Wow, guess who’s SEVENTEEN. ME!! Feel free to express post me a cane and dentures, because damn, that’s old. I had an amazing weekend. My three bestest friends in Thailand came down to my small town of Maha Sarakham on the Friday before my birthday. We had such a wonderful time, just because we were together. We ate a delicious western lunch at this restaurant, I am always to cheap to buy anything but a drink at and then went back to my house. We just talked and chilled in my room until around 7pm when my family made us leave and go to the fair, because they were going out for dinner. So we attended this giant red cross fundraiser/market/fair/carnival/concert thing in my town. It was alright but basically you just had to buy things and well exchange students are broke. So we went and watched a Thai show which was cool for about five minutes until we realized it was just the same girl singing in Thai so we left and walked home. We went to seven eleven and loaded up on junk food then went home and stayed up all night talking. IT WAS SOOO NORMAL!
The next day we headed down to Khon Kean a city about 45 minutes away from Maha Sarakham, to meet up with friends and go out for some more delicious food. We hung out and went to Shabu-shi. Shabu -Shi is this restaurant where you have a hot shabu pot in the middle of your table with two types of soup broth and there is a conveyor belt that encircles the restaurant passing by every table with raw ingredients on it. You grab the ingredients and cook them in your soup broth. They also have a sushi bar and an ice-cream bar. I am not going to lie it is my favorite chain restaurant in Thailand. It is also one of the most expensive, 300 baht. Now for comparison an average Thai dinner from a street vendor cost 30 baht, and average Thai dinner from a Thai restaurant 100 baht. So, yeah quite the difference, but it is sooo worth it.
After that Jacquie, Annie and I headed back to Maha Sarakham and my friend Ashlee headed home. When we got home we had a delicious normal pizza. ( normal pizza is a rare commodity in Thailand because Thai people always put very strange things on their pizza like hot dogs, shrimp corn, mayonnaise, ketchup, yeahh…) Then once again we had a very normal western teenager night of lying around eating junk food in bed while talking about random things.
Well, we didn’t talk about that random of topics, it was rather predictable. We talked about how it is so insane that our exchange is over half over. We talked about how the next two months are going to be hard because we have no planned trips or exchange student get together and it is very lonely. We talked about how once we get to April, time will fly so fast with our two big trips. We talked about our worries for going home. How we are worried that our friends haven’t changed. We are worried that while we have all grown up so much, our friends will still be exactly the same. We talked about how excited we are to go home to those same friends anyways because we miss them like crazy. We talked about the first meal we want to eat when we get home and how nice it is going to be to have your own room again, with all of your stuff. We talked about how even though we are going home, we will leave soon again because this exchange has made us realize we want to travel the world.
The next day we woke up late and walked to the bus station and sent Annie and Jacquie home. I went home and went to sleep because I was exhausted. My host sister woke me up at seven saying we were having a party with my councilor and my other host parents. I was tired and kind of mad they didn’t tell me. But I got dressed and went down and smiled like a good exchange student. This was rather hard because they kept discussing, how they thought I was so homesick and how they thought I had gained so much weight. They were talking in Thai too, so they thought I couldn’t understand. This really hurt me, once I finally am starting to feel happy and content in Thailand they are convinced I am miserable and keep trying to change my life. They think there is something wrong with me. Then they go and call me fat, which is so hard to hear because I have gained weight, but I have been trying so hard to eat healthy and exercise but Thai people only feed me junk food because I am a guest. I rarely eat fruit or vegetables, not by choice, but because my family doesn’t buy them. It’s such a double standard. They call me fat, then bring me boxes and boxes of cookies. It really messes with your mind.
The last week has been rather bad, because that birthday party upset me a lot. I thought I was doing so well, I thought I had adapted and created quite a good life for me and then I find out I am doing it wrong I guess. Host families are so complicated, especially in Thailand because they don’t treat you like family. They honestly have no idea how to treat you because their culture sees foreigners as like a whole different species. We are all just human, I do all the same things as your sixteen year old daughter. I do homework, I watch TV, I exercise, I play on face book and I sleep. There is nothing wrong with that. I am trying to live my life as normal as I can here, and it is really hard when my family treats me like I am some explosive mess. They tiptoe around waiting for me to break. They expect me to fail and to be homesick. I don’t like that feeling. I really don’t.
So, my friend Ashlee and I are meeting up in Khan Kean tomorrow to go eat some healthy vegetarian food, walk around a lot and plan a trip for the end of this month down to the coast to visit all of our friends down there. I also decided this is only going to get better if I make it better. I decided to challenge myself to an adventure a day. That is 132 adventures, and I made a tumblr to blog about it so you can follow progress, if you want. If you are wondering why I don’t just blog it on here, Tumblr is wayyy easier to use for picture uploads than blogger.
That is all for now.
Xerox Chantel <3
P.S. Email me what you would do if you had a day in Thailand. Seriously, all of my family and friends just write me a quick email and I will try to do it.
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