Jazzercise--thai style!

Hi all!

The rest of my birthday was fantastic! The funny part is all of it took place in a mall—Bangkokians are very fond of malls! We went to a Chinese restaurant and I had delicious hot and sour soup with a side of pork and mushroom dumplings. Then we went up a floor to a karaoke bar where we were ushered into a private room and began singing all the hits from backstreet boys, to britney, to rihanna. I think spice girls' wannabe was the hit number though! Sometimes the lyrics were super-imposed over the music video but more often then not, they were shown over an awkward 90's american beach video with kind of a girls-gone-wild feel minus the nudity. Very odd but very funny. After singing our lungs out, we recovered with hot fudge sundaes at Swensons (which is apparently a west-coast ice cream chain). All in all, it was a great wan gert-day and everyone was so good to me!

Some interesting things we've been learning:
Each day of the week corresponds with a color in Thailand and many Thai chose to dress accordingly.
For example, today is friday and i'm wearing light blue :)

Monday- yellow (the color of the king bc he was born on a monday)
Tuesday- pink (clearly my favorite day and also the day I was born!)
Wednesday-green
Thursday-orange
Friday-light blue
Saturday-violet
Sunday-red

My Thai teacher also told me how the day you were born affects personality: Saturday (stubborn), Thurs (teacher), fri (Happy), wed (“quite stubborn too”), tues (courageous). So clearly grant and I are meant for adventuring!

We also learned how to say the months in thai and let me tell you, these are some of the longest and hardest to remember words we have learned yet. Additionally, each month is suffixed with either kom (for 31 days) or yon (for thirty days) and february (pan). My favorite month to say is july, pronounced: Gah-rock-gah-dah-kom. Thankfully october is easier dtu-lah-kom :)

Last week we noticed a crazy jazz aerobics class in session outside the Tesco (kind of like thai walmart) near our dorm. Yesterday, one of my fulbright friends and I decided to join in. So we arrived in our workout clothes 15 minutes early only to find out that thai time really does have a whole other meaning. We did have fun trying out our thai on some poor unsuspecting thai women. My friend Mal told one woman that we had been in Thailand two minutes instead of two weeks :)
While we waited, the excitement built up-people were stretching, word got passed back that the teacher was on her way, people practiced the moves. The class finally started about 15 minutes late and over the sound system blared, “all you drag queens get ready...” then a driving beat began that would last the entire hour. I can't say for certain but i'm pretty sure there were no drag queens in the class but rather 77 neighborhood women and 3 men. Then we proceeded to follow the movements of the bouncy instructor, jumping around, pumping our fists and generally trying to not look completely crazy for the next solid hour. I'm not sure we succeeded because a) we were the only farang (foreigners), b) it was our first time so we didn't know any of the steps, and c) most off all-we knew we had to look ridiculous because other foreigners were stopping to take pictures of us. Mind you this whole exercise was taking place in 90 degree weather so my face was bright red and I was sweating like no one's business!
It was epically hilarious and a great workout so totally worth it!

We finished out the evening with some fantastic pork on a stick, corn on the cob and vegetarian dumplings from street vendors. YUM!

Now i'm off to a homestay for two nights with the family of one of the students I will be practice teaching next week. Wish me luck!

Chok di!
caitlin

P.s. i'm including a picture of me and my thai teacher on my birthday (that's my thai cake in front of me) and a picture from Ayuthaya-a former capital of thailand that we day-tripped to last weekend. picture credit: the fabulous marketa! it was the first try too!