Sense of Normalcy

It's amazing how quickly things have become routine. I have a ritual now to my daily life. I have friends, I have boy problems (sort of), I have complaints about my parents (only marginal, llike any teenager would have), I have a set routine.
I'm tidier here than I have ever been in my life. Seriously. Every night before I go to bed, I iron my uniform for the next day and take a shower. I then spray Deet over every imaginable place on my body and add to that layer baby powder. It is so humid here that if I didn't, I would be sweating buckets AND eaten alive by mosquitoes. I read myself to sleep. Mr. Martin has given me six books to start with and will give me more when I return the first few. I'm already onto my second.
I wake up at 6 am and for some reason, I am even cheerful about it. Maybe because it is the only time of day that has reasonable weather. So, I wake up, I shower, I put on some more deet and baby powder. I put on my uniform complete with socks and big black mary janes. I eat my cornflakes and I arrive at school at 7:15 am. Having teachers for parents really puts a damper on your sleep patterns. I'm the first kid in my class to get to school.
School is like a big party, all of the time. Yes we have classes, but I only have classes in english (I'm in the english program). When I have a class in thai I try to participate. I even take math tests! The teachers here are so much more relaxed than the teachers in America. They call the students fat, or ugly, or beautiful. They ask if you have a boyfriend, or have a crush. Sometimes they make jokes about your love life and their own. Hearing a teacher call my friend fat was really a bit of a culture shock. Everyone laughs here. In Corvallis we would become indignant and the teacher would at least get admonished from the administration.
Anyway, there's class and then lunch. LUnch is served in something called the "Cantina."
There are stray dogs everywhere. The food varies a lot and comes from individual vendors, wizened old women missing teeth. There's rice, curry, soup, noodles, hot dogs, fried chicken, snacks, fruit, and a fruit juice stand selling coconut, pineapple, papaya, passion fruit and everyother "weird" juice you could imagine. I bring 40 Baht with me to school. That buys me lunch, a drink, a snack for later and a bottle of water. It's the equivalent of $1.25.
Then we have class and school in officially over at 4:00 pm or see mung. I normally have to wait around for my host father and I leave school at 5:00.
Yesterday though, I went out with my friend boo (I found out that it's actually pooh, like the bear). Anyway, Pooh and I convinced my host mother to let me ride pooh's motorcycle, if pooh drove and we both wore helmets. Nobody wears helmets here because the motorcycles only go 10 miles an hour, but we wore them anyway. We were a sight to behold. School girls wearing their mary janes on a motorcycle.
I really liked riding the motorcycle. It's was such a free feeling. Who knows, I might want one instead of a car when I'm older. It's cheaper than a car too. So we rode into town and stopped at a temple. Neither of us knew quite what to do and we were the only people there. We made a wish and lit some incense. After that we drove along the river. You can see Loas. It is astonishingly beautiful. Tall green jagged peaks everywhere covered in forest. I hope I can go there someday.
After looking around the shops (I'm going to buy a pair of hot pink pointy toed jellies when we go back!) Pooh took me to her favorite restaurant here. It's a vietnameses crepe shop. In america, crepes are soft. Here they are crunchy and the waitresses cut them into bite size's peices for you. I had one with strawberry and custard. The store owners were shocked. I guess putting fruit and custard together never occurred to them. Pooh's choice, tuna with chili, was perfectly acceptable though. When I go back I think I'll have chocolate and banana. We also ordered soda. The soda was blended with ice and was a little bit like a smoothie. It came in a plastic parfait dish with a spoon. I had sprite, Pooh had oreo. The Oreo came with corn on top that was drizzled in chocolate sauce. Canned corn is a dessert here. It's eaten with chocolate and with watermelon, it gets put on top of icecream. I'm utterly befuddled by this strange idea.
I got home at 6:30 pm and then had to get ready for the Rotary meeting. I went to my first one. It's small and at a very nice hotel in a conference room entirely dedicated to Rotary. Emma, the new exchange student was there. She's as tall as me and even blonder, but her proportions are completely opposite. She has the longest torso I have ever seen. When she was sitting down next to me she was 6 inches taller than me. I thought, if her legs are as long as her torso, she must be over 6 ft. But no, she's actually a little shorter than me, so my shallow pride in my height hasn't been damaged. My pride in my fashion sense has though. She is by far, the most fashionable girl I have seen in a while. She hasn't gone to school yet and doesn't have any friends here yet. I invited her to come with us shopping tomorrow. She seemed really excited to have been invited somewhere. Her host parents have left her home alone all day for the entire week. She starts school on monday.
I got my cell phone to work and I called mom and dad. It was so nice to hear their voices. Dad's philly accent came through so clearly on the phone. It was comforting, but he sounded like my uncle.
I also recieved my first real letter. My friend and former rotary exchange student from the Czech Republic sent me a letter. It was so nice to have mail. I just sent off a bunch of letters to people in the U.S. and a response to my Czech friend. I even sent a postcard to Charlie. Life is moving forward so fast and I've only been here a week and a half.
Signing off for now,
Suzanne