Another Post About Food... This Time Sponsered by Coca Cola!

I lied. Coca Cola didn’t sponsor my blog post. In fact, I had to pay a full 10 baht for my drink all by myself. That’s a whole hard-earned 33 cents my soda cost me, thankyouverymuch. But look at it!

Yes. That’s Coke in a bag. They like to put everything in bags here, particularly with liquids. It’s supposed to be healthier for the environment or something, and certainly makes things cheaper, but I have not adapted to carrying liquids in what I previously considered not even slightly sturdy plastic.

Also, I’d like to note that my student Mamay is entirely faking her excitement in the photo. She thinks that my amusement from this is weird. But she’s a great sport and not only drags me everywhere from the Crocodile Farm to Ayutthaya, but additionally puts up with my weird enjoyment of the mundane things in her life.

But wait, there’s more! In this special blog post you get not one, but two unique edibles from my past weekend. After all sugar always goes best with… more sugar!

Welcome to Thailand’s version of cotton candy. I believe the name is roti sai mai, but I only know that from Googling it. It’s some sort of spun sugar. Generally enjoyed wrapped in a weird crepe-esque thing. It’s similar to eating straw. It has a weird dry straw-like texture when you eat it, but it’s so appealing. I can’t explain it. And who doesn’t like eating straw wrapped in pastel pink and green crepes? Exactly.

New Post Coming Soon!

I promise! I left Santisuk at 8:30AM yesterday morning and returned at 2:00AM the next day. (Nothing like an over 17-hour-long day.) So I'm a little tired. I'll update and post about all my adventures tomorrow. I think the photos are worth the wait!

It's funny though. Worn out and driving through the rain in a taxi back to Lat Krabang at 2:00AM, Kate and I passed through Bangkok. Butchers slaughtering their next day's profits on the street, a weird mix of Thai ballads and Ke$ha on the radio, and watching the dark clouds over the Bangkok skyline as we made our way perilously through the streets. It's this mundane stuff I'm going to miss a week from now.

Babysitting: Thailand Edition

This morning I was peacefully wallowing around in my bed when I heared a shuffiling of feet followed by "oh no, she heard us" and shrieking. Good morning CJ. I preceeded to have a hyperactive four year old post-Frosted Flakes bounce around my room tackling Kate, myself, and anything breakable in sight. During this Kate informed me that Carol had left for the day putting her and I on CJ duty.

Me, being the bright person I am, decided to find somewhere that CJ could run around without breaking anything, or hurting himself or us. And where better than a giant park?

Less than an hour later I was caffeinated, and he was spazzing around with minimal injuries. He saw me using my camera and preceeded to ask if he could try taking some pictures. I figured I might as well let him. So, the following pictures are what happens when you let a 4 year old have control of your camera:

 He took some surprisingly nice pictures.

 No idea who this guy is.

 And then sometimes he's adorable. But only sometimes.

 He took pictures of Kate and I around the park.

Does your park have a giant turkey? I didn't think so.

Oh, and I finally got a photo of the water monitor on land!

He was about the same size as a park bench. And he was a tiny one.

And another photo of CJ for your enjoyment:

Do you see the mischief in his eyes? Because it's there. Look beyond the cuteness.

A week from today Kate and I are taking off for Chiang Mai! We can't wait! But it's also sort of sad, because I have to head back to the States afterword and by no means am I ready to go home. But I still have just under a week to hang with students, so I'm not out of adventures yet!

Home Sweet Thai Home

Back during my first week here my friend Tucker asked me to put up photos of my living quarters. For those of you who don’t know, I’m living in a room on the third floor of the Santisuk center. It’s pretty much perfect. Also, I don’t think I’ll ever have a shorter commute to work.

Anyways, here’s my room:

The view after you enter.

The view from the far end of my bed, back toward the door.

So that's it. That's home. And it's 100 times better than my college dorm was. You want to know why?

Bam. Air-con.

Air conditioning, or air-con as it is universially called in Thailand. It's kind of a God-send. 

Anyways, not much going on the past few days. Just teaching mostly, and I spent a few hours wandering around Lat Krabang today. It's nice to have times when I'm not running around to different corners of Bangkok and actually get to hang out in my own neighbourhood. 

"Keep Your Eye Out for Dragons"

As Kate and I entered the park she actually said "keep your eye out for dragons". Believe it or not, it's not uncommon here. In the US if you venture into a park you might meet a few squirrels, a rabbit, turtle, or whatnot. Nope. Welcome to Thailand. We spent our morning reading in the park and watching monitor lizards go by.

A quick biological note: technically they are not komodo dragons. Komodo dragons are a distinct breed of monitor lizard only found in the Indonesian islands. But for all intents and purposes, they're kind of the same thing.

       Komodo Dragon (Monitor Lizard)                                                                        Water Monitor (Also a Monitor Lizard)

A picture I took of one of the moniors swimming in the park.

See? You learned something today. So anyways, we had a pretty laid back day today. Figured we'd go hang out with some dragons this morning; work on lesson plans and devotionals. Just another day in Thailand.

Welcome to Class

Curious how a typical English class goes with me as the teacher? Time to find out!

4:30 – Class starts in 15 minutes so I wander into the classroom to turn on the A/C, lights, and drop off my materials. Often I then scurry off to fit in one more snack before class because I’ll be teaching until 9:00PM.

My classroom, pre-students.

4:45 – I usually have 3 or so of my 10 students. Still, I get the process going. Take attendance, check homework, etc.

4:50 – Students have arrived. I get pleasantly flustered as they wai me apologetically. Class continues, often with me teasing them for being late.

