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Molly the Tookay

Monday, August 13th, 2012
9:37 pm, home.
Just got back from a weekend trip to Chiang Rai and so glad to be home. The bus was quite the sardine can and a very windy road. But we made it.  But most importantly, there'a a dead tookay lizard stuck to the wall of my balcony outside my room! It scared me so bad when I went to open the windows, but then I realized it wasn't moving...  But the question is, how does a lizard die while stuck to a wall?? It's got to be one of the more bizarre situations I've come across lately.

Wednesday, August 15th, 2012
9:58 pm, home.
I had to come to terms with Molly, the name that Dana gave to the blue and red speckled lizard on the wall.  I came home from dinner and my room was smelling rank. Really really rank. Obviously it was because there was a dead lizard stuck to the wall and had been there for three days, but still, it was not a welcoming smell.  I'll let this video tell the rest of the story:

"Green Magpies" and Other New Vocabulary

This week, I started a new (hopefully) weekly activity: I told my third grade class that if they bring in a new vocabulary and teach the class, they can eat lunch with me in the English teacher’s office.  Big time! So Thursday rolled around, and at least 25 of the 34 students brought in new words, and what a random collection! Here is a selection:

Freezing point

Saturn

barrel

green magpies (??)

rood (which I didn’t know was a word…)

fresh milk (?)

vulture

gyroscope

daisy

sunflower

mathematics

meteorite

planetarium

history

Hopefully next week, they can give the class a sentence with their new word—undoubtedly, they’ll find some obscure English words that I have never heard of. 

A Malaysian Vacation

The Nan crew has just returned from our first cross-border adventure.  Last weekend we had two days off for Buddhist Lent, so we booked a cheap flight to Penang, Malaysia, a big island off the west coast of the country.  The plan was to take a night bus to Bangkok after school on Wednesday, get to Penang and stay in Georgetown (the city) on Thursday and Friday, then take a bus to Kuala Lumpur, the capital, on Saturday for our flight back to Bangkok on Sunday.  But naturally, plans change. On the previous Friday, Prakop, our boss, came into the office and said, “Hannah, I have good or bad news for you. You seem to have the wrong visa. Can you go to Vientienne tomorrow?”  At first, I thought she was joking, but no, she was really suggesting that I go to Laos after judging the English competition on Saturday morning. Although Nan is next to Laos, it’s pretty tricky to actually get there and would probably have taken the better part of 2 days, not to mention that the Embassy is closed on weekends.  But then I remembered that I already had a trip booked to leave Thailand! So new plan: I would leave Nan a day earlier than everyone else and hit up the Thai Embassy in Penang.

So the adventure began with a night bus, an 8 hour stay in Bangkok, and a flight to Penang. I made it to a guesthouse that was quite nice, though on my way, a bird shat on the top of my backpack—missing my head by centimeters. That’s supposed to be lucky, right? Hopefully, it was giving me the luck I needed to get my visa in time for my return flight to Bangkok…

Thursday morning, I woke up early, ate some noodles on the street, and took a bus up to the area of the Embassy.  On the walk there, I met a Thai woman who conveniently knew where it was a pointed me in the right direction. I rounded the last corner of the walk, only to find a locked gate and a piece of paper posted over the sign: “Embassy closed Thursday, August 2 for Thai holiday. Open Friday, August 3.”  This was not good news, as I new that my visa would require a full business day processing time. So I tried to talk to the guards, but they showed me no mercy, telling me to leave and come back tomorrow. Woof.

Conveniently, it was only 9:45 am, so I headed back to the center of Georgetown for some sightseeing.  It’s quite a unique city. Malaysia was colonized by the Dutch, Portuguese, and finally by the British, and getting its independence in 1957. Georgetown was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the early 2000s, so it has been fairly well preserved.  The architecture is a fascinating juxtaposition of large, stately, colonial buildings, smaller colonial storefronts and homes, Chinese temples, Buddist temples, Hindi temples, mosques, and even some ocean jetty neighborhoods. The colonial storefronts seem to be crumbling under the bustling life of the city, but they are so lively and bright at the same time.  So, I met up with a few PiAers from Chiang Mai that were also in Penang and spent all of Thursday walking around Georgetown, poking my head into storefronts, tasting so many interesting foods, and taking way to many pictures. 

