Week of 2/1-2/7

Here are some highlights of the last week or so:

Last Sunday (2/1)... yeah, that's over a week ago... we went to cooking school and learned how to make (among other things) curry, pad thai, and a banana with coconut milk desert. The day started with a visit to the market, where our teacher taught us about the different kinds of rice, various coconut products, and different forms of flavoring common in Thai foods.

Then we drove out to the farm where the cooking school is. There we learned about traditional Thai family farms and the ways they plant crops to encourage soil health and plant health - like planting stinky plants next to others to keep the bugs away. Their green beans are HUGE here - like as long as your arm. For real. It's intense.

Last Monday (2/2) all nine of us trekked out to the UN Irish Pub to watch the Superbowl be replayed. Those of us interested in the game already knew the outcome, but decided to go see it anyway. And we decided to mess with all the other people (at least some of whom didn't know the end) and cheer for the losing team. It was so much fun. Andy, Emily, and I in particular had a lot of fun being loud and raucous.

Best quote of the night came during the booth review for the last Steelers touchdown:
"Oh, come on! His toes are down; he's just being graceful! He's a fucking ballerina, that's all!"

Hilarious.

Also on Monday, a new language teacher started - Ajaan Jang. She's very high energy and is a ton of fun. She sometimes tells us stories about past years of Coe students, such as last year one student kept telling her to turn toward the water buffalo during his midterm. She said she tried really hard, but after the third or fourth water buffalo turn she just burst out laughing. What he meant was turn right - or liaow kwaa, not liaow kway. We also take a 20 minute break about two-thirds of the way through class, which is excellent. Two hours is a LONG class.

On Tuesday (2/3) Catherine got sick. Usually getting the stomache flu is not a huge deal, but since Catherine's pancreas doesn't work (she has diabetes) she can't be left alone while ill. Since I was one of the people that she gave 'betes training to over christmas break, and since Patricia is the one with all the tropical disease knowledge from her years working in Paraguay, the two of us camped out with Cate, making sure she tested her sugar and ate icing and such - did you know you can absorb sugar through your gums? I didn't until Christmas. It was actually scary for a while because her blood sugar refused to climb above the 60s (for reference 180-200 is good, 300 is high, and 40 is coma). Then we discovered the icing Cate was eating didn't actually have sugar in it. Oops. Thanks for that info Google. So I left her to rest with Patricia and took a drunk Becca for a walk to the 7-11 to purchase sugary things for Catherine, and bread-like things for her. There we discovered the group's new fave candy - Chokie-Chokie. It's basically a milk-chocolate fudgey-substance in a tube and is delicious. And two or three tubes absorbed via the gums made Catherine's blood sugar sky-rocket up over 200 so she could sleep.

Wednesday in Human Rights class we reverted to third grade and needing to raise our hands to talk rather than having a conversation like adults, and some people still didn't talk. Ugh. Hopefully we can un-revert this week. Probably one of the most interesting discussions we did manage to have was whether the "vacation mentality" would really enable people to make decisions to do things that they would be opposed to doing at home, as one of our authors discussing child prostitution suggested. Nathan and Ian were very sure that this would not happen, while Becca was convinced that it could. Thoughts? This also lead into later discussions regarding if humans are inherently good, inherently evil/bad/not good, or inherently stupid.

Thursday the program took us out to eat at Drexler's favorite Italian place in town, right across from CMU. It was pretty delicious, about as good as you can get anywhere (and a lot better than Gen, Nikki, John and I had gotten the day before!). Coe alumn, Brad, who is teaching English at CMU this year came with us too. I remember thinking we had a lot of good discussions, but I don't remember what about anymore. Drexler and Patricia talked about living abroad, Holly, Emily, Kacie, Nikki and Gen told ghost stories, I talked to John about Teach for America for a while, but I don't really remember what I spent most of my time talking about. Andy, Chris and Brad had boy talk at one end of the table. :)

Since it was the first Friday of the month, there was a craft market going on in one corner of the campus, and after class Patricia, Holly, Emily and I tried to wander to it, but it took a very long time and we got a little lost. Walking back was much faster. That night Andy, Chris, Gen, Nikki, Kacie, Emily, Holly and I went to a British Pub by the guesthouse for bar food and drinks. When everyone else went to play pool, Gen and I had a really great talk back at the table. I really enjoyed getting to connect with someone new on the trip. And Gen is such a sweetie!

When we left the pub, Gen, Kacie and I decided to go check up on Paul, the saxophonist and co-owner of the jazz bar. Gen is his secret admirer, so at least a couple people from our group go every few nights. The jazz is decent (it really depends on the ensemble playing), but Paul is very good. This night, the combo was short a bassist and drummer. So one guy jumped up to the drum set for a song or two, and when he wasn't playing, Paul would occasionally tap a cymbal or something to accompany a solo or whatever. For the last song of the first set, Paul said they wanted to try something "experimental." I wouldn't say it was that experimental, but it was PHENOMENAL - I mean one of those times when music just reaches all the way to your soul, and you not only hear it with your ears, but feel it in your chest, in your pulse, creeping around your subconscious. A-mazing. I hadn't had that happen in a while, and this piece especially grabbed me.

Saturday (2/7) we went to an elephant show. To be honest, I almost didn't go. First off, we have our Thai language midterms this week, I wanted to get started on editing my NGO's english publications, and I need to read a lot faster/a lot more for my independent study on Thai conceptions of gender and sexuality. And secondly, these sorts of things always feel somewhat like animal exploitation to me, and I kind of wish there wasn't a market for it. I'm fine with safaris and going to see the animals in their own habitat or something replicating their natural environment, where they're wild and untrained. But animal shows kind of bother me. And this was our second one. In the end though, I went and it was fun to coo over baby elephants and marvel at elephant antics with everyone. I did skip riding the elephant though. It just felt like too much money to sit on an old-style throne on the back of an elephant that had just been forced to paint pictures and kick soccer balls in front of me. Instead, Patricia and I wandered around the camp, until we hit the village where all the mankoots (elephant handlers) and their families live. Then we turned around so as to not intrude.

Also on Saturday, I discovered one of the computers in the guesthouse has a slot that fits my camera's memory card!!! Excitement! So I'm working on uploading all of my pictures before we leave for Laos this weekend.