Happy, uh... Mother's Queen's Birthday Day and a Short Commentary on Food/Communication

So today in Thailand it was Mother's Day. Or actually, I should say the Queen's Birthday. Therefore, everyone celebrates Mother's Day, and all government places and places that sell liquor are closed in honor of the Queen. Or mothers. But I'm pretty sure it's just for the Queen. Anyhoo, was made to go to a ceremony honoring the Queen where there was about a room and a half full of people (people employed by the government, I'm assuming) all dressed in their white, khaki and blue uniforms. (Basically everyone looked militaristic. I looked around for the missiles and such, but all I got were a couple of monks, and a huge picture of the Queen adorned in christmas lights.)

It was a fairly long ceremony, in which everyone in the room proceeded to go up to the Queen's picture in groups and bow, each offering something that looked a lot like a mexcian wedding cake. I passed the time by staring at the light fixtures, and crossing my legs, and then remembering that its considered impolite here, and quickly slamming both feet down on the floor. Oh, and thinking I would like to be Queen as well, just so I could have a whole country celebrate me. For two hours. After, I got to meet the mayor and other high ranking officials of the town, which made me feel very important. Until I looked at the pictures in the car afterwards. There's the mayor, some other important people, Gift, a few members of my Rotary Club here, and then...there's me. Sweaty, greasy....me. If anyone ever wondered before, that's what you get when you combine a very hot, humid morning and a dark blue blazer. Sigh. Maybe I'll just photoshop another picture in... Like, my senior picture. And give myself Jessica Alba's body...

At any rate, nothing else of huge importance has been going on lately. I don't start school until the 24th, and Gift is on vacation now as well, so we don't really do much, except sit around and eat chocolate. Well, we watched practically a whole season of 'Weeds'... so I guess that's something. Oh, and I bought a cell phone. We went to the local Walmart-esq store, where Gift was walking around the counters of cell phones commenting on there being a camera in this one, a music player in that, and a radio in this. When I made a comment a few moments later, saying how I didn't really care which phone I got, Gift looked aghast. "Well," I pointed out, "I already have an iPod, and a camera, and it's not like I can understand the radio or anything." I snickered, "Plus, who am I going to call anyways? I don't have any friends. Mostly, I'll just be calling my parents." She just looked at me. Sigh. We ended up with a phone that has a camera, a music player and a talking dictionary. The talking dictionary I'm pretty excited about...

On to food though. I have deemed it virtually impossible for me to get fattish in anyway during this exchange. (Hurrah!) It's just not possible. We eat two meals of rice + supplemental foods such as, well, I can't pronounce any of the names so never mind, a day. Actually, on second thought, scratch that. Gift told me the second day I got here, that one has to eat all the rice on one's plate. I always seem to forget this fact every time Pi Noi (Pu Ching, it turns out is not her name. Whoops.) loads my plate up with rice, and then it's not until I get full and stare sadly down at my plate (still loaded with rice) and remember. And curse myself. Sadly, the only way I've ever imagined getting fat is off of breads and candies, not rice. And pork. And other things I don't know about. Most of the things I eat here, I never know what they are; I just rank them on texture, color and taste. And spicyness. My host dad told me the other night that he is slowly staring to up the spice in my little separate wimp-bowls, something I definitely am not so sure about. I happen to like my taste buds. But it seems that I'm doomed to forever burn them off one night, just to have them grow back so I can burn them off the next. They also don't refrigerate their food here. When we're done eating, my host family puts the bowls of uneaten food back in the cupboard with the cups and silverware. Hmm... We sometimes eat leftovers, but what happens to the rest of the food is a mystery to me.

Speaking of mysteries, while it's hard to communicate in Thai, it's turning out to be equally hard communicating in English. Now for the following to work, you need to say all the oddly spelled words in quotations out loud, so as to grasp my confusion. Tonight, we had like a ten minute joke going about some sort of American food but I couldn't understand what on earth they were talking about. "Tomorrow, we have sapagtiii" Uh.... My host dad looked at me again, "Sapagtiii [the 'g' is extremely silent]" I smiled, "I have no idea what you're saying." He laughed, and my host mom laughed and they continued to repeat it, while I just looked at them. Hmmm... Sapagtii, sapagtii, sapagtii...Where have I heard that before? Oh, right, I haven't. I didn't grasp what was going on until someone said something about noodles... "Ohhhhh! Spaghetti! Right! Yes! Spaghetti!" I smiled, and they laughed even harder. "Sapaghet-EEEE" They repeated and laughed and laughed. "Yes, Spaghetti. What's so funny?" "Sapaghet-EEEE!! Hee hee hee! Sapaghet-EEEE!!! Ha ha ha ha!" They continued to chant. I repeated what they were saying, but I added the Chinese tourist 'peace signs' and squinted. I thought they were going to roll off the benches they were laughing so hard. God, my life is hilarious....

Until later---
Anchelee