Busy Busy Busy

Well it's no surprise that I've run out of time, with attending many farewell parties, packing, and visiting friends, that I've had no time to blog as I wished. Right now, my room is bare, with the somethings new, somethings old stuffed into two suitcases. What a whirlwind this year has been, but the adventure is not over! I will be traveling to India for two weeks, and then I will update the last few weeks in my blog. In the meantime, I will try to leave Nakhon Phanom less tearless than days before, and I will leave you with this reflection on traveling.

Photo taken at The Good Mook Coffee Shop, Mukdahan

Ahan Thai: An Epicure's Conclusions

Now that I have spent nearly an entire year dining on local Thai cuisine every day, I feel that I can declare a sound judgment (backed by meals and meals of evidence) on the dishes that make my heart beat a little faster upon sight. Without further ado, here are my most favorite Thai dishes... ever.

Som Tam

Tam papaya, pok pok! It is very nice! Eat with sticky rice! 
These are lines from a song I sing with my students ever since we covered the vegetables and fruits units. Som tam is traditionally made with shredded papaya, garlic, lots of chilis, tomatoes, and limes pounded in a mortal and pestle duo. Depending on the region, this national favorite is tinkered to satisfy the locals partialities. Tam Isaan/ Laos adds more fish sauce than usual, and other accoutrements such as crabs and small fishes. I've even seen snails tossed in as well. My favorite Tam is more of the Thai variety, less salty and with peanuts and green beans.

Laap Nua

Another Isan dish makes it into my select favorites. When I ask my students what they are making for lunch, I can tell when we're eating laap because they are usually very happy. Laap, from what I gather means minced meat. There are other varieties made with fish, pork, or chicken, but I root for the beef. The ground beef is minced and stir fried with chili peppers, basil, garlic, mint leaves, sauces of the yet unknown but highly approved sort. Usually accompanied by fresh long beans and sticky rice, Laap is the perfect meal on a blazing hot, sultry day.

Guway Tiyaw Nua

On cool rainy days, I usually enjoy sitting at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant that will only make one perfect dish: guway tiyaw. Like many Thai dishes, there are many permutations on the recipe (from various meats to noodle sizes and kinds), but I love eating this yummy noodle soup with sen lek (big noodles) and with nua (beef). The restaurants specializing in this dish let the broth simmer all day to achieve the optimum flavor. Condiments include vinegar, dried chili flakes, sugar, fish sauce, and sweet chili sauce. It's kind of the Thai equivalent of customizing your favorite coffee at Starbucks.. but way better.

Khana Moo Gop

Khana Moo Gop has to be my go-to stir fried dish in Thailand. In my first few months here, I mourned and was nostalgic for my broccoli and spinach, but quickly forgot this silliness when I discovered the availability and ubiquity of chinese kale! It's like broccoli and spinach decided to get married and had the best looking children of all in the kingdom of greens. Sweet and crunchy, this kale (khana) is tantalizing when stir fried with crispy pork and fresh chilis in oyster sauce. Aroy mak mak! (Very delicious!)

Tom Yum Koong

Without fail, Tom Yum Goong makes my tastebuds dance. Seeing the dish has a very strange Pavlov effect on me. Tom Yum is a hot and sour soup, comprised of lemon grass, ginger, kaffir lime leaves, chilis, tomatoes, mushrooms, onions and garlic in broth (note: the first three ingredients in the list are not to be eaten. I learned this from experience). Tom yum comes with fish, squid, or shrimp, but I definitely like the shrimp best, especially if caught right when I placed the order (oh yes, this happens in Thailand). I almost have it every day for lunch at one of my schools and tom yum has yet to disappoint me. Tom yum deserves its name indeed, for it is definitely a yummy piece of dish.

I can definitely empathize with Elizabeth Gilbert and her particular chapter in Italy on Eat, Pray, Love. I graduated from college with a lot of weight lost into my thesis, and I also went through a lot of heavy emotional challenges at the beginning of my service. Hence, I was much thinner than I was now, but thanks to the incredible tastes of Thailand, I have grown to be a more sated, healthier person. My tastebuds have not only been invigorated (sometimes to the point of nearly scalding my tongue from an offending piece of chili), but my thirst for life and experience has expanded and deepened. Cheers to that!

To the Market, to the Market: On Sights, Smells, and Insights.

