What has happened since my last post?  I traveled to Kohn Kaen with all the exchange students, including past, future and current exchangers to help teach the future students about what they will be experiencing in the next year. It was also the last chance for the inbounds to all spend time together. Honestly there was not much for us inbounds to help with during the weekend so we had a lot of free time to hang out with our best friends one last time. Me and my friends found some bikes and biked around little thai towns in the middle of nowhere. It was so much fun and is probably one of my favorite memories from my year in Thailand. On the last day of our Rotary weekend the inbounds were given our exchange certificates and were graduated from the rotary youth exchange program in district 3340. It was very emotional for all of us to say goodbye and it was a very loud wake up call that my year in Thailand, that back in September seemed would never end, is ending in 2 short months. I will go leave Thailand on July 10th and arrive in Portland on July 11th. After saying goodbye to everyone we all went back to our seperate cities. The next week I went to Bangkok with my host family. I'd only ever been to bangkok one other time and unfortuantely I got food poisoning on that trip. My host family took me to see all the sights of bangkok the grand palace, Emerald temple, the giant shopping malls, the otop center and tons of other things. Bangkok is a very cool city and I only wish I could have spent more time exploring it. We came home Sunday night and then had one day to get organized before the new semester of school started. I was excited to be going back to school, mostly because I was pretty bored with my host families house and was ready to see all my Thai friends again. School was fine the first couple days but since my class is now in M.6 (seniors) they are studying all the time and school has become very serious for them also since it is still the hot season it is unbearably hot. My second week of school I ended up going to Ubon on tuesday and Wednesday to say goodbye to 2 of my best rotary friends who I won't be able to see again before we all go home. This was the first goodbye I had to say to close friends but it really didn't feel like goodbye and so it's hard to wrap my mind around the fact that I won't be seeing them again for most likely a couple years. There isn't anything else exciting that has happened lately. A new mall opened up in Ubon and it has starbucks and Mcdonalds which has been pretty fun for us exchange students. As my time in Thailand is slowly starting to come to an end I just want to say that this has been an amazing experience and it still all feels like a dream. And it all went by way too fast it feels like just yesterday I was stepping off the plane into the humid, smothering Bangkok air and now I'm looking forward to getting on the plane and returning to Oregon. I have truly loved my time here in Thailand and I will never forget this year. I have become an entirely new person and I am so ready to see how my life in Tigard will be different after the experiences I've had here, I am ready to come home!

