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 :)