Trekking Through the Jungle (aka "I Hurt")

It's hard to believe that we're back already from our trek in the Thai rainforest. Before we left, we had our doubts as to what it would be like--would it be really cheesy? Set up for tourists? Really hard? Too easy? Um, let me clarify--really, REALLY hard. As in, I am surprised I survived. As in, I contemplated suicide more than once rather than continue climbing. But I'm getting ahead of myself.


So we left our house in Chiang Mai at 9:30am, and we were picked up by the trekking company in a truck, much like the "taxi" pick-up trucks here in the city. There were 13 trekkers plus 3 guides who squeezed into this truck. Space was pretty tight, and we all got hurried introductions over with. The truck drove us about 30 minutes north of the city to a Thai market where we picked up water and last minute supplies (think rain ponchos for our bags, and a couple snacks). It was a really cool market--there were all kinds of fruit, meat, and pastry vendors there, along with some drink vendors. It's still amazing to me how many different kinds of food they have, and it's all so colorful (though I don't touch the meat stuff with a 10-foot pole). I paid 2 baht to use the bathroom facilities, which were far below par, then we piled back into the truck to continue on to our final destination--the rainforest. None of us actually knew the name of the city we were going to until our guide told us later that night. I suppose they could have driven us out of the country and we wouldn't have known the difference, but a stop at the tourist police office a short while later quelled the fears of any who had considered this option. We turned in copies of our passports to the very friendly English-speaking officer, who drilled us on the emergency tourist police phone number (1-1-5-5), as if it would do us any good in the middle of the rain forest without cell phones or reception, but still, it felt good to know they at least knew we were going.

Our truck pulled up to the elephant camp 40 minutes later, and everyone got really excited. I mean, how could you not get super excited when a bunch of elephants are walking around and you're about to get on one of them? It would be impossible, I'm fairly sure. So we all climbed onto our elephants from a bamboo platform, and set off down a cliff to the river. It's really not very steady riding on an elephant. They sway from side to side quite a bit, and if it hadn't been for the bar on our little riding chair-thing, I would have slipped off 2 or 3 times. The "mahout" (elephant trainer) rides on the elephant's head to steer. We got down to the river and let our elephants mill around for 20 minutes or so--I'm not sure, it was so entertaining to watch them interact with each other and the baby elephant who was running around them, I think we all lost track of time. This baby was so cute. It wasn't tied to anyone, it just followed the whole herd as we went on our ride, each of them looking after it in turn. I guess it takes a herd of elephants to raise one baby. He was a little naughty, though--he just plopped down in the middle of the trail at one point. The elephant I was riding was a male and was called Boon-DI-ah. He was cool.

We got back to the elephant camp and found lunch waiting for us (rice with some tofu). It was pretty good but nothing too spectacular. No one cared. We were all excited and geared up for the trek looming ahead. We wanted to get going, we were dry, well-fed, and well-hydrated. Oh, how naive we were.

We set off from the elephant camp on foot, walking about a mile down a dirt road before veering off on the path that would take us to the foot of the mountain. I have to laugh now as I'm writing this, because we were so enthusiastic and utterly unaware of how difficult our hike was going to be. They told us it would be 3 hours. They also told us to bring 2 or 3 bottles of water. Well, I am pretty sure one guy brought 2, and the rest of us brought 1 each, thinking we'd A) be fine, or B) didn't want to have to pee before we made it to the village we were staying in for the night. The first hour of hiking was easy to moderate--it was hills interspersed with some stretches of flat path, and everyone was too high on adrenaline to notice the hills too much. Sweating, however, was inevitable, as the sun was high and hot, and soon our shirts were soaked through. The scenery was amazing, and just got more gorgeous the farther in we went. I had my camera in my hand and couldn't resist taking countless pictures on the way up the mountain (oh yes, we soon realized after that first hour that we were going up a mountain--a real one, not one of those sissy mountains).

We took a break at a small waterfall, and a few of the guys on the trip took advantage and jumped in. In hindsight, I realize now that they let us take such a long (20 minute) break at this waterfall because it was a turning piont of sorts before the trail got infinitely more difficult. I wish I had savored sitting and breathing more at that waterfall.