Football, Water Fights and Grey's Anatomy

I know what you're all thinking, another post?! Usually you barely get one once a month but with no school and all my thai friends studying in big cities and all my exchange friends living in those same cities I am a little bored. I spend most of my days playing games with my host brother, eating and watching TV. Right now I'm specifically working my way through all the seasons of Grey's Anatomy. Also so you all don't think I'm being super lazy, it is incredibly hot, so hot it takes energy just to sit outside. April is the hottest month of the year in Thailand and it is also the hottest weather I have ever felt in my entire life. On to some exciting things I have done lately, 2 weeks ago I got to travel with my host mom, brother and grandma too Buriram. Buriram is about 3 and a half hours from Kantharlak and we went there for one night. The first night me and my brother went to watch a Buriram football game. It was a good game they won 2-0. It was the first professional sports game I've attended in Thailand and thankfully I learned that the Thais can support sports pretty much the same as we do in America. The stadium was packed and there was even a Buriram Tide that I hate to saw it was even bigger and louder than the Timbers Army. Buriram's colors are dark blue and white and I'm pretty sure every fan attending the game had on a dark blue jersey which was pretty cool to see in the stands. The next day we had to get up at 6 to go to my host mom's neices wedding. It was the first Thai wedding I'd attended start to finish and I must say it was very boring. It all happened in the morning and we were on the road heading home by noon. The wedding was small and the ceremony lasted forever but in true thai fashion not everyone was paying attention most people wer talking to eachother playing with their phones or eating. There was so much food, if I remember correctly 7 or 8 courses of different very expensive, special thai foods. I got to try shark fin soup, wild mushrooms, lots of noodles and other things. After the wedding we went home because in 2 days Songkran would start :) Songkran is the Thai new year this year it took place on April 13, 14 and 15th. The Thais celebrate with a giant 3 day long water fight! It was definitely one of the highlights of my exchange year. I decided to stay in Kantharalak to expierence a small town Songkran festival with my Thai friends and family. I am really, really happy I chose to do this because it gave me a chance to see friends that I hadn't seen in months and as always I was super popular and that's always fun when people are shouting your name and running just to see you. It's hard to explain the madness that is Songkran it is really something you just have to expierence for yourself. I'm having trouble even trying to explain the basics. Basically it's just a giant water fight people set up along the main roads in town and then other people sit in the back of pick up trucks and drive around getting splashed with water and splashing people with water from buckets they've filled up and put in the trucks. In the center of town it's super insane with so many people and cars and mini concerts every few blocks and for some reason they put baby powder on your face and everyone wanted to put powder on me so my face was very white for most of the days. I still don't think I've been able to expalain Songkran accurrately, it's just one of those things you need to expierence for yourself. But needless to say it was so, so, so much fun and i was so bummed when it was over.
My year in Thailand is winding down I passed my 8 month anniversary of coming to Thailand at the beginning of April and on April 10th it marked 3 months until I will be on a plane heading home. My 17th birthday is a week from today and I'm very excited to be celebrating it Thai style with my friends and then in May I will hopefully be traveling to Bangkok with some exchange friends if all goes as planned. I am so Thankful to have had this expeirence and I am looking forward to seeing what adventures these last 3 months hold!

From March 21st to April 1st our rotary district traveled to the South of Thailand on our last official trip together. All the students met in Korat, the biggest city in our district, then took a bus down South. It was a very long drive but we eventually made it to Krabi, a city on the Indian Ocean. We visited the Emerald Pools and a natural hotspring on the first day. The emerald pools were these crystal clear pools in the rainforest and we got to go swimming in them. The hot springs were amazing! They were pools that overflowed making a waterfall that flowed into a river. We spent the night at a hotel in Krabi and the next day we went out to the ocean on a private boat and visited islands in the Malacca Straits. It was the first time I'd ever seen beaches with white sand or water so clear you could see the fish swimming at the bottom of it. I went snorkeling for the first time in my life and that was another thing I will never forget. I almost felt like one of the fish in the coral reef while snorkeling it was cool! We spent all day out taking the boat around to different islands and got back late in the afternoon. We spent another night in Krabi and ate dinner at a fancy restaurant built on top of a lake. After dinner we went to a night market to buy souvenirs but I had to go home early because I was dehydrated the sun is so strong down on the water you don't even notice how much it affects you until later. Luckily I was only sick that night and the next day I was ready to go on a boat for 5 hours to one of the Similan Islands. We got a boat just for our rotary group spent all day on it it was acutally very relaxing and peaceful out in the middle of the ocean, I've always loved the ocean and boats so I had a blast. We spent 2 nights on the island and there were barely any other people there it was absolutely beautiful. The next day we spent island hopping on the boat. Unfortuantely disaster struck on this day and my new underwater camera that I had to buy right before the trip becasue I broke my first one got water in it or something and stopped working :( But it was okay becasue  I got to snorkel some more and we spent sometime just swimming and jumping off the side of the boat into the open ocean which made up for my broken camera. That night on the island we sat out on the beach until pretty late, it was very magical and felt like our own private island because we were practically the only ones there. The next day we took the boat back to the bus and then took the bus to Phuket. So our 5th day was spent mostly traveling but that was okay because I was really needing to catch up on some sleep. When we got to Phuket we checked into our hotel then got dressed up to go to Phuket Fantasea. All I knew about Phuket Fantasea was that it had the biggest buffet in Thailand and for exchagne students that was pretty exciting. Phuket Fantasea was sort of like the Disneyland in Thailand it was very beautiful and we saw an amazing elephant show in which they used all sorts of real animals including elephants and even a tiger right there on stage in front of us! The buffet was pretty good and I got to eat spaghetti for the first time in a long time which was definitely a plus. The next day instead of taking us to another temple or something the rotarians took us to play paintball which was very fun! It was my first time playing and I found out I have a pretty good aim and only got hit once but I don't enderstand why anyone would want to play paintball in Thailand it is much, much, much too hot! After paintball we went to eat McDonald's then shopping at  a shopping mall and market. After we went back to the hotel to relax before going to see the sunset at a famous cliff. Unfortuantely I didn't get to see the whole susnset because of all the clouds but I did get some pretty awesome pictures with my friends. After the sunset was a seafood dinner which was okay but I really am not the biggest seafood fan so i didn't eat much. I know I haven't said anything about what Phuket is known for the parties, stripclubs, bars etc. I did see many of these things and it was very sad to see the girls who worked there. I had always heard stories about these kind of places and it really did show me the other part of Thailand that I've never seen in my little world in Kantharalak. I don't really want to talk about all that so on to the next day. We packed up and headed out on the bus to do even more shopping. We drove most of the afternoon and all night to get to a town a couple hours outside of Bangkok. In the morning we went to the floating market where all of the market is in boats and to see the merchandise you have to ride in a boat, it's actually really cool! After the market we visited an old WWII train and a cemetery for the Prisoners of war and forced Asian laborers who had to build the railway. The Thailand-Burma railway, also known as the Death Railway was built by Japanese POW. It is called the Death Railway because during its construction around 106,000 POWs and laborers died. The cemetery was also a war memorial. It looked exactly like war memorials at home which was weird because it was the first one I'd seen since coming to Thailand. We spent one more night in a hotel and had a fancy dinner on a river all together because tomorrow we would be going back to Korat then to our separate cities. It's always sad to say goodbye after the trips because the other exchange students become your family and best friends while your away from home. I know I'll never forget all the amazing things I saw, the crazy things I did with my best friends, new foods I tried and all the laughs I had with rotary district 3340!

