มะเฟือง and the second to last day of classes

This is a pretty starfruit...

aka มะเฟือง, or ma feuuang

A portion of the street I live on is littered with these little fruit grenades.. Laying there in varying degrees of explodedness, I'll admit that I've been tempted to pick one up and have a try. I've been curious about what these guys taste like but, suspecting that at least one of the feral neighbor dogs has probably urinated/drooled/vomited on the street fruits, I've chosen to avoid the neighborhood supply. So I went ahead and bought one from the market. The flavor could be described only as uninteresting and sort of sickly, with maybe some bile and dirt undertones. It is very pretty though.

2 days until the end of term.

.

motorbikes and too much tamarind

I haven't been taking motorbikes home from school lately. When it's been raining, and the streets here are less like streets and more like canals, my dangling feet and calves get soaked on the 30 block ride home. We wear skirts to school most days, so I ride the bike sidesaddle. [This, I learned after an uncomfortable encounter one day which probably doesn't need describing, is what women in skirts do here when mounting bikes.] To avoid soggy shoes sometimes I flex my thighs and straighten my legs, so I'm an L - legs sticking out at a 90 degree angle. It works great until you fail to notice the fence or the dumpster or the dog or the child or the other motorbike whizzing past you. Then, it hurts.

I knocked over a parked motorbike, doing exactly that a few weeks ago. Got the entire neighborhood's attention which the whack, screech, crash of my ankles making contact with the front of the bike, my motorbike driver yelling, braking hard, and finally the unmanned bike teetering and falling into the street. I'm a bit less of a novelty in the neighborhood now, after almost 10 months here, but doing something like that will inevitably draw a crowd. Which is exactly what happened. I should also mention that as I stepped off the bike to apologize and check for damage, my leg plunged thigh-deep down into a ditch full of some sort of vile sewage/oil/death sludge.

So there I stood, leg throbbing and swelling and caked in black slime, face like a drippy tomato in the afternoon sun, looking pathetically around at my witnesses... and they just erupted in laughter. these are the coolest people. they made sure i was fine/happy/not dying and a few of them offered a ride to the school where I could wash off whatever this stuff was that was, by now, probably eating away at the skin on my leg.

[I've recovered nicely, by the way, and no harm was done to the motorbike I attacked.]

And so I haven't been riding motorbikes lately.

Lethargy got the better of me yesterday afternoon, however, and I took a bike home from the market. Halfway through the ride home, the driver exclaimed something completely incomprehensible from inside his helmet, reached behind him and thrust a tamarind pod into my face. Taking both hands off his bike for a moment, he showed me the universal "Consume this food!" motion.. and (yes, while driving) sat watching me in his side mirror. so I smashed that pod open and shoved the sticky sweet tamarind in my mouth as fast as i could. big, exaggerated chewing and eating motions to demonstrate that I was, in fact, giving it a try. now please look at the road again.. And he did exactly that ...until I expressed to him how delicious I found the tamarind. At this, he started shovelling handfuls of the the pods over his shoulder, insisting exuberantly that I accept what ended up being about 3 pounds of tamarind - enough to keep me full for a week. Luckily I was able to bring them into class with me today and share them with the kids.

3 school days until end of term.

rain and lunch

.
Rain is roaring outside my windows this morning - the room's filled with the smell, the sound of the first real rain in a long time hitting the warm pavement, the neighborhood rooftops, smoldering garbage piles, the swampy canal a few blocks away. The stormy sky, the way I didn't see sunlight until 9 this morning, the puddles on my doorstep - it reminds me of home in Oregon.

Unlike in Oregon, where going out in the rain is a near daily necessity, stepping outside when it's raining here - unless for completely unavoidable reasons - is considered strange behavior. The one and only time i went for a run in the rain, i got looks of confusion, astonishment, concern, horror from my neighbors and constant offers of shelter or assistance from drivers, motorcyclists, bicyclists, grandmas poking their heads from kitchen windows, landscaping crews taking shelter under banana trees. So instead of going for a run this morning, I treated myself to a cup of tea, a piece of toast and 3 hours of winter Olympics coverage - all enjoyed in the comfort of the nest i've built myself in my bed here.

By 10am I'd worked up an appetite from all that eating and nestling and Olympics watching, so I summoned the energy to take a cold shower, get out of my pajamas and visit a nearby market to pick up lunch. I went for something I hadn't tried yet, and I'm still unsure as to what it was, really..

food parcel

Served on a banana leaf, this dish (I asked about 10 different people what it's called and I can't remember what a single of them told me) is basically a really eggy, slightly oily, crunchy, chewy crepe (or maybe some strange cousin of the omelet?) stuffed with veggies and an indistinguishable protein substance. The salty, sweet, savory flavor was incredibly similar to the taste of pad thai, now that I think about it. When I ordered, the surprisingly voluptuous Thai woman at the food stall, cooking fast and ferociously, stopped what she was doing for about 2 seconds to shout something in Thai, then flip, fold and wrap the meal in a banana leaf, drop it into a bag along with a little condiment bag of cucumbers with red onion and vinegar, take my money and hand me my meal. And most impressive was the fact that the whole time she kept a broad smile on her face. I imagine I'd be a crazed, wild-eyed, panicked mess.

The countdown to summer vacation continues: 7 school days

spelling quiz before lunchtime

.
Three weeks of school left. That means three weeks left to complete a comical number of student evaluations, [the most challenging part of these has proven to be simply writing out the students' names. Wananatchaporn Rattananontachaisuk, for example, was a particularly frustrating one. they're all about that long.] create, administer and score final exams for my 160+ students, and finish the ridiculous amount of paperwork I've been diligently procrastinating for the past few months.

