Cornflakes & Coffee

Songkran... Thai New Year. The third New Year's celebration I've had this year! Crazy.
Following Songkran is Songkran... or rather, 3 days of water-fighting madness across the entire country.

PICTURES:
http://picasaweb.google.com/gecko.on.the.wall/Songkran

In these pictures you will find some taken at a church - that's where the games, stilts and bug is from; these were taken on the actual day of Songkran.
All of the others, which tend to start with water droplets on the window, were taken on the first day of the festival itself, and the pictures are almost nothing compared to the real deal.

Not only is there water flying in every direction at every one, powder is smeared on faces, clothing, automobiles and just about everything. Some use colored powder, which a picture of a bus displays proudly in my album. But I didn't see any of the colored powder on a person this year. As for the regular stuff, however, it got in my face, eyes, mouth, and someone spilt a good amount of it from a bottle on me, which went down my shirt and turned my entire left side white.

I'm sorry you can't see any pictures of ME in my album... that's because I didn't risk taking out my camera in open public. However, two people, Pi-Fanta (Ning) and a farang friend I met have taken pictures, both I have asked for e-mails with photos from. Both said they would love to do so, so now I wait.

The water festival started off [for me] with me [on my lonesome] and my water gun (which I can thank my host dad for), walking around, shooting-up innocent citizens. I walked to the mall, hoping there would be a lot of action there [the mall is barely a few blocks from my current house]. I was right. Not only did I find a good "nest," or "station" - I decided that's where I'd be for the rest of the festival. "Kon Dio" - Alone - isn't much fun, and I met a few people at this shop [bar, actually] called Mr. Tong's, both Thai and "foreigner."

On the second day of Songkran, extended [host] family came over and we had a small BBQ in the shop-area of the house. It was pretty tastey. Then I proceeded to drench my host mother, father, and other family members - then headed back to Mr. Tong's to finish off the day. ...only to get tossed into a pool-sized water-holder/refiller/thing for our gun and bucket water-refilling needs. Just so you know, we love to drop lots and lots of ice into our water to REALLY shock our victims. I felt like I was tossed into the ocean over by Alaska... *shivers*

There really isn't a whole lot else to say about this huge event - it was more action than activities.

Go check out the pictures - here's the link again:
http://picasaweb.google.com/gecko.on.the.wall/Songkran

I'll try and weasel out the pictures from my friends soon... though from the "farang" I can only hope to get an E-Mail from him - I have no contact information of his, and he has my E-Mail on a piece of paper. Hope it didn't get lost to the massiveness of water-wars...

On a different note, I'm back to my old [first] host family, which I will stay for the remainder of time. School hasn't started back up yet, but when it does, I plan on taking fewer classes to focus on learning the language more intently. I have returned to the Kunawongkrit, with my fun host dad, host mom, brothers and sister, my kitty cat friend [Cake], a room with a actual working TV and DVD player in it (yay!), and a broiler - so now I can finally make cupcakes with the Pillsbury and icing goodies. :D

Who cares if Asia always says, "Gah, can't eat that, that makes you fat!"... more cupcakes for me!
Muahahahahaa! Yay ziploc bags.

MoniNeko

P.S. - I just spell-checked the darned thing, and I believe I just set a record... One error in the entire thing! I misspelled water gun. Har har.