In the United States, many people I know have pet dogs or cats. It is very normal to pet dogs that you see, even if they're not yours. However, in Thailand, it is less common to have pets. Of course, some Thai families have pets but not very many do. However, in Thailand, there are a lot of stray dogs. These stray dogs are called street dogs, and they don't have homes. As an American, at first, whenever I saw a street dog, I wanted to pet it. They were so cute! But I learned that these dogs might be sick, and petting them could get me sick too. I felt sad for these dogs. Then I learned that even though the dogs didn't have homes, people still took care of them. Often, people put out leftover food for the dogs, so they had something to eat. Thai people like dogs; however, they don't let dogs into their houses or pet them because they don't want to get sick. After I learned this, I didn't feel sad for the dogs because I knew they were still getting taken care of!
Lastly, the food was very different than I was used to. I loved the food in Thailand so much! Thai food is often spicy. I like spicy food, so that was good for me! While I loved the food in Thailand, Thai people don't have very defined food for each meal, and they eat rice a lot. In the United States, we have breakfast foods, lunch foods and dinner foods. I might have cereal and fruit for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch and pasta for dinner. In Thailand, the food is not set into categories like this. For example, it was common to have fried rice for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. At first, it felt strange to me to be eating "lunch/dinner foods" for breakfast and to be eating rice with almost every meal in Thailand. I like rice, but I didn't understand why we ate rice so often.
