Dear Charles #10,
ive got a couple stories for you today. ive been meaning to write on here for a few days and just havent gotten to it, so redemption is coming. i hope youre not overwhelmed.

a few weeks ago me and kyndra got some dinner in the market and brought it home to eat while we watched a movie. this has happened a few times, and every time we mentioned how we should really get some sort of coffee table to set our stuff on, so we dont have to keep straining our backs by going up and down off the floor to eat our dinner. so last weekend we finally took action and bought a little table at a store down the street from us. we got it for 200 baht, which is a flippin steal, but the only problem was that it was SUPER ugly. we figured we could just buy some paint and make it all pretty. but this is not the point of the story. the real story comes at the store when we went to buy the table.
alright so this store is like...how do i even describe it... there is just..stuff...everywhere. if ever i have use the word 'stuff' and meant it for what it truly means, this is that time. its the kind of place that you walk in with the purpose of getting one thing (after finding it) but walk out with just a bunch of...stuff...you discovered you needed once you walked in. apparently when i went the first time, i needed a DOREMAN alarm clock, green hangers, and a little box full of q-tips...of course its all justified when you can say that you bought all of those things for about 4 dollars total. (you should be so jealous right now that youre not living here)
ANYWAYS, so me and kyndra went back to this store last weekend to pick up the table we found to be greeted by the 'employees' of the store (im still not totally convinced they werent just a couple of teenagers who waltzed in looking important). they were two guys, young, 'thai hip', which means they had the same hair cut and wore trendy shirts, and honestly...a little sleezy. the way that stores work (most stores) is, when you go in a worker from the store starts following you in toe, wherever you go...i think just in case you have questions, but its honestly the most annoying thing in the world. youre just trying to look around and they are like breathing down your neck. *shiver*
so in this store one of the guys was doing that, we picked out our table and he brought it to the front for us and the guy at the check out counter started talking to us in thai. well mostly kyndra, cause im not that good. so he's taking our money, and looks at kyndra and says " did you two come to thailand for boyfriends?" and kyndra's like, "no, we work at different ministries" so the guys like, "oh...well how old are you two?"
so kyndra tells them and then both of the guys look at me and are like "oh we're 18 too..." so i was like "oh..thats....cool" then they laughed and asked us if we wanted to be their girlfriends......
so we quickly left after many awkward looks and refusals, to these...'oh-so-tempting' thai boys.

in thailand its pretty common to meet someone and the order of the conversation to be..hi, how are you, whats your name, are you married or do you have a boyfriend? which of course makes your self esteem fly through the roof when you have to tell people youre single 3 or 4 times a day and they make a huge deal out of it. "oh you sing-gul! but you so bootifull! why you sing-gul? you shou' nod be sing-gul bootifull gurl!" but then again you get to hear how beautiful you are all the time too so...i guess its a fair trade.

the other story is short, and just sort of a funny, like, i just had to stop and laugh at the situation i was in, sort of story. so last weekend, me and kyndra, and a few other friends went out to this bar/restaurant with the owner of the coffee shop, P'Lut. it was a fun night, we had good food, and there was live music and drunk thai people kept wanting to talk to the table of 'farangs'..naturally...so on our way home a few of us rode in one car and a few in another. i rode with P'Lut and Ae, and we were gonna drop Ae off at her house and then meet the other car at the coffee shop and then go home. so after we dropped Ae off me and P'Lut were in the car, talking casually in tinglish (thai english), when P'Lut turns on his CD player, to none other then his 'romantic ballads of the 90s" CD. if you knew this man, this would be SO funny to you right now. a 40-something, jolly thai man who speaks little english, and this is his favorite CD.
so once i got passed the shock, i proceeded to sing with him. this is when i stopped and laughed at my situation. here i am...an 18 year old girl in a country that is foreign to me, riding home in a pick up truck with P'Lut, singing my heart out with him to 'endless love' hahaha. it was a great time none the less, it was just..funny to me. a kind of situation i would never expect myself to be in.

so ive had 'endless love' stuck in my head all week, me and kyndra painted our ugly coffee table, and all is well with the world. plus me and kyndra are going on a juice fast for the next few days, which im actually really looking forward to. or maybe just the fat dinner im gonna eat when its over....
im STOKED for my mom and kyle to visit...only a few days now til they get here! i'll tell about how much they are enjoying themselves next week :) -anna