Market, Temple, and Karly's Birthday

Karly’s birthday was a couple weeks ago.  She wanted us to go to the town temple and dinner and the as a celebration.  Around noon we headed out to the temple.  We went to pull in and park our bikes and were blocked by a market.  We thought that was great!  We locked our bikes and walked through the market for a couple hours.  Apparently they have markets that come for a couple weeks and we just stumbled upon it accidentally.  It was a very happy accident! 

They had clothes and dishes.  They were selling hedgehogs and bunnies.  There were terrible roasted bugs and frogs.  There was delicious coconut water. 

Abby and Lindsie ate the a maggot from the tray on the bottom left in this picture.

Holding this huge, nasty bug was enough for me.  I did NOT eat any of them. 

They have these types of foods everywhere.  None of them look or smell appetizing to me at all.

A game called Cookie Run is VERY popular over here.  All my students adore it!  I got it on my iPad, but I don't love it the way they do. 

Little figurines.

These guys were cutting coconuts, pouring out the water, and carving out the flesh.  They the lady in front was selling the coconut water with shavings of fresh coconut is a big cup of ice.  It was so refreshing and light.

After we had seen all the market had to offer we headed over to the temple.  

We had been told that we needed long skirts to be respectful.  I had one in my backpack that I just slipped on over my shorts.  The girls that hadn’t brought one were provided with one there.  We went inside and there was a monk, some candles and a very large Buddha statue.  We didn’t know what we were supposed to do and was was allowed and what was frowned upon so we watched the natives to see what they were doing.  Some of them prayed, a few knelt and recited with a monk, one make noise on an instrument of sorts and a lot of them were taking pictures.  We felt that since we aren’t Buddhist the best/only thing we ought to do was take some pictures.  We snapped a few in front of the large Buddha and headed outside again.   We were inside for less than 5 minutes.  We wandered around the grounds, took some pictures, and looked at the river/canal that holds early river racing.  Apparently people come from all over the country to watch the races.  

Around 3 we headed home.  I stopped at the bank and Tesco with 2 of the girls and everyone else headed home. 

That evening we hopped back on our bikes and headed out for dinner and Swensens.  We went to the Swiss Steak House.  About half of the girls got steak and they said it was divine.  I got a veggie omelet that was okay.  When we go back I will most certainly get a steak!  Swensens after was delicious as usual.  I got the Oreo brownie Sunday in a waffle bowl. 

It’s always nice to get out of the school for a bit and experience the town.  And of course it’s always good to eat ice cream!

The next day we had cake for Karly’s birthday.  There isn’t an oven here at the school, so we ate microwaved cake in cups, which was surprisingly delicious.  We also didn’t have any candles, so Abby putted up a cake with candles video on YouTube.