a storm, dog vomit and a wedding

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Last night I was startled out of sleep by the most ridiculously loud crack of thunder I've ever heard. My bed frame shuddered, the accompanying lightning lit up the whole room. it was the first time i've actually been scared by a storm.. what with the torrential rain, violent wind and thunder and lightning that could've be mistaken as some sort of military offensive, i thought my little house might not make it through the night. well it made it, as it turns out, though not without small lakes having formed under my bed, in the living room, in all my shoes sitting in the entryway.

the motorbike ride in the morning was fantastic - i wish i'd had my camera with me. the full 2kms to school were flooded with no less than a 8-10 inches of murky grey water, a good 12-14 inches in some places. I got a workout keeping my legs completely outstretched for 10 minutes sitting sidesaddle on the bike behind the driver man who was trying to navigate us down the canal, around floating tree branches and anticipate the speed bumps along the way.. it was unreal watching kids, shoes and socks off, riding to school on bicycles whose wheels were half-submerged in floodwater, shoeless grandmas, skirts hiked up well above the knee, sloshing down the street selling breakfast food, and the feral neighborhood dogs looking even mangier than usual, soaking wet and struggling to walk/paddle from pile to pile of floating garbage.

And once I arrived at school I got an unanticipated treat...
Since the school is almost entirely open-air (and security there is lax, at best), it's not uncommon to have animal visitors now and then. Usually it's just birds sitting on your table at lunch, or pooping on a stack of tests, but yesterday evening we apparently had a dog come visit the third floor. I know about said dog because it vomited right outside my office door. and then, because of the rain, the hallway flooded and created a putrid, chunky, reddish/brown river which flowed, conveniently, under the door into my office and straight down to my desk and the stack of books and papers I had lined up next to it. a superb start to the day.

The kids were awesome today, though, which helped me forget about my vomit soaked room and belongings. They get really excited about teaching me Thai, so I let them play teacher for much of the day.. great fun.


Last weekend, two of the Thai teachers at the school got married. I wasn't invited to the ceremony (I'm not too offended, considering I'd never met them until last weekend) but they had their party/reception at the school and they invited all the foreign teachers to attend. I have a grand total of three photos from the event...

Ivy and Mitchie showing off.. something.
and me, most likely looking for the nearest server to bring us our next course

fuzzy shot of the auditorium where we ate dinner
and were entertained by the school band and the MC (another teacher) cracking jokes in Thai, of course, so I don't know if they were actually funny. i laughed at them all anyway.

about half of the evening was spent taking pictures in front of this floral archway.
here are the bride and groom with one of the high school teachers

As I was leaving, the school director earnestly told me that I need to find a man to marry me soon so that we can both teach here, get married at the school (very cheap, she assured me), have children, and then send them to this school and they'll get free tuition! i told her i'd think on it.
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heat and odd cold things

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It feels like it's been getting hotter here lately, or maybe it's more humid. In any case I'm getting just slightly tired of being constantly drenched in sweat. I sweat in places I previously thought didn't have sweat glands. my shins sweat. my knees sweat. the backs of my hands and the tops of my feet sweat.

I wake up in the morning, warm and comfortable and relatively dry with the fan on Hi, 6 inches from the bed, blowing in my face, but by the time I make it downstairs to put the water on for coffee my tshirt is already sticking to my back and my hairline is getting damp. My morning routine continues with ten minutes of killing the resident ants swarming around last night's milk glass, listening to the news, making a butter and vegemite sandwich and by this point I'm drenched. and I stay that way until nighttime when I take a cold shower and plant myself in front of the fan again.

The ambient heat and moistness doesn't really bother me, but now and then I tire of wearing sodden clothes. So I've discovered the miracle of baby powder - something which everyone carries with them here and with which they liberally dust themselves constantly. It's an ingenious idea despite the way it (combined with blackboard chalk dust) turns my black skirts and pants a lovely mottled grayish color by lunchtime every day.

Aside from baby powder, they combat the heat with cold sweet things to eat...

At temples and other "ancient" places, they often advertise "ancient" foodstuffs like this ANCIENT ICE CREAM, which I find hilarious.

