Snake! (July 18)

Second to last day teaching at Banpatannasamakee school :(  Today I taught fourth grade in the morning. When I went to the bathroom before class, I saw a long (maybe five feet!) black snake slithering into the bathroom a few seconds before I was going to go in. I’m glad I wasn’t a few seconds later, then I would have gone in while the snake was in there! I told the other teachers about it and they made the one male teacher at the school go and chase it out of the bathroom. They said that it was a dangerous kind of snake!

Then after lunch I came back to the classroom, and thought that I would finish preparing for my classes tomorrow. However, pratom 5/1 was there to have there class then, rather than tomorrow (the school is going to a Buddhist temple tomorrow afternoon, so they would have missed English class). Fortunately, I had prepared enough already, so I was able to start teaching right then. I have learned that it is good to always have a few backup class ideas in mind, because I never know here whether I will need to teach a class that I was not expecting (usually with 0-1 minute warning that the class is starting), or that I find out during class that we are actually having a class that is twice as long as usual.

Apparently there was a problem with the coconut desserts yesterday, because Bu forgot to boil the coconut milk before pouring it in, which changes the taste. So she thought that we should make it again this afternoon! This time, we made a blue version, so we first went to pick the flowers for making the blue dye. Then we chopped up some more coconuts. I am getting pretty good at removing coconut flesh from the shell of the coconut, it took me awhile to figure it out. With fresh coconuts, it is easy to scrape the flesh out with a spoon, but with the aged coconuts (which are used for making coconut milk), the flesh is much harder, so you have to whack it with a knife to get it off.  We made coconut milk, and Bu heated the water, sugar, agar agar powder, and blue liquid. We made a simplified version, so this time we poured it into bowls rather than fresh coconuts, and chilled it in the fridge so we could eat them in a couple hours.  The dessert had the consistency and look of one of those potluck jello salads with cream added, although it tasted like coconut. It was not my favorite dessert that we have made here, but it was fun to prepare.