Tuktuks and Turian

This weekend was interesting. On Saturday my host parents had to go to a wedding reception in Chumpon where Maren another AFSr is staying. So when I found out they wanted me to go with them I mentioned her and they invited her along. It was so great to actually see another AFSr and talk. I had a great time because of that though the dinner was very strange. Dinner was in a big room but the room was packed full of tables and a small stage was shoved in the corner. The bride and groom went on stage for all of 5 minutes to get these flower necklaces (like a Hawaiian lei) and then someone said something to them and they were seated again. For the rest of the time random people just got on stage and sang and there were Thai dancer for maybe 10 minutes. But the weirdest thing was that no one paid attention. Everyone just sat at their own tables and talked like being at a crowded restaurant. After being there for maybe an hour we left and went out to dinner at a seafood place downtown. The food was really good and I had the whole night to talk to Maren which was perfect. One thing we both talked about was how much we miss the ocean and swimming and how weird it is that we both live close to the ocean here but have not been yet though we've been here almost 1 month. We ended up staying at the restaurant until 10:30 and then I had a 2 hour drive back home. The next day we all just hung around the house since the day before we had a long day and it was nice to finally spend one day relaxing sort of. In the evening though I joined my host parents when they went to a funeral for a distant relative. Well the person who died was a millionaire and own a hotel in town so the funeral was huge and this was the last night. They had multiple tents set up for people to eat in and screens set up so that people could watch the services. We went into the tent in front of the house so we didn't have a screen. There were a lot of monks who chanted and that was amazing eerily beautiful. Then a lot of people went up and talked but I didn't understand it, my host mother said they were talking about all the good deeds he had done in his life. It was remarkable how huge this service was there were thousand of flowers donated by different people and there were hundreds there on this night and it had been going on for 7 nights. It was interesting to go to my first wedding and funeral all in the same weekend and it gave me a lot to think about. ....Well I just stopped to watch my host father being interviewed on TV. He is still talking and has been on for over 15 minutes. It's really cool to see him on TV and P. Nu explained a little about what he is talking about. I'm going to end it here for now I have to get ready to introduce myself to over 3,500 people tomorrow morning at school.