I've been working hard on saving money since, as of the end of term on March 10 I will no longer have a source of income. As lunch at the school is free for teachers and students, I gorge myself in the lunch room each day. Shoveling in bowlfuls of rice and curry and eggs and fish, not necessarily because I'm hungry, nor because I find the food particularly delicious. No, it's pretty much just the fact that it's free. That and the, The more I eat now, the less I have to pay to eat later mentality that grips me when I'm in ultra-frugal mode.

Yes, school lunch is one of the things I'm going to miss here in Samut Prakan. It's the highlight of the school day. My reward for having woken up and taught the first three class periods of the morning. There is just one meal option each day - whatever the school cooks feel like making. Sometimes it's sweet curry over rice or hot noodle soup or rice with scrambled eggs and ketchup (yup) or stir-fried veggies and pork. it's usually pretty good.

Well it seems I'm not the only one who looks forward to her school lunches. The kids can't really focus at the best of times, but in the class period before lunch they're particularly spacey. I gave a spelling quiz on Monday (bus/train/catch/take/airplane/car/van/ride) and this was what one of my grade 4 students handed in as her answers:

drumstick/drumstick/mutant drumstick?/drumstick

I'd write more but I need to go eat my free lunch.

.

steamy

.
It's getting hot again.

I've been taking for granted the cold season's respite from the heat. And now I begin to remember what it's like to be drenched in sweat from morning to night. Despite the way it makes running difficult, requires me to wash my sweaty shirts more often and leaves my face glistening with a sweaty sheen, I usually enjoy the heat just fine. That is, of course, when I have a functioning shower at home. Something's wrong with the plumbing at the house so we've been without water for two long sweaty, hot days. As one might imagine I smell (and look) awesome.

On Sunday morning - back when I could still bathe myself - I went to the home of the family I tutor for. I was greeted at the gate by their new puppy, a poofy ball of pomeranian fluff, about 6 inches in diameter, named Poo. We spent most of the two hours rolling around with the unfortunately named pup and talking about pets and home and food and why Americans say "piece of cake" when the conversation has nothing to do with cake. (in thai they have a similar expression: "like eating a banana") As I left they presented me with a leaf-wrapped parcel and told me to eat it for lunch..

mystery leaf package

So I refrained from buying the sticks of chicken satay with peanut sauce, or the somtam with stickyrice, or the noodle soup, or the coconut smoothies, or the steamed pork buns that I pass on my 20-block walk home and saved my appetite. At home I opened up my package to find...

Joong!
aka Zhongzi aka Jongzi aka probably many other things

Joong are steamed Chinese sticky rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves - kind of like a Chinese tamale. kind of. This one was a delicious mash of long grain sticky rice, peanuts, mushrooms, salt egg yolks, chestnuts, sweet pork chunks and fresh lotus seeds, all seasoned with 5spice powder and a generous amount of black pepper.

Joong deconstructed

Savory and meaty and salty and sweet and nutty and chewy... I demolished my joong in about 5 delicious minutes.
.

well deserved dim sum

.
As the school year winds down, the kids are acting more monstrous than ever.. constructing (and field testing) elaborate paper airplanes, riding on each others' shoulders wielding cardboard swords, swinging large sticks (and often hitting the ceiling fans, to their glee), biting classmates (and faculty), eating assigned homework.. I had every intention of going out last Friday night but after a week of playing disciplinarian, it wasn't going to happen. What I ended up doing with my Friday night: slumping on my living room floor with a cup of chocolate milk, a bowl of rice and soy sauce, 5 steamed bbq pork buns and no shame. Fell asleep on the floor before i could finish my dinner. Staggered upstairs to my bedroom at around 8:00 pm. Fell asleep again - this time in bed - at about 8:01 pm.

To redeem myself after a pitiful Friday night I resolved to do something new and interesting on Saturday. So at midday, along with teacher Katie, I headed into Bangkok's Chinatown.

The trek to Chinatown on Saturday involved a van ride through our flooded neighborhood, a hot damp ride on the public bus (with windows that were, to my horror, impossible to open), a few minutes on the Bangkok skytrain, another few on the subway, and finally some confused wandering around city streets. After 9 months in Samut Prakarn, Saturday was my first visit to Yaowarat Rd (Chinatown). It was a frenetic and amazing jumble of street vendors, honking stand-still traffic, hurried pedestrians, jam packed restaurants, bustling narrow alleyways - not far off what I'd imagined it to be.

Yaowarat Road in Chinatown

With a hankering for some real Chinese dim sum, we explored the major thoroughfares, the hot winding alleyways, the rows upon rows of umbrella-shaded vendors and finally came across a restaurant (boasting, like 100s of its neighbors, the best shark fin soup in town) with a small steamy case out front, brimming with little dim sum morsels in varied shapes and colors. Once we were seated inside the tiny bustling room, sipping a Singha, our waitress brought out a towering stack of round bamboo steamer baskets and arranged them around our table. They held different varieties of hot little dumpling parcels. we pointed to a few (emerald dumplings, dragon's eyes and a shrimp/crab/pork wrap thing, i believe), she scooped up the rest and we dug in..

dim sum and a brewsky

Yaowarat again, as we attempt to cross the street

Lanterns strung over the streets in preparation
for the upcoming Chinese New Year