Lazy Saturday

March 26, 2011

Ah, sleeping in was nice. I slept til about 8am, then thought I was supposed to skype my parents. So I got on and talked to my mom, but she said we were going to do it at 8pm their time! I could have kept sleeping. Grr. Of course, once I was up, there was no going back to sleep cause of all the thoughts racing through my head. I ended up just getting up and starting to type up the first few entries of the blog. Finally, called my parents for about an hour. Jaz poked her head in to say breakfast was ready! Nice!

I logged off and headed downstairs to discover a new person in our kitchen. It was Ruth, one of our neighbors, from Toronto, Canada. We all had a nice leisurely breakfast, they gave me advice on everything from scooters to getting to Bangkok and talked about the visa situation some more.

We decided we all needed some exercise, so we planned to meet back in an hour and head out for a run. I did the dishes up, Ruth went home to do some work and Jaz took a nap. At 10 am. Hahaha! I also used this time to officially set up my blog. I had been waiting because Ryan had pioneered some password protection software that allowed Elizabeth to post pictures of the kids and stuff, so I wanted to find out how to do that. I didn’t want to start a blog on blogspot and then find out that I needed to do it on a specific server, or upload the software before I started the blog. Ryan had assured me that I could just start it, and then he’d install it for me this week, so I could post some pics.

Jaz came down, Ruth came back and we piled into the borrowed truck, after a chat with the neighbors who were cutting down a fruit tree with a machete because the fruit was “not tasty.” I love that phrase. They use it a lot here. It makes me laugh.

We drove and drove, almost to where we had ridden elephants when I was here in November. There is a huge reservoir out in the midst of these woods, right at the foot of the mountains. There’s a running trail around it, and along the trail are these bamboo structures where you can sit and eat as part of a restaurant. We ran (yeah, right, mostly walked, haha) halfway around the reservoir and decided to sit for a bit and have some lunch. It was so nice to get some exercise! I feel like I have not properly worked out in months. Plus, I finally got some lime soda, yay! And we had some papya salad, some spicy meat dish and sticky rice. It was very yummy. I actually learned how to say that the other day, and then immediately forgot it.

We continued our walk, got back to the truck, and went to pick up Ruth’s bike from the shop. That turned into an hour long conversation with the owner and her daughter who is studying communications. She was very excited to learn that I was from Hollywood. It’s pretty funny how I can always tell when people are talking about me. I can pick up a few words here and there, like Hollywood, and the number of days I’ve been here. It was actually kind of cool, because Jaz would talk and then the daughter would ask me a question in Thai, but looking right at me. You know how normally, if you don’t speak the same language, you’ll ask the interpreter to ask, but you don’t really ask the person directly? She didn’t do that. She’d just ask me, as if assuming I really did understand her, and then I would look at Jaz blankly and she’d fill in the question. Eventually, the five of us, Ruth, Jaz, the owner, the daughter and me, were all in a circle talking and at first, I really tried to pick up on words and accents and try to just absorb it, but my brain got tired, so my mind started to wander and my eyes followed, and the owner lady started laughing at me, saying I must be so bored! “But still cute,” she said in Thai. Hahaha

We decided to head out, to have second lunch (this second meal phenomenon really applies to everyone across the board here) at an Islam place. I’m not really sure what that meant, since there’s not really standard Muslim food to my knowledge, but apparently I was wrong. Anyway, we got to the place and it was closed, so Ruth jumped on her bike to head to her pedicure appointment, and Jaz and I headed to get food at a Burmese restaurant. It was very yummy. Pink sticky rice with friend garlic and a bunch of different meats and salads that you eat all together.

We got back to the house, I practiced guitar for a while, then Jaz came downstairs and blew me out of the water with her abilities. The thing I’m discovering about guitar is that everyone tries to just nonchalantly say “oh, you can do harmonix like this, or play all these chords here. Or here. Or here. And you can play F six different ways.” Then I start trying to read tabs and figure out the six ways to play A all over the frets, and my brain just overloads and melts down. This is why I cannot teach myself. I look at the huuuuuge chords chart or watch other people play and I just want to know how to do all of it RIGHT NOW! This is why I need lessons. I need structure and someone to tell me “This week, practice this.” Otherwise, I just get incredibly frustrated and give up. 

Jaz did teach me a new chord though: F#Major. Yay! Progress! She also taught me Hotel California cause there’s lots of chords and now I know them all.

Ruth called while we were rocking out, and came over. We decided to watch a movie, so we went through my movie collection that I brought and decided on Children of Men. That movie is so cinematographically awesome. About a half hour into it, some friends texted Jaz and she invited them over. (Funny side note: Microsoft Word has highlighted “texted” and “Jaz” as spelled wrong, but has no problem with “cinematographically”. haha) We paused and waited for them to arrive. They were Dane from DC and Keith from Michigan. We all caught up for a bit and then decided to restart the movie. After Dane accidentally knocked the power for everything off, we had to start from the verrry beginning of the previews, since we have no remote for the dvd player, but it gave us time to make popcorn and drink some more wine!

Post-movie, more jabbering, and I had to go to bed before everyone left because I had to get up at 8am for church with the kids!