Hii so it's been a while and I know that there have been multiple people waiting for an update. There are multiple reasons for that. First of all I was just busy and too tired to write this block but I also encountered some problems and I wanted to talk to a some people before doing this update. More about that later.
Since it has been quite a while this might be a longer update. I'm not sure yet though. I guess I will just see. And why I don't know yet, is because I know I will be too lazy to proof read anything so I just write it down the way I think.
I guess I will start with the problems that I have encountered first because I would like to end this on a positive note.
Tbh school has been going amazing so there is nothing to worry about. My problem is more about my host family. They don't really talk to me. Whether it is just about daily conversations or actually important matters. Often I only get to hear 3-5 sentences after school which really isn't a lot.
But because I have never lived with a host family before I decided to talk to some other exchange students and a friend (soon to be exchange student -> trivial but I love his host mom and host brother they are sooo cute) before going to talk to anyone else.
What I found out from that was that the experiences I have been making with my host family shouldn't quite be like that and I was advised multiple times to go talk to my coordinator about it. I have yet to talk to her because I either hadn't gathered the courage yet or it just wasn't a good moment but either way I decided to inform my parents (hi Mama hi Papa) next so that they were up to date and wouldn't have to get to know about it through this blog.
If I'm being honest sometimes it makes me very insecure that I have been having some troubles with my host family because I see most of the other exchange students having a great time while I feel completely left out starting when I meet my host sister to leave school.
There are many things that (after talking to other exchange students) shouldn't be like that but I prefer not going into detail about it in this blog. If you are interested you can text me and I can decide how much I want to share with you but I don't want to write it this indirectly as it also might be harder to understand the situation by just reading this.
Anyways so apart from that I have honestly been having a great time here in Thailand. I feel very at home? Natural? Welcomed? at school and I have found some friends. I really love my class because they are very funny and friendly.
I'm still a little too shy to speak Thai with them. I don't have a problem if it's with teachers but I have decided to try to ask my friends to speak Thai with me starting next week.
On a day to day basis I spend about 9-11 hours at school (that might be ever longer soon). School ends at around 16 o'clock/4pm but normally my host mother picks us up at around 17 o'clock/5pm. Which gives me an hour of pretty much freetime. Sometimes my class plays games once school ends and if that happens I really enjoy it. We often played werewolf and I got the werewolf card like 5 times out of 6😭😭😭. While I do think that it is more interesting than being a villager I would prefer to have a different card. I'm really not good at being a werewolf. Especially since I often don't really know who is under suspicion because I don't speak Thai that well. But I still have fun. What I also thought was interesting was that they use different base cards (?).
Okay so in Germany you would normally always use:
-cupid (marries 2 characters without knowing their identity whose goal it will be to win the game together)
-witch (can either safe a victim, kill a second person or do nothing)
-blinking girl (can try to see who the werewolves are while they do their move)
In Thailand they use none of those cards in a basic game. Instead they use:
-werewolf seer <not the actual game but they decided to call it that> (searches for the seer, if she finds the seer the werewolves win)
-spellcaster (mute a different person each round)
-tanner (hates his life and wants to die, wins the game if the village kills him; if he is killed by the werewolves then it is bad luck)
Or we just play UNO.
I kind of forgot what I wrote in my last entry and when that was so if I have talked about receiving my schedule already then you may skip this. I will mark it using this *
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So I received my schedule maybe at the beginning of this week? I lost any overview I had on time. And let's just say it definitely isn't a normal schedule. But I'm also happy about that as I get to experience a lot.
So first of all I have some classes in other grades like for example biology or one lesson PE. I don't have an arts class yet but I wanted to talk to my coordinator about it and that would also be in another grade.
During the week I have multiple cooking classes. Like bakery, Thai food, Thai desserts or food carving. I do these classes with the Estonian exchange student whose name is Iris because writing Estonian exchange student is too long. So anyways we haven't quite decided which of these we will regularly attend. Last week we went to bakery and Thai cooking and while both were very fun cooking does take a lot of time which means we miss other classes. So we have decided that we probably won't regularly attend all of them.
Last week we made red velvet cake
And ข้าวแกงเขียวหวาน or sweet green curry (still very very very spicy)
We even got to try a Thai snack which is very yummy
I also have A LOT of PE classes. In Thailand they have one hour of PE per week. On that they they go to school dressed in their sports uniform. For those who forgot what it looks like:
So... instead of having one PE class I have 3... on the same day... with the Thai weather... At first I was very worried about that. But after having only 2 of those classes last week (the 3rd one was canceled because the teacher was sick) I will actually be looking forward to it as I had a lot of fun.
It starts with volleyball in ม.4 <10th grade> (we have a very sweet teacher who teaches both this and the next PE lesson). To be honest arriving to the first lesson wasn't quite the best. I couldn't reach Iris who stays with this class and neither my host sister who had asked me for my schedule the day before to know where I would be so that they could tell me and my friend where they have PE as there are 3 possible locations. Which are the gymnasium, the sports field or the thing where the the assembly takes place every morning. So I kind of arrived a little late. But the teacher was so sweet so I didn't feel extremely embarrassed. Only a little. I'm very grateful for my friend though. Without her I would have never found the way there. Who would expect that a gymnasium has a second floor???
Anyways after volleyball me and Iris had chairball with the same teacher but with ม.1 <7th grade> for those who don't know what chairball is it is basically basketball but basketball already has a meaning to it so they had to name it differently. How it works: There will be 2 teams each consisting of 7 members. One of those members will stand on a chair and hold up a basket (like a paper trash basket) and try to catch the thrown balls of other members. Another person will stand infront of the other team's basket person as a defender. And well the rest is like basketball. Only that no matter from where you shoot you get 1 point. Iris and I definitely enjoyed our height advantage.