We resumed hiking. There was less chatter now, as the trail began to be steeper and with less even paths in between. Our guides seemed to think we had enough of a break at the waterfall, because by the time we next stopped, I was sweating even more profusely than before, was wheezing, and had pulled out my inhaler twice. My lungs felt like they had been punctured multiple times, and as bad as I was feeling, there was a whole half of our group that had fallen so far behind Marieka and me that we couldn't see or hear them anymore (they had a guide with them too). So I settled into what would be my place in line for the rest of the day--2nd slowest in the fast group. I thought it could have been worse. I was still going faster than 7 people total. At this point, I still cared about how I was doing, group-wise. So, so stupid. I should have spent that energy mentally forcing more oxygen into my lungs.

Mentally, I mark the turning point of our hike at what I suppose could correlate roughly to the "tree-line" on mountains at home, though there was technically still vegetation above this point here. We had rested momentarily at a point just before the forest opened up, and that is the point where the trek ceased being pleasant in any form or fashion. I had already hiked more than I ever have in my whole life. We had been at it for about 3 hours already, and gone roughly 8km, 6 of which were uphill. I had literally one swallow of water left, I felt as though I'd sweat out half of my body weight, and my lungs were on fire. I was doing the 'one foot at a time' mantra in my head, and I could see the group ahead, sitting on another fallen log. Haha--I said "ahead". I should have said "above". I saw the group above me. This part of the mountain was like climbing a very narrow, very steep set of stairs. The steps? Elephant footprints. How convenient. Perhaps there's an actual elephant nearby I could charter to the top? I got halfway up this monstrous climb and almost started crying at the impossibility of it. The girl in our group who was behind me was nowhere in sight. Everyone else in our group was watching my slow progress. Great. I audibly told myself not to cry. I trudged up the rest of the way. Made it.

Now, this log was in a position where we could only see one direction: the way we had come. Couldn't see ahead of us. After a fifteen-minute break, during which time the girl behind me made it up, we continued on. No sight nor sound from the second half of our group. They could have been eaten by pandas for all we knew. We rounded the corner behind the log and came into a clearing--our first sight of the village we were staying in! The end was in sight!

After seeing the village, I immediately began searching for our way up--THAT was the point I truly wanted someone to just kill me. Shoot me in the face, fml, leave me to die--whichever way you want, I really didn't care. I cannot even describe how totally and completely awful I felt--my whole body was in pain, and I had already pushed past my limits. What was directly in front of us was yet another steep climb, probably about another 400m high.

I can't go into detail about the rest of the climb, mostly because I was barely conscious for it. More than one person looked like they were going to cry. Notably absent from those going to cry were the mountain goats from New Zealand and Germany, Dave and Lasse. Those guys had clearly been eating their wheaties. Or they were on speed.

We made it to the Lahu village, and that was pretty cool--they live in bamboo huts on the edge of the summit of this mountain. There were dogs, pigs, chickens, and cows running around the village, and we stayed in a house belonging to a very entertaining man who has 3 wives. Oh yeah--the village people are polygamists. Um, he also was singing and dancing to guitar playing that night while smoking opium. Yeah, it's illegal, but the hill tribes still do it, and he was offering these joints of opium around they modern-day peace pipes. We all cleaned up and about 40 minutes after we had arrived, the second group came trudging in, bearing my beaten roommate, Neha. This was Neha's first camping/hiking trip, and I actually think she did really well, tube-top, pink poncho and all. We had dinner all together on the floor of the hut, which was constructed of bamboo and covered with woven mats. The roof was thatch, and was tested for its waterproof-ness that night, because a huge thunderstorm moved in. We were so high up on the mountain that we were actually IN the thunderstorm. We could see the front moving toward us, and then the whole world disappeared as the cloud overtook us. It was awesome.