A series of collages, designed to replicate the market viewing experience in Nakhon Phanom:

From left to right: cucumbers, yai and lek, fish heads, fresh produce

From left: bags of dried chili, rubber flip flops, fresh curries

From left, to right: grilled squid with tumeric, heaps of dragonfruit in season, woven sticky rice carriers

From left, to right: fresh vegetables sai tung, ripe pumpkin in season, tomatoes and limes

from left, to right: desserty-licious custard apples, silks for sale, boiled peanuts

Were the array of images dizzying and arbitrary? An overload for the senses? If I could somehow convey not just the sights, but also the varying sounds and the smells constituting the market, I would. My usual market (talat) is chaotic, noisome, and loud.  Therefore, I look forward to making my usual rounds to buy food and other etcetera items for the house. One of the biggest ways I've adjusted to life in Nakhon Phanom has surprisingly been the happy preoccupations of the domestic sort, and going to the market has become now become an act of effortless meditation, amidst the disorder and noise around me. Navigating various stalls of produce, meats, clothing, shoes, and other knick knacks has infused Zen into my life.

The market is redolent of discordant aromas: the trail of smells, from the roasting meats on a spitting fire, to the chili and spices, to the fragrant fruits and vegetables, the pungent herbs, to the distinct stench of raw meat, defy the sterile and emotionally arid supermarkets of the States. Here, the markets follow a faint sense of order and category; divisions between produce, meat, and textiles are more guidelines rather than rules. It won't be out of the ordinary to find an island of butchered fish-heads next to heaps of rubber flip flops for sale. Nor rows of raw seafood next to a coconut drink stand.

Despite my unflinching yearning for organization (now buried deep within my consciousness), I find the dissonance about the market appealing. You don't take a stand for granted, and each one will stand on its own. You have to vigilant-- since the produce stands are scattered, you don't want to settle on a mundane tomato and stumble upon an incredibly vibrant one, freshly plucked from the vine. All the colors stand out. The activity is so bustling and stimulating. People-watching becomes an inevitable activity to complement the shopping.

One of my favorite things about the fresh / night markets here in NKP is the glowing karma of the foods you buy. Produce is local, and you buy directly from the farmer (yes farmer's markets are predominant around here) or the producer. Moreover, produce here come in seasons, so you never buy a product forced to flourish at the wrong times, and you have something to look forward to in various periods of the year. This month, dragonfruit is in season; their hot pink skins glow in the color palette of September's markets! 


It goes on without saying that the best thing about buying food... is eating it! While I cross things off my shopping list, it's very easy to satisfy my cravings by munching on a snack, whether it's a grilled meat on a stick, fruit, or a dessert of some kind. My go-to is usually a bag of sour mango and the complimentary sugar, salt, and chili dip.

Fruit a la carte

I will surely miss the Sunday and mid-week routine of dropping by the fresh markets in my village. I'm sure I will find some farmer's market to lose myself in, but none that can compare to the sights, sounds, and smells of the fresh markets in Thailand.

I Spy with my Little Eye, Something that Begins with a Letter B

Here is a clue, it involves more than just pens, crayons and glue:
Maybe a little imagination, some fun, and maybe some rhyming too.

We are working on a cumulative semester project, and the best one will be posted here soon.

Rocking out in the Village

Like most of the events circulating my life here in Thailand (or rather, my life circulating such events), I dropped in on what I only thought to be a Thai festival but instead, was a huge celebration for the King. While there are many festivities in honor of the King, this was one was of epic proportions. For one, I did not expect a prominent Thai band, Carabao to play at this concert.

Me, Trish and her visiting friend Tiela decided to drop by because everyone around town had their tongues wagging about this event all day last Tuesday. My students in particular were pretty inquisitive, if not insistent, on my attendance. Trisha's fellow teacher kept calling her that afternoon in talks of a rendezvous. When we walked out of our house, the highway was lined with cars and trucks on end, and crowds of people walking towards the army base donning pink shirts and bearing Thai flags on sticks. Everyone wearing pink means serious business.

A blurry vision of the band onstage (pre-recognition)

EVERY PERSON wearing pink and dancing with Thai flags

It was only after walking around the backstage and circumnavigating the mud did I realize how special this festival was. After many overnight bus rides, it is impossible not to recognize the famous Thai band Carabao (in their youth, two of the band members studied in the Philippines!) with their videos and music playing loud and clear on the stereo. I was supremely excited when I realized it was them singing on stage, and even asked if the girl was collaborating with them! I was less than a hundred feet away from Thai superstars! How lucky was I?!

It was a treat to watch the usual villagers unzipped of their daily preoccupations and rock out to the music. I really wish that I had acquired enough Thai at this point to sing along. Nevertheless I had a great time swaying to the beat of the music and marveling at the band's exceptional guitar skills (read: MAD skillz).