I feel like all my posts have started with an apology and I apologize for that! I just have been very busy for the past few months and updating my blog has become less important for me. But I apologize because I know it is important for my friends and family back home because it is your only way of knowing what I am up to! My last post was on December 1st which feels like just yesterday, before I came on exchange I was warned by past exchange students that time was going to fly and wow does it really! But anyway since my update I moved into my second host family. I didn't know much about them before I moved in but it turns out they are an even better match for me than my first host family. While I liked my first family very much and they were so nice and good to me they were very strict and busy all the time so I had a lot of down time and got bored quite a bit. In my 2nd family I have an 11 year old brother and a sister the same age as me who is on exchange in Illinois right now. My parents own a warehouse about 2 kilometers outside of the main part of town we live in a renovated portion of the warehouse. About a week after I moved into my 2nd host family's home I left for my second rotary trip to the north of Thailand. We traveled for 9 days and say so many incredible sites. The north of Thailand was originally were I wanted to live while on my exchagne so I was very excited for this trip. We spent 3 days in Chiang Mai, visited the highest point in Thailand, saw ruins of old temples, rode elephants and saw the famous white temple. This trip was over Christmas and since my district is just the best ever on Christmas night we had a party with real christmas foods and did a secret santa gift exchange. This Christmas definitely wasn't what I was used to but I made the best of it and even though it was hard being away from my family I got to celebrate with my rotary family so I think that made up for it. I arrived back home in Kantharalak on the 27th and luckily didn't have school until the 2nd of January so I could catch up on the sleep I didn't get while on my trip. For New Years I celebrated with my host family. They have lots of extended family living in Kantharalak and they all came to our house and I played with my cousins and brother. Again different from how I am used to celebrating but it was fun and I am glad I got to expierence how Thai people celebrate New Years Eve. After New Years I went back to school and everything was the same as before christmas until about the middle of January when my school started getting ready for sports week. For those of you who don't know what sports week is, since we don't do it in America which I really think we should change, I had so much fun, Sports week happens in every school all over Thailand Universities and elementary schools included. It is sort of like a mini olympics, the school is split up into colors and the colors play each other in all sorts of sports, there is a parade and shows and even giant stands made by each color. throughout the week the teachers judge everything and at the end there is a winner of the sports week. I didn't play any sports but I did help with lots of art projects, danced in the talent show and was a drum major in the parade. Sports Week was most definitely one of my favorite things I've done in Thailand so far and I was so bummed when it was over. I think those are all the highlights from the past 2 months. Other new things...I have become very close with my host brother and I am so grateful for that I didn't realize how much I missed having siblings until we started to talk. I play football at the park with him everyday and he loves to watch the Walking Dead with me and we even have inside jokes now! School will be ending next week and I'm both excited and sad. It will be hard to say goodbye to the M.6 kids, the seniors, because I have gotten very close to a lot of them but this summer I get to do lots of traveling with my host family and with rotary which I am very excited for! I'm not sure what else to write about so now I'll post some pictures!

