It's amazing how quickly it can go from being beautiful and sunny, to pouring down rain. It's like clockwork. The rain is a blessing here, though, because it cools down the temperatures to a bearable level.

We've had a really nice relaxing weekend. The majority of the people at our apartments went to Koh Phangan this weekend to experience the Full Moon Party. They took an overnight bus (15 hrs long) last Thursday evening and are coming back on the same bus tonight (Monday night). I guarantee that if I had decided to go, I would have gotten there, regretted it, and been stuck for 4 days on a beach with crazy, drug-taking, alcoholic travelers. No thank you!

Saturday we spent the day at the Siam Center in Bangkok, a large area with 3-4 giant malls, malls so big that NOTHING in the United States could even compare. It was unreal! Each mall was at least 5 stories high, some had 7 stories, and were filled with expensive stores like Gucci and Coach. We wanted to go on a glass-bottom boat ride (yes, inside the mall!) at the Siam Ocean Aquarium, but it was really expensive, so we settled for a 4-D x-venture movie instead. It was a cute little film about turtles and how humans have invaded their habitats, like an interactive 3-D movie (water sprayer in our face, our chairs moved around--it was really fun). Then I had Subway for dinner! Real turkey and real cheese! It was so delicious.

Instead of taking a taxi back, which costs up to 300 Baht to get back home, we decided to figure out how to use Bangkok's public transportation. We rode the SkyTrain north to its last stop (35 Baht each), then rode the bus to Rangsit (the town we live in, 22 Baht each), then rode on the university's transportation until we reached campus (6 Baht each), and walked home from there. We saved around 30-40 Baht this way, which is how much a meal costs.

Oh yeah, last Thursday night was really fun, too. We went to Future Park, the huge mall in our province, to have dinner and see a movie. We watched "Pandorum", some new movie with Dennis Quaid, a sci-fi thriller. It was pretty good. The popcorn was funny, though... They had three flavors: original, sweet, and cheese. I got a mixture of original and cheese, only to discover that "cheese" isn't quite the same here as it at home. It tasted good, for sure, but it was like a weird mixture of spices on popcorn. We were so confused as to why it didn't taste like cheese, but then we remembered that they don't have cheese in Thailand, so they had no idea what it was supposed to taste like!

Last night we wanted to out for pizza because we've been craving Western food, but everything is closed here on Sundays, just like at home. Hopefully we'll try again tonight! It's expensive in terms of Baht, but cheap in terms of American dollars. About 160-200 Baht for a Large pizza (which is 5-7 bucks).

I'm really distracted now so I guess that's it. I've uploaded a few more photos on Facebook, check them out if you get a chance!