An Unorthodox End of the Semester

Packing can be so so daunting, especially when your entire needs are going to need to fit into a bag or two. In order to avoid another existential crisis, I'm taking a break by posting this entry, an account of my recent culinary rendezvous with a local delicacy: fried cicadas.

MMhm. You heard me right. I figure since I've been persuaded to eat crickets and red ant eggs, what's another invertebrate, right? So after almost a semester of goading, I finally gave in to my teachers' (and my students' ) challenge.

I know this picture is off-topic, but it was the school's last day! Had to take some silly pictures with the students.

Here, today's adventure begins. A venture to the forest (still part of the school grounds) in search of the visually inconspicuous yet easily audible fast food.

Here's what them little buggers look like. Kind of cute actually, looks like they have a koala nose.

Yes, that's me, holding a 15 foot long bamboo pole, with something really sticky attached to the end. This apparatus is actually quite efficient. All you have to do, is gently tap the cicada and the hunt is done.

You see that little speck at the end of the stick? There's my dessert.

It took Trisha several attempts in order to hold it. They are a lot bigger than you can imagine and they flap their wings like nobody's business.

Clipping their wings so they can't get away... This really is quite the process.

And off they go to the frying pan! Add some grease, MSG, and voila..

Chim-doo, chim-doo (taste taste!)

Crunchy, yet satisfying. Dare I say an adequate substitute to curly fries (with protein too!)?

Alright, this blog entry will be it for a while. I am off to my travels tomorrow (spanning Northern Thailand, and then the southern islands) and won't dare go near a computer. See you all, and wish me safe travels!

Another Atypical Day: Delivering Letters.

9:00 am rolls around and I stare out my window hoping, eagerly awaiting the glimpse of a car, or a motorcycle, ready to whisk me off to school. Does this sound a little too industrious? maybe, but the past two weeks have been littered with class cancellations for a variety of (not entirely legitimate) reasons (as usual). This means that I have had minimum class time with my students. This means, that I haven't had much time to review our semester material, especially with the 6th graders because March marks the end of their academic year. Fail.

Granted, I was more excited by the fact that I had made these cards for my 6th graders that had a group picture of all of us, than the cumulative semester activity I had in mind, but still. I think this still qualifies as a sound reason for wanting to go to school.

Once Trisha was dutifully picked up, I huffed and puffed and resolved to ride Zoom!Bella (my red bike, perpetually out of air) all the way to Baan Na Bpong, which is the village where the school resides, in order to deliver the cards to the sixth graders that I won't see again. The morning bike ride was quite lovely actually, despite the tropical sun, as the cool winds were to my favor (perhaps an omen from the universe concurring with my wholly impulsive decision?).

I pulled up into the village, conveniently as one my 6th graders walks out of his house. Promptly, I delivered the card I had made the afternoon before, and asked if he could show me where all the other 6th graders lived.

Feeling like somewhat of a celebrity again, the Na Bpong students traversing around the village proceeded to follow me around as I delivered the cards. It was really nice being able to see where the students lived, and even meet some of their parents.

A crazy, crazy thing: when I was a child, I used to climb trees in order to get these berry-like fruits. We called them "aratilis" is Tagalog, and how fitting must it be, to see this tree, a relic of my youth, among a throng of Thai school children. A village student helped me, oddly enough, reclaim a forgotten berry of my childhood. I think this symmetry is quite poignant.

Now that my camera is fixed (800 baht later), I took some pictures. Definitely enjoyed my day off--it was well spent glimpsing the everyday experiences of my students, and being able to see them beyond the context of our classroom.

Me and some of the students who joined in on the parade:

Showing off their cards:

A student of mine, with her nong chai ai (shy little brother):

My two resident troublemakers:

More card deliveries!

Khan, my day's helper (and no, he wasn't on stilts all day):

(a slightly more formal picture)

(don't tell, but Paw is one of my favoritest students of all time)

I loves them.

Brown is Beautiful

For the past three weeks, I've been working on "The Body" unit with all of my students. In order to reinforce the lessons, my students have worked on self-portraits and self-evaluations. Both are fascinating projects. I've had the pleasure of observing how my students see and portray themselves. A lot of them drew themselves as not necessarily how they look literally, but what they fantasize themselves to be--cartoon characters with comically sized muscles and brightly colored hair. Kids at this age take full advantage the freedom to imagine themselves as whatever they want to be, superpowers or not, unshackled by their present realities. So what if their family lives in a tiny village? They can be Goku if they want. This particular imagination is what I dearly hope will not dissolve over time. However, the desires to be someone else different is also two-pronged.

One of my aims in these exercises is to instill the notion that being beautiful or handsome does not require a specific set of characteristics. Here, is it widely accepted that lighter skin, an aquiline nose, and being thin as beautiful. I want to take a hammer and squash these perceptions to pieces. I want them to understand that beautiful comes in different shapes, sizes, and colors. I wanted them to realize that brown is not the apricot crayon that comes in a box. There are no "Dove" campaigns here to disrupt the conventional notions of beauty, so there might be no one around telling my students that they are beautiful the way they are. I wanted them to realize that being beautiful is something one can independently claim and assert, and not some aesthetic value, appropriated by society, to aspire to. I want them to understand that imagining themselves as something else, something that holds more power, might not even be necessary, when they realize the kinds of powers they already have.

Yes all these I hoped from a simple exercise. It may have not succeeded the way I wanted to, but who knows. They will hearken back to this simple school project and at least they know that they can indeed think of themselves as beautiful.

Here are some sample projects. I apologize for using photobooth, my camera is currently in the repair shop...

My name is King.

I have short hair. I am tall. I am fat. I have a big nose. I am handsome.

My name is Pbit.

I have short. I am thin. I have a small nose. I am brown. I am handsome.

My name is Ai.

I have long black hair. I have small black eyes. I have a small nose. I have brown skin.

I am short. I am fat. I am beautiful.

My name is Urn.

I have short black hair. I have small black eyes. I have a small nose. I have brown skin.

I am short. I am thin. I am beautiful.

Here are some photos of my students drawing their self-portraits. Eventually, I plan to post a gallery of some of their works.

Mae Nam Kong, in the Dry.

I thought it might be time to further elaborate the place where I'm living, and there's no describing Nakhon Phanom without mentioning the Mekong River, or the Mae Nam Khong, as the locals call it, which literally translates to "the mother river." With good reason--the Mekong River, spans from Tibetan plataeu, to China, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and flows into the South China Sea. It is one of the world's 12th largest rivers at near 3000 miles. I had a crazy idea that it would be the most awesome trip to kayak down from Tibet, but I suppose rapids and waterfalls might compromise my corporeal integrity by the time I get to the sea... My roommate and I have made a pact to only visit Vietnam by boat (hearsay tells me it's only 80 baht...). During the dry season, there are even areas in Nakhon Phanom where tobacco plants supplant the river's flora.

This last weekend, my roommate and I visited the river and discovered that a beach had surfaced, most likely as a result of the dry season (hello daily 100 degree weather). Locals greeted the onset of the hot season by taking a dip into the river, sans traditional bathing attire. Most of them fully clothed, adult and child alike, combed the beach for some freshwater clams and lazed around in inner tubes. Trish and I walked for most of the day so our respite placed us at the river, just before the glorious sunset of Thailand.

Here are some of the pictures that Trish had taken:

I certainly hope that you are all enjoying yourselves back home, nestled safely away from this tropical heat. I am teaching my last three weeks of school before vacation starts, and then an epic backpacking odyssey throughout Thailand begins!