Normally I would end the day with a PE class with my own class: ม.5 <11th grade> and a dancing lesson. Not this week though.
In addition to that I have Thai music classes as well where I will be learning to play a Thai instrument that is kind of similar to a xylophone. Sooo this week was my first lesson anddddd well I had to do a test. But I didn't make any mistakes so I was very proud if myself. I was honestly very surprised to because I made mistakes every time I practiced it beforehand.
Short side note before I continue: English classes are sooooooooo boring. We have an American teacher as we are in the English program and there are often teachers from abroad. And let's just say that he doesn't explain anything and that the content of the lesson is super easy and boring but he also doesn't really make it more interesting.
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Apart from all those things I have joined the impromptu speech club which kind of reminds me of discussions in school in Germany and I'm planning on joining the dance club for after school as well. I would really really like to join a sports club because Thais take the car so much that I miss moving. Although you walk a lot if you have classes in different parts of the school building. I mean 7 floors with 2 different extremely big wings and a teachers wing in between (if I find a photo I will add it here). So for example on wednesday I did over 7.000 once I was back in my classroom after lunchbreak which is around 12:50.
(This is the view from the 7th floor)
So now to this weekend. I didn't spend this weekend with my host family which I have no problem with because they are apparently traveling somewhere else but this is part of what I mentioned earlier when I said that they don't communicate even if it is about important matters. And as said if you would like to know more about it text me privately so I can choose how much I want to share with you.
On Friday I stayed at school longer because I would go to the airport with my coordinator and her 2 sons (one 6 yo and very cute and one 13 yo and very polite) to say goodbye to phat who is leaving to be an exchange student in Germany. The 13 yo son still had tutoring lessons for physics so we had to wait for him but that was fine. I just continued reading my thriller. It's very good. At some point all the foreign teachers started leaving and one of them came to me. Turns out he speaks German and that very well. He is Amercian but his mother was as he told me German so he often spoke German with her, visited relatives in Germany and even spent 5th grade there before returning later when he was around 20-30 to live in Munich for a year.
He also told me that he hasn't spoken German in a long time (he is already a little older) and I have to say I was quite surprised because he doesn't really have much of an accent. Sometimes you can hear it but other times you wouldn't know that he isn't German. I also got to know that he has been living in Thailand for almost 15 years by now and I'm really impressed.
So back to Phat she will actually be in lower Saxony but not in Hannover. It is a bigger city and it is definitely known so that you would recognize it when you hear it but I forgot the city name. It is on the tip of my tongue. Either way I really hope that she will have a great year there and find many new friends. We're also planning to meet once I get back since she is supposedly staying until the end of June.
That night we stayed at a hotel near the airport. I got my own room😎. The next day we did quite a lot. At the end I had walked 17.000 steps. First we went to a mall to eat. We ate Korean food because that was the first shop where we found free seats. I ordered tteokbokki carbonara since it isn't spice and it was really yummy. I also ate some of the Korean chicken and I don't know how but apparently fried chicken with peanuts and a sauce that contains cinnamon actually work together quite well.
After that we visited the Bangkok Art And Culture Center. Normally it has 9 floors but only 7 were opened due to an ongoing deinstallation. I was honestly expecting more art works but the lower floors mainly consist of cafés and there are generally not a lot of paintings. I kind of forgot to take pictures once we were inside.
Well after visiting the gallery we took the BTS to JJ market. It was really cool. JJ market can be parted into different parts with different kinds of shops. Because the son of my coordinator had found out that I have budgies he really wanted to see birds. So we went to the animal section. It was very interesting to see. You can buy anything there. Cats, dogs, rabbits, birds, mouses, turtles, monkeys, snakes literally anything. We walled around a lot. In the end my coordinator even bought me bracelets as a memory of this day.
When we were done at the market we went back to the shopping mall. I went to the library (they have a very big English section) and checked out a lot of books. In the end I didn't buy any because I still have 4 books to read but I will definitely go back there.
I was actually supposed to stay with another person for the weekend kroo Tao (teacher tao) who taught at my school a long time ago and was very active in AFS. But her sister came by and had her look after her kitten so she was busy with that. As a result I stayed and am staying with Paa duk (aunty duk).
Paa duk is amazing. She is super friendly and I feel very welcomed here. She doesn't really speak English so we try to communicate in Thai. And it works!
When I woke up in the morning we went our to eat breakfast at a beautiful café. The food was very yummy and the surrounding area was breathtaking.
(Of course taking pictures was a must)
For lunch kruu Tao came to fetch me and we went to another café. They had chicken and a dog there. Apparently it is very popular because children love to go there to play with the chicken and dog.
Tbh I don't know what we did afterwards or if we did something. We have been doing so much and it is very hard to remember everything. But I had a lot of fun either way.
Oh right about Paa duk. Right now she is staying alone which is why kroo Tao thought it would be nice if I stayed with her. Paa duk's daughter is studying in Sweden and her husband is on a business trip. Their house is quite big so she probably feels a little lonely from time to time.
The next day kroo Tao and I drove around using the MRT and it was fun but very tiring.
When she brought me back to Paa duk, Paa duk's friend was there too. We talked a lot. Sometimes the communication was questionable. I spoke Thai the whole time and it was fun. The perfect phrase for that would be "mehr schlecht als recht" but it worked.
Paa duk even washed and ironed my school uniform for me which was super nice of her. I definitely hope to see her again soon and will miss her.
So anyways I will try to update this blog once a week depending on how much time I have. I guess I will just see.
And I know this is ended kind of hastily but I want to upload this due to certain things
Anyways see you!
Edit: Kind of forgot about this but paa duk introduced me to some Thai fruits ans they are delicious!
On the left you can see ngor long liian and on the right is lam yai
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