Thursday. Managed to sleep until 5am today. Decided to get out of bed at 7. It was a cooler morning than it has been and it felt great. I sat outside with a cup of hot green tea and read.
Once the rest of the house started moving, I got up and showered. I visited two different volunteer placements; both day cares. The children were absolutely adorable! I had my one big embarrassing moment at the second day care. The children were all starting at me while they started singing a song. The song sounded beautiful and I started dancing a bit. The country director for Thailand was standing next to me. She looked at me and told me they were singing their national anthem. I can't remember the last time I've been that embarrassed. I'm a terrible example!!!
After visiting the volunteer placements, I went back to the home-base and had lunch with all of the staff. I had drunken spicy noodles and they were simply amazing! I had the rest of the afternoon off. The first thing I did was walk to the massage parlour. I had a two hour Thai massage. I couldn't think of any better way to spend those two hours. It started to downpour during my massage and hadn't let up by the time I was done. I hadn't learned that no matter where you go in Bangkok if it's October, you need to grab an umbrella. It was a rainy walk home, but I have to say I really enjoyed it.
AFter dinner, I headed out to do a little exploring. I ended up in an area of Bangkok that reminded me exactly of time square. Needless to say, I wasn't the biggest fan of that area. An hour of that was enough for me and I headed back to the house.
I'm proud to say it was the first night that I slept until 7:30 am when my alarm went off. That is a milestone when traveling to the other side of the world! I'm finally adjusting with five nights left.
Today. gosh, it was a wonderful day! Fridays are Cultural and Learning days for CCS Thailand. We drove about 2 hours outside Bangkok to a small, local floating market. Every boat either had flowers, vegetables or food. My new favorite Thai dish is something I've decided to call Rice Flower Corn Cup. I was told the Thai name, but It is something so ridiculously difficult to say, that I've just decided to give it another name. It's a very simple dish. It starts with a pan is similar to a cupcake pan but much more shallow and the edges are rounder - you put a drop of coconut oil in each cup, heat it up, and then drop in the rice mixture. The mixture is rice flower, coconut milk and a tiny bit of sugar. Once you drop that in, you add a few fresh corn kernels (or you can use green onion) and in a few minutes, you have a delicious cup of goodness. It's the closest thing to eggs I have found since I haven't been able to eat eggs! I think it's the texture that reminds me of eggs, but it's much sweeter than eggs. Yum. (picture attached)
After walking around the floating market for about an hour, we got into a little wooden boat and headed on a boat tour. We floated by about a dozen different Thai style homes that can only be reached by boat. The water was very swampy, but great for lotus flowers as they were everywhere. Not only did I see a lot of lotus flowers, but there were also about a dozen different orchids. We stopped by a home and were given a tour. This is what a traditional style home looks like: Traditional Thai Home
I was afraid to walk through the home as the boards supporting the home were over fifty years old. I could feel many of the boards were loose, plus there were huge holes in many of them. One of the boys that lived in the home (he was about 6) kept laughing at me. He thought it was hilarious that I was so nervous and tried to show me that I had nothing to be afraid of. He kept jumping up and down on each board and would run back and forth from wall to wall. He had a beautiful smile.
We headed back down the river to another home where they made some type of sugar for a living. I'm still not exactly sure what the difference is from regular sugar as I asked, but wasn't given a straight answer. All I know, is that it is practically impossible to get anything in Thailand that doesn't have sugar in it.
After the boat tour, we headed down the road to the next small town. We stopped for lunch and the Country director ordered for us. We had all types of great Thai dishes. Attached you'll see one of my favorites.
It was a long ride home in the rain. Sadly, I spent the evening packing up my things. This last week has gone by so quickly! Tomorrow morning I'm off to Ko Samet with Kalia - a girl I've been sharing my room with for the past week. She is wanting to do nothing but lounge as well, so it should be perfect. However, I haven't gotten any homework done on this trip and I am in serious trouble! I'm really behind and have some catching up to do. If I'm staring at blue water and don't have any other plans, I don't think homework will be so difficult.
I look forward to sharing my pictures when I get home. I have about 1000 so far and I'm sure Ill get quite a few more over the next five days.
Happy Friday everyone! Enjoy your weekends.
signing off at 11:30pm Friday evening - my last full night in Bangkok.
xo's
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