the fall of it: So...this one time, we went to Thailand...

And we're still in Thailand. THAILAND. When we got off the plane in Bangkok, after flying for too many hours, sleeping between chicken rice vegetable tofu noodle midnight meals on the plane, and lots of naps and card games on the airport floors, we could not believe where we were. Two little American white girls, wandering around the huge Bangkok airport, sweat dripping off the ends of our noses from the humidity and heat...not something you see everyday. Not something the Thai people see everyday.
We live in a house, like many people, and it has air conditioning, which may turn out to be the best thing about this whole trip since it's 100+ degrees and 100% humidity everyday. Awesome. It feels good to shower in the cold shower, we feel all clean and dry. Then we walk outside and our clothes immediately suction to our bodies and BAM! We're sweaty. But the fruit makes up for all of that. Watermelon redder and juicier than a...something and pineapple like you wouldn't believe, mangoes that taste like candy and heaven and loveliness all at the same time. Fruit smoothies that put Spoon Me and Jamba Juice to shame. They know how to do things here.

In the meantime though, we've been doing some other activities. Riding elephants, visiting temples, riding around in the back of a pickup truck at unsafe speeds, standing in rainstorms, checking out mountains to climb, playing phase 10, reading...super awesome. Seriously though. Um, have you ever ridden an elephant? Did you know that their heads are really big? We're not sure if their brains fill their whole head or if there's other stuff in there, too. We did get sneezed on a lot and covered in mud and guck that definitely came out of our elephants head. Actually, just Rose did. Our guide, a teenage boy, had a little crush on Rosemary and he made the elephant sneeze on her. Did you know that the fuzzy little black hairs that cover their skin are, in fact, not fuzzy but very prickly and pokey? Even if you have pants on. Did you know that elephants like this fruit called leche? It's like a huge grape that you pick off the trees. We liked them, too. Our elephant guide let us take turns riding on the elephant's neck while he picked the fruit off the trees and peeled them for us. Delicioso. When we got off the elephant, our guide asked Rosemary to stay haha. He also wanted us to go swimming with him in the river. Unfortunately, we didn't have time...

At church yesterday our group made up more than half of the congregation. There are 13 of us, 9 girls and 4 boys. The boy pickins' are looking quite slim so far, but there are many many many Thai boys that have nice skin and engaging smiles. Anyway, church. So we made up most of the congregation, all of sunday school and pretty much all of Relief Society. It was really nice to be in a place that was so familiar. Same music, same spirit, same doctrine, same gospel. A little bit of home away from home. One of the weirdest things so far has been the time difference. It's 9:00am on Monday morning here and it's Sunday night at home. And if the fact that we're already in the future isn't strange enough, we're also in a different year. Completely. Date in Thailand: May 10, 2553.
So...we didn't fly halfway across the world just to play, we really are here to do humanitarian work. We haven't started anything yet cause we're just getting settled and everything, but we did visit a school for Autistic children and an aids prevention center. We got to play with the kids and sort of get to know them. They were really shy until we bribed them with candy. Not very different from kids in the U.S. So, this week we're going to a hospital and to a human trafficking prevention center to see what projects we could organize there and then we start organizing, get started trying to help people. We're going to go into it full board, with everything we have. It'll be sweet.

So...til next time. Enjoy the pictures and videos!