Weekend!

My weekend has been pretty great! In just a little bit I have to go catch the shuttle to go to school again, so I'll try to write quickly.

My friend Soojee came to visit me on Saturday! We had a great day going around the city. The not-fun part was that the first several people we came into contact with (the tourism police, the tuk-tuk driver, etc.) would totally ignore Soojee and just talk to me. That is one thing I hate about being a white minority in another country. People either love you or hate you. Or they pretend to love you while they hate you. Either way, I don't like the deference at all. Then later, when we went shopping at a market, Soojee would speak in Thai, and then she had the advantage. One lady actually told her that for her she would sell her something for a hundred baht, but if it was for me then it would be a hundred and fifty. Thanks, thanks.

Oh yeah. Our tuk-tuk drive was interesting. The guy was supposed to take us to a temple, a shopping place, and then drop us at this backpacker's street. Well, the temple was fine, but the shopping part was just weird. We figured he'd take us to a mall or something. But no. He kept dropping us off at these single shops that were really nice. The first place he took us to was a tailor! What are we going to do at a tailor? The next place was a jewelry shop. We kind of glanced at the diamonds and then left. The next place he told us that we should look for a long time (he'd get free gas or something). So we went in to yet another jewelry place. The salespeople took us through all these fine jewel rings. We were like, "Cool. That's pretty." But we didn't buy anything until the very end when I found a mini-purse for one hundred baht (three dollars). When we got back in the tuk-tuk, he asked how much we spent. When I told him, his face kind of fell. I think he gets a commission on how much the people spend. Well what does he expect? Can't he see that we're young? I don't like diamonds anyway.

Anyway, we did go see the Prince of Persia. It's plotline is sometimes laughable, but overall it was an enjoyable movie. All-in-all, it was a great day.

Yesterday (Sunday) was a lazy day. I didn't get up until twelve. I watched a movie. I read. I went on the computer. For dinner, I walked out front to these little food carts where I ate some delicious pork, vegetables, and dumplings in broth. I love dumplings. Then I got a watermelon-kiwi smoothy. The whole meal was about one-fifty. So delicious.

And now it's back to school again. Sigh.