Dear Charles, #15

today broke the mold of the last few weeks. i have been "enjoying" the hot season for awhile now, listening to the rain hitting the pavement only at night, when i'm snuggled away in bed, wishing the cool relief would come during the day. and today, it did! it rained most of the morning, and although it's stopped now the sky is still cloudy which gives me hope for it to continue. granted it is only temporary relief as tomorrow the weather will pick up on the moisture from today and harness it for it's own, deathly humid, purposes. you win some you loose some though right?

besides the overwhelming heat of the past few weeks, the events have been normal: wake up, hit snooze, hit snooze again, shower, skip breakfast, get picked up for school, take off my shoes, check my email, acknowledge that my mom, dictionary.com (with the word of the day) and urban outfitters were the only ones to write me, sigh, turn on the fan, settle myself in my plastic chair, begin the work for the day, listen to the sound of the kids running past my room, muster up patience to work with kids who speak english as their second language, eat too much lunch, continue work, think about what the people i love in america are doing, hear the bell that lets everyone out of school, wait in the parking lot to go home, sweat, sweat some more, get home, shower, nap or read, walk to the market and get something delicious for dinner, commence some activity that's usually different every night, get in bed, try to ignore the heat, clear my mind, sleep, wake up, love my simple life. repeat.

a few weeks ago my room mate, and good friend kyndra left to go home for a month. she's there to raise support and visit her family after being here for almost a year and a half. i miss her like crazy but i'm really glad she gets to do this. before she left here though her friend julie came from WA to visit her and i got to spend a week with the two of them. it was one of the best weeks i've had here :)

one of the days of that week the three of us and p'lut made our way up to a tea farm, and coffee shop close to the border. we ate breakfast and drank coffee. i drank coffee! i figured it was about time to accept my fate as a washingtonian and like the stuff before i get shunned out of the state. plus i'll be starting university next year and i want to fulfill every college stereotype possible, including the ability to say "i've got 2 finals tomorrow that i haven't studied for yet. i think i'm gonna have to pull an all-nighter, starbuck's here i come.." or something of that nature. then achieve mad respect from my friends when i pass both exams with flying colors. all thanks to that little black bean ground and juiced.
so we went to a couple different places where they harvested and sold tea that day and got to see the workers pulling the tea leaves and got to take part in something like a 'tea ceremony' without the fancy clothes or mats on the floor. all of this took place on the top of a mountain, and as we got ready to go i remembered what i would have to face on the way back down: a road shaped like outcome of a silly string fight.

i braced myself, rolling down my window and closing my eyes, although by the time we had been driving for more then 3 min. none of that did any good. i felt the food and gallons of tea in my stomach dance like a group of seniors at prom. no, make that a group of hard-edged teenagers moshing at a rock concert. i guess my toast and eggs had some sort of vendetta against me for eating them, and the tea decided it wanted to flush my system early. i was miserable. the beautiful scenery around me began to blur, and i clutched my stomach, ready right then and there to sacrifice my clean jeans as the receiving place for my breakfast. kyndra tossed me a plastic bag from the front of the car that ended up being my crutch the rest of the ride. the suckiest part about it all was that i never threw up. i just had the anticipation and the feeling, and the taste with no relief. it took us like 25 min. to get down the mountain, and about 4 and a half hours for me to recover. i think i'm officially motion sick.

the only other exciting event i can think of that has happened since then is my "assignment" as it is now called. a man that goes to the university near my house was at the cafe one day, talking to his friend about how he needed someone who spoke english to look over his thesis paper to make sure his english was good. of course p'lut suggested a wonderful american girl he knows! so i met with supian (from indonesia) and accepted his offer to have me correct his thesis paper for his masters in biotechnology. it was the craziest thing i've ever done, i wish i could remember the title of his paper but i literally didn't understand a word of it. i did my best with the corrections, but when i gave it back to him i reminded him that i am not en english major, and most of the words he used i have never even heard. either way i got a thousand baht out of it which is sweet!

i'm going to write more soon about my thoughts as of late, but for now i'm going to go wait in the parking lot for my ride home, sweat, sweat some more, go home, shower...etc etc...