(retrospect concert and last week teaching)
well im sad to say it, but i just finished my last week of teaching, we had a great last day though, i kinda invented a thai version of sximon says that i like to call och bie(in thai it basically means go away!)
so what id do is id write a bunch of verbs on the board, like run jump, dance(a big favorite) laugh, scream, swim, ect.
then id teach them what all the words ment by acting them out and having them mimic me, after i knew that they understood what all the words ment weedplay a game where id point to the word abnd say it, and the last kid to do the action, id point at him or her and yell OCH BIE!!!
and then the kid would go sit down behind me, it was a great game, but i think that i probably shouldent have made them yell as much, they were loud, and definetly should of thought about the other teachers(yeah right! my kids are way cooler than thiers)
im sorry mom
one thing that im gonna miss the most, well besides the kids and tyhier smilin faces... the ice cream
yep...
theres an ice cream man who would come to the school every day with a huge tub of homemade cocunut ice cream! and evey day id buy 2 cups of it(the cups were small)
one day id already eaten lunch and was ready to go home, but the ice cream dude haddent come yet, so i thought to myself, ill just wait five more minuets(i could never spell that word right) 5 min later i get up look out my office window(oh yeah i had an office... actually mabye it was the english depatment... andi was on the couch, thats not the point though, back to my story) i look out my office window and hes not there, so i wait another five and another and then it hits me... im eighteen years old, 18! legaly a man in most countrys and im waitin for the ice cream man like a freaking third grader!
so i waited five more min, then i got me some ice cream and went home.
it was delicious.
in the future they said i can teach tere some more, but the thing is that, since we have all of october off from school(yeah! how you like that cody??!!)i probably should go do my last week there, hmm im my 7 weeks here i have not finished five consecutive days of school yet!
sorry mom
its not my fault really
well what else?
oh so on wednesday i didnt have to teach a class, so after school on teus. i took a very long bus ride to mahsarahkam with the other exchange students to go and see a thai hardcore/screamo concert(the bands name is retro spect) if you dont know what scramo is ask my dad, he loves the stuff!
Oh one thing i havent told you bout thailand is that americans are treated like celebreties(kinda sad really), let me put it this way, one of the girl that was with us got in for free, just cause she was white, so basically we got to get right up to the front about 2 feet from the band!, they were awesome, i crowd surfed one of my friend, i frankly wiegh a bit too much for the dudes, and jumed into the mosh pit i actually didnt get hurt at all, cause honestly, again, i out weigh every one in the place by about 30 lbs, i felt bad though, one time i got shoved from behind, so i turned round an shoved the dude back without taking a look at him, when i finally realized who it was, i was lookin at this thai kid, my age and all, but he couldent of weighed more than 120, and he was on his back starting to get up about five feet away....so i did what any one would do,
i booked it to the other side of the stage, before he could get up and use some mui thai on my coward butt, after the concert was over, oh yeah! i caught(now when i say caught, i definetly mean ifought kicked and bit like a crazy man through hordes of thais) a drum stick, i was very proud of that!
sorry mom
after the concret was over though, we were walkin outside trying to call my friends host dad and lookin for the bands van, when it started to rain, andi dont mean roseville-stlye rain, i mean thailand-jumanji-monsoon-style-torential-downpour-action!
so here we are 6 forieners, trying desperatly to get to some shelter before we drown, i actually somehow got water up my nose while running!
finnaly w found shelter, only it was already occupied by about 20 thais, so we squeezed in and they oogled us while we tried to get a signal on a soaked cell phone, through the miracle of technology it finally worked and when the dad came to pick us up the ^ of us piles into his four seater wagon, and went to pick up the two girls that didnt want to stick around for the concert, they were at some 7-11!
we got them, yes that means theres eight of us in this tiny car while the rain still falls in buckets, wait not buckets BATHTUBS!!!
we finnally get to the main road to go home only to find that its not a road any more, its a THIGH HIGH RUSHING RIVER!!!!!!
the dad tells us we cant drive through so hell find another way home while we leave our shoes and other valuables in the car and ford the river!
(do any of you guys remember the game Oregon Trail that game rocked!)
so we get out of the car snd start to fight our way across, remember the first original star wars movie where Han and Luke are traped in the compact with that sanke
eyeball beastie? Thats what it felt like! trash was floatin every where(it WAS a city street) and every bransh or bottle that hit my leg under the surface, felt like some massive thai snake comin to grab me and drown me in th murky depths, and i didnt even have a blaster or light saber to kill it with!
eventually we triumphed over the river and made our way home, nothin to intersting about 8 farang stumbling barefoot in the rain for about 1 1/2 km
sorry mom
were fine i promise
any ways that was my week tomorrow i stard school again, as a student this time,LAME!!!!!!
sorry mom
i know its why im here and all, i can stll voice and opinion right?
jeezz!
