This week all of the PCTs organized a one day English/Life Skills camp for our villages. Around 200 10-12 year olds showed up and we had all different kinds of lessons for them ranging from road safety to nutrition to exercise. Each lesson involved fun activities and a few english words to teach them. My group chose to do an obstacle course and water balloon fight. Our goal was to teach the kids about teamwork and to have a bit of fun. By the end of the day I was covered in a mixture of water and sweat and was exhausted. It was a ton of fun. Two resource volunteers came to help us and they said that at site they host or go to other volunteers camps all the time which are usually around 3-4 days long. They are a lot of work to plan but the kids really loved it and I am excited to do more in the future.

Animal hide drying outside of a wat. An elderly man cuts the animal hide into different animal/human shapes and punches holes into the hides to make beautiful puppet shadows. He is trying to find an apprentice but none of the young people are interested.

A woman making pasins at a festival I went to last night. Everyone wore traditional Thai clothing and there was a parade, music, shows, and lots of food!

I saw these 3 Thai men at the festival, my sister told me they were supposed to be Americans....

Baby elephant in the market. When I walked by he reached out and tried to open my bag! Or that's what I think he was doing anyways. I feel really bad for these elephants, the people hold them still by a hook behind the ear.

View from the restaurant where I ate lunch today. Jealous?

Tomorrow I find out where I will be living for the next two years, and then on Thursday I head to site all by myself for 4 days!

Puppies and Porcupines

This week has been crazy. Tuesday night I got home from class and told my host family that I like porcupines. Porcupine is men in Thai which I think is pretty funny. I was just trying to practice my Thai plus I do think they are really adorable and I would maybe like one as a pet down the road when I get to site if it seems practical. My family couldn't understand what I meant so I googled pictures of baby porcupines to show them. The next day I get a text from my host sister telling me she is going to be home late because she is in Bangkok. At 8pm she comes home all excited and drags me out to the car. I can hear a puppy crying in the car and then she shoves a box in my hand that clearly has something alive in it. I open the box to see a little ball of quills hissing at me. Then the puppy is placed in my arms and she tells me to bring him into the house. I figured that the puppy was a friends, but nope, she went to bangkok spur of the moment and came home with a baby porcupine and a puppy. The puppy slept in my bed the first night and peed all over it of course. In the morning when I went to check on the porcupine he was not in his box so I had a puppy and a porcupine lose in my little bedroom. Since then the porcupine has warmed up to me and he is so adorable! He likes to try to snuggle though which is pretty painful for me.

On another note, I taught English as a second language this week. My students consisted of 4 monks, 5 little kids, a group of middle aged people, and several elderly women. The lesson my group had planned involved lots of activities where people get up and move around and eat snacks. The monks walked in right when we were about to start and panic set in. Monks are not allowed to sit near women, touch women, take anything from a women, have fun, or eat after 12 (along with 222 other rules). Our whole lesson had to be thrown out the window and we had to make it much less active. But the students still seemed to like it because they all came back the next day and even brought friends! Teaching turned out to be a lot of fun and I laughed harder trying to lesson plan than I have since coming to Thailand.

I also interviewed a 70 year old man who owns a garden area where he uses solar energy, recyclables for gardening, makes his own gas for cooking, makes organic fertilizer and pesticides, has a healing herb room, and makes homes out of mud and rice. People come to his house and he holds classes teaching people about self sustainable agriculture and the benefits of not burning rice fields after harvest time. It was really interesting and I hope that I can find something like that at site too.

I am doing much better since my accident and am hoping that the doctor will clear me to start biking again tomorrow. Training is now half over and in one week I will find out where I am going to be living for the next two years!

Puppy! I named him Mocha, which is the same thing in Thai and English. They already have a dog named Pepsi so I thought I would keep with the drink theme. 

My baby porcupine! Since in Thai he is a men, I have decided to call him porky/porkster. I tried to name him Mowgli from the jungle book but no one here could pronounce it. He has already grown a noticeable amount in the 4 days I have had him which makes me wonder just how big he is going to get...

