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Published: January 25th 2018
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Wednesday: January 24th
Well, this is my second to last blog. Kinda surreal. How could a month go by so fast?
This morning I woke up and had chicken with rice soup, salad, and Chinese donuts. At 9 am we hopped in the big blue bus and ventured to the market we went to on our very first day. This particular market can be very tricky because half of it is regular shopping and the other half are touristy items. Libby and I paired up because we had specific gifts we wanted to find. Our first stop of the day was a little coffee shop where I got Thai Tea and she got an iced cocoa (her favorite, but makes her poop). The amount of items in the market were a tad overwhelming but we did find everything we were looking for.
When we arrived back to BCNC lunch was waiting. We had sticky rice, chicken, salad, and papaya salad. All my favorites. I was going to miss these dishes so much.
The plan for the rest of the afternoon was to go to the supermarket and buy food/spices to bring home. Before we left, one of
our friends, Mao, showed us how to make Thai tea so I could make it at home 😊 It's so so good (but not good for you). The grocery store we went to was really nice and looked similar to ones in the US.
I grabbed a large bag of Thai tea and a few sauces for dishes. I also bought some dried mango and other snacks for myself (Oreos, oops). I could've stayed in the grocery store much longer but we left after about 20 minutes to go find some ice-cream. We almost got ice-cream at McDonald's but then we found the BEST place. It was a crepe bar with normal lunch crepes but also....ice-cream crepes! Most of us ordered the chocolate brownie crepe which was chocolate ice-cream with brownie bits inside of a crepe. With 14 orders to make, we spent an hour waiting but the wait was totally worth it.
The theme for the Farewell Party with all of our friends was colorful dress, so I dressed in a colorful dress I got at a market here. The party was at the Green Lake Resort, two minutes from BCNC. It offered a beautiful view of a lake with tables set up outside. We had a buffet of various foods from rice, fried vegetables, soup, squid linguini, fruit salad, chicken curry, etc. The soup was set up as a bar where you could put different noodles and spices in it. There was a small bowl of lime juice that you could put in to counteract the spice. Libby didn't realize this was lime juice so she put in three spoonfuls. Mint was invited to the party and she spent some of her time helping me decipher what to eat. For the soup, she told me that a little spice was good, so I put in a tiny spoonful of chili sauce (big mistake). I've learned over the course of my three weeks here that "little spice" means a lot of spice. I sat down and took a bite of my soup and my mouth was on FIRE. Unfortunately, most of the food I had chosen to eat was also spicy so I tried to eat as much of the soup as I could. Libby took a bite of her soup and almost choked/spit it out. She then made Khim try it and Khim's first reaction was to say, "oh Libbyyyy." Her face was priceless, and one that I can not explain with words (I do have a video). For the next ten minutes we made multiple Thai buddies try her soup, and surprised quite a few.
After people finished up with eating, the program started. There was a stage with two Thai buddies being the MC's for the night. The first part consisted of BCNC students doing two different dances. Our Messiah group then went up on stage and Libby/Aubrey talked for a few minutes on our experience and then we sang two songs. The first song was Lean on Me because we felt that it well-represented our relationship with our Thai buddies. After singing two verses and a chorus, we transitioned into What Makes You Beautiful by One Direction because the Thai buddies LOVE One Direction. We jumped out into the crowd and sang to our buddies while dancing. They loved it so much. The second part of the program was watching the various picture/video presentations that BCNC and Messiah students had put together. There were some tearful moments as we allowed ourselves to think back on our amazing adventures and special moments with our Thai friends. Libby and I were embarrassed and laughed at quite a few times, as we tend to be captured doing funny things more than others.
The third part of the program was giving gifts to the faculty of BCNC that we spent time with. Debbie my teacher did a great job thanking each person and sharing memories. It was so sad to watch her present an award to Pi Jip (I've been spelling it 'Jit' but it's Jip). Pi Jip is retiring after this year because all government employees must retire at age 60. The Thai & US exchange program would look different next year, but Debbie stated that she knew that this friendship would last much longer as Pi Jip is considered family. It's been pretty cool to experience the friendships that my teacher and her husband have built and poured into over the past 10 years through this program.
We certainly didn't leave the night empty-handed as many of the BCNC teachers bought us all little gifts. Pi Jip gave all of us these beautiful travel mugs (I can't wait to show you). Pi Nat, my instructor from Nakornping, came to the party and she gave me a small purse that she handmade. I will definitely be friending her on Facebook 😊
The rest of the night until we were picked up by the bus, was spent singing karaoke. I made Mean go up with me and we sang Havana with a few friends. Mean who claims she is shy was the main person singing throughout the whole song. I went up another time to be a back-up dancer for Mint. When we weren't singing on stage we were dancing in the crowd. It was so much fun and the perfect way to end our last party together. Mean wouldn't stop hugging me and telling me that she didn't want to say goodbye tomorrow. The final farewell at the airport tomorrow was going to be harder than I thought.
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