Eating lots of fruit (July 5)

Estimated fruit intake for the day:

~10 rambuchans

1 dragonfruit

~20 mangosteens

2 slices watermelon

SO YUMMY!!

This morning Bu was getting her hair washed, so I decided to also get my hair washed this time. That was a good decision! The hairwash included a head massage, and the hairdresser also made a very nice braided hairstyle after she blow dried my hair. The whole thing only cost $1.30. I think that this is how I will be washing my hair for the rest of the time that I am here. Bu was getting her hair washed at a salon next door, and while I was waiting for her after my hairwash, I chatted with the two ladies working at the salon. Even though we didn’t share much common language (they had very limited English, as is my Thai at this point), it was interesting that we could communicate about several things. For example, I learned that one of them went on a one month trip to Hong Kong for vacation, and she enjoyed eating KFC there (that’s not what I would choose to eat in Hong Kong, but to each her own!).

            Then off to the school. On Fridays, everyone wears all white, which is a Buddhist observance. Bu leant me a white shirt and skirt to wear for the day (fortunately she is the same height as me so it is easy to borrow clothes). The day started with a Buddhist prayer led by the students (this happens everyday). It also includes some movements to music and some meditation (?) with music.  Then I was teaching my first class (pratom 4) outside in the open air assembly area. We started out by doing the hokey pokey, which the students liked a lot, and then a worksheet that I made about colors/animals/numbers “color 5 pigs pink,” etc. Next I had the pratom 6 class. I attempted to teach them about the 4^th of July, but I don’t think it worked too well. I had written an easy (I thought) few sentences about the 4^th of July, but I don’t think they could understand most of it. It is often hard to tell what the students know/understand, but generally it seems like they know a fair number of words (for foods, animals, etc), but don’t have a lot of experience with sentences/more abstract concepts. Finally, I had the pratom 5 class. With them I abandoned the 4^th of July idea, and we did the hokey pokey and then played charades, which they liked a lot. I need to think of more active songs and games for next week!

            Also, the students are really into waving “hello” and “goodbye” to me now. Whenever I am walking around the school, I am always waving hello or goodbye to someone.

            After school, we went to an outdoor market. As luck would have it, it started downpouring again, but this time we ran around and bought a few things and then stood around a large umbrella at a fruit stand and ate mangosteens while we waited for the rain to stop. When we got home from the market we ate some more mangosteens (“ngoi” in Thai) and some kai-hong (or kanom-gon, in Isaan language), which were deep fried balls of dough with a paste made from dried peas inside, and powdered sugar. They were really tasty, and an interesting combination between sweet (sugar) and savory (pea mixture).

            Next, we walked over to Bu’s uncle’s house (about 2 minutes away) to help prepare for his party tomorrow. He is having a “merit-making” party, so they invite some local monks to eat. First, I helped Bu make coconut milk. This morning, when we left for school, Kai (my host-mom) was picking some coconuts from their garden and chopping them up. Bu took the chopped pieces of coconut and put them in a blender with water. Then the blended mixture went into a sieve over a large bowl, and I squeezed the coconut milk out of the solids, and put the solid pieces of coconut into a separate bowl. We repeated this many times, cycling all of the solid pieces of coconut through the blender three times, as they continued to get finer and finer.

            Then back to the house for dinner, which consisted of several dishes. The family tends to make 1-2 dishes at a time (in the morning, and again in the evening), and then put the dishes on bowls on the table, and cover the whole selection of dishes with a large basket when they are not eating. Then when it is time to eat, they take the basket off. As a result, at any one time there are about 5 dishes on the table, which have been cooked in the last day. For example, on the table at this dinner, there was a fried rice dish (from breakfast), cooked bamboo (was cooking in morning), eggs in broth dish called polow (cooked yesterday), eggplant + fish dish (not sure when this was cooked), sliced watermelon, and a dessert called bua loi kai wan (I think this was bought, it was egg and large tapioca balls in coconut milk). They always have a rice maker that is filled with rice. However, in the northeast part of Thailand, the traditional staple is sticky rice (khao nyu), which is soaked in water and then steamed in a basket, before it is transferred to another basket for serving. There are generally a couple baskets of sticky rice sitting next to the prepared dishes at all times.  To eat one grabs some sticky rice, and forms it into a solid ball by squeezing it several times. Then you pull off small pieces of the rice and eat it with the other dishes. The rice is the main component of the meal (in terms of quantity), the other dishes being more like garnishes for the rice. Also, breakfast tends to be savory, the dishes cooked for breakfast don’t seem different than what is cooked for lunch or dinner.

            Then we went back over to the uncle’s house to continue helping preparations (this time I was de-stemming chiles).  They also had speakers for karaoke tomorrow set up, so they were playing Thai pop music loudly until 1am (although we went back to Bu’s house around 8 and I went to sleep by 10 even though the music was going).