Of Mothers and Milk

So I can get used to this whole Thai work schedule. The coming weekend is yet another 4-day vacation, in honor of the Queen's birthday, which is also by default National Mother's Day. And how do Thais celebrate Mother's Day, you might ask? To give you an idea, I've excerpted the following conversation (from Emily's blog), which took place between Emily and one of our Thai co-teachers last week:

Aj. Ann: "They will be saying thank you to their mothers. For... how do you say...? The milk." (motioning to her breast).
Emily: "Oh... heh. heh. Yes, the.. um... the milk."
Aj. Ann: "What do you call this milk?"
Emily: "Um. Well, we call that 'breast' milk."
Aj. Ann: "Best?"
Emily: "No. Um, BREAST. Like.. uh.. B. R. E. A. S. T. Breast. Breast milk."
Aj. Ann: "Oh (give it a second). OOOOOH. BREAST milk. And what do you call the ...value of the breast milk?"
Emily: "Umm.... the value of the breast milk."
Aj. Ann: "You do not have a word for it? We celebrate the milk as the best milk. The most valuable milk from the mother."
Emily: "That is... very good."

To give you an even better picture, here's a collection of Mother's Day sentiments from my 6/1 students:



So, the value of breast milk, giving thanks for mashed bananas, and the Queen's 78th birthday bash will align on Thursday, culminating in another long weekend for the ajaans.

On a more serious note about Thai mothers, one of our school's teachers and "lunch lady," Aj. Bouy, lost her 21-year-old son to a fatal motorbike accident last week. On Friday, we asked Aj. Prakop if there was something we could do, and she said yes, that she would take us to see Aj. Bouy first thing after school. I felt strange about visiting Aj, Bouy in person at her home, just days after her son passed away, since we only really knew her in passing. We had been thinking more along the lines of flowers or a card. But Aj. Prakop insisted, and we trusted her. Aj. Bouy, like many of our coworkers, lives very near our apartment. She was dressed head-to-toe in black when we arrived, and looked as though she hadn't slept in a week, but she smiled at us and squeezed each of our arms in gratitude as we came through the door. We followed Prakop to an altar in the living room, and following her lead, dropped to our knees, held our hands to our foreheads for a moment in silence, and placed a white paper flower in front of a large school photograph of Aj. Bouy's son. Afterwards, we sat with Aj. Bouy for a while in the rows of fold-up chairs that were set up in her living room, listening to Aj. Prakop talking to her in Thai, stroking her shoulder or placing a gentle hand on her knee. Prakop never flinched or stuttered - she seemed to know exactly what to say and do in this situation.

Saturday morning we had a parent-teacher conference at school. The assembly room was packed full of parents, who listened to the school directors give lengthy speeches about something long and boring sounding, while their kids milled in and out of the room asking for baht to buy ice cream with. The four "foreign teachers" sat behind the Director, and midway through the assembly we were asked to introduce ourselves to the room. I'm not sure if anyone understood my attempt at "Hello, my name is Caitlin, I'm from America, I teach Kindergarten and 6th," but we got some friendly smiles from the audience nonetheless. Afterwards, one of my Kindergarten students, Fasai, came and found me and plopped herself in my lap, calling me "Aj. Jackieee!," as some Kindergartners still do. It's understandably confusing that their American teacher from last year is not actually the same one as this year, even though we're both white. Jackie Thomas, know you are not forgotten at Bandon Sriserm.

Meet the Roomies

Last night we had our first real home-cooked, blissfully rice-free meal at the apartment, thanks to the incredible culinary skill of Anna. Girlfriend can work wonders with a steamer and borrowed restaurant oven. We set up a "dining room table" out on our patio (using bedsheets as a tablecloth), ate, drank and were merry. Check out our delicious feast, and meet my fellow ajaan roommates, in the video below:



Also, my guest star appearances on Emily's show, "Over Fruit," continue. See here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ztA2lYt7C8

Friending, Fitness and Skeeter Bites.

This past weekend, we decided to lay low and recover from traveling the weekend before. The upside of doing so was that we discovered a lot right under our noses in Nan. Emily and I visited a new coffee stand (that actually makes real coffee - !!! - not the kind from 3-in-1 sugar-milk-instant coffee packets... blegh) where we met Cho, a young-ish guy from Bangkok who speaks very good English. Cho has a friend who runs a trekking company in Nan and offered to ask him for a discounted trip for us... hopefully we'll take him up on the offer very soon. Next we did some shopping at one of the clothing "boutiques" near school, and met Joey, the employee who wouldn't stop complimenting us and asked me sing to the American rap music he was playing in the background. I politely declined, but he gave us a discount on our shirts anyways.

