Nicole's Saturday with her Host Family

This morning, we did another load of laundry and successfully hung everything outside to dry. 

We also realized we have a resident salamander in our room.

We had fried rice, chicken, and cucumbers for breakfast. Not exactly typical breakfast food, but still delicious.

We then played dress up with traditional Thai clothing with our mom, P'Dui.

She was so excited to let us borrow her clothes and jewelry. 

Fun Fact: Apparently Brooke looks like a Thai star. 

We had so much fun posing all around the house and eventually convinced P'Dui to take pictures with us too! 

P'Dui has a daughter who is a nurse in Bangkok and a son who also works in Bangkok. She misses them a lot since they don't get to come home often and she showed us pictures of their graduations and other family photos.

There are three sisters who live in this complex to take care of their mother and father. Their parents are both very old, bedridden, and are on 24/7 end of life care. Since there are no caregivers in this province, the family really had to rally together to provide for their parents, especially after their dad had a stroke. 

P'Dow, our nurse host mom, is retiring after this year as head nurse of the hospital so she can spend more time helping her parents at home. 

Yesterday, P'Tong, the ICU nurse, told us that although there are hospitals in this area, the quality of life for patients after being admitted and sent home isn't very good.

 After a pasta lunch, we headed to a nearby coffee shop that had beautiful flowers (both real and fake). There were also some pretty large lizards basking by the pond. 

We visited another monkey temple. The monkeys were climbing on rope ladders above a pool and trying to push each other in.

We then went to Phra Narai Rachanivej, which is the ruins of the old city. 

We walked around and took a ton of photos. We could see the old foundation of buildings and huge walls and gates enclosing the complex.

We also got to see elephants, but something clearly got lost in translation. 

Afterwards, we went to a huge shopping center called the Big C. It had a lot of different shops and vendors, but the main part was just like a Walmart.

We finished the day at the pool in the Air Force Base and picked up food on the way home. Brooke told our mom we like French fries. Our mom happened to have a huge bag in the fridge. We might be having them for breakfast from now on!