4:45 – 5:30 – “Sentences” – Every night 10 new words are assigned from the list of most commonly used English words which was compiled by Dr. Edward W. Dolch (I don’t really know what that means, it’s just what the course material says). A typical day includes a word list like, “who, what, where, good, well, better, best, drink, eat, ate”. During this portion we go around and students read all their sentences. It’s my job to correct grammar and pronunciation. Some days it’s fun and easy, other days are excruciating. Still, it’s the portion of the class I get to be the most creative so I really enjoy it. And if I don’t get my students laughing during some portion of this section there’s something wrong. I want to pump up their enjoyment of the language during this section as much as possible.

5:30 – 5:55/6:00 – “Sound of the Day” – During this portion I give a 20 question quiz on the previous day’s “sound” and then move on to the new list. Today’s lesson was Z or S. So I gave a word list including words like “zero, zinc, zoo, zipcode” etc and they have to learn to pronounce these correctly as well as learn to differentiate from their S counterparts such as “sink” and “sue” for “zinc” and “zoo”. We get to make funny sounds and they just repeat after me a lot. At first this section was tedious, but I actually enjoy it now since I can tell a HUGE improvement since the beginning of the session only 9 classes ago.

6:00 – 6:45 – “Bookwork” – Here’s where they finally open the course materials. In every session after Pre-1 they cover 4 chapters. In my Level 1 class they are expected to complete chapters 1-4. Each chapter has 20 sections including things like pronunciation, reading, questions, grammar, games, and essays.

Some of my students working on bookwork.

I used to be worried about filling up a full two hour class, but time actually flies by. I adore my students. They’ve already much better than when we started. By no means are they fluent, but we’ve come to understand each other and know how to circumnavigate each other's language barriers. Besides, they’re great at teaching me (and mocking my) Thai. Besides, now that I’ve provided them with the space to come out of their culturally-shy shell, they do. And it’s entertaining (and educational) for all involved.

New Hair Color

So after a very long day of going to Pattaya, a floating market, and seeing Man of Steel, we decided to take Sunday easy. Well, actually my students had to cancel our plans due to a lab class at their university, but still. So as Kate settled into updating Facebook and attempting to download a movie on Thai wifi (estimated download 2000 hours later…) I decided to go out and dye my hair.

I arrived at the salon only two blocks from Santisuk in Lat Krabang and spontaneously choose a color via pointing. Then the real fun began. Hair stylists in America find my hair a challenge: it’s thick, curly, and particularly unmanageable. Well, in Thailand some of them have never even seen hair like mine in person, let alone worked with it.

It took less than ten minutes before a second stylist was recruited because of how much hair I had. And this is still the pre-wash and drying stage. During the actual dying part I learned how to count from 1-30 in Thai.  (Now I’ll actually understand how much money the coffee lady wants from me!) Well, after patiently listening to the Thai lottery on the television and letting the dye sit I was beckoned over to the hair washing station.

First, it’s not like America’s. It’s very strange. It feels more like a doctor’s examination table, except once you get over that it’s actually more comfortable than ours. This is the closest thing I could find to a picture like it. Well, as I’m laying back I see my stylist gesture to the one next to her and point to my hair. And then she re-soaps it and rinses again before calling over another stylist. After they look, say something in Thai, and wander off, another employee walks next to me.

Now I’m pretty proud of my ability to communicate with someone who speaks almost no English, and she could clearly form sentences, but she was trying to talk to me while someone was spraying water and scrubbing my head right around my ears. I thought I could make out the phrase, “200 baht to fix” and the word “fix” a few more times. Awesome; exactly what you want to hear. In what felt like a decade I finally made it back in the salon chair. My hair was Ariel red and my roots looked yellow-pink. Now, I have stylists all hovering around me looking concerned, nervous, and some attempting to say something. My stylist finally just points to my head. Me? I was just cracking up laughing. I seriously could not stop grinning.

All I could think about was my late nights of panic throughout this past year of college when my friend would try and dye my hair. During the worst part I looked like Rainbow Brite gone wrong and had ended up calling an ADPi sister I had never really talked to before. (She always had really pretty red hair, and I knew she had experience dying it.) That sister offered to take me to Walmart at one in the morning on a school night and then dyed it when we returned back to the dorm, saving me the embarrassment of wearing a head wrap until I found a better solution. (I still owe Kaitlyn dearly for that.) That's true sisterhood for you.

But these memories just started flooding back. Compared to that night my hair looked like a masterpiece! Besides, the faces of all of the salon employees were just too funny. I mean, I think they thought I was going to throw a tantrum. I knew my hair was going to turn out bright red. I had picked a red color and their dye is designed for extremelly dark hair. I couldn’t blame them, I just felt bad for them.

And I’m sure it didn’t help that I really did just keep giggling as they attempted to style it after I affirmed I didn’t hate the color. They were clueless. After a combination of attempts involving some sort of foam, gel, spray, air drying, combing, a diffuser, and a hairdryer, I knew that my hair was not going to turn out. But they didn’t. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone look guiltier about taking my money. Still, I was just chuckling and extremelly amused with their wonder and confusion.

After I returned to Santisuk I quickly re-rinsed my hair, added my own product, and let it air dry. After it did I ended up with a style and a color that I actually love (not the colors I described earlier). And even if I didn’t love it, torturing those poor stylist wouldn’t have changed anything. I got rid of my prior roots, and had a fantastic laugh in the process.

Be grateful the next time you go to a salon and you can actually communicate with the person who is in control of your appearance for the next few months or so. But regardless of your situation, always take it with a grain of salt and find humor in everything. You never know when a trip to the hair salon will turn into an adventure in itself.