This past week was a little easier and things are slowly beginning to make more sense. I'm very comfortable taking the skytrain now and know where to find/ask for general things. I finally discovered a grocery store that sells things like soup and popcorn. This is a HUGE advancement for us.

Nic's been sick this week and we had to go in to the hospital yesterday to get him some antibiotics. He's slowly peeling himself out of bed and even eating spoonfuls of rice! HOORAY! I have a theory about what made him sick:

Last Sunday we got up early to head out to Chatuchak, the weekend market. It gets very hot and very busy so it's suggested you get there as early as possible. We arrived there at around 9:30am and began our shopping. It was a pretty neat place with stalls for everything you can think of. There's alot of silk and materials, clothing, food, decorations and weird knick knacks and then there's a weird aisle that sells animals. There's probably about 30 stalls selling kittens, birds and dogs but who knows what else. I didn't want to go down that way. We both bought a couple of things although not too much as we were just taking it all in. By about mid afternoon we decided to find some food but we couldn't find anything that looked decent. By this time we've been walking for hours and ithere's a huge crowd and it's hot, humid and smelly so we decided to get the skytrain into downtown. On our way to the skytrain Nic spotted this random, old, crotchety, voodoo looking old thai lady sitting on the street who was rolling rice into pattys and then frying them in a shifty looking grill. Nic thought it looked delicious, bought one, ate it, said it wasn't great but finished it anyway. He's been sick since. But who knows! It could have been from anything he ate!

Adding insult to injury we now have a gecko in our room that thinks he owns the place. Monday morning, at the beginning of Nic's illness he woke up to the gecko on his head. Poor guy, not Nic, the gecko. Otherwise everything in our apartment is still really great. We really like it here and are loving the gym, pool and the other people staying here. Although having a restaurant here is convenient we've already gotten a bit tired of it. The food is great...when you get what you expect which is rare. You can ask for cashew chicken two days in a row but get something completely different both times. Sometimes the chicken is battered and deep fried, other times it's not. Sometimes it's insanely spicey, other times it's not. It's fun...I guess.

The last thing that we still are suprised by is this culture's fascination with Westerners or "Farang" as we're called. In every mall, and even supermarkets, products for skin whitening and coloured contact lenses are being sold. The girls working in the malls almost always have coloured contacts in and fake eyelashes. Tuesday afternoon on my way home from work I was sitting on the skytrain across from a thai girl about the same age as me. She pulled out a bottle with powder in it and I initially thought it was baby powder and I thought maybe she was on to my trick of tossing baby powder in your hair when it's dirty but instead of putting it in her hair she put it all over her face! It turned her face about 3 shades lighter than it had previously been. Then I get off the train to find all the other students outside at the pool....tanning.

This weekend will be low key, with Nic hopefully getting better. Otherwise we're both doing really well and eager to get out to see more of the country. We'll be sure to keep everyone up to date on what we see and experience here. I'm also still trying to get my pictures up on here but for now they are just on facebook!

Nic & Em