Not Busy, Just Thai'd Up

In life you take the good with the bad.  And for this week, the bad came in the form of sickness…twice.  Monday night into Tuesday, I had a fever.  So I did nothing, and it went away.  Not so bad.  But Friday night, I had food poisoning.  After five hours of vomiting out what felt like all of my intestines and disgusting amounts of diarrhea until 3 AM, and then a butt ton of sleep, I got better (props to Kristina for taking care of me- thankyousomuchiloveyoualot!). Thank goodness.  So fellers, DON’T EAT AT THE ART CAFÉ by Taepai Gate! It might look snazzy, and it has good pumpkin pie, but really, the possibility of five hours of hell is not worth it.  Everyone who eats there ends up not feeling well, although not everyone throws up.

But NEXT to the Art Café is this most wonderful place to buy glasses! The people are really nice, and they even complimented my Thai J  but they speak English really well, so no frets if you can’t speak Thai.  They are also really bored- I feel like they don’t get heaps of business.  I literally walked into the place, said I wanted some glasses, and they kept piling frames on frames on frames on the table in front of me.  They had this sweet deal where I could buy a frame, and get the other frame for free if I just paid for the lenses.  To top everything off, the eye exam is free, and the glasses are ready the next day! Two pairs of glasses = $237.  All of that sweet business for a decent price? I say, getchoo some glasses dur!  I am through advertising.

Another amazing thing that happened this week: visiting the Healing Family Foundation where my friend Emily volunteers, also known as the place that I referenced in an earlier blog post (where I’m getting lots of souvenirs for yens guys! On another note, if you click on "Healing Family" at the beginning of this paragraph, it will take you to a YouTube video that my friend Matt made for Emily- it will give you a bit of insight into what happens at this place and how amazing my friends are. If you click on "Foundation" it will take you to their website!).  The Healing Family Foundation is a community for mentally and physically disabled people.  Here, they are taught how to weave in a Japanese wave style so that they can make amazingly beautiful things (did you watch the video to see what they do and how beautiful their work is????) like bags, shirts, coasters, hair clips, shawls, table runners, etc.  It’s a place where these people can come together and find a special community, a family, and great friends.  This place is amazing, but the people are even greater- they stole my heart.

I went with Emily on Thursday after class to hang out with them and see what she does.  We did a lot of arts and crafts with them: we made edible turkeys (BECAUSE IT WAS THANKSGIVING Y’ALL!) and other out of Oreos, pretzels, nasty licorice pieces, M&Ms and berry candies, and then we colored pictures.  They are really creative, and Emily is so great with them because she gives constant words of encouragement when they proudly show her each colored stroke.  My favorite part though was rehearsing for our dance on International Day (a Payap event) next week.  Emily is bringing some of the people at Healing Family to school so that we can all show off their work, and hopefully sell some of their products to support them financially.  They all LOVE to dance, and they’re really good at it. One of the guys, Tiang, choreographed both dances that they are doing- he’s really fun because he likes to change things up, and he gets super into it.

 

During my short time there, I felt a little uncomfortable because not only did I not understand what they were speaking (still not a master of Thai), but I also didn’t know how to communicate with them effectively the entire time.  But somehow, they accepted me into their little world for a short time, and we bonded on a level where we were all having fun with each other despite the barriers.

Another heartfelt moment this week was PIH Thanksgiving.  Now, they celebrated Thanksgiving on Tuesday, which was a little odd, but everything else made up for it.  I am a stickler for having my annual Thanksgiving foods- I get really upset when I don’t get my grandmother’s stuffing and pies, my grandfather’s turkey and mashed taters, Tom’s sweet potato casserole and green bean casserole, and my mom’s amazing can-opening skills to plop the cranberry sauce and olives in a bowl…but PIH did something amazing and so I wasn’t too heartbroken.  We had mashed potatoes, roasted chicken (turkey is too expensive), broccoli and cheese, cinnamon rolls, and salad.  It’s not my favorite annual meal, but it wasn’t Thai food.  It was really special and sweet because Thanksgiving is a totally American holiday, but they reached out to us and gave us a lil family and tummy lovin. 

After dinner, they blasted some American tunes, and my SEIAGS family scared the Thai people by getting a lil rowdy.  That’s right- gettin’ down with Miley to “Party in the USA” and “My Milkshake Brings all the Boys to the Yard.” Dinner ended in a little dance party- not to take all the credit, but I’m pretty sure I had a lot to do with it *brushes shoulders off*- all I had to do was get on the table mouthing lyrics to “Don’t Stop Believin’”.  #crowdpleaser (for some reason I got into the random hashtagging thing- someone please tell me if I’m doing this correctly- I don’t really understand it)

 

A second most excellent dinner that was eaten: flower food.  A group of food-experimental friends and I plopped into this really adorable hipster-looking restaurant, Saimok kab Dokmai, where flowers are not only decoration, but food.  I felt like a fairy.  We sampled a few dishes- the coconut soup with flower petals, the curry with flower petals, deep fried flower petals, flower petal omelet, and spicy flower salad.  We also got to sip on some roselle juice (my favorite) and some rockin blue-colored butterfly pea juice.  It was a little odd to see purple and white flower petals just laying around in my dinner, but they were quite tasty!  They tasted like herbal, perfumey spinach leaves. Now I just wanna go around sampling people’s gardens.

Now, for the most magical moment.  The Festival of Lanterns- YiPeng, a Lanna festival!  Saturday night, we all went out to Mae Jo University to watch hundreds of paper lanterns be let go into the air.  The festival is a northern Thai holiday meant to be a way to make merit, and it coincides with Loy Krathong, a celebration in which tons of banana leaf boats are released into the river (I’m gonna see it this coming Wednesday!!!!! YEEEEE!!!!!).  It felt like the Fourth of July and Christmas mixed all in one- I just felt like I was in a fairy scene.  We waited around for hours amidst thousands of people sitting on square pieces of plastic, and after the sun went down, Buddhist chanting commenced for an hour.  After two hours of waiting, we jumped at the cue to begin lighting our lanterns.  And before the mysterious signal that the man with impeccable enunciation referred to over the speaker, hundreds of lanterns were released into the air, floating into the dark oblivion of the night sky.  It was so beautiful- on my camera, they look like stars, but in person they looked like magical twinkling fairies. 

Matt and I tried to set one into the sky, but ours caught on fire.  He threw it to the ground, and tried stomping it out- this was a great idea until the fire exploded around his leg and singed his leg hair.  It was scary and hilarious all at the same time.  But we (more importantly Matt) got over it after deciding to just enjoy the scenery despite our failure.  AHHHH! My words and pictures just don’t do it justice.  Just. Come to Thailand during the end of November!