Not so awesome was that it continued to storm and monsoon all night and all morning, making today's trekking a bit difficult, as it was still raining on us while we came down the mountain. We set out this morning at 9:30 again, and hiked for a couple hours down the back of the mountain from where we had come up. Going down was definitely easier for me than going up, because it was very little cardio and a lot of strength training. It was interesting to see how the dynamics of the "fast" and "slow" groups changed with our change of direction. Maggie, Robbie, and I were numbers 1, 2, 3. Not that I noticed, or anything.

We stopped at a big waterfall, and this time I got in. We were all wet anyway, so it didn't matter and it was really fun. Another hour's hiking landed us at the jumping-off point for the whitewater rafting. That was really cool. I asked my boat's guide if I could sit in the front, and he wanted to make sure I wasn't a "lady-boy". That's what they call someone who's not very strong. I assured him I was up to the task, and I'm glad I did, because the front was awesome. We got bowled over by huge rapids about a dozen times. Our guide pronounced me "no lady-boy" at the end of the trip, so I guess I did okay. He also said the funniest things. When something unexpected would happen, he would go "Oh my Buddha!" He must have said it a couple dozen times--he was hilarious. He also "accidentally" splashed us with his paddle, tried to tip over our bamboo raft (we did that after), and then fell off of our bamboo raft himself.

We had lunch then and came home, again all crammed into a truck, and got rained on the whole way. All in all, though, it was an amazing and beautiful experience. Just a bit tiring.

My Name is Name

Today was our first day with the 6th graders all together. As with the other classes, we had them make name tags for their desks so we could call on them easier and also, of course, to learn their names. We had a few names that stood out in particular:

Pooki
Supaporn
Mew
PeeDee

and the winner...."Name"

We thought he had misunderstood the assignment at first, but soon we came to see that Name is possibly the smartest kid in the whole school. He can actually read English. This may not sound like an especially surprising skill, but I don't believe any of the other kids in the whole school, and probably close to none of the teachers can do this. He can sound out the words and was reading the flashcards we held up before we said the words on them. He was also the only one who has managed to solve a hangman puzzle well before reaching the end. It was very impressive.

We played hangman ('pencil sharpener', 'I am from Thailand') and a game with the flashcards. They enjoyed it a lot, and needless to say, Name's team annihilated the other team.

Just as a side note, we're going trekking in the northwest rainforest, so I definitely won't be able to write for the next 3 days. (Try to contain your disappointment) Look for another post on Monday morning! I'm sure there will be lots to tell. Also, I'm still trying to upload more pictures as i write--it's harder than you would think.

Everybody Poops...Except Travel to Teach Volunteers

As I'm sure everyone is aware, there is currently in publication a children's book called Everybody Poops. This is an outrageous and pervasive lie. Our nation's--nay, the world's--children are being manipulated.

The Chiang Mai Travel to Teach volunteer house has been united by a struggle so primal that it cannot be escaped by even the most conscientious of us. Anyone who's traveled to the sweatbox known as Southeast Asia has an idea of what this not so mysterious problem is. Yes: I am talking about poop. Lack of it, too much of it, you name the problem, someone here has it. We have the remedies, of course--Pepto Bismol, Maalox, Immodium, Tums, antibiotics (cipro is popular), etc. Not to mention the famous B-R-A-T diet (bananas, rice, applesauce, toast).

So you eat fruit without washing it. A little bit of water gets in your mouth while you're showering. Perhaps you had a bit of egg that was undercooked. Yes, my friend, diarrhea is heading your way with the speed of 2 tuk-tuk drivers fighting for tourists. Hmm...you say to yourself--I know how to clear this up. I shall take some of that Cipro antibiotic that the travel clinic woman gave to me. I am prepared. I was forewarned.

You poor shmuck.

You take your cute little Cipro tablet, and as promised, your diarrhea problems vanish almost immediately. Unfortunately, so does the ability to poop for the next three days. Well, this does present a problem. Better stuff down some more of that fruit, and maybe add some spicy pad thai that's hot enough to burn your face off. 'That will shake things up in there!' you say.

Uh-oh. Now you have heartburn. Throw some of that Pepto at it, and maybe a couple Tums for good measure. 'Problem fixed,' you say. 'I am a poop genius.' Until the next cycle begins again. Enjoy your six hours of freedom, my naive little farang.

