water fight!!!

some of you are probably wondering why you haven't heard from me in a while. well, let this rather lengthy post explain why.

thursday (and for a few keeners---wednesday) to sunday there was a festival in thailand called water festival. this started as a religious holiday and celebrates the buddhist new year. it has, over the years, developped into a country-wide water fight. to many this may sound like heaps of fun and it is, but by the time the fourth day rolled around i had enough water fight for a while.

everywhere......people of all ages threw water at everyone who'd cross their paths. this created maeham in the center of town for the four days and got quite painful on the highways. there was no discreimination of a person's age or place to throw water. driving down the highway on the back of a pickup having water thrown at you can be pretty painful........even more painful is water coming at you when your pickup is going about 80km/h as well as the pickup where the water came from........but hey.....we all survived. most days i was also traveling with another group who is taught by my friend stuart. he is also a volunteer teacher with the same organization as me. it is nice having another foreigner around to be the zoo animal with! here is a bit of a summary of each day and what my group had me doing..........

THURSDAY:
we started the day by going to the monestary. it is customary for the burmese (and probably thais too) to visit the monestary and pay their respects to buddha at some point during the festival. for the people i live with and spend my time with.......they chose the first day. so we showed up at the monestary and found some monk friends we had previously visited and spent some time talking and visiting again. we went for a walk around the yards and then it was lunchtime. there was tons of food and many people. we sat around visiting with many burmese people......stuart and i were introduced to many friends of friends of friends. everyone has to meet the volunteer english teachers! we met a woman named grace who invited us to her house the next day to make the traditional burmese water festival snack which is kind of like sweet dumplings (i'll explain later). after we had enough food and visiting we climbed in the back of a pickup to take everyone back home from the monestary. this was the beginning of my first real taste of the water throwing. wow! we were totally soaked. it is actually a nice break from the 40 degree days we have here in mae sot. after we came back to town we went home to get showered, put on dry clothes and rest before dinner. not much happened in the evening. just the regular chatting and maybe a card game or two.

FRIDAY:
today was making dumplings at grace's. these dumplings are tasty little morsels that consist of rice flour and water dough rolled into little balls. you stick a sugary piece of candy (almost like fudge) in the center and roll the balls again to hold it inside. then you drop them in boiling water and when they rise to the top you take them out and cool them down (usually with ice). after they're cool you sprinkle coconut over them and there you have your ready to eat dumplings. burmese people make hundreds of these little things to be shared with anyone who may come visit during the festival. after we stayed at grace's for a while we went back into town to hang out at the office where stuart teaches and chatted all afternoon with some people from his classes. he has really interesting students who aren't shy to talk to us. my students on the otherhand are too into tv to be much fun to hang out with. they are nice people but not as fun. anyway, in the evening we went to some festival markets, a wondeful meal at some friends' house and then went to see the daughter of this family perform traditional burmese dances. after the dancing two guys stuart and i teach and stuart and i went to the carnival which had some bands playing. it was ok. but after travelling all day by bicycle which meant getting soaked whenever we went anywhere.......i was happy to be home and get out of my all day wet clothes, take a shower and go to bed.

SATURDAY:
today was the rent a pickup and go to the waterfall day. on the way to the waterfall we stopped at the house of my group's hired driver. this is a thai guy and he had to pay homage to his mother. i was invited into the house to meet his mother and watch the ceremony of presenting her with gifts, etc. after they presented her with gifts and bowed to her they "washed" her hands with water. there was a silver bowl with water and a sprig of some kind of plant in it and that got dipped and sprinkled on her hands. all the children and grandchildren had a turn and me too. it was very interesting to watch the whole thing. then we piled back into the pickup.......all 15 to 20 of us!!.......and off for the waterfall we headed. after visiting 3 different waterfalls we came back to town. we had a ton of water thrown at us all day on the highway and at the waterfalls.....but downtown is where the real maeham was!!! it was so cold by this time and i was so cranky that it was no longer fun. you never knew how much water was coming at you, how hard or what the temperature. i was certainly glad to have the truck drop me off at home. we showered and rested for a bit and then went to the office where stuart teaches to hang out for a while.......then it was bedtime.

SUNDAY:
today was dumpling making at stuarts office. i hang out quite a bit here so i was invited too. it was quite a process happening by the time we arrived. i'll post the pics that show the whole dumpling making as soon as i can find a cable for my camera. we hung out at the office all day and watched the kids dance, ate and talked. in the evening i went into town and hung out with some of the volunteer teachers for a bit and then called it a night around mid night.

today is monday and there is also no class today. it is the last day of the festival and the first day of the buddhist new year so my students wanted a break today too. this is no problem for me as i'm finding i don't really like teaching adults and living with the two guys i live with isn't always a party. they are way too over protective of me and i'm feeling like i need a break from them. i'm 28 years old and i think if i skip one meal.......i'll know when i'm hungry again and i'll survive. i know how to do my laundry and can do it my way if i want. if i go into town and come back after dark you don't need to sit in the doorway waiting for me and don't need to worry the whole time. i know i am gaining invaluable experience and knowledge etc. by living with these guys but emmersing myself in their ways isn't always easy. i have less than 8 weeks left with them and am excited to go to the beach for a few day before heading back to korea. it will be a sad goodbye but right now i'd leave today if i felt like i could. i'm sure the 8 weeks left will fly though.

i best get outta this cafe. i need a cold drink and a nap. i hope you all are well. i miss you all very much.