1/31/13

Today was a good day.
It rained for the first time in forever.
I ate bread, apples and mashed potatoes.
Understood my French teacher.
Translated a whole page in Chinese.
My Tagalog teacher is back.
Kids in my class learned American slang today and I had to explain what shawty was.
And I chatted with some people back home that I haven't spoken to in a long time.
Simple yet good.

Book: page 3 of Adventure of State
Thai: dong..................must, have to

Mystery

My host family is a little mysterious. Well, not really but I think it's because they cannot explain some complex things in English.
My host dad apparently lives in the South of Thailand.

Sophie lived with my host family now for about two weeks earlier this year to "teach" my host brother English. So when my host family does things they invite Sophie too which is really nice of them. Therefore Sophie and I are solving this mystery together and are finding out more but very slowly.

Here is what we know:
He lives in the south.
My host parents are still married.
He visits sometimes.
He works in the south.
And that's about it.

So today I was talking to Sophie on the phone when my host mom walks through the front door. My host brother (Toey) follows her and then another man I do not recognize. I figured it was a friend or business man because my host mom often has business meetings with people at the house.
And then she said, "This is Toey father."

I immediately told Sophie that I would call her back.

To be continued...

Book: Finished The Destiny of Natalie X and Other Stories today and it was quite good. MOving on to Adventure of State. Another book from my host family's condo.
Thai: baker..................................lightswitch

Staring

There are many phrases that you are taught as a kid.
Don't talk to strangers.
It's rude to point.
Don't stare.
Or my mothers favorite, don't forget the napkins.

It has come to my attention that Thailand may not use these phrases as often as we do.
Especially about the staring.
Now I live right on the outskirts of Bangkok so there aren't foreigners where I live. For example whenever I see another foreigner in town I try and talk to them because the sightings are so rare. Although us farang (Thai word for foreigner but a better translation would be white or even better not-Thai-and strange- looking) are rarely sighted, we do still exist.
Although I'm not sure all Thai people know this.
For example, whenever I take the Song Tao (truck with a cage in the back, purposes as a bus) there is always one person that will stare at me or look extremely confused as to why I exist.Sometimes this happens on the bus but not so much anymore, maybe I don't notice it.
When I first came here it felt awkward and embarrassing but I'm way past being embarrassed by anything at this point. One time I stared back at the person, just to mess with them, they just kept on looking at me.
This fact just makes me laugh.
I've met one other farang on the bus before and it turned out he is a teacher at the school next to mine and has lived here for ten years.

Farang are always on the river boats though.
That's why I take the bus instead of the boats.

Book: Only read about 20 pages today so hopefully I'll finish The Destiny of Natalie X and Other Stories tomorrow.
Thai: doo.......look/watch

Eggs

It began Saturday evening, when my host mom picked me up at Tesco after I came home from a fun day spent with Saeko, Sophie and Waldir (Mexico). Normally I sit and read while I wait for my host mom to pick me up outside with her car, but this time she met me inside. She said she needed to buy some eggs for a donation she was going to give. We split up in the store, I go and look for a laundry brush (I have to wash half my clothes by hand) and she goes off to get eggs. We met up about two minutes later by the produce. I assumed she was going to get about two to four dozen eggs. But oh no.
The cart is half full with eggs.
HALF FULL.

We arrived home with a car full of surprisingly unbroken eggs- I was nervous the whole ride home because Thai driving laws are.....lax. My host sister then informs me that on Sunday we are going to 2 temples and so that my host mom can give away the eggs. Well, I assumed she was giving away the eggs because 1. there were so many eggs, 2. my host mom said "donation" and, 3. we were going to the temples in the morning aka "give monks food time because they can only eat in the morning".
Well, as it turned out I assumed wrong.
(I'm sort of used to being wrong about my assumptions while living in Thailand because everyday something surprises you here.)

I woke up Sunday morning and quickly got ready because my host mom told me we were leaving at eight. So I stride into the kitchen to grab and apple for breakfast and to my surprise my host mom is in the kitchen boiling all the eggs!
"Chu-ah die mai ka?"- Can I help you?
"Die, die."- Yes. (Or literally: Can, can).
 "Count 100 eggs in here and 100 in here," she continued, pointing at a box and a woven basket.

And that's when I realized that my host mom had just bought and boiled 200 EGGS.

At 9:30 we all finally piled in the car and started making our journey to a temple outside the city. That's when I asked my host sister about The Eggs. She explained to me that my host mom prayed to Buddha and promised him that if her prayer came true she would bring him 100 boiled eggs. And my host mom's prayer came true so that is why we have The Eggs.
And all I could think at that moment was "Buddha is a statue."
So I asked what happened to The Eggs, if they went to the monks, or poor people in the community or whatever. I again assumed wrong. She explained that you bring your promised gift (most commonly eggs but you can bring fruit, flowers, firecrackers and other things too) to the temple, wai to it and do other traditional things at the temple and then after you're done you can take your gift back home.
And so that's what we did.
Oh, but I had one more assumption to be proved wrong. So we had 200 eggs and we were going to two temples. 100 eggs per temple right? Nope. We used the same eggs twice.

And thus that is the story of how there came to be 200 hard boiled eggs in my house.

Book: Finished Childhood's End, The Casual Vacancy, Water for Elephants, An Abundance of Katherines, and I am The Cheese. Now I am on The Destiny of Natalie X and Other Stories which is a collection of short stories. The reason I came upon this book is because my host family owns a condo and they bought a furnished room which had books in it that were in English so they said I could have them. I'll probably finish it tomorrow since it's really short.
Thai: song roi kai...............................................200 eggs

Well, I haven't blogged in a while but I've decided to blog everyday I am home until the end of February.