The (not so) silver lining in your fiasco of feces? Every other person in your house has been struck with like affliction: you are not alone. You can (gasp!) fart in the open walled bathroom stall without fainting from embarassment, far from it--you can discuss problems and potential solutions with your housemates who, like you, are so desperate for a cure that social taboos are flushed down the toilet in the hopes of finding a way to make your poop do the same.

Beer Me An Elephant

After four years of college, another semester of grad school, and some random weird experiences, I thought I had seen a lot of crazy things in bars. Nothing I've ever seen, however, compares with the spectacle that was last night.

We decided to go out on the town for the first time (urged on by our new enigmatic British housemate, of course), and so we walked to what can only be called the "sexy" street. It has countless bars that are open-faced to the street--that is, there are no walls on the sides that face the street---you can walk right in. The sexy part comes in because there are numerous "available" Thai girls/women who hang out at the bars, to attract the wealthy Western men.

After walking once down both sides of the street, we chose our battleground: a bar on the corner called "Jammers," which featured a pool table and a dozen or so of these Thai ladies, a few old men, and a couple of other tourists. The first thing Maggie and I noticed on the menu was the phrase "Lady drinks +30 baht". I thought, quite logically, that this meant that women's drinks cost 30 baht more than men's. Oh no, my friends--that would be the price to buy one of those plentiful "available" women a drink. And let me tell you, they were eyeing Robbie. Maggie, being totally secure, laughed about them. But I told her we would help her jump them if she wanted us to.

I started off the night with a Long Island, and it pretty much snowballed from there. This particular bar was apparently more concerned with quantity rather than quality, because my drink basically tasted like 6 or 7 shots poured straight into my glass. Our table got progressively louder, then I decided--by George, I was going to play some pool. We met a new friend from Oman (I think he was about 50) and so I played him one on one. I only lost by one ball, but as he then bought the loser table a round of beers, I was pretty okay with losing.

This was the point of the night where you think back the next day and are like "hmm. I should have stopped there. That was the deciding moment." But hey, free drinks, am I right? So we all downed those, and I think that's about the point when I decided that we should really be dancing. I mean, they were playing all of these great (American) songs, and no one was dancing. It was a shame. So I dragged Neha (roommate), Maggie, and some of the Thai whores off their chairs and began a dance party. Our friend from Oman got in on the action too. He can really cut a rug, that guy from Oman.

After awhile, another round from Oman guy, and some more dancing, we decided it was time to move along to the next bar. We walked down the street about fifty yards and found a much larger venue that was packed with tourists (but young cool ones, like us). I made the very, very good decision to not order anything. I was on the move. I wanted to call my sister. And dammit, I couldn't find a payphone. Just as I came back to the bar to report this sad news to the crew, it happened.

An elephant walked into the bar.

I'm sorry, maybe you didn't catch that....

A FREAKING ELEPHANT WALKED INTO THE BAR.

Now, I don't remember every single detail about last night, but I do remember this: I was absolutely, completely delighted that this was happening. I ran over to that baby elephant (it was about seven feet tall and roughly the size of a Chevy Tahoe) and just started hugging away. I may have clapped my hands once or twice also. I wanted to take that elephant home.

This elephant was awesome. It was just very cool, very friendly, and after we had petted and fed it, continued moving up the street after its handler guy, who was pretty much letting it go wherever it pleased. I mean, how would you really stop it, anyway? The thing must have weighed a couple tons.

Coolest. Thing. Ever.

Right Tosser

funny quote of the night during a conversation with my new British roommate when we were discussing how we both used to have trouble staying still while sleeping: "Oh yeah, I was a real tosser......oh. wait."

The Desk Called "what is this"

Teaching children a foreign language is, as I think I've mentioned before, a bit more difficult than I thought it would be. Today, Tuesday, was our "young" day, as we had the pre-K, K, 1st and 2nd grade classes. They are much, much harder to teach than the older students as this is their first real exposure to English for many of them. We started off, therefore, in what we thought would be a fool-proof manner. It turns out that the only thing we ended up proving was that we are fools.

