Questo il beccio di Tosca!

Some of the girls went out tonight for a dose of high culture at the opera. I'd never been to an opera before. I tried to put preconceived notions out of my mind, but part of me kept hoping a fat lady in a viking hat would show up.

We saw Puccini's Tosca. It was tragic, but good. I wish I were so vocally gifted.

There were English and Thai subtitles projected onto screens on either side of the stage, but I enjoyed trying to figure out as many words as possible based on my Spanish.

It wasn't until I got to Thailand that I realized how much I like foreign languages. I feel like a spy trying to crack the code. Every street sign or poster I pass is a secret message, waiting to be deciphered.

As of right now, I