I can't figure out how to post pictures onto a blog post from my Ipad! Sorry about that but if you go to my profile and then click the tab that says pictures I uploaded a few on there :)

I realize that I have neglected my blog lately and this post is very late in coming but better late than never right? My last post was about a month ago, right after my 3rd month in Thailand, the anniversary of my 4th month in Thailand is fast approaching and I can not believe it. One of the things I was told by past exchange students is that the exchange goes by way too fast, at the time I brushed off their comments thinking how could 10 months go by fast? Now I understand what they mean I would give anything to have time slow down and be able to stay in Thailand forever. A lot has happened in the past month so I will give a brief update on the highlights.

I had my first rotary trip with the other exchange students to Phukradung National Park. It was so much fun! It was the first time all of us had been together and it was so great to meet so many people from all over the world. Phukradung is about 6 hours north of where I live. It is a mountain that we had to hike to the top of. Thailand is a very flat country their mountains would be hills in Oregon but hiking up Phukradung was the hardest hike I have ever done. We hiked about 6 Kilometers straight up and since this was Thailand there was no straight clear path, we had to climb over rocks and around trees which made it that much harder also the Thai people have never hear of switchbacks. I am proud to say that I was part of the 2nd group that made it to the top and we did it in about 3 hours, it took some people all day almost 9 hours. We stayed at the top of Phukradung for 3 days during those days we hiked from one side of the mountain and back again to see waterfalls and cliffs. It was absolutely breath taking and I loved every minute of it even if I came home exhausted, leech bitten and sick. At Phukradung I saw something that will stay with me for my entire life. As I said it was extremely difficult to walk to the top but the only way to get up to the top is to walk. That means that all the supplies used at the top of the mountain must be carried up by a person. There are men and women who carry up to 50 kilos tied to sticks that they carry on their backs everyday. Seeing these people walk up this mountain carrying everything from tourists bags to the water and food we'll eat and drink and even propane tanks was completely insane. It was something from one of my history books but it was happening right there in front of me. I don't think I can ever accurately explain how hard those people work or how you feel when you see them but I will never forget them. Being with the other exchange students was part of what made this experience so awesome and I can not wait to see them all again in 17 days for our Christmas trip to the North of Thailand!