We found these giant flashcards in the volunteer house--about a ton of them, and they had all of these school-related pictures and words on them, like "chalk," "milk," "colored pencils," etc. We would hold the flashcard up, point to the pictures, and say the word, telling the kids to repeat after us (pood-tam-kah). It was after five pictures that I decided to quiz them on what they had learned when I made the mistake. It went something like this:

ME: "Desk." (pointing to desk)
KIDS: "Desk."
ME: "Chalk." (holding up a piece of chalk)
KIDS: "Chalk."
ME: "Pencil." (holding up a pencil)
KIDS: "Pencil."
ME: "What is this?" (pointing to a desk)
KIDS: "What is this."
ME: "No." (shaking head vigorously) "What IS this?" (pointing to desk again)
KIDS: "What IS this."
ME: "Uh oh."

They are like little copying monkeys, all of them--we have to be extremely careful what we say, because even something as seemingly innocent as "So..." turns into a vocab word, echoed by twenty kids, who are probably wondering to what object "so" refers.

For instance, we taught them the "good morning" song, wonderfully performed for us by Maggie and Robbie on the first day. Well, as we were getting ready to leave class today, Robbie decided to put his own twist on the tune, and started muttering "Goodbye, goodbye" to the tune, and a few seconds later we heard three little voices repeating it over and over again like a scratched Buddy Holly record. Good thing it wasn't something more potent than goodbye.

Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot

The teachers made us lunch today after our morning classes, and it was the best food we've eaten so far in Thailand. I'm not going to lie, I went to lunch with a lot of apprehension, because most Thai people eat a lot of meat and fish that I'm just not sure about, but man--was I blown away.

We walked into the room, and there was a huge table laden with all kinds of delicious-looking goodies: soups, noodles, identifiable meat, fruit, pretty much everything. I started with a very tentative scoop of the noodle dish, and from that first bite it was love in my heart and heaven in my mouth. I think I had four helpings. There were two giant plates of it, heaping up like mountains, and it was all for us--the teachers were eating something else at the other end of the table, but I didn't care, as long as that wonderful, unnamed entity was sitting in front of me. It had noodles, fried egg, onions, some green vegetables, and some leafy stuff, not to mention whatever genius blend of spices were in there. There was a small bowl of pork soup sitting next to the noodles, and after Robbie confirmed that the soup was 1) very good, and 2) very spicy in a good way, I dumped some of that on top of the noodle mixture and it was like my own small piece of Nirvana.

After the first few scoops of noodles, Robbie decided to branch out and try the beef soup from the other end of the table. After he did, I could hypothesize why there were two distinct groups of food, one on our end and one on the teachers' end: there was "Westerner" spicy and "Thai" spicy. That beef soup was definitely Thai spicy. He took one spoon full, and as Maggie and I looked on, his face became redder and redder, eyes got big, and we lost it. We were laughing so hard, and the 3rd grade teacher was just looking at us, so I said "spicy!" and pointed to Robbie's watering eyes, and all of the teachers started laughing too. To his credit, Robbie did finish the soup and I'm sure it was really good, but there was no getting better than those noodles for me. And Maggie doesn't make friends with spicy easily, so we left that untouched.

The fruit here has given us all a taste for the exotic. Mango is the most popular, followed by lychee, mangosteen (which is AWESOME), pineapple, banana, dragon fruit, papaya, and passion fruit. Those exotic fruit stands at stores like Whole Foods pale in comparison to the fruit here--you can buy a dragon fruit that's about five pounds. (And you can get it for about 50 cents).

All this talk is making me crave a fruit shake, which is basically the Thai smoothie. Unlike American smoothies, these are readily available almost everywhere, and there are street vendors who specialize in these frosty delights. A fruit shake will run you 20 baht (60 cents), and a smoothie with some dairy/yogurt added in is 25 baht. Ah, the smoothies are just what is needed on a blistering day like today (110 degrees) and they're plentiful for the picking.

In fact, I'm going to go get one now.

The 500-Yard Dash

Oh, my friends. How I wish you would have been here to see what transpired this afternoon.