Using toilets to grow vegetables. Yumm!

Since I am healing from my little accident I didn't spend the weekend traveling like the last few weeks, but I had an awesome time anyways. Saturday was sports day for all the PCTs (Peace Corps Trainees) but I was unable to participate so I had to sit and watch. After that was a bike maintenance session. I don't have a bike anymore so I once again had to sit and watch. My host sister came and picked me up and a bunch of friends biked over to my house. My meh taught us how to make a Thai kanome (snack). We all had individual personal size pumpkins that we took all the seeds out of then made an egg, coconut sugar, banana leaf mixture and poured it into the hollowed out pumpkins. The pumpkins were  steamed on a gigantic contraption over a fire outside the house. Half an hour later we had delicious pumpkin with a creamy custard filling.

Sunday I woke up in the morning to find my Paw setting up chairs all over the yard and hauling huge boxes of sugar and fish sauce out of the garage. Next thing I know people start popping up left and right while I am sitting outside in my pajamas trying to eat breakfast. I rush inside to get dressed and when I come back down the yard is filled with people and my Paw calls me up to the front and hands me a microphone. I introduce myself in Thai and try to explain where I am from and what I am doing in Thailand. The crowd loved it and I felt like a superstar. Right after my little speech I'm whisked away to Tesco Lotus (basically a huge Walmart). We had pizza for lunch with real cheese! I came home and made chicken cacciatore for dinner. This may not seem like a big deal to you but believe me it was. My family has never had Italian food before and I was very nervous that they would hate it. Thai food is incredibly flavorful and either extremely spicy or sweet. My meh and sister watched me cook the whole time and seemed very confused by what I was making. They all claimed that it was delicious but it is hard to say for sure. I did make a ridiculous amount and only a small portion was left for me to bring to lunch the next dayso I suppose that is a good sign.

My Meh eating italian food for the first time! I know her face looks disgusted but I swear it was delicious!

I was planning on adding a few more pictures but they take a long time to upload and I am being devoured by mosquitoes. 

A Night in a Thai Hospital

For all of you who said you didn't think I would last a month without landing myself in the Hospital, well you were right. Tuesday started off like any other day. I went to language class in the morning then to the post office to mail my niece a present, and then to the market for some fried bananas. On the way back to class for the afternoon I was riding my bike and my front wheel went of the road into a whole. Next thing I know I am flipping over the handlebars and my head smashes onto the pavement. Fortunately, I was wearing a helmet that I had just tightened so it fit perfectly. Unfortunately I was all by myself and couldn't even standup. Within minutes I am surrounded by about 15 Thais and am laid down on a bed and have smelling salts under my nose. Then seconds later Peace Corps arrives and whisks me off to the Hospital. The ER is quite small and my bed is right next to a little boy screaming at the top of his lungs. The doctors stab me in the butt with some needles (which is a first for me) and slather my cuts with iodine. The pediatrician spoke english and could communicate with me so I had him instead of the regular doctor. I ended up spending the day/night in the ICU for observation. None of the nurses spoke english so it was very confusing. They gave me XXL scrubs (probably what they consider American size) and the first time I stand up to go to the bathroom my pants are at my ankles. I think they really enjoyed seeing an American butt. They also spent a long time trying to say my name and cracking up over how strange it sounded. On a positive note, I got a grilled cheese during my hospital stay, and cheese is very rare in Thailand. My host sister and mother came to the hospital right when they found out about my accident and were crying and very concerned about me. My sister ended up staying over night with me and even took the next day off from work to take care of me. It turns out that I had a concussion, sprained neck, bruised pelvis, small abrasions, and possibly a fractured coccyx. My bike was shipped to bangkok for repair (hopefully). I missed a lot of training but was able to go to language class and a little bit of technical training today. I am still very uncomfortable but grateful that I didn't have any other injuries. The Peace Corps has been very helpful arranging transportation and helping me out with everything. The PC doctor calls me a few times a day to check in and ask how I am doing. I did get to learn a lot about Thai hospitals from this visit! Hopefully I won't be returning to one anytime soon...