you're thai and I like it

I'm still not over how cool and friendly thai people are to foreigners. I've gotten much more used to people waving at me from a motorbike or attempting a conversation with me even when they don't speak English or offering me food to taste because they want me to know how effing delicious things are in their country. But I'm not done appreciating how awesome it is.

Last week I was waiting with Ally to get on a minivan to Bangkok. An older Thai woman was waiting with us, and began to talk to us about what we were doing in Suphan, and in the span of the next 15 minutes as we waited and then got on the minivan together, she made herself our best friend. She told us about her job, then about her brothers, then about her nieces and nephews, then showed us photos of all her relatives and their dogs, then wrote down our names and numbers in her notepad, then invited us to her house for dinner the following week, then gave us her name and number, then took several pictures of us. When we finally thought the interaction had ended, she abruptly turned to us again and handed us 2 fresh mangoes grown from her mango tree, which she says only produces a few good mangoes at a time. Then gave us a bag to carry the mangoes in.

What's even cooler than this interaction is that stuff like this happens, I'm sure, to lots of foreigners/other teachers around all of Thailand. I just think it's really bitchin.

On a totally separate subject, it's summer in Thailand! A summer that I feel I haven't earned, but that I will embrace gladly, and I am about to travel in both unplanned and planned fashion for 2 months.

Also, I went to Ko Tao and saw the best sunset possibly of my life.