Maggie, Robbie, and I visited Bo Sang today, which is a village dedicated to making silk and paper umbrellas. We shopped and walked around, seeing a lot of new crafts that I hadn't found before, and of course visiting the umbrella workshop, where we got to see Thai men and women actually making these umbrellas by hand and painting them too. It was pretty cool to see, and the umbrellas were gorgeous. So gorgeous, in fact, that it took me effectively forever to pick one out. Robbie and Maggie were making fun of me because I would pick one up, put it down, put it in my shopping basket, take it back out, and do the same thing with another one.

After a couple of hours we were ready to head back home, so we spent awhile trying to find a red truck taxi to get back to Chiang Mai. There aren't a lot of tourists near this village, so finding one was a real challenge, and once we did, we had some minor trouble telling them where we wanted to go. On the way home, therefore, I decided to document this adventure, and put my umbrella bag down, got out the ol' camera, and started snapping.

We reached our home street with food in mind. Maggie and Robbie piled out and I was quick to follow, realizing only as my feet hit the ground and the truck began to pull away that my umbrella bag was still in the truck! It was just bad luck that I happened to be wearing a flouncy, cute little skirt and a tank top today, because I immediately started running after the truck as fast as I could, waving my arms and screaming "STOP!" at the top of my lungs. I thought for sure that the driver or his wife (who was riding passenger) would have to see me. I was so conspicuous.

My bag was slowing me down. I threw it to the side of the street, praying that Maggie and Robbie would come pick it up. I ran another five yards--now my sandals were clearly slowing me down, and the truck was nearing the end of the street, about to turn left, where I would surely lose it. I kicked off the shoes, now tearing down the asphalt in my bare feet as fast as I could, and faster than I have run in a long time. The truck reached the corner--I was still a good 20 yards behind and it was starting to turn. I screamed louder. I overtook a couple scooters who were slowing for the corner and rounded it at full sprint. I chased the truck for about another 100 yards down the road, the futility of this chase setting in. I jogged to a stop, finally, my feet screaming in protest, and found a small patch of shade to give them a break from the scalding pavement. No sooner had I stopped and stared in vain at the back of the truck getting farther and farther away when a Thai man on a scooter pulled up short next to me and said something in Thai. I just flung my arm toward the taxi and wailed "My umbrella's in that taxi!" and he zoomed off after it without another word.

The next two minutes felt like ten. I had no shoes, no backpack, no umbrella, and no sight of Maggie and Robbie. My feet felt like they had just been shot with thirty small b-b guns and were imbedded with glass, and I couldn't do anything but wait for Maggie and Robbie to find me, hopefully bearing my shoes and backpack (in which was my money, ID, camera, etc).

Thankfully, they came through for me as I expected they would--Maggie's face came around the (distant) corner. I put my shoes back on, and we gave one last look toward where the taxi had disappeared then began walking home, despondent and resigned to wait around at the entrance to our road in the desperate hope that the taxi drivers might eventually see the bag and remember where we lived, when the man on the scooter appeared in front of us from around the corner, saying "The taxi comes back here now! They coming back!"

We all started yelling and cheering, and as that taxi came into view and pulled over, you would have thought it carried the King himself for the welcome we gave it. I grabbed out my bag, and we thanked the man and the taxi drivers again and again. It wasn't until we were walking home and Maggie and Robbie had started laughing that I realized exactly how I looked as I ran the 500-yard dash in my skirt and barefoot down Samlan Road, screaming my head off and waving my arms like a maniac. Apparently hilarious was how I looked. All of the shop owners and street vendors came out of their shops to watch as this unfolded.

I am pretty sure I gave those vendors and some scooter drivers quite a show.

And the Haggling Champion is...

I almost decided to title this "I am my mother's daughter," and I must give her credit for my most excellent haggling skills. Yes. I am good. The royal We (that is to say, Maggie, Robbie, and I) decided today would be excellent to go up the mountain here to visit the Wat on top. It's called Doi Suthep, and we had a very wild, windy, crazy ride in a red truck taxi, which I will henceforth refer to as a "death cab". Oh, man, this road was insane and he drove how Grandma used to through the hilly backroads. That is, very fast.

