Thailand: Week 8

Hey everyone,
So this was kind of uneventful. I went to work everyday and it was the usual. Played with the kids for 9 hours 5 days out of the week. They're all so adorable that I want to take them all home with me. My favorite part of work is definitely nap time. It's very hot, but the fans make it durable.
Although the week was ordinary, the weekend was not. On Friday night I came into the city to sleep over because we had to get up kind of early for our adventures on Saturday. We met up at the church Saturday morning and took a long nice drive in the back of Bird's (old branch president here) truck. Pretty typical here. An hour and a half later we get to this dirt road and Bird stops. He opens the car door, yells something in Thai, closes the door, and BAM. Pedal to the metal. We shoot up this dirt road and are all flying all over the bed of the truck. It was like the Indiana Jones ride in Disneyland except we didn't have seat belts. In fact, we didn't have seats. When he stopped two minutes later we were all in tears from laughing so hard.
We then walk down to this cool waterfall and play in the freezing water for a while. Us girls had a nice time reenacting moments from The Little Mermaid. We also jumped off some scary rocks so that's fun.
When we were done, Bird tells us we're going on a hike. Now, Bird is crazy. That's the bottom line. He takes us on this hike with no path, straight up a flipping mountain, and through the rushing river. I most certainly ripped a HUGE hole in my Thai pants and got many cuts and bruises from the falls. To sum that up, I was pretty mad at the fact that we had to scale the side of a mountain, but overall it was fun.
We get back to the car literally covered in mud. Drive a little bit and then stop for lunch. After lunch we rode elephants!!! It was so fancy. I loved it. We even named the elephants! Fanny/Pamela, Ellie, and Watermelon was the baby elephant. They are such fun animals, really I'm considering buying one right now.
After that amazing experience we went to a river and rafted down on bamboo rafts. We had two rafts, so three people on each. You guys know me, I'm pretty competitive so of course we had to race down the river (we won). I felt like I fulfilled my dream of becoming a pirate when I was standing there with my stick,  dodging vines. It was so fun, but each time we hit a rock or the other raft, I would get thrown forward and most likely fall down. I came out of that with more bruises than that dumb hike.
Anyway, that's all! Sorry this is so long!