Fresh coconut ice cream on a stick
The brightly colored worms peeking out are pieces of dyed coconut

Pineapple slushy/smoothie
topped, strangely, with chocolate sprinkles and grape jelly balls

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math and science day and a mangosteen binge

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This Friday was another baffling day at school.. it was Math and Science Day (discovering just this much was a real breakthrough) so all of the math and science classes prepared posters to display downstairs in our open-air auditorium/courtyard. The hard part of the day was figuring out who, what, where and when I was supposed to be teaching and what I was supposed to be doing when not teaching.

The day didn't start smoothly.. My first class (the horribly misbehaved fifth graders) I was told would be canceled so I went off to work on grading tests in my office, only to have one of my grade 5 students come running up to me at my desk... "teacher, teacher! teach! where? english class? free time, ok?" Turns out that the plan (if there had ever really been one) had changed and we all actually did have morning classes but none of us non-Thai speaking teachers had been informed. i grabbed a fistful of paper and markers and followed my student back to the teacherless class which, by then, had erupted into a scene of even greater mayhem than it normally is... boys riding on one another's backs, battling with classroom chairs, dueling with PVC pipe swords. The looks I was receiving from the thai teachers in neighboring classrooms were unmistakably ones of disapproval and were telling me, in case I wasn't aware, you're 15 minutes late to class and you need to get your screaming children under control. I ended up having limited success getting them under control as the courtyard below was filled with laughing, playing, screaming kids and a rock band, yes, a rock band, warming up on stage. The lesson plan I had come up with on the walk over was this: 40 minutes of "draw a picture of what you've learned this year in English." What actually ended up happening was 10 minutes of that, and the rest of the time spent sitting/laying on the floor, the 8 of us, drawing pictures of the most shocking monsters we could come up with, and the students teaching me, then quizzing me on, the names of different animals and objects in Thai.

The rest of the day unfolded in a similar haphazard fashion. In the end it turned out I had no other classes to teach so I milled around, watched the high school students perform dance/lip sync numbers up on the main stage [**side note: this dancing is unlike anything I've ever seen allowed, let alone encouraged, in a school. the members of one of the more provocative dance groups were clad in tight white tank tops, minuscule denim cut-offs and towering red heels and were made up with what probably amounted to a good 3 pounds of eyeshadow, mascara and lipstick between the seven of them. I should also mention that two of these dancers were males - cut-offs, heels, make-up and all. The dance they performed was certainly entertaining - they had obviously practiced and worked hard on their choreography - but I couldn't help feeling like I should be covering the eyes of the primary school children sitting in the audience.] and ate food that the students were preparing and selling at card tables set up by the stage. After lunch I played basketball with a group of the high school boys (i took em to school) and watched the final game of the high school girls' soccer tournament sitting in the ridiculous mid-afternoon heat, drinking from a plastic bag full of coke and cheering with the kiddos. a great day, all in all.

students looking happy
because they don't have to go to class


more celebration about the class-free day

high school students grilling up some meat-on-a-stick in the courtyard

After school I went to the market where a woman had a table piled with what looked like 200 lbs of mangosteens so I bought about 6 of those lbs and took them back to the apartments as an offering to the thai teachers in return for bites of whatever they were making/eating/drinking that night.

mangosteens before they were devoured


innards of a perfectly ripe little mangosteen
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thempanada and the national anthem

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Learning Thai has proven to be a daunting task, so a few weeks ago i decided to focus my efforts on just memorizing the Thai national anthem that the kids sing in school assembly each morning. I devoted a week to the endeavor and now I'm showing off... i proudly sing at morning assembly, i sing in the evening when the anthem plays on all radios and televisions, i sing in taxis for the taxi drivers, really I sing to anyone who'll listen. did I mention that I'm terribly proud of myself? The kids in class helped me with learning all the pronunciation and they still get a kick out of listening to me butcher their dear country's anthem in class.