I digress.

So we got up there and went to the Wat (temple) on the top, which was possibly one of the coolest things I've ever seen. It was huge, and had tons of shrines to Buddha inside. We went up to the temple first, which was a grueling 306 steps==ahhh! We took our shoes off when we went in, and they were burning on the tiles--I hopped between the shady spots. Then we came out and had about 20 minutes to shop around with the vendors outside. Well, there were about a million Buddha masks, and I just had to have one, so I walked over and started to deal.

"600 baht"
"What?! No, too much"
"How much you pay? I give you discount"
"300 baht"
"500 baht"
"I'm sorry, too expensive" (turn to leave, think better of it, go to vendor next door)
"Ok, ok, 350 baht"

350 baht=$10=I am happy.

Got a wall hanging for 200 baht (started at 450) and a small statue for 100 (from 350).

The bargaining games continued tonight at the Night Bazaar, where I finally found a leather bracelet like I've been wanting for ages. Maggie and I tag-teamed that one and got a great deal for two of them.

New girl comes tomorrow, and we're all excited to meet her!

Petroleum Jelly Women

I think myself a relatively accepting person, however, even I have limits. One of the volunteers in our house, Dom, flies past those limits with the speed of an oncoming Mach6 fighter jet. Dom is....a piece of work. 63 years old, never shuts up, and is intent on offending the entire universe before he dies. That might have summed him up until we all went out to dinner last night, where new heights were attained in his crusade against manners and all things socially acceptable.

All of the volunteers in the house (that is, me, Robbie, Maggie, Archie, our coordinator, Jim (who's a girl), and Dom) went to a nice restaurant for dinner. Conversation ranged from family to hobbies to where we all are from. It was pleasant. It was appropriate. Then from far out in right field, Dom starts talking about pregnant women. Where did this topic come from, you ask? Hell if I know. He moved right along from how pregnant women are only eating for 1 and 1/10th of a person (because babies are small, so don't say you're eating for 2 as an excuse to eat more food or gain weight, ladies) to how when a woman says her water is breaking, it isn't actually water. WOW. Really, Dom? Because I seriously didn't know that until you told me over dinner just now. But no, the conversation doesn't stop there--he procedes to describe IN DETAIL the viscosity and appearance of this mysterious liquid. Apparently, it most closely resembles petroleum jelly. At least, Dom's wife's did when she asked him to reach his hand in their bed one night to check for her. Ew. Gross. Me. Out.

Can I please just say that i believe myself 100% completely justified in hating this man? And if you think that judgment is harsh, just consider for a moment that this is merely one in about four dozen serious breaches of social protocol that this man has committed. He's Canadian. He should know better.

A short list of other things said/done by Dom that night:

Made the "booby-grabbing gesture" with his hands not once but six or more times.
Attempted to rub an actual pregnant Thai woman's belly without asking.

I don't know what to do with this man. He's going to Vietnam this weekend, which will be a lovely vacation for the rest of us. Thank Buddha.

The Artist Known Only as "M"

When a Buddhist child is born, the parents consult a monk, who reads various star alignments, etc. and picks the perfect name for the child. The parents, at the same time, then give the child a nickname, like "Sue," "Jom," "Not," or "Guitar." Yes, I had a boy in class today named Guitar. I also had one named "Milk" and rumor has it there is a "Pizza" running around school somewhere.

Now, let me just say, thank the lord for this tradition of giving kids nicknames, because their real Buddhist names are unbelievably difficult to understand and just about impossible to say correctly. On the flip side, they can hardly pronounce our names, especially Rob's (R's are really difficult for them). I have changed my name from Steph to Stef on the board now, because "ph" is pronounced like "p" in "pop". To the entire second grade class, I am now "Step," probably permanently.

Getting the kids to spell out their names in English on namecards we made was hilarious. I'm going to try to write something in Thai on the next entry if I can figure out how, but their alphabet has 44 letters, and they aren't characters like in Chinese, but they're close in that they're very squiggly, and most of them look like "n's" or "u's" with various embellishments. So it was totally a loose translation when we tried to help them figure out how to spell their names. A girl whose name was pronounced "sigh" spelled it "sane."