Here's Jacqueline and Laurel, some Chiang Mai fellows, at the Blue Mansion--the former home of a Chinese entrepreneur:

Speaking of food, apparently, Penang is quite the food hub. Upon my arrival at the guesthouse, I was given a city map and a full color brochure of all the foods that Penang has to offer—so overwhelming for such a short trip. Clearly I had my dining work cut out for me. So the day began with Char Kway Teo (similar to Pad See-ew in Thailand), progressed to street tastes in Little India, mango sorbet, white coffee, and ending with dinner at a Nyonya restaurant (Malaysian-Chinese).  It was a delicious trip.

By dinnertime, the three other Nan girls had arrived, and so the 4 of us, plus the 2 Chiang Mai girls, plus another teacher from Japan staying at our hostel enjoyed a lovely dinner.  On the walk home, we stumbled upon a Hindi temple where there was a hoppin’ dancing scene—all the women were dressed in the most colorful saris, dancing in circles within circles and having so much fun.  We stopped and gawked for maybe 30 seconds before being invited to join by one of the men near the door. Apparently, since it was nearing the end of the celebration, we could join in too! We stumbled into the circle and attempted to follow along. It was impossible not to grin the entire time—it was so fun!  I was a little worried we had crashed a wedding though, but thankfully, it was a more casual brother-sister celebration of sorts. What an end to the day!

Also, check out Dana's blog for a video of the dancing! http://wanderlustawaits.wordpress.com/2012/08/09/raksha-bandhan/

Friday, took me to the Embassy once again.  This time, I arrived early, armed with an excess of Malaysian ringgit, Thai baht, and American dollars, determined to get my visa in the one day that I had left in Penang, no matter what. My hope was soon crushed, however, when I realized that my situation was not unique. Judging by people’s conversations with the man at the window, many people had tried to go on Thursday when it was closed and had planes to catch as well. Oh boy. I continued to try to negotiate with the window man, but I felt pretty defeated. I tried money, compromises, logical arguments, but nothing seemed to make him budge. Then I saw the security guard from the day before. He started talking to me and tapping the empty chair next to him absentmindedly. So I took the hint (was it a hint?) and sat down next to him.  I told him my situation, and he seemed to think I should just wait around and keep talking to the window guy when less people were there. So in the meantime, I talked to him about random things—his background, his job, his two daughters.

Around 11am I game the window man one more try. He was getting nicer, but no less stingy with his rule-following. I was stuck. Too overwhelmed to make any logical decision about what to do, I brought out my notebook and made a list. It soon became clear that it made the most sense to just change my plane ticket and stay in Penang through Monday so that I could pick up my finished visa. Next, I set off to find a phone. My security guard friend suggested that I use on of the taxi driver’s phones, so I went out to the street to find some more friends to help me.  This is about the point in the day where I realized that people really are good and willing to help you out.  One guy looked up the Air Asia phone number, while a different man let me use his phone. For better or for worse, the numbers were not going through. We tried at least 6 times to get through, but no luck. Time was a-tickin’, especially since the embassy closed at 12 while they processed all the paper work.

11:40 rolled around and I decided to just give in and give the window man my paper work, and figure out my plane ticket later.  I went up to the window, where there was no longer a line to wait in, and handed him my forms. I said, “Here are my papers.  I know you can’t do anything, so I will just--” and he said, “What do you mean I can’t do anything!” This was sure a surprise, and the rest is still a bit of a blur. Somehow, he took pity on me and decided that he would process my visa that day! What a relief. So long story short, the visa was acquired successfully. Whoa. Sorry for the extreme long-windedness.

Anyways, the rest of Penang was wonderful! We left on Saturday afternoon for a 5-hour bus ride to Kuala Lumpur, but that soon became a ten-hour journey.  We rode the bus for about a half hour before we stopped for some technical difficulties. It was a charter bus, but the AC was non-functional. No good in the Malaysian heat.  So everyone got off the bus, and an hour and a half later we hopped on a new bus. We stopped at a rest stop around 6:30, then for some reason we stopped again at 7:30. We looked around a bit bewildered, and the man next to us explained that it was time for the Muslim bus driver to break his fast. Sure enough, the rest station was packed with people, sitting at tables, full plates in front of them, but no one was eating. Then we realized they were waiting for sundown.  Within 5 minutes, everyone had tucked in.  In ten minutes, we were back on the bus on our way to KL.

