I had a layover from DAD to BKK to HKT, and the Thai family consisted of a mom who works in hotel management and a daughter who works in real estate. They are Phuket natives. They did not have an extended family and told me the mother daughter duo was their entire family.
Anyway, I guess the reason why it's interesting to bring up the story is because the daughter studied abroad in high school as an exchange student to California. Apparently Thai exchange students like to go to English speaking countries to build fluency in English.
But somehow, this Thai student ended up going on exchange to McArthur, California, which is like, northeast PAST Sacramento. It's in what the "real Northern Californians" call "real Northern California." So she hung out on farmland and went shooting with the family (which was her matching preference because apparently shooting is a hobby in Thailand). And bought a bunch of denim while she was there.
But I thought it was interesting that a foreign exchange student spent their time in California shooting guns. I thought it was quite funny that this student somehow managed to go all the way to California but got immersed in what is more traditionally thought of as rural American culture, rather than mainstream "California culture". She didn't visit San Francisco or Los Angeles once. She landed in SFO, and it's a 6 hour drive from SFO to McArthur. Her host family drove out to pick her up, and drove her back at the cessation of the foreign exchange. Just an interesting story, is all. It was interesting to hear from her what it was like to stay in McArthur, California, since as a Californian it is as foreign to me as another country or state.
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