morning assembly where we sing the national anthem

i have discovered the thai equivalent of the fabulous latin american hand-held snack, the empanada. I don't know what they're called here, so I've dubbed them thempanadas. these ones I tried in Ayutthaya had two different fillings: one, a sweet crumbly paste made perhaps of some sort of sweetened mashed beans (?), potatoes (?), loads of sugar and some egg yolk, i would guess. the other was filled with ground chicken seasoned with sweet and savory middle eastern/north african spices. The dough is thin, chewy and a bit crunchy around the edges. The whole thing is deep fried - no surprise there - and costs about 15 US cents.

sweet, crunchy, dense Thempanada
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fried quail eggs and the BBC Chronicles of Narnia

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These bite-sized eggs are my favorite streetside snack lately. they're quail eggs fried up in the sort of ableskiver pans they use to cook a number of different foods here. The guy generously oils the little cast iron hemispheres and cracks a quail egg into each one. A couple minutes of cooking and he pops them out with a spoon and drops them onto a bed of shredded cabbage in a styrofoam bowl. When you place an order, he sets a couple of fresh, hot eggs on top and spritzes the whole thing with a spray bottle (like the ones we use at home to punish karl) of soy sauce. The result is a rich, salty, protein-rich snack, all for about 30 US cents.

quail egg vendor
(squid-on-a-stick vendor in the background)

quail eggs by the river

On an un-food related note: I spent Sunday in my neighborhood doing laundry at home, swimming at the school pool with a group of (strangely un-supervised) second graders and buying groceries at the market. In the evening I nestled down in my sweltering bedroom and watched what is, perhaps, my number one favorite childhood movie (well, series of movies) ...

The BBC's 1988 production of The Chronicles of Narnia!

I have to watch it in hideously low resolution 9-minute segments on youtube, but it's entirely worth it.
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it's no Oregon blackberry cobbler...

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...but here's a different birthday treat for my lovely sibling today:

spongy hot dog on a stick, wrapped in a sweet moist waffle!
(i remember how much you loved these)

HAPPY 19th BIRTHDAY SEESTA!

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the return of internet access

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After weeks of confusion about internet access here, I finally have internet access at my house again. On the other hand, it looks like internet in my office at school is gone for good (one day, a few weeks ago, a couple of guys just walked in as I was sitting at my computer, motioned to borrow my chair to stand on, removed the modem from the wall and off they went. the few people at school with whom I can communicate in English have told me, "mmm... hmm... maybe later." this translates to: "you will never see internet here again.") But internet at home means I can finally get all my nerdy NPR podcasts back! That means weeks of fresh, new Wait Wait... and Car Talk and Talk of the Nation! Also, The Moth, check it out.

Thai Mothers' Day was last Wednesday, so we had the day off of school and I am proud to say that I completed 10 (small) loads of laundry. I am not proud, however, that I had 10 loads of laundry to complete. I'm just thrilled to have clean underwear again.

Because it was Mothers' Day, I had all my classes make booklets for their mothers, with the title, "I Love My Mother Becuase..." Well, most of the girls were able to handle the assignment - I did get plenty of pages reading, for instance, "...because he cook me when hungry," but they enjoyed drawing flowers and hearts and mothers hugging daughters who all look suspiciously like Hannah Montana. The boys, as always, were more keen on drawing hand grenades and ninjas.

I was proud of noodle boy's restraint today - just one noodle bowl on page one. That's as far as he got on the book, however, and here's his front cover:

I think he may have misunderstood the assignment.

I decided not to send this class's books home to mom. They're pinned up in my office instead.
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วัดบางพลีใหญ่ใน: wat bang phli yai nai

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There's a beautiful Buddhist temple perched on the bank of a canal near my neighborhood. I have to pass it on my way to Bangkok or just about anywhere outside of my province, but I had never bothered to visit until a few weekends ago.

The temple, itself, is small but spectacular - delicate, intricate detail covering walls and doorways, rows of beautiful golden statues, immense crystal chandeliers. I visited on a Sunday, so the place was packed. I, the towering caucasian, made a weak attempt at blending with the crowd. glancing around awkwardly, taking cues from the women beside me...

ok, take shoes off here, i guess. nope.. don't take them off yet... ok, here. now ladle some of this hot mystery liquid into this bowl thing.. ok, now put money in this wooden thing and light this stick on fire. alright..