Getting the kids to spell these names was a constant challenge for the past 3 days, as we taught new classes and took up a good twenty minutes each time. When I was praising one of the three-year-olds pictures, then, and she wanted to sign it and give it to me, I braced myself for the inevitable communication struggle sure to follow. This one time, though, I was given a reprieve. She was known only as M.

Dog I Think Has Rabies

The street our house is on is called Samlan Road. Samlan is basically comprised of eight "soi" or alleyways, and we're on number 7. I was on a mission tonight, hunting for a phone and some food. There are plenty of food stalls that have extremely cheap Thai goodies--I can get a bag of steamed rice for 5 baht, which is roughly 15 cents. Harder to find was a phone that would work to make international calls. But determined I was.

Now, let me say this--Thailand is the dumping ground for the world's unwanted dogs. They are everywhere. You can't walk five feet without seeing at least one, and for the most part they're well tolerated and taken care of. The monks feed the ones that hang around the temples, even.

Also rampant in Thailand is rabies. I don't think 5% of these dogs are vaccinated. So when I passed the last of the food stalls and the giant mean-looking dog lunged out at me, barking ferociously, I was legitimately worried. I jumped sideways (not a good idea, because that put me farther in the road, which might be worse than the rabies danger) and tried to just keep walking. The damn thing followed me. Of all the people walking on the street, and there were a lot, it was like he was zeroing in on me. I think this thing was racist. I mean, come on, I wasn't nearly the closest person to his family, yet he comes after only me on this crowded street. He was looking for some white meat and I was the best thing on the menu. I must have walked fifty yards with DITHR right behind me, sure the next thing I felt would be his jaws clamping down on my calves, trying to calculate how many punches I would be able to get in before he took me out and desperately wishing I had gotten the rabies vaccines instead of the Japanese Encephalitis. Who the freak gets Japanese Encephalitis? Rabies seemed the obvious choice at this juncture.

A group of scooters were flying down the road toward me and I took my chance at the last moment, jumping across the street at the last second, halfway hoping that DITHR would be caught in the crossfire of the psychotic scooter drivers. DITHR survived. I feel certain we will meet again.

Crazy Cat Children

So today was day 2 at the temple school. Our first class was with the 0.1 and 0.2 kids, which is the equivalent to pre-K and K classes in the states. Let me just say, I respect preschool teachers more than I can possibly express in words after today. I think they should have shrines built in their honor. We walked into this classroom, and it was unlike the other ones in that it had no desks, no chairs, and no chalkboards of any kind. The kids sit on the floor and I guess the teacher just tells them the lessons or something, which we hadn't planned for (up til today we had been writing the alphabet on the board and having the kids follow along and draw pictures to go with the letters).

So we walk in, and there are 10 really tiny kids sitting in a circle, and we're like, "oh. Man, this might be easy. That's like, 3 kids each? We so have this." Um. No. Literally, five seconds after we said this, the door opens and 20 more screaming kids run into the room--smaller, if possible, than the ones we already have in there. fml. FML. The teacher speaks no English. Lovely. We had planned to teach them the alphabet song, and it turns out they already know it. They might not know what it means, but without anything to write on, how are we to do something with that? So we sing the good morning song, introduce ourselves and have them say their names.

It's 9:07am, and we still have 53 minutes left. Shit. We are out of ideas.

That's when I thought it would be totally stellar to act out different kinds of animals and tell the kids their names. So I got into the middle of the circle, knelt down, pawed my face, and said "meow." I guess in Thai, "meow" must be code for "start mewling and hissing and jump the white girl," because next thing I knew I had 30 or so tiny Thai children crawling all over me, pretending to be cats, and where were my fellow volunteers--my cavalry? They were laughing their asses off, that's where they were.

We finally hunted down some crayons and paper for the kids to draw on, and they did that for as long as we could get them to, then we tried in vain to get a game of red-light, green-light going that failed miserably. Finally, I just looked at the teacher and was like "ok, that's all. We'll see you tomorrow." I think she understood that, because she just laughed. Ha.