Wonderful, wonderful things about Thailand:

- Menu translations: most restaurant menus and food items have English translations, but the accuracy of these 'translations' is questionable, so 'Fried Prawns' becomes 'Fied Pawn' etc. My friend Grace and are still trying to figured out what we'd get if we ordered 'fend fied.' One option at the local minimart: Thin Wafers with Nature Identical Raspberry Flavoured Cream. Doesn't that sound appealing?

- The friendliness: You know the awkward smile that you do to strangers you don't know? I swear it's a staple here, but somehow Thai people don't make it awkward, they just look cute and chipper when they do it. Of course, the friendliness CAN be taken a little far - my friend Stacey is doing a story on a massage parlor run by blind people, and found out today (after a little feeling up by one of the masseuses) that one of her blind subjects has a big crush on her (ok, this is actually kind of cute).

- The sunset (it has stopped raining!): When the sun goes down it feels like you are the white stick in the middle of a giant piece of blue and pink cotton candy - just pink and blue gauziness as far as the eye can see.

- The sun finally came out! It's beautiful: I swear, I haven't sweated this much since . . . ever.

- Soong taos (literally "two bench"): These are public taxis that you can pick up all across the main highway here, and they basically consist of pickup truck with two benches in the back, plus a roof. You see so much of Thailand, get to meet so many people, and the drivers are a trip. Plus, a ride to my assignment (about 45 minutes) costs 50 baht, or less than $1.50. NOTE HOWEVER, that apparently they are NOT the same as 'private taxis,' which, despite appearing exactly the same, are manned by drivers who will try to convince you to pay them about 60 times as much for the same distance. Then you will get into a small discussion (argument?) outside of your assignment despite the fact that neither you nor the driver speak the same language. Ok, enough of that. Take the soong tao (try it with me Mom: 'Song' like one that you sing; 'Tao' like saying 'owww I hurt myself' with a T in front).

- The fact that despite my lackluster Thai I can always tell when Thai people are talking about me because the conversations sounds like this blah blah blah ROOOP blah blah blah ameriKAH blah blah blah FALANG (or blah blah blah PICTURE blah blah blah AMERICAN blah blah blah FOREIGNER).

Tomorrow is (finally) a day when I won't be out collecting pictures or audio or video, I'll just be editing. I'm not sure I've ever learned so much in such a condensed period of time. Yesterday I completely changed my system for shooting; I'm also collected audio all the time (never done that before) and today I shot video for the first time (with a lot of glitches but thank god for my amazing coach Pailin). Things are really, really good though.

Thank you for posting comments. Keep on at it. At the top is a photo I took late last night while out on assignment. Oh also, I saw muay thai boxing, it was awesome.

XOXO, Julie