a brief history of the past few days

i have been neglecting my writings in the past several days, and meanwhile we have had several mini-adventures that i want to tell you about. so the following will be a smattering of events, hopefully in chronological order, but if not you get the idea.

1. over by the river, a couple miles from our apartment, there is yet another market area - warorot. this market was different though, because it is exclusively thai. very few tourists and very few items that aren't useful (aka no tourist trinkets). there is a section outside that is all flowers. across the road from that there is a big building with vendors lining every inch of the streets. if you can manage to snake your way through and in, you can get into a big old building full of vendors. there are three levels and the middle is a big tall open ceiling, so you can see down from the top to all the levels. there is a picture of this on shutterfly. there are escalators to get to each floor, except that they dont work and you have to walk up them like stairs - kinda creepy! there was also a secret passage to get out to a pedestrian bridge that over looks the road. also very cool. on the bottom floor of the market is food. i found these cool rice cake snacks (but made with real rice and flavor!) they are delicious. they had tons of weird snacks that i want to try.

2. one day when luke was at work, i decided to go swimming pool hunting. i had a few leads from books and maps, so i first went to the closest one. it is in this big mall type condo hotel place. the mall attached to a hotel is pretty popular in thailand. so i wandered around and then found a desk, where the lady told me the pool was on the fourth floor. so i got in the elevator, and there was also a thai lady that worked there in it. she giggled and said something to me in thai about water and made a swimming motion, so i said yes. when we got to the fourth floor the elevator opened about 2 inches. oh good. me and my fear of being locked in places. so the lady shoved her mop into the slot and tried to pry it open. no go. then she called on the elevator intercom. thank god she was there and speaking thai in the intercom, or i probably would have freaked! so anyway we just took it back to the 2nd floor and walked upstairs. she was giggling about it and speaking to me in thai. i was just glad to be alive.
the pool is pretty cool though. at first i though it was free, but it turns out you have to enter through the gym and pay $1.25 per day if you dont have a membership. i think that will definitely be worth it at some point.

3. near our house there is a little market that is mostly produce, some strange looking cooked foods and a couple vendors with piles and piles of everything, including lots of little baskets. well, luke was working and we needed fruit, so i decided to venture over. it looked like rain so i brought my raincoat. after riding 2 blocks the drizzle got annoying enough to warrant putting on my raincoat (aka sweat city). the market is close so i thought nothing of the rain. while i was shopping around for my fruit it began to pour. really hard. like many non modernized thai buildings, the roof of this market leaves something to be desired. so the rain starts pouring off the roof in waterfalls on each side of the market. there were also some mini falls coming into various places of the interior. thai's love there brooms, and some of the market people could be seen sweeping water into sewer grates. i wandered around as much as i could thinking it might let up, but i looked at the clouds and there was no sign of a break. since it is only a 5 minute bike home i decided i should go for it. well, let me just say that i didn't need the swimming pool that day! i got completely soaked. the rain went into my jacket through the collar even though it was zipped all the way! it also made a waterfall stream down my front that decided to pool up and form a small pond that went down to my underwear! good thing it was about 85 degrees out. i got home, hung all my clothes in the bathroom, and looked out the window. guess what - it had stopped raining!

4. when chris and i came down the mountain from doi suthep, we noticed a sign for a waterfall just past the zoo. so the other day we decided to go check it out. well once you get past the zoo, it is pretty much straight uphill until you get to the sky. so i decided to walk my bike a bit. it wasn't too far though. there is this little area with some places to eat and such and then you get the entrance of the national park and you are pretty much right there at the foot of huey kaew waterfall. we climbed up and over all kinds of huge rocks and found a cool sitting spot in the shade. chris set up his tripod while we stuck our feet in the water. amongst other things, we saw a GIANT spider. then some other people started to gather around our rock area, including a small group of middle school looking girls. (well, at least they looked it to me - but everyone here looks so young!) they came over to luke and i while chris was taking pictures. the started talking to us, and it tuns out they were doing a school project for their english class. we talked to them about their town, lampang, which is two hours away. two of the girls were really outgoing and had pretty good english. they were super cute and giggly and took our pictures and then we filled out an evaluation for their class.
after that we climbed back down and found a path that went up to the top. well it was sort of a path and also giant pieces of rock to climb over. at this point it is getting really hot out, as usual. we made it to the top of the cliff, overlooking the waterfall, and in true thai safety style, there was no railing! so we sat down and leaned our heads over so as not to be freaked out! the path kept going up and we saw a little hut across the way to explore so we kept going. the view was really good from here on up. at the top of some more waterfalls - the whole park is a series of cascading waterfalls all on the same river. the water flattens out and then falls again over and over. at what seemed to be the top, we had to cross a mini fall to get to the lookout hut. i got a pretty cool picture of luke jumping over it:
after the lookout we hiked down. there was a road right there, but that option would involve direct sunlight and pavement for a good bit. so it was decided to walk through the jungle trail - which was made of dirt and about a foot wide. i was less than thrilled about this, as it was pretty steep. but we made it down and no scorpions found me! i also hardly got any bug bites, there are a lot less bugs here than i thought. at the very bottom we had to go down this super steep rocky pass, and that was the hardest and last part of hiking. when we go to the bottom, there was a sign on our path that said no climbing!

next we found an amazing restaurant at the bottom of the trail area that had a patio overlooking the waterfall with really good food! yay! our reward for being tough hikers.

5. we discovered a delicious japanese restaurant near us. the miso soup was amazing and we had japanese food that i have never tried because they didnt have sushi there. we talked to the owner because they forgot our soup and she brought it out. she was so super nice and her english was pretty good too. definitely going to be a regular spot.

6. last but not least i had my first student. i am helping her prepare for a medical residency interview in youngstown ohio of all places!!! her english is pretty good and we have 10 hours to go over interview skills, practice, customs, and resume writing. i have 4 more sessions with her. if she is accepted into the residency after flying to OH for her interview, she will be there for 3 years.