Tomorrow is the start of our second week teaching here in Suphanburi and even though I still feel silly calling myself a teacher, it feels like I have been here teaching for at least a month. We also went on our visit weekend trip, which made coming back to Suphanburi feel like coming home.  We went to Ayutthaya with a group of four other teachers from our program living in Suphanburi.  Before I get to the weekend update, I wrote down some of the most common or silliest nicknames of my students (all Thais have a super long first name so they each have short nicknames and I'm not sure how they come up with them):

1. Ice
2. Beer
3. Porn (Common for girls because it means blessed or something else positive)
4. Tony Stark
5. Nut
6. Dream
7. Mint
8. Ploy
9. Pan
10. Fluke
11. Earth
12. Oat
13. O
14. M
15. Ct. Dooky Baby
16. F in love

Anyway, Ayuttaya was once the capital of Thailand and evidently was the largest city in the world at one time with over 1 million people.  Burma invaded and basically tore the city down, but there are tons of really neat ruins to explore which is what we did all weekend!  I am really into ruins (I couldn't think of a better word than "into") and have loved exploring them in India, Peru, and now Thailand! (Photos: Hampi-India, Machu Picchu-Peru, Ayutthaya-Thailand.

Ayuttaya is only an hour and a half van ride from Suphanburi, so we left Saturday morning and got there by 11.  We walked a ways down the street toward the area where most of the ruins are(which are all Wats -aka temples) and explored a pretty cool one that was very popular for tourists.  After getting lunch we tried to look for a hostel/hotel in that area because we didn't want to go to the street that Lonely Planet recommended where all foreigners go.  Alas, we couldn't find one that everyone was willing to pay for so we walked back to where we were dropped off and eventually found the street with all the hostels.  It was actually pretty cool and we found some nice and cheap rooms.  Eric and I splurged staying in an A/C room with the bathroom inside our room for 400 baht ($13ish).  Saturday night we took a boat ride to see some of the really cool Wats on the river.  We saw one that has one of (or the?) biggest lounging Buddha and another huge gold plated one.  Buddha images are often coated in gold because even when the Buddha is in darkness, with even a glimpse of light it shines through.  I think this is a really beautiful metaphor for life whichever way you are spiritually or religiously inclined.

We got a relatively early start the next morning so we could check out the other temples before it got too hot.  We have a very disappointing American breakfast (3 pancakes with a 1/2 inch diameter each), but this was compensated for by biking around Ayutthaya the rest of the day! I miss riding a bike so much and this was just what I needed.  We rented bikes from our hostel and were off to explore the ancient city!

We ended our mini vacation shopping a little at the street market near the bus stop (I don't often enjoy shopping at home, but love it for some reason when I am traveling) and then headed home to Suphanburi.