well until next week,
ryan
ps
if you guys havent noticed i usually up date on sunday nights- thats sunday mornings for you!
pps
i love you mom!
so what id do is id write a bunch of verbs on the board, like run jump, dance(a big favorite) laugh, scream, swim, ect.
then id teach them what all the words ment by acting them out and having them mimic me, after i knew that they understood what all the words ment weedplay a game where id point to the word abnd say it, and the last kid to do the action, id point at him or her and yell OCH BIE!!!
and then the kid would go sit down behind me, it was a great game, but i think that i probably shouldent have made them yell as much, they were loud, and definetly should of thought about the other teachers(yeah right! my kids are way cooler than thiers)
im sorry mom
one thing that im gonna miss the most, well besides the kids and tyhier smilin faces... the ice cream
yep...
theres an ice cream man who would come to the school every day with a huge tub of homemade cocunut ice cream! and evey day id buy 2 cups of it(the cups were small)
one day id already eaten lunch and was ready to go home, but the ice cream dude haddent come yet, so i thought to myself, ill just wait five more minuets(i could never spell that word right) 5 min later i get up look out my office window(oh yeah i had an office... actually mabye it was the english depatment... andi was on the couch, thats not the point though, back to my story) i look out my office window and hes not there, so i wait another five and another and then it hits me... im eighteen years old, 18! legaly a man in most countrys and im waitin for the ice cream man like a freaking third grader!
so i waited five more min, then i got me some ice cream and went home.
it was delicious.
in the future they said i can teach tere some more, but the thing is that, since we have all of october off from school(yeah! how you like that cody??!!)i probably should go do my last week there, hmm im my 7 weeks here i have not finished five consecutive days of school yet!
sorry mom
its not my fault really
well what else?
oh so on wednesday i didnt have to teach a class, so after school on teus. i took a very long bus ride to mahsarahkam with the other exchange students to go and see a thai hardcore/screamo concert(the bands name is retro spect) if you dont know what scramo is ask my dad, he loves the stuff!
Oh one thing i havent told you bout thailand is that americans are treated like celebreties(kinda sad really), let me put it this way, one of the girl that was with us got in for free, just cause she was white, so basically we got to get right up to the front about 2 feet from the band!, they were awesome, i crowd surfed one of my friend, i frankly wiegh a bit too much for the dudes, and jumed into the mosh pit i actually didnt get hurt at all, cause honestly, again, i out weigh every one in the place by about 30 lbs, i felt bad though, one time i got shoved from behind, so i turned round an shoved the dude back without taking a look at him, when i finally realized who it was, i was lookin at this thai kid, my age and all, but he couldent of weighed more than 120, and he was on his back starting to get up about five feet away....so i did what any one would do,
i booked it to the other side of the stage, before he could get up and use some mui thai on my coward butt, after the concert was over, oh yeah! i caught(now when i say caught, i definetly mean ifought kicked and bit like a crazy man through hordes of thais) a drum stick, i was very proud of that!
sorry mom
after the concret was over though, we were walkin outside trying to call my friends host dad and lookin for the bands van, when it started to rain, andi dont mean roseville-stlye rain, i mean thailand-jumanji-monsoon-style-torential-downpour-action!
so here we are 6 forieners, trying desperatly to get to some shelter before we drown, i actually somehow got water up my nose while running!
finnaly w found shelter, only it was already occupied by about 20 thais, so we squeezed in and they oogled us while we tried to get a signal on a soaked cell phone, through the miracle of technology it finally worked and when the dad came to pick us up the ^ of us piles into his four seater wagon, and went to pick up the two girls that didnt want to stick around for the concert, they were at some 7-11!
we got them, yes that means theres eight of us in this tiny car while the rain still falls in buckets, wait not buckets BATHTUBS!!!
we finnally get to the main road to go home only to find that its not a road any more, its a THIGH HIGH RUSHING RIVER!!!!!!
the dad tells us we cant drive through so hell find another way home while we leave our shoes and other valuables in the car and ford the river!
(do any of you guys remember the game Oregon Trail that game rocked!)
so we get out of the car snd start to fight our way across, remember the first original star wars movie where Han and Luke are traped in the compact with that sanke
eyeball beastie? Thats what it felt like! trash was floatin every where(it WAS a city street) and every bransh or bottle that hit my leg under the surface, felt like some massive thai snake comin to grab me and drown me in th murky depths, and i didnt even have a blaster or light saber to kill it with!
eventually we triumphed over the river and made our way home, nothin to intersting about 8 farang stumbling barefoot in the rain for about 1 1/2 km
sorry mom
were fine i promise
any ways that was my week tomorrow i stard school again, as a student this time,LAME!!!!!!
sorry mom
i know its why im here and all, i can stll voice and opinion right?
jeezz!
well until next week,
ryan
ps
if you guys havent noticed i usually up date on sunday nights- thats sunday mornings for you!
pps
i love you mom!
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