First School Day

School for me is not really educational... for two reasons today. I don't speak Thai enough to understand what's going on, and there was only one one hour class today. Maybe more, there wasn't a clock in the room and I didn't care. Instead of back home where the kids move classrooms, all 40 of us kids were in one classroom, and the teacher came in about an hour after everybody got there. Basically how it works is: we got to school, met up with some of Tata (My older, but younger than Toto, host brother)'s friends, and got to the classroom. Once there, they kind of introduced me to some people, and people introduced themselves to me; simply because I was the whitest person in the school. After socializing for an hour, the teacher came in to teach math. Not just math though, Trigonometry, and it was weird Trig, so I pulled out my reading book and drifted off into fantasy land. After the teacher left we mingled for a little while, then Tata said he was going to go meet with his girlfriend, so I went with some of his friends to get some lunch. We walked over to a noodle cart while it was "raining"(a light drizzle by Oregonian standards :) ) and got noodle soup. It was really, really, really good. Probably some of the best food I've had since Bangkok, and this was just from a street vendor by the school. After everyone was done eating, we headed back to the school, and found out that there wasn't going to be another class, so we decided to go shoot some hoops. Since I was the white kid, I was automatically the best in their heads, and as it turns out, I pretty much was; even though I'm average in America. After a game or two, we were all hearded into the actual gym, which has concrete floors by the way, and sat down. It wasn't just sitting though, we sat in rows and columns cross legged. We sat like this for 3 whole hours. It was interesting for everyone else, but again, I still can't speak Thai. Near the end of the 3 hours, some type of tradition something something was going on, I have no idea, and nobody can figure out how to explain it to me. Still sitting cross legged, we bent over and put our foreheads and hands on the person in front of us' back. We sat like that for a good 20 minutes, with the leaders shouting at us; why? I have no idea. Some of the instructor people came and got me, again, because I'm white, and made me introduce myself to everybody. The introduction however, was not just an introduction, it was a song and dance routine. Literally. That was embarassing and interesting, but I lived. After that, school was over. We were going to get ice cream, but there was a KFC right across from the ice cream parlor, so everyone else wanted to go there. It is not our KFC, but oh my god was it nice to eat fatty greasy American food. It was the standard chicken, but one kind was breaded with chili batter. Also, they had regular fries, and the Ketchup was sweet. It was weird, but still amazingly good to get some fast food in me. After KFC, we went home on a pick-up truck that was basically a taxi bus. Then, I turned on the Olympics to see the Womens 150m freestyle, and some weightlifting. I tried to use the laptop at the house, but it gave me a BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death for those of you n00b5), so I asked my brother to take me on our cousin's scooter to an internet cafe, which is where I'm sitting now, shoeless, telling you all about my day. Hope you all are having fun!
Jamie