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.