We arrived around 9:30pm in KL and soon found our way to our hostel, the Reggae Mansion (not even joking, that was its name). It was indeed quite nice, perhaps even mansion status. We hit the town and went to Little India to check out the night bazaar, bought some dates, then meandered around KL for a bit. In the morning, we had a few hours to walk through the city before catching the bus to the airport.  I took advantage of the free breakfast and made 2 PB and Js for the trip back home (about 18 hours in all), and Allison, Dana, and I walked around Merdeka Square and the Chinatown market. More interesting Mogul architecture and lots of super tall buildings. Malaysia is a sure-fire melting pot.

Alison and Dana in Merdeka Square

Chinatown

And, just in case you forgot which country we were in:

Handball anyone?

Usually, my favorite daytime adventures are somehow related to a run.  Feet are two of the best modes for stumbling upon new things.

            A few days ago, Allison and I went for our evening jaunt, but decided to take a new road and see if  we could follow the river.  The road lead us to a path, which meandered to a small dirt road.  The red dirt lead us through a few small farm patches, a pig pen, corn fields, and past a small Buddhist shrine.  It was a beautiful, clear, and breezy day to begin with, and this little road only added to it.  On our way back through the neighborhoods towards our house, we came across a big neighborhood party (celebrating who knows what), complete with whisky-filled men ushering us in to join the festivities.  We ventured to the table and they gave us water (and probably would have fed us the entire feast too!), but then we weaseled our way out and headed for home.  Then we had the brilliant idea of eating dinner across the river from our house, where we had spotted some food stands and some top-notch sunsets a few weeks earlier.  Now was our chance—the sky was clear and it was dinner time. So we ran home, showered, turned around, bicycled over the bridge and made it just in time for the sunset. We happened to also have our ukeleles so we played a few tunes with the last glimpses of sunlight.  We cruised down the riverside to scout out a good dinner spot, and as we were checking out a stand and deciding whether to commit, two young girls in blue sports uniforms popped up and asked, “What do you want to eat?”  Apparently we were not too subtle and looked a bit unsure.  So, Pum and Tiew, our new highschool handball-playing friends helped us decide what to eat.  There was a lady selling tilapia (one of my favorites), but you have to commit to buying the whole salt-encrusted flapper, and there was no way that Allison and I could eat the entire thing. Conveniently, our new friends were sitting with about 10 of their teammates, and soon we were sitting on a mat with ten of our new best friends, chatting, charading, playing a uke song or two, and eating.  It was just a delight.  They even offered to take us around Nan, so we may meet up to go to the museum in a week or so. (p.s. the word for museum is Pee-pee-ta-pan. I think it’s my new favorite Thai word, second only to Blah bak a baw—blowfish).

Anyways, here is a picture with our new friends:

Teacher Ann moves and the family comes in force!

On Sunday, the four of us were invited to join Teacher Ann and her entire extended family at the ceremony for her new house.  Her brother and nephew picked us up in his small sedan and the four of us piled into the Thai-sized backseat and headed out to the new home.  She is moving to a legitimate development, straight out of suburban California, into a beautiful, bright, and open house.  But before she could spend the night there, there were many preparations to be done.  Earlier that morning, her relatives arrived from the small town that they are from (about 1 hour away), bringing loads of food, tables, chairs, and decorations.  Then four or five monks arrived.  Teacher Ann, her son, and her niece knelt under a little bamboo structure in the house while the monks prayed, removing the old energy and spirits from the house.  Then it was feasting time (obviously this is when the four of us arrived), and the 35 or so family members dished up sticky rice, laab, tom djud, the most delicious fish ever, and the largest platter of fried rice that I have ever seen. We mostly hung out in kid’s corner (there are fewer language barriers when you are playing and building forts with the couch), with the occasional brief meeting of one of the older relatives.  They were so generous and friendly—it was fun to be a part of the celebration.

 Allison and her new friends:

Thailand, America, and Italy Unite

As a belated 4th of July Celebration (really we just wanted an excuse), the four of us invited our Thai co-teachers over for dinner on Wednesday night.  We went to Chiang Mai this last weekend, where we picked up some gems, including pasta (and a large jar of peanut butter).  We strategized our menu in accordance with our appliances-- rice cooker and electric wok-- and set off to the market on Tuesday night to buy some kilos of tomatoes, some onions, garlic, and lots of veggies. We even found balsamic vinegar at the department store in town! A worthwhile investment. We whipped up a veggie-ful tomato sauce, complete with lots of Thai basil.  We completed the cooking adventure on Wednesday after school, boiling the pasta in the rice cooker and whipping up some bruschetta. All five co-teachers came,  and we had some other special guests as well: the 4th grade chinese/math teacher who always talks to us, Teacher Ann's crazy 5 year old son and her 12 year old niece, and Teacher Wandee's daughter.

We had a great time sharing our American/Italian dinner with them, and it was topped off by all of the fruit that everyone brought (typical Thai style).  We got everyone to play a few games as well, including charades, in which Dana did an incredible angry bird.
The dinner party set-up:

 The whole gang:

 Teacher Angeli (who has a bark to threaten any out-of-hand 2nd or 3rd grader) and me (the inexperienced foreigner):

Fourth of July Festivities!

Class parties are so fun. I nearly forgot.  All of the English teachers were sporting our finest red, white, and blue today and handing out oreos with peanut butter-as American as we get. I started class today by teaching This Land is Your Land (well, actually just one verse), and a few kids got really into it with hand motions, but in the end, the Thai teacher was the only one as interested as singing it as me.  Typical.  But I brought in my banjolele for the first time and they loved it! I think it will have to make special party appearances.  I tried playing some J Biebs, and they caught on right away. Instant success.  For the rest of class, we made 4^th of July hats, sang some more, and then everyone busted out insane amounts of kanom (i.e. snacks)! I brought in oreos, but they were nothing compared to the bags and bags of chips, boxes of cookies, dried squid, and seaweed that all the students brought. They take their parties seriously.

Tonight, we will continue the celebrations at our house! We are attempting to host a Thai potluck, but we’ll see a) who ends up coming, and b) what kinds of food turn up. Last night, I told our friend P’ Benz that we were having a party (and by that I meant a dinner party), and she got so upset because her shift at work was scheduled for 4 pm to midnight. She wasn’t about to miss the farang party though, so she called her friend, told her she was sick, and offered her 600 baht (around $20) to take her shift! Such a dedicated farang friend. 

This weekend, we are headed to the big city: Chiang Mai! It will be a long, windy bus ride, but I’m looking forward to visiting the other PiA fellows and my old host family.

Pha Yao

       Our first outing! We had a packed weekend last weekend, complete with teaching, traveling, dancing shrimp, and waterfalls. 

Saturday morning, we taught an English Camp for high school students from the villages of Nan province.  There were about 100 students and each of the four of us led an activity for a bit.  Dana was playing a game involving running and steeling each other’s chairs, and during one of the rotations, her group was sooo loud that I had to move my group outside.  The Thai English teacher who was with me said, “That group has a lot of bisexuals. They have more… ah! oy! (insert dance move here)!”  Sure enough, Dana had a lot of lady boys in-the-making in her group. That was the highlight of the day.

After English Camp was finished, we ate lunch with the other teachers, then came home to pack for our trip to Pha Yao, a neighboring province.  Kim, who is Thai/Indian/teaching English at a nearby school, was driving to visit her friend from Chiang Rai, so we hopped in her tiny car and made the three-hour journey. It was a doozy of winding roads and beautiful scenery, with lots of sudden stops for stray dogs that ran into the road.  We finally made it into town, turned the corner, and saw a huge body of water- surprise! Turns out the town was intentionally, then unintentionally flooded around 40 years ago, so now there is a large lake in the middle.  Just a casual landscape transformation… We met up with Mateya, Kim’s friend, and had a feast of fish, seafood, and “dancing shrimp” at a restaurant next to the water. The dancing shrimp are tiny little guys that are tossed with spicy sauce, then served still jumping around in the dish. It’s like seafood poprocks! Kind of.  Post-dinner, we walked around a little night market, then stopped by the BM Pub. Needless to say, bowel movement puns were out of control and only added to the amusement of the night.

Sunday, we took a little boat out into the lake to a small shrine that stood out of the water.  Apparently, 20 years ago, some people discovered the remnants to this temple/Buddha shrine, so they excavated it.  It was a small but beautiful statue on a little dirt mound in the middle of the lake, and the trip was even better with our bright orange life jackets and fishermen hats.

That afternoon, we drove outside of town to a waterfall.  We started hiking up a trail alongside a small creek, waiting for a huge waterfall and pool to pop up around each bend in the trail, but it turned out to be more of a rambling waterfall with lots of levels.  Even better! We hiked/scrambled up until level 5, when the trail got too sketchy.  It was so good to get out and see the crazy jungle foliage and move up an incline! I had missed it.  Don’t worry, we took a lot of self-timer pictures.

Cross-dressing youngsters, all in the name of poetry, of course

This Tuesday was a holiday to celebrate a famous Thai poet.  Naturally, a three hour assembly followed.  Every grade performed a song or a dance or a skit of some sort, most of which involved some wild costumes.  Here is a personal fave:

 so glamorous right now.

Check out Dana’s blog for some ridiculous videos of the event, which was complete with first graders in tutus, voluptuous fifth grade boys, and tiny kindergardeners as what looked like characters from Toddlers in Tiaras. We only stayed for an hour or so, but what a show!

Aerobics, Thai s-tyle

This Monday was round two for Thai aerobics- what a show!  Everyday, about 30 Thais show up everyday to the park down the road from our house for 45 minutes of microphoned fitness.  Most of them are middle-aged women, but there is the occasional old man or high school student who comes along to move their feet.  I saw them groovin’ everyday in passing, so naturally it was something I had to try.  Last Monday was a doozy—joining in with the others really made me realize how uncoordinated I am (similar to me trying to do Zumba in America).  The instructor stands on a cement stage with a microphone and two side kicks on her left and right.  We got there a bit late the first time, which didn’t ease my learning curve.  But round two was slightly more successful. And everyone is dressed in color-coded polos to match the day of the week. On Tuesdays, we wear pink.

Suki Night

Last Tuesday, P’ Benz took us to the market and we bought the necessary supplies to have a hot pot suki dinner party at our house.  

This included: $6 worth of mushrooms, 2 heads of cabbage, cilantro, and a bunch of morning glory, rice noodles, nam cheem sauce, shrimp, chicken, chicken carcass for broth, pork, eggs, a whole durian, watermelon, mangoes.  A feast to say the least.  A whole crew came over and we cooked up soup in the electric wok. Sanuk mak!

Knees and Toes

The past few weeks have been filled with learning the body parts.  Or I guess, the students have been learning them, I have been teaching them.  We’ve sung songs galore, including the Jellyfish and the Hokey Pokey, and we have been exploring our artistic side with some monster drawings.  Here are some highlights:

 So this was drawn by a seven-year old crazy girl named Ben. Check out her artistic additions:

Nanthing to do but hobbies

This weekend was full of relaxing and hobby time, per Nan usual.  Saturday, we biked out to the City Park Hotel, and for 50 baht, swam in their giant pool- it was glorious.  Sunday, P’Benz, our Thai partner in crime, borrowed her brother’s car and drove us to the Nan Riverside Art Gallery.  It is a beautiful sequence of buildings up in the mountains, filled with modern renditions of traditional Thai scenes, as well as exhibits of old temple murals.  It was such an oasis up there, complete with giant staghorn ferns, fishtale palms, and other tropical plants.  

We were appreciated

        For what? you might ask.  Well, last Friday was Wai Kru Day, the Thai equivalent of teacher appreciation day.  Even though we had only been teaching for five days, were were included in the festivities.  All of the teachers were dressed to the nines in matching traditional Thai outfits, so Katie, Dana, Allison, and I went out the day before to buy new skirts.  After a solid hour of trying on, refitting, and bartering, we had purchased four new patoongs, the traditional northern Thai skirts.

         The assembly was in the open-air gym on Friday morning and boy was it hot.  They packed in all 1000+ students, plus all the teachers into the gym, and after an hour of listening to people talk, every class came up to the teachers to wai us (imagine a Namaste-esque bow) and to give us flowers.  There were many flowers, candles, incense, and photos to be had, but it all finished in time for our eleven o’clock classes.

                                  Our new skirts:

 5th Graders lining up for the assembly:

 Kindergardeners are the smallest

 The school:

 The crew:

What's in a name

Every Thai person has a full name, which is usually quite lengthy and impossible to remember or to pronounce, and a nickname, which they usually go by.  Apparently it has to do with the superstitions in Thai culture.  A nickname is given to a child at birth and used in lieu of a true name so as to protect themselves from the bad spirits.  After all, who would want the evil spirits to know their real name?

Thus, everyone uses a nickname (thankfully for me and my memory).  I had eight classes of second and third grade this week, and I am struggling a bit to remember everyone’s name, but I did catch on to a few great nicknames.  Here are some favorites, to give you a taste of the diversity:

Giant

Captain

Gun

Boss

Donut

Beer

Oil

Whiskey

Bignut

Littlenut

Goodview

Gong

And then there were four

Allison and Dana have arrived! They both hail from Princeton and graduated two days before hopping on the airplane and crossing the Pacific. 

We met up with them after teaching a English teacher training workshop for all the teachers in Nan Province.  There were about forty teachers, thirty-five of which were women, ranging from 26 to 58 years old.  We led some listening activities for a while, then had them do a speaking warm up with each other.  This is all it was: each person in a small group talking for 1 minute about themselves in English. Simple enough, but they loved it!  It was so fun to walk around and listen to what they said, especially the ones who were laughing a lot.  This one woman was particularly hilarious.  She was not shy about jokingly calling out “Teacher, I don’t understand!” and her group was having the best time speaking to each other.  I caught a snippet of her 1 minute speech, in which she said, “I hangover.” What a gem.  Then we played competitive taboo. So fun. Not bad for a mandatory Saturday workday.

After teaching, we met up with Allison and Dana and biked around Nan and to a coffee shop.  For whatever reason, coffee shops are all the rage here.  And they are really nice, usually with nice gardens or AC. We came back to Katie and my apartment, as Dana and Allison are currently living in a guesthouse.  We are still trying to figure out how we can all live in the same place (which is usually the case in Nan), but Ajaan Prakop has not found a place yet… But it was fun to hang out in our downstairs, which we really hadn’t done yet, and play some ukelele/banjolele, and hoola hoop.  I’m pretty into Saturday Hobby Hour.  Or actually, it is more like Hobby Day.

We met up with the Thai friends and the other farang at Kad Nan, the bar central of Nan.  Apparently, it used to be a strip mall in the daytime, but then a bunch of bars moved in.  So is sardine-can bar after bar, complete with competing music. But it is pretty fun.

Today, we are off to see some of the temples that Nan has to offer, and probably hit up a coffee shop, maybe do some reading or painting. Sunday is Hobby Day too.

Celebrity Status

It’s day three at Bandon Sriserm School today, and day three of air-conditioned office sitting. I was supposed to teach my first class of third graders at 10 am, but turns out they were learning math instead.  My co-teacher, Teacher Angelie, seemed to feel that I should start tomorrow anyways, so I just met the class for a hot second before returning to the office oasis.  It’s nearly lunchtime, which is always exciting:

Katie and I usually walk down from our office around noon and make our way to the canteen.  Meanwhile kids are swarming and waving and hugging Teacher Katie like mad.  They don’t even know me and I am a celebrity, too!  We got lots of trinkets along the way too, like candy, cookies, partially eaten snacks, roses, and art projects. Pretty sweet. It’s a bit like the Pied Piper—a crowd gathers around us until we really make moves to the canteen and then a small group hovers outside the door waving while we eat.

But after lunch is my favorite event.  Each of the kids has a little drawstring bag that they carry around during lunch, most of them have it dangling around the neck or hanging from their arms, and inside the pouch is a cup, a toothbrush, and toothpaste. At the end of lunch, a song comes on the loudspeaker and all the kids fill up their cup, squat around a trough in the ground and brush their teeth, with the occasional wiggle dance move thrown in.  It’s a school wide brush-your-teeth-time! My favorite time of day.