The next thing that happened was Loy Krathong day and honestly I think this might even top Phukradung! Loy Krathong is celebrated in the eleventh month of the year on the first day of the full moon. It is a day to give thanks for the river and to let go of any bad things inside you. This year it was on November 28th, last Wednesday we had the day off from school because every year there is a parade through town. I being a foreigner got to be in the parade dressed in traditional Thai dress and I got to be part of the...well I'm not sure what you would call it but it was our school honoring the king. I had to wake up at 2 am to go and get my make up hair done which I was not very excited about but it ended up not being that bad because I got to hang out with some friends from other classes. We went to the parade grounds at about 8 am but our school was the very last school so even though the parade started at 9 we didn't actually start to walk for a long time after that. I was the center of attention and I took pictures with so many people, it was crazy but I loved it! The parade itself was very, very hot and tiring. I got a very lovely sunburn because my outfit covered one arm but not the other. After the parade I went to lunch with friends to celebrate and then when home to get ready for that night. At night is when you really celebrate Loy Krathong, the Thai people go where there is a body of water in my town it was the park right across the street from my house. I went with my friends to Loy Krathong because my host mom was in Bangkok and my host dad had to work. During Loy Krathong you make these little boat things from banana leaves and flowers called Krathongs and then you float them in the water. I wasn't able to make my own since I was in the parade but one of my friends was very nice and him and his brother made me one. At the park there were lots of activities like a futsal tournament, beauty pageant, live music, people selling things and as always lots of food! There were even fireworks and it was so cool to see them because in Thailand there's not much thought about how far away the fireworks should be set off from all the people so they were literally right above us, my friends got scared cause they were so close! Another part of Loy Krathong day was the famous paper lanterns that you always see pictures of. Lighting a lantern and letting it go was one of the coolest things I have ever done it was so magical and dream like I loved it! In all I think me and my friends ended up lighting 6 lanterns in one night! So all in all I had a blast on Loy Krathong day and I hope to celebrate it again in Thailand one day!

Some other smaller details from the last month. I am having a tough time with the language. I mean I'm definitely progressing just not as quickly as I would like to be. Thai is a very hard language because of all the tones. I'm trying my hardest and hopefully in a few months I will be more fluent. School is great and I've become very close with many of the kids in my class and now, especially after the parade, kids in other classes are starting to talk to me more and more. I have become very close with the  2 girls from my city who are going on exchange next year and they are kinda like my little sisters in Thailand. It's very strange to be so popular! The girls in the younger grades look up to me and everyone is always yelling at me telling me they love me. I will be moving host families soon, which is both happy and sad. I really like my host parents but I am not very close with my host brother and sister in my first family. So I hope to be close with everyone in my second family. My second family is much younger speaks even more fluent english than my first family but I am going to ask them to speak only Thai with me as much as possible. Maybe I'll try to post some pictures from Loy Krathong, Phukradung and just my daily life in Thailand in another post!

October 3rd marked 2 months since I left for Thailand. The time has flown by and even though I look ahead at the rest of the year and it seems so long I know it will go way, way too fast. I was in Bangkok 2 weeks ago, I was so excited to go to Bangkok because I would be meeting my host sister for the first time. She is my age but lives and goes to school in the city. We took a charter bus to BKK and that was my first experience taking a bus for longer than the ride to school. I felt like I was on the night bus from Harry Potter! Unfortunately almost immediately after we arrived in BKK I got food poisoning. Which was no fun and really cut into all the plans I had to see rotary friends in the city. I was really sick for about 2 days and then the rest of the week I still just didn't feel 100% better. I left BKK on Saturday late at night. I was going home by myself because Sunday night I left again. This time I was going to district 3340's RYLA. RYLA stands for rotary youth leadership awards all though we did not learn much about leadership at the camp, it was more of a military boot camp. This years RYLA was held in Sattahip which is about 8 hours away from Kantharalack it is right on the gulf of Thailand. We stayed at the military base in Sattahip. It was amazing right on the beach and even though it was a little bit frustrating because they whole week they only spoke Thai, I had a blast meeting the other exchange students and even making some new thai friends.

Now I know I haven't posted in a while so I'm gonna make a list of all the interesting things that have happened to me i the last month or so!

• I was able to hold a baby sea turtle and then let it go free in the ocean! This was such an incredible experience I still can't believe it really happened!
• In Sattahip they took on the Thai students onto a Thai aircraft carrier and they usually don't allow foreigners on to them but they made an exception for us exchange students. I was really fascinated by the whole military base and so happy they let us go on the carrier. 
• I met some of the most awesome exchange students from all over the world and I can not wait until l see them again in November!
• I went swimming in the gulf of Thailand. The first ocean I've ever seen that I've actually been able to swim in!
• Right now, for the month of October, my school is on break but I'm still hanging out with all my friends and continuing to be Kantharalack's very own superstar, as my host dad says. 
• I was the leader of the parade at a sports day that our school attended. They dressed me up in traditional Thai dress.

