"Hello? หน้าของ ประเทศไทย... "

One of the funny things about Thailand: everyone answers their cellphone with "Hello?" then they proceed to carry on the conversation in Thai. It can be very misleading because I think everyone speaks English all of the sudden, but they certainly don't.

This weekend has been a huge celebration of the Tenth Anniversary for the Joint Graduate School of Energy and Environment at KMUTT. For the festivities on Thursday, ten monks came and sang while we sat on the floor and bowed to them. It was a beautiful but long ceremony, and afterwards I asked Pai what they were saying, but it turns out that Thai Buddhist Monks sing in Sanskrit, so he had no idea what they were saying. Just a blessing for more success for our graduate school.

Thursday evening we had a JGSEE dinner party at a restaurant near Central Plaza Rama II called "The Park". Our professors talked about the history of the grad school, there was a video, and to our surprise, Kareoke is a part of a semi-formal event in Thailand. Par for the course, we got up there too and sang "A Whole New World". The lyrics on the screen were in Thai, but luckily we've seen Aladdin enough to get through it. The highlight of the evening for us as well as the program, was a traditional Thai dance performance by myself and the six other girls from UNC. A team of Thai women and 1 fabulous Thai man took almost 2 hours to get all of us in the proper hair, makeup, outfits, and ready to go. We'd been practicing the dance for 3 weeks and it was a lot of fun! Our colleages were surprised how beautiful we looked in the traditional Thai garb (considering we're usually running around playing frisbee like good girls should not).

Saturday evening was another adventure with a four course dinner and speakers from around the world. One sip of your drink and they replace it! The menu of courses was as follows:

-Smoked salmon rose with green leaves, citrus vinaigrette peppered cold tuna carpaccio with balsamic syrup, tandoori chicken on salad raita dip

-Classic lobster bisque, crab ravioli and vegetable pearls

-Raspberry sherbet

-Baked snapper and salmon steak combination with a green asparagus salsa, served with a peppered sweet and sour sauce and glazed onions

-Chocolate iced souffle with apricot and spicy mango sauce

-Freshly brewed coffee or tea

News flash: I have a house in Bangkok. It's this little townhouse to the left here, 3 stories. There are six of us that just moved in and I will have more pictures later once we get more furniture and get everything ready for our housewarming party.

Regrettibly, I have learned that another one of my relatives has passed away back in America. My Uncle Peter was an amazing doctor who ate organic food, loved cars and photography, ran in marathons across the world, and has 3 beautiful daughters that I love more than anything. My sympathy goes out to my family and I am absolutely heartbroken that I cannot be there with you all.