Later we headed to D-milk, pretty much the most stereotypically Asian snack-shack you can imagine, and our new obsession. "D-milks" are essentially made from ice, fresh milk, condensed milk, sweetener, and some combination of chocolate cereal or Corn Flakes, or jelly if that's your thing, all blended together to make a milkshake-type drink. Sound weird and kind of gross? Yes. Delicious? Yes. At D-milk we met Meow (that's how her name sounded... no clue if that's the correct spelling). Meow is working on her Master's in Accounting from Georgetown, and just returned home to Nan after spending 3 years living in Washington, DC. She explained that her father is in failing health, and so she's not sure when she'll get to finish her last year. She said she misses America a lot, and asked us to come visit her often because she gets "so very bored" during her D-milk shifts. This will no doubt become a regular hangout for us - and it's cool and very rare to meet a Thai person in Nan who's spent any amount of time in the States.

On Sunday we had our usual Hot Bread brunch, and talked with Usa and her sister for a while about our respective trips. Usa is always incredibly helpful in answering our various travel questions, and has even leant us some Southeast Asia travel books from her bookshelf. She also told Anna - our resident chef - that anytime she wanted to come by to use the restaurant's oven, she was more than welcome to (we don't have any kind of kitchen in the apt). Anna took her up on the offer, and tomorrow we will be enjoying a surprise homemade feast. Emily, Nicole and I are in charge of finding wine, and eating. The first task may prove challenging, but the second - no problem.
...

Just when I thought I'd adjusted to the humidity here, I tried running in it yesterday. Wooowee it was like drinking air. My exercise routine up until now has consisted solely of bike riding around town and daily yoga videos with Anna in her air conditioned room, but today after yoga I took my afternoon workout to the reservoir along the river, where Emily and Nicole do their daily runs. Eventually my "run" became sets of 10-second sprints with Anna, then a slow jog, then a lap and a half of power walking... (and who am I kidding really... I've never been a runner in any kind of weather... but I'm giving it a go).

No matter what kind of workout you're after, the reservoir is a prime place for people watching in Nan. There are people of every age circling the track. School-aged kids go jogging in their uniforms. Old grandmas go running dressed in head-to-toe sweat suits in the sweltering heat. Women go jogging in platform sandals. Some people wear jeans. It appears there really isn't much a Thai person won't exercise in, except a good ol' pair of running shorts and a t-shirt (so imagine how ridiculous we look to them). Aside from the locals, there are also a host of stray dogs, white cows, and buffalo chillin' around the reservoir. They stay off in the marshy grass, but man they can add an unpleasant smell to the air every now and then.

As we were making our final lap around the track (drenched in sweat, from only walking), we passed by two women and heard them muttering "something-something-ajaan-Bandon-Sriserm." Recognizing that they knew we were teachers at Bandon Sriserm, we shot glances back at them and nodded, and they laughed, asking how old we were. I told them and they cackled, "Babies! Babies! and so beautiful!" I wasn't exactly feeling my finest, but it was nice nonetheless.
....

I think there's a mosquito - or maybe twenty - inhabiting my sheets, and last night, they feasted on me. I woke up this morning COVERED in itchy bites. I'm not exaggerating when I say I look like I have some sort of disease... I was bored during a free period and counted 29 bites on just one arm. They are also on my feet, my neck, my knuckles, wrists, behind my knees, and every other possibly irritating and difficult-to-scratch place on my body. Needless to say, I was pretty miserable during school today, and had a lot of shocked "AJAAN CAITLIN!" gasps as students pointed to my bite-covered elbows in class ("I know! I know!"). In 6/1, Cake was very concerned and told me that the solution is to "keep walking, always walking." She also ran after me after class to give me her jar of Tiger Balm (a menthol-like cream that helps with the itch). There is no age-minimum on kindness and hospitality here in Thailand.

I'm still scratching away as I sit and type this, going a bit nuts while I wait for my sheets to come out of the wash... But at least now I've expanded my vocabulary and can say "mosquito bite" in Thai: "yung gat"! Also I have a new beautiful piece of artwork for my desk, courtesy of Aj. Anna: