Thai Girlwonder

Today we experienced the Thai new year for the first time. Another name for it is Songkran. A little while back they would sprinkle water down your back, but now they’ve turned it into a giant water gun fight. When we first got there we were unarmed but not long after we came across a booth selling water guns. We bought three. We walked the rest of the way down to the moat and when we got there we were welcomed by buckets and buckets of water dumped on our heads. Our puny water guns didn’t help much. Soon we were soaking wet. We got into a tuk tuk that had a trashcan full of water. We were splashing everybody we saw. After an hour we got off and went home, but first we got ice cream and soda.

I know I spelled marriage wrong but I did it for a reason. I’m going to tell you about a certain scene in a movie. The movie is called “The Princess Bride” and this scene is the scene where the main character “marries” a prince that she doesn’t love. It’s just a line that I thought was kind of funny, it goes,

“Mawwiage, mawwiage is what bwings us togever today. Dat sweet awwangement, that bwessed engagement.” (the priest is saying this) “Skip to the end skip to the end!” (this was the prince, now’s the priest again) “Pwincess Bubbercup, do you…” (the prince) “Man and wife, say man and wife!” (the priest) “Mon and wife.”

That’s the only part the priest speaks and I thought it was funny so I put it on here.

Today we went to the elephant park, it was really cool, they had an elephant show, an elephant ride, and a bamboo raft ride.

During the elephant show the elephants would paint pictures, either self portraits or flowers. They had one elephant that was four paint some flowers and it looked really good, for his age that is. Ora Chai, one of the older elephants, painted a tree with flowers on it and even signed his name.

They also had one elephant play soccer and basket ball. He missed most of the time but got the ball in the goal once when he was playing soccer.

For the elephant rides they had a seat on top of the elephants back and you had to go up a ramp unto some platform and then you had to climb from the platform unto the elephants back and then to the seat. They put us two people per elephant and I was put with brother2. When we first started brother2 was breathing really hard and clinging to the rail.

For the bamboo raft ride we got to go down a little hill climb down a ramp and walk across a bunch of unstable rafts till we got to the raft at the very end and then we sat down and shoved off.

After a while we started to get bored, it was a long ride, so the driver stopped and told brother1 to come and try to steer. So brother1 got up and tried (he wasn’t that bad) and then after a few minutes let brother2 try. He wasn’t as good and got a shorter turn. Then my turn came. I walked up to the front of the raft, trying to keep my balance and grabbed the bamboo pole from brother2.

For a hollow bamboo pole it was pretty heavy and was hard to lift. I don’t know how well I did but I know I was up there longer than brother2.

When we finally left we were hot and sweaty, not quite ready for church. Luckily we came home before going to church.

My dad hasn’t slept all night. He’s been up all night long doing nothing but play the wii. He even made my brother get off so he could play a level on his favorite game, Fire Emblem. Turns out he didn’t play jut one level he played all night and is still playing now. My whole family is happy cause he’s on the last level in the game. He’s been trying to beat this game since before we moved to Thailand and it just keeps getting worse and worse. He stays up really late, sometimes all night and never stops to eat unless we bring him something. I can’t wait till he beats this level.

Today we went to go see walking street before church. We looked around for a while and bought a few things but when we went back to get the car there were so many vendors that it was stuck. If we can’t get one of those song (two) tows (seats) to take us home then we’re stuck here for a few hours (somewhere between 5 and 7).

My mom finally called someone and asked about a harp and teacher yesterday. On Monday or Tuesday she’s going to call her again and ask her about lessons. My new teacher sometimes gets to play for the queen!!!

The Thai language is a lot more complicated than english… they have five different tones!!! If you say a word in a tone that you didn’t want to say it in you’re saying something totally different. I can count from 1 to 99 and name some fruits and flavors but other then that I have no clue what I’m supposed to be saying. The driving is a lot different to, almost everyone rides a motorcycle and when they do you better watch out because they don’t listen to most of the traffic rules and if you hit them you have to pay money for the medical bill and the motorcycle, sometimes the funeral. The drivers seat in the cars here is on the right instead of the right so that makes it just as hard.

Brother1, Brother2, and I just started our new school. It’s much bigger then the old one. It’s huge! They have a place that you can go to at the end of the day and get smoothies. It’s really awesome and my teacher is really nice to. Today we’re going to the umbrella factory and to get some stuff painted on our stuff (backpacks, shirts, ect)

A few days ago we went to the night bazaar.  We bought the new veggie tales movie (the pirates who don’t do anything).  We got home and took it out of the package, brother1 just happened to be looking at the rating… it said pg13 for violence and scenes with action.  We watched it and it was pretty bad, they didn’t even have a Christian theme (dun dun dun). 

I was kidding about it being really bad.

Sometimes I wish I were just back in Colorado to be cold. It’s 80 degrees or something here during the day. No snow, no mountains. At least we have a swimming pool in our new neighborhood. Two actually. The one I like the best is the one that’s farther away. It has chess boards and it’s huge. It’s like the smaller version of a lake. During the summer it’s supposed to be around 100 degrees in the afternoon. It’s not as bad in the morning. Today my Mom and Dad sign for our house while brother1, brother2, and I take the test that tells the school peoples where we are in the subjects. I don’t know much about the school but one thing I do know is that we have no uniforms!!! We used to have uniforms at our school in Colorado and they were really uncomfortable.