15 minutes of this and I was able to finally sneak around to the back and take some pictures...

a side entrance to the main room of the temple

photo: courtesy of NZ Chong - thanks NZ!

incredibly colorful main room

(i suppose there's probably a more correct term for this place) of the temple

flags of Thailand and of the king fly at the temple
over the masses of vendors selling foods, clothes, drinks, jewelry, brooms, false teeth, etc.

a man, floating down the canal by the market,
with a makeshift wood burning grill in his wooden boat cookin up meat-on-a-stick,
selling it to passers-by

Adjacent to the temple is the Bang Phli Old Market, which is housed in the strangest building... From the temple's walkway of umbrellaed vendors, you have to shoulder your way through the throng to get over a short narrow pedestrian bridge which spits you out at the structure's dark wooden mouth. Stepping over the threshold, i had to give my eyes a moment to adjust to the dim,brownyellow light before I could see that I'd just entered a narrow corridor stretching for as far as I could see. There are few to no windows here so the only light comes from bare bulbs overhead, hanging every few feet from fraying, sagging electric cables. The place has an overwhelming, not unpleasant, musty smell. sort of like atool shed filled with ancient rusting tools, old wood and pain thinner. Lining the rickety wooden walkway are a hodgepodge of vendors with their wares stacked on carts, shelves, the floor, crates, bed frames -whatever's around. They sell everything here.

toiletries, milkshakes, extension cords, grilled meat-on-a-stick, blue jeans, hammocks, school supplies, hair driers, pet rabbits (looking absolutely ridiculous dressed up in tutus with bows strapped to their ears), diapers, bicycles, giant wooden altars, cookies, briefcases, books, cell phones, mushrooms...

view of the exterior of the market from a bridge over the canal

end of the bridge descending into the inky (and, i should add, economical) abyss that is the
Bang Phli old market

flags, flags, flags!
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a celebration (?) and karaoke at school

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Two weeks ago - back when I was enduring an internet-free existence - we apparently had some sort of festival/celebration day at school. I showed up at 8:30 (the time class is scheduled to start) that Tuesday morning to find an empty classroom. Now, this is normal, but the kids usually trickle in over the next 20 minutes or so.. this day I didn't have a single student for 40 minutes. it did seem to me that the sounds of squealing children coming from the courtyard were particularly loud so i went to investigate. it took very little time to discover that I had, unsurprisingly, missed a memo about some sort of school-wide activity today. but this is normal here. Communication (at least with those of us who don't speak much Thai) isn't one of our school's strong points - so I did what I do every day when one of my students (no, not the administration or even a fellow teacher) informs me of some major schedule change, or when I get ushered into a waiting van first thing in the morning with no comprehensible explanation... i shrugged my shoulders, smiled and pretended to understand what was going on

I'm still not exactly sure what was happening that day, but there was some good fresh coconut ice cream served in the typical fluffy white hot dog bun and an awesome show in which the kids dressed up and sang karaoke on stage for the entire school.

One of the (male) high school students, dressed up for...?


high-schoolers performing some sort of traditional dance in the PE room


Little Miss Thai Sunshine!



one of the grade 2 students sings karaoke

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farang in a tuk tuk

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finally having access to my photos from my nong sao's camera means that I can put up some posts from her visit...

On our second day in Bangkok, we started off with a bag of farang (guava, not foreigner). The fruit stand/cart guys often have a little condiment station on the side of their cart. They always have a chili flake, salt and sugar combo which I love on guava and pineapple and green mango slices. I'm unclear on what the other condiments are.

farang covered in salt, sugar and hot chili flakes

we took our bag of crunchy, salty, spicy, sweet farang chunks and hopped a tuk tuk to Sanamluang - the royal field out in front of the Grand Palace and site of a, then, recent protest by the red shirts.

our Oregonian, Chaco-clad feet in the tuk tuk, sitting in Bangkok traffic
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