Biking, Teaching, Touring, Laughing

More photos here.
Last night it rained all night and into the morning which means that today is a nice cool day.  I can sit outside and not sweat.  It feels so good, and I'm very grateful for the rain though it means snakes will come during the night.  Let's just hope they stay clear of our bathroom.

Last weekend was one of the best.  We headed down to a beautiful place called Sukothai.  Part of it is an old ancient city with ruins of old temples, buildings, and Buddha statues.  We all rented bikes and rode around the city all day long.  This resulted in sunburns (sorry Mom), awful tan lines, a heat stroke for G, and tons and tons of fun.  One thing that made it less fun was getting road burn on my leg that doesn't have the burn.  This means that standing isn't very comfortable, and also being at Sukothai in the heat with a fresh wound meant little baby flies sitting on that wound.  Gross.  But everything turned out fine, and it was still a lot of fun.

Sukothai

Everything is going great.  I love it hear.  Teaching English is getting easier.  Now on Fridays we teach for about 5 hours at the school.  The older kids are a lot of fun to teach, but the younger ones are a little harder especially because the Thai teachers give them to us all at once (about 25 kids) for two hours. We're hoping that in the future we will only teach three hours a day instead of five, we'll see what happens.

On Sunday G got heat stroke so we didn't think that taking the trucks home would be a good idea.  We waited until a man from the ward was able to take us home in his car.  My goodness he is the funniest Thai person I've ever met.  He's also not a very good driver.  We were driving around trying to find the road that takes us to Doi Saket when he starts driving behind this big grocery store.  G and I ask him where we are going and in his heavy accent he replies, "I don't know?"  We all started laughing and laughing.  Next thing we know he's pulling out onto this very fast road.  In about 2 seconds he crosses three lanes and cuts somebody off.  That car swerved around us and speed up ahead.  Very calmly he says, "Wow.  He was mad."  After we finally got on our way to Doi Saket he was more cautious.  Or as he would say "I have cautious."  It was great.  So great.  I love it here and I can't believe that I have less than two months left. It's crazy. It feels like yesterday I was stepping off the plane in Bangkok so excited to get up to the foundation and start working.  And now I'm here, doing just that.  I have to remind myself that this will all soon be gone.  And I'll miss the cicadas that hurt your ears, the frogs that can get so loud I can't sleep, and the meals where I wonder what in the world I'm eating.  But most of all I'll miss the children.  I'll miss playing ninja attack with them (Now they're so good it's impossible to beat them) and having arm wrestles with boys and getting sore arms the next days.  They are all wonderful people, and I hope that some how, in some way, my being here will have meant something to them.

Fa, Me, G, Kam.

All the kids before going to school.

I'm an Asian

More pictures here.
You know when you get hurt and at first your not that worried about the injury, just taking it as it goes?  Then somebody talks to you and tells you all the things that can go wrong with what is already wrong with you.  Consequently you get a little paranoid and can't stop thinking about what was previously just a pain in the leg.  Literally.

Last weekend G and I headed down to Chiang Mai like we always do.  To get back to the orphanage we have to take a series of trucks up the mountains and then somebody from the orphanage has to drive out to the main road to pick us up and take us back.  So it was a nice Sunday night and we were waiting to be picked up when Aussi (a 15 year old boy mind you) shows up on a two seater, I repeat, Two seater scooter.  Also keep in mind that the wheels on the scooters here are significantly smaller than the wheels on scooters in America or Europe so it's already a little wobbly when you ride it.  It ended up that all three of us were riding home on this small scooter, and I think it's important to note that G and I had back packs that amounted to a large 10 year old.  It made me feel Thai.  For a wonderful 10 minutes I thought I was as Asian as the Asian driving the scooter.  Everyone listen! (or read)  Being Asian is awesome.  

Here's where my being Asian stopped.  Petch (another 15 year old) showed up on a second scooter.  So I was getting off the first and onto the second when I noticed that my leg hurt really bad.  Like it was on fire.  You guessed it my leg was resting against the uncovered exhaust pipe on the scooter.  Needless to say I didn't enjoy the second half of my ride home in the fresh night air watching the lighting a ways off as the Asian I previously was.  Okay, maybe I enjoyed it a little bit but my skin had just been melted and it kind of hurt.

I got burned, and I got burned bad.  I don't know why the engineers who design these scooters don't think, "Man, this exhaust pipe gets Really hot after driving this scooter.  It's open and anyone can touch it, especially when they're getting off the back and they need to put their leg there.  Hmm... maybe we should cover it... Meh, they'll just learn by experience."  And we do.  We do learn by experience.

I wasn't too worried about the burn until the new volunteers from Germany started talking to me about it.  They said things like "flies sit on it," "they plant eggs," and "you can't always be swatting at them, some flies are too small to notice."  That's when my paranoia kicked in.  So, now I keep it covered as I should/should have so no flies can lay their eggs in there.  

Besides that burn (which really isn't that bad, it's just something to write about.) everything is going great.  So great.  Especially because as I write this I'm listening to one of my favorite songs and that always makes a good moment better.  I love it here, and though I miss my family and friends I wouldn't trade this experience for the world.  It is so much fun to be with these people.  And up at the orphanage I get the opportunity to meet so many people from all around the world because what we call guests come to the orphanage a few times a week to see what we're all about.  It is fantastic and I love it.