I'm Pretty Sure Fei-Fei Lives in a Pool Hall

Time is running out! This summer has flown by so quickly, I can hardly believe that we have less then two weeks left with the kids. The past couple of weeks Laura and I have taken up bikeriding. It's amazing, we can pick any direction and within ten or fifteen minutes of riding we're out of the city. We have ridden through so many different landscapes that are all beautiful in their own way. My favorite ones though, are the ones that feel like a jungle. Sometimes we will be on a little road completely surrounded and covered with huge trees and/or grasses and feel like a tiger could jump out at us. Alas, no more tigers. We do however see lizards and snakes. We also saw a komodo dragon once, it was the size of a crocodile, freaked us out a little bit just hanging out on the lawn of some gated place we decided to bike into. I thought we might be on a wildlife preserve after that. Oh, and one time we were biking through these trees on some rural road out in the country and I told Laura that I hadn't seen any reptiles that day. She looked at me and told me there was a giant spider on my boob and there was. I screamed and hit it off and almost fell off my bike. Very exciting.

Me by the Garden Home

Me by a giant gold Buddhist head

Same place with the Buddhist head, found this temple on our bikes.

Ancient Phichit Ruins

Phichit Crocodile, they have meetings in there.

Alisha by a River (in case you couldn't tell)

Last week we started going to the kids houses to do parent teacher conferences. We each were supposed to go "conference" with three kids + families but it hasn't exactly worked out that way. On Monday I went to Name's house with Sarah and Tang and we had a really yummy dinner while Tange talked to her parents in Thai and she hid in another room. Alisha was supposed to visit Nest and Fei-Fei on Thursday and Friday but both families wanted all of the teachers to go so I went to those too. Nest lives in a house that is in the middle of a whole bunch of rice paddies very far away. His family was very nice and made us lots of good food and I just kept eating it. Apparently I really like flowers. When we went to see Fei-Fei we were led into a pool hall. That is where we ate dinner. For all I know he lives in that pool hall. From what Tang has told us he comes from a very powerful family that is one of the oldest in Phichit. They fed us shark fin soup and many other delicious treats. I think I might miss having Thai food every day; I really like rice now.

Ink and Mew being Pirates!

Nam-Nan Counting Tokens

Mew :)

Name Singing Little Green Frog

Phuvit being the wolf pretending to be the grandma in Little Red Riding Hood

Pordee being the woodcutter

Alisha and Prea

Nest

Saturday we went to Burma with Tarn and Jeab, which is actually no longer Burma but Myanmar. We had to go because or visas were going to expire today (small oversight) so if we hadn't left the country and got an extra 15 days we would have had to pay 500 baht for every day that we stayed over our original 90. Luckily we didn't have to pay for the trip since it was not our fault. We left the house at eleven on Friday night drove eight hours and got to the gates at six in the morning. We crossed over, they thought I was Laura and had to whiteout my temporary visa and write in my actual name. We spent the morning shopping. Everything there was brand name (I dunno if it was real or not) and very cheap. We, unfortunately were sick of shopping and didn't get that much. Alisha did, however, buy a bright purple ukulele and I bought a whole bunch of blue bracelets and a souvenir for my daddy.
We then drove home from about two to ten stopping to see a shiny white palace/temple thing that had hell at the bottom and heaven at the top. Inside was a mural of hell (at the entrance) and all the people going to heaven on dragon leaves. Hell was graced by the likes of Spiderman, Captain Jack Sparrow, Ben Ten, Avatars, Darth Vader, a Transformer, Superman, Batman, some Hard Core Lovers, and of course Michael Jackson. It was kind of a weird temple. It was gorgeous till you got close enough to see what exactly was going on. We also stopped at a lake. It was gorgeous but we have no idea where it was or what it was called.

Alisha slept on the floor of the van all the way to Burma

In between Burma and Thailand which is actually called Myanmar.

Hell outside of the temple

On the way up to Heaven

Alisha just got out of Hell. I'm on my way to Heaven.

The Lake of Shining Waters

Today we went to church bright and early. I am going to miss our ward a lot. They take such good care of us. I got several hugs today from people just saying hi and from people we had to say goodbye too. Next week will be really difficult cause it will be our last Sunday in Thailand. The one after that will be spent in Cambodia. I'm almost homesick for here already.