At points during the night, when I again receded into the depths of my thinking, the base aligning to the tempo of my heartbeats, I began to think of how the King has, and continues to be a unifying force for the country all across socio-economic lines, as well as a vanguard for the nation's self-identity. Such reflection turned inward, and I then started to wonder what were the unifying, overarching forces that held me together during the year. These will be explored at a later post. For now,  I am amazed at how seamless my integration into my community turned out to be. I did it-- it happened without my conscious awareness--I had acclimated in Thailand psychologically, spiritually and emotionally, at some points gradually and some dramatically. With my last two weeks here in Nakhon Phanom, it is so difficult to live in the present with the past and future tense and demanding my attention and reflection. I am striving to recognize the gift of every day, the present, while trying to have a healthy balance of looking at my life in retrospect, and pragmatically looking ahead.

The only way to achieve this for now, is not to let moment like Carabao run past me while I linger in my thoughts. So I am resolved, for the next couple of weeks to relish the present, mindful of the richness of my past and ever-so hopeful for my future. Here's to rocking out my 11 months in Thailand!

Lessons and Milestones

Sometimes I approach Tuesdays and Thursdays with a little dread, aware of some unknown soul-trying challenges lurking in the seemingly benign corners of Na Bpong school. If I'm luckily, they're usually the predictable classroom chaos, unwelcome fondles from innocent first graders, and uncooperative 5th grade boys with growing egos. Last week however, was just one of those days that made me want to cry on the spot, swear  I would not step foot in the 5th and 6th grade classrooms again come hell or high water, even if it means I won't get my stipend.

This year, I have tried my best to inculcate the value of working independently, regardless of whether or not a worksheet or a test receives a hundred percent. But because the prevailing academic mentality here is perfection, it does not matter whether or not a student produced his or her own work. As long as there are perfect answers, perfect lines with dotted i's, they are safe from the policing of the teacher stick (yes, it's a hitting stick.) But this teleological, deeply flawed approach has prevented my students from summoning up enough confidence in their intelligence to fulfill their work (or I suppose, the diligence to finish it themselves.) Last Thursday, I caught one of my better students giving out the answers to the class bully like it was an infectious disease, in order to win some social favors. In retrospect, I realized my mistakes in approaching this problem:

a. I was marking off finished worksheets at a corner in the room, where we track students' progresses. When I saw this happening, I pointed it out to the entire classroom, and the entire class lost some of their stars.

b. My explanation for the consequences of cheating were probably inadequate, as I got flustered and visibly upset

c. I made the incredibly regrettable mistake of saying that in America, it was strictly forbidden to copy each others' work. Instead, I should have said that in every school, cheating is strictly forbidden because it hinders learning and personal accountability.

To this comment, my best student responded by saying "this isn't America. this is Na Bpong school" in Thai, which of course, I can understand. That comment gave me a huge reality check, a slap in the face, and collapsed my hubris. Of course, how could I make this egregious, irrelevant and inconsiderate comparison? I hurt their feelings, but I didn't recognize it at the time so I quietly collected my things and walked out of the classroom.

This week, when remorse settled in, I got numerous apology letters, and affirmations of friendship from my 5th and 6th grade class. Here's an example:

It reads: "Ud sorry. Ud love Teacher Coconut"

On Tuesday we had a brief discussion on why it isn't good to cheat and why it hurt my feelings. I am impressed by their genuine and immediate apologies, and how much they were also willing to forgive my mistakes. These are the occasions where I am so deeply humbled by this tough profession. It is a reminder that while I have acquired some finesse with teaching, I have still much to learn.

On the other hand, today is also an occasion to celebrate student milestones! In my 6th grade class at Thai Samakee, we worked on hobbies and the triumvirate of speaking, listening and writing by interviewing everyone in the class about their favorite hobbies. I have a student Jack, who started off the year behind his classmates and who hung out with a couple of boys who have now dropped out of school. He was timid, recluse, and did not like to participate in our activities as much as the other kids. Now, he is the source of praise (the only initial student who could recall "dragonfruit" in english!) and has become more and more confident in his abilities. Today, I was amazed at how he asked "What do you like to do?" to all his classmates so confidently and nonchalantly, as if he were telling the time. He may have finished last, but I was so proud to see how his hard work has paid off. Even during lunch time, I heard him asking puzzled students what they like to do. All in all, the progress these 6th graders have made since the first time I saw them has floored me. I was a very proud teacher today, sneaking off wiping a tear or two maybe, as I heard them chatter "I like to cook food" and "Joom likes to dance" all day.

Here is a copy of Jack's work, with correct grammar and dotted i's.