Bangsean

Sawadee ka!

Wow, Finance is so unbelievably hard here, I want to tear my hair out.... midterm exams are coming up, and I am not too happy about that. Grrr! But okay, enough on that. On to more important things!

MJ, Robert, and I went to the Bangkok zoo on Friday. So fun! We saw lions, tigers, and bears, oh my! It wasn't anything too amazing, but a nice chance to get out of the city. We also rented paddle boats for 30 minutes and water-biked in the zoo's little lake! There were kymoto dragons everywhere, which was pretty cool to see.

Saturday afternoon, MJ and I took a bus out to Bangsean, a small beachy town near Pattaya, to visit Uh-Oh, a Thai girl who recently graduated from Thammasat and moved back to Bangsean to teach English and work at a local church. When we got to Bangsean, MJ made the most wise investment of her career by buying an enormous floatie which she proceeded to lug around for the remainder of the weekend, and get strange looks from the locals (a 22 year old white person with a missle shaped floatie...what's so weird about that???). We sat on the beach and watched the sunset (so beautiful) until Uh-Oh was finished with her seminar, then we went to her apartment. Well, first we walked in the wrong direction for 1 hour:
After 45 minutes, MJ: "hmmm, I think we've been walking for longer than 15 minutes" (how long Uh-Oh said it should take to get to her house)
Me: Well, maybe we took a wrong turn.
MJ: Want to just keep walking and see what happens?
Me: Sure
So, we did that for about 15 more minutes and then gave in and got Uh-Oh on the phone and had her talk to a taxi driver.
Then, Mj and I asked Uh-Oh if she had any movies, and when she showed us a Thai movie, I insisted we watch that one. 10 minutes later, I was fast asleep. Typical.
The next morning, we all went to The Tide, a really nice restaurant, for breakfast, to celebrate Kyla's 17th birthday. Kyla is a Canadian girl from Uh-Oh's church group who has been in Thailand for missionary work since she was 9. Really cool. Anyway, I got a smoked salmon sandwhich and chocolate mousse, which was pretty amazing, especially because none of it involved rice :)
After brunch, Mj, myself, Uh-Oh, and Uh-Oh's sister, Annie, went to the beach. While Uh-Oh and Annie relaxed under the shade (Thai people don't like to get tanned, as "white" is the in look for them), Mj and myself rented a bananna boat for 30 minutes and got slung all around by the crazy Thai man on the jetski. SO much fun! The best part was watching Mj get thrown off when she tried to ride the bananna boat backwards and attempted to right herself midway through the ride. Priceless.
Then, Uh-Oh and Annie left to make it to church services, and Mj and I made our way to Monkey Hill. Wow. Those monkeys sure had it out for Mj. One of them literally stripped her of her towel as she was trying to feed it, leaving her in front of countless people, only in her small bikini. Ha, I think Mj was as much as a show as the monkeys were. ALL the Thais were staring and laughing as these monkeys surrounded her. It was so funny. Love it. I was of course documenting this whole spectacle, and pictures can now be seen on facebook.
We then made our back to Uh-Oh, said our goodbyes, and hopped on a motorbike (yikkkes, my first since the accident) to get to the bus station. Once there, it was smooth sailing back to BKK, with MJ toting her gigantic floatie the entire way.

Miss everyone in the States....can't believe I've been living in Thailand for 2 months now. I've been picking up the language, and I can already feel myself settling in to the area. I could definitely see myself living here for a longer period of time, but no matter what happens in my life, where my travels take me, or how much I fall in love with another country, Texas will always be my home.

ps. shout out to my family: all the Thai girls in my classes say "Oy" when they make a mistake, or have a moment of exasperation. Thought you'd enjoy that!

Till next time!