Other news from Nan: we met three new friends, also farang from America, who are teaching high school on the other side of town.  P’ Benz, the ringleader of our Thai friends, is master at befriending anyone who is visiting Nan, especially if they speak English.  So he introduced us to them last night while we were at the Riverside skate park. Yep, skate park.  We are friends with a bunch of skater dudes.  They are all really nice and speak a fair amount of English.  There’s Benz, Tuti, Bass, and Daum.  We went to P’ Daum’s house out in the country last weekend.  His grandpa has tons of chickens and ducks and rabbits, lots of fruit trees, and a small pond in the back that is stocked with fish.  Tuti tried to fish while we hung out by the pond, it was real sabai sabai.

Kun Yai continues to be a source of entertainment for us.  Katie and I brought Kun Yai and Kun Dtah some fruit yesterday, then got a full tour of their (huge!) house, then we ate snacks, then we were served a giant mug of corn milk (who knew? it tasted exactly like an ear of corn), then we took a drive through town in their air-conditioned car.  They are just a hoot, and all too willing to look after us.  You know what they say, you give a neighbor some fruit… 

Here is our house:

Here is where I live:

Here is Katie and me, represented by new friend Fah:

Here is the breakfast of champions:

Here are the muddied waters of the Nan River:

Welcome to Nan!

I’ve arrived and settled into a new home with one of my three fellow fellows, Katie. She is returning to Nan after living here last year, so she’s an old pro and has been showing me all the hot spots that Nan has to offer.   We are living in a spacious apartment with a big open room and bathroom in the downstairs and two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, plus two balconies! Luxury status.

Some highlights so far:

1.     Buying 6 mangoes for 20 Baht, roughly 70 cents. And they’re delicious!

2.     Planning a PiA band with Katie: with any luck she’ll be on Melodica and I’ll be on banjolele.

3.     Turning the carport into badminton central (soon to come, but I did buy two rackets and birdies today).

4.     Riding two-to-a-bike almost as well as the ten year old Thai kids.

5.     A series of interactions with our landlords:

Kun Yai and Kun Dtah (the landpeople), have visited us no less than 5 times in the two days that we’ve been here.  The visits have been a mix of cordial and helpful to confusing and parent-ish.  Yesterday, Kun Yai, who is probably around 70, came over 3 times before 10 am. Whoa. Mostly she came to tell me to turn off the balcony lights at certain times of the day, and she walked me through the house to each lightswitch and to the front windows describing when they should be on and off.  Unfortunately, I always confuse the words for open and closed/on and off (they sound so similar!), so I didn’t quite catch on for a while.  Then she came back with a set of drinking glasses for us to use, and she was very adamant that we drink only water from them, as “beer is bad, not good” (keep in mind that all of this is in her fluent Thai and my very broken attempts…). Basically, she wants to mother us.  And we sure are being watched—yesterday Kun Yai said, “You go running today, yes?” And it was true, but I never saw her while I ran.  Close circles with eyes everywhere… And Today Katie and I were setting up a hammock on the front balcony and we saw the landlords and this other guy who works for them (maybe? not really sure…) down on the road. They flagged us down, and within a few seconds, Kun Yai was back with a man to measure our doors to get screens.  Then we tromped through the house/storage area, and after seeing my pile of notebooks and school things on the floor of my room, they brought up two bookcases for Katie and me.  They are very generous and kind and are definitely taking care of us, hopefully not too much. But in the meantime, I think Kun Yai and I are on our way to being friends. She smiles at me a lot.

Thailandia, Round Two

I'm off for the next installment of SE Asian adventures!  I am sitting in the Seattle Airport, getting ready to fly for 11.5 hours to Seoul, then 5 to Bangkok, then 1 to Nan, Thailand, where I will be teaching English to elementary students at the Bandon Sriserm School.  I will be with three other Princeton in Asia fellows in Nan, one of whom, Katie, arrives on the same day as me, and the other two, Allison and Dana, arrive in a week.

You may be wondering things like, "What grade will you teach?" "How many students?" "What level of English?" "Where will you live?"  But these questions will remain a mystery for both of us for the time being. Details, stories, and pictures to come, just you wait.