i am a listmaker

so i am a list-making freak. and therefore, i think my best method for describing several events that have happened over a series of several days will be to list them since they are a little too disjointed for a story. so here it goes.

1. chiang mai food festival - this was great. it was a thai carnival/live music/eating fest! they also had little mini pitchers of singha beer. but it was great because there were all these food vendors displaying their eats, so you got to look at all the options instead of ordering blindly. we shared and sampled lots of different things, including bbq-ed sticky rice on a stick! who knew you could bbq rice! i saw a baby cow being bbq-ed - ahh!!! gross!! they also had whole squid and crawfish and whole fish as well - a thai favorite (i have no idea how to eat around the bones!) there was a stage with thai pop singers and dancers in feathery costumes. there were all these cool light things around (see photo page) and also the most rickety ferris wheel i have ever seen! along the back side, there were a bunch of carnival games, 2 giant inflatable jumpy things (including one that looked like a shark!!! - clarke i thought of you!!). then there was the ferris wheel and a couple other kiddie rides, including this one....



2. after returning from a tune up, our work informed us that the motorbike was ready for pickup! ahh!! ok, so i am terrified of this thing. and i will never drive it. but luke is all excited. it has a clutch. so we walked over and luke got on and practiced going around the block. we thought we might have to share the bike but we get to take it home and put it in the parking garage! so against my better judgment, i get on the thing for the 2 minute drive home. slightly terrifying, but at least we had all left turns (remember traffic is backwards!). so maybe i will ride it to out of town trips where there is way less traffic, but no thanks, not in the center of town! chris is excited though because he wants to take it up to the mountain temple to take pictures at sunrise. we will have to do a photo shoot with it soon. and also name it. it is silver, although i was hoping it would be pink (so that luke would want to ride it less!). i am all set with my bicycle for now!

3. luke and i took our first siesta at the pool near our house. it was a super hot day and was amazing. the water was so warm just from the weather here. it is just a regular looking pool that is a part of this gym in the middle of all these townhouses and apartments. we made our first friend here. he is a teacher of spanish and french at a university here for a few more weeks. he is a brazilian from germany and his mother was italian. confused yet? he also speaks some thai...and perfect english. what's the language count at? 10, 15? so this guy is buddhist, and said he just got back from an amazing trip in japan where he did meditation in these beautiful zen gardens. he also has 3 passports - germany, brazil, and italy. pretty amazing. he was cool.

4. after dinner one night, luke and i ventured to out neighborhood wat. i thought it might be lit up in the dark, and we had not been there yet. so we walk in the gate and there are all these people there. inside this one building there were lots of people dressed head to toe in white, chanting, and there were all these people sitting in plastic chairs watching. so we decided to sit in the back row to observe for a minute. well guess what - it was a funeral! i saw a coffin shaped mound inside (we were outside looking to the inside ceremony) with lots of red and white flowers on it. then i realized there was a large framed photo on an easel. so we snuck in on a funeral - i wonder what that does to your karma! we then quietly left to explore the grounds. there was a group of monks in the main building and there was one who was lecturing and chanting. we peeked in the sides to watch. the large golden chedi was lit up and there was a full moon! really beautiful!
5. future trip plans - for work at the end of october, we are going to a town 3 hours north - chiang rai - to do an outreach program. chris gets to come for free because they have space for him! then from there we are going to take a trip to laos! every so often we have to leave the country to get visas reset. chris has to do his sooner, but mine and luke's last 3 months each time. so we are going to take a bus to the border, spend the night, and the next day we will be crossing into laos and taking a slow boat down the mekong river!! so cool! it is a two day trip to get to luang prabang, laos' old capital. then we will spend two days there and fly back to chiang mai. should be pretty cool. at the halfway point on the river we get to stay at a small village.

6. one night luke and i decided to buy beers and we were going to find a cool place to sit and drink them. but there was one flaw in our plan - there are very few places to sit in thailand. there are very few benches along the road to sit on and the park by our house closes the gates at night. so in our search we ended up making it all the way home and we sat on the front stairs of our building and drank our beers. and in the process we made a friend. we had seen this guy before coming into our building with his really nice powder blue road bike. his name is kyle and he has been teaching here for a year and a half. he is from atlanta. he seems cool so hopefully we will get a chance to hang out with him.

7. there is an amazing amazing massage parlor 2 blocks from our house. they are so good. i got just a back, head and neck massage instead of the full body thai one. it was great - i even got a face massage. we will definitely be frequenting that place!