Seventeen

Hello everybody! I’m back with a brief description of my day yesterday. I’m no longer in Bangkok, so I’m hoping to get some posts up about my time with Chloe soon. Anyways, yesterday was my birthday, and overall, it was a much better day than I expected. I had a pretty typical day at school, and afterwards I went to a coffee shop and got myself a matcha latte (which I’ve become addicted to). In the evening, 10 friends from school came and surprised me with gifts, snacks, and a piece of cake with a some candles. I was only expecting a few people to drop by for a few mins, so I was pleasantly surprised to have so many people to celebrate with. After we ate our cake, we went out to dinner at a Korean BBQ place, and finished the evening with a motorcycle ride home. When I arrived at the house, my host mom had mango sticky rice, spring rolls, salad wraps, and a fruit cake waiting, and everybody sang happy birthday to me. I ended the night with a nice video chat with my family. This morning, we prepared some salad wraps and laab (a Lao dish) to offer to some monks at the temple, which is supposed to bring good luck on your birthday. The birthday festivities concluded with a trip to a pond, where we released a fish and a turtle, and I’m not completely sure where they got them from in the first place, or what the release was supposed to represent, but I know it’s a birthday-related tradition. Overall, yesterday was much better than I expected it to be, and thank you all for the birthday wishes!