That's all I can think of right now! And now I'm gonna go to the milk shop with friends, all they do is eat here!

I know This post is very late in coming! I apologize but I have been terribly busy the past few weeks. My life in Thailand has started to have some routine to it, but it is still an adventure with new experiences everyday. This week is my fourth week at Kanthalak Wittaya School. I love it there! I am in class M. 5.1. The grades are all different here and very confusing I still dont understand it myself. But grade 5 is the equivalent of junior year and each grade has a certain number of classes with the same students in each class I am in class 1. I am the most popular kid in school! The first weeks of school students would literally stop what they were doing to stare at me. They have become more used to me know but I am still very popular and everyone stares at me tells me I'm so beautiful.  There is only one other white student at my school of 4,000. Her name is Vivian and she's from South Africa but she isn't an exchange student she actually moved to Kantharalak. She's younger than me so I've talked to her but she hasn't had quite the same experiences as me.

 Here's a brief outline of a usual day. I wake up at about 7 o' clock, get ready for school and eat breakfast. They have school uniforms at every school around the entire country and they are all pretty much the same a long blue skirt a white button up blouse and mary Jane shoes, boys uniforms are pretty much the same just shorts instead of a skirt and tennis shoes. We have one day a week where we wear our sports uniforms.msports uniforms are sweatpants and a different colored shirt depending on your grade, grades 1, 2 and 3 wear yellow and 4, 5 and 6 wear blue. Around 7:45 I leave for school. Pinot, who works for my host dad in his clinic, usually takes me on the motorcycle. My school isn't very far away about 2 miles or so and eventually I might walk to school with some of my friends who live near me. In the mornings, at school, we line up by class and sing the national anthem and listen to announcements. After the announcements I have various classes  until 12 o' clock which is when lunch starts. All my classes are in Thai so I have no idea what's happening but I usually sit in the back and talk to friends or sleep. Next week during English class I will have Thai class which I'm excited for! The language is so hard and I would love to have some actual instruction on it. I buy my lunch at school. Everyday I have either rice or noodles which costs me 20 baht then I get either a water for juice for 7 baht. There is about 30 baht to the dollar! Everything is so cheap here it's awesome! Me and my friends eat lunch in the canteen then go back to class to hang out until 1 or whenever the teacher gets there to start class. School ends at 3:45 and I go home around 4. Sometimes I'll stay later to hang out with friends. When I hang out with friend Iusually just sit and annoy them while they try and do homework :) Depending on the weather either Pinot picks me up on the motorcycle or my host mom picks me up in the car. When I get back to the clinic I have a snack then take a shower and change. We eat dinner at my host moms parents house everyday at about 7:30. My host grandma, Amma, always cooks some delicious homemade Thai food. That's a pretty typical day but definitely not everyday is like that! Everyday is still pretty different. 

When I told people I was going to be spending a year in Thailand the number one question I got asked was, "Why did you choose Thailand?", and I always gave some vague answer about hearing what a wonderful place it was and how everyone had been there had loved it. But truthfully I didn't really know why I chose Thailand and since I didn't really know why I had chosen this country I obviously had doubts about coming. But now I have been here for 4 weeks and I can say with absolute certainty I still don't know why I chose Thailand but I already never want to leave this amazing place! I am so happy here and honestly I am not homesick at all. Well that's not true sometimes I'll miss my family or the weather in Oregon or my friends. But I have a wonderful family here too (they are constantly telling me that i am they're daughter and they will always be there for me) and the most amazing friends I could have asked for! 

Oh and I'm trying to put pictures on Facebook but have been having some technical difficulties and it takes forever to load them onto my blog. I'll keep you all posted about where I end up putting them!