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!