Finishing up

So we're finishing up in Chiang Mai and will be going on our tour march 12. I am almost done with my paper and plan on finishing it this week to hand it in next week.

I want to tell you all about my weekend to the temple festivals. On saturday and sunday night myself and some other students who teach at the university were invited to go to a temple festival. The thing about temple festivals is that it is th eone time when Buddhists are allowed to get drunk and party and act inappropiately because it is the night to celebrate the temple. I still don't quite understand the logic behind it. BUt they have food and live entertainment. Usally people sing or dance on stage and you bring a gift for the new temple and get blessed by the monks. Its a time to walk around, take pictures, and just have fun.

Myself and the other students rode in a taxi full of monks. It was an interesting ride because we sit on two benches facing each other but wwe cannot touch them. Its kind of like playing a game...don't touch the monk. So anyways both nights we rode together but the Saturday was a little different than sunday. On saturday there were a lot of intoxicated people danicng and they kept coming to us because we are the only farang and tried to pull us in a dance. They just held onto and kissed the students cheeks for about 5 minutes at a time. Then at the end the monks bought us dinner so we wouldn't be hungry but dinner ended up being a bag of different assortments of meat on sticks. The only problem was there were 5 of us and two are vegetarians. So we had this big bag of meat and you don't want to be ungrateful because it was bought for your benefit. So we ate as much as we could but ended up giving it to one of the girl's host family.

On monday night myself, Hannah, and Sarah stayed at the hospital with Shawn. In thailand the medical system has the family stay and take care of the patient all the time while the nurses just come in and out every now and then. So the students have been signing up to spend different nights with hism so his mother can rest. I got about 2 hours of sleep but we had fun and Shawn was doing so much better that he moved out of the hospital yesterday and fortunately he'll be going home this week.