Observations

June 17

Dear D,

I’m guessing you drank a lot of wine on your trip too? Thus the wine lingo? I’m sorry it was bitter on the finish… Any particular reason?

It rained a lot last night (I was actually COLD!), and is still raining now. The sky is grey and the palm trees on the beach are swaying slowly.

L just told me that some of the male Thai teachers have been asking about us volunteers. And I’m known as “the tomboy” bahaha… Looks like this haircut of mine can help put your heart at rest.

Some observations:

1) Nasal sprays—The kids here are apparently addicted to them. Many keep a small container in their pocket and pull out every so often to take a nonchalant snort. Sometimes they leave it dangling from a nostril. So far I haven’t talked to anyone about it, so I’m not sure how the trend came about. I haven’t felt particularly congested or anything. I recall an American nurse telling me once that one shouldn’t use nasal sprays for longer than three days, because the sinus tissue can become addicted to the medication. Hm.

2) Yesterday (perhaps in an effort to fight my “tomboy” persona) I wore my Banana Republic pencil skirt that I bought right before I left. I got a LOT of comments. From “sassy” to “modern.” Then one of my Thai co-teachers asked me, “why are you dressed so polite today?”

3) I went to the Takuapa Wednesday market and bought fried taro and bamboo buns, fresh papaya, coconut jello and a pancake on a stick! The pancakes were made to order; you could choose a cartoon character off of a chart to put on your pancake. I chose the Japanese Qoo character, which the pancake man then free hand drew onto the skillet with a tube of chocolate batter. Once that had cooked a little, he poured normal pancake batter on it. The finishing touch: smothering the pancake with sweet butter! Nom nom.

4) My students’ nicknames. A sampling: Arm, Hunny, Palm, Sun, Net, Nut, Far, Boom, Pop, Oil, Fern, Poppy, Tum, Pear, Give, Bye, Tikky, Dear, and Mayrisza. Thai names are usually very long, so nicknames make things more manageable. Mayrisza sounds a lot like “My Lisa,” and the students made their name tags after I introduced myself, so…I’m not sure if I should be very flattered or what.

5) Punishment for being tardy: I walked into one of my classes to find several male students doing push-ups at the front of the classroom. Turns out they had been late and this was the penalty. More showed up late and what they had to do was truly unique. They stood at the front of the class, bent over, wrapped their left arms around their outstretched right arms to hold onto their ears. They pointed at the ground with their right hands and keeping their pointer finger on one place on the ground shuffled around in circles! The rest of the class counted their rotations out loud. Lots of laughing from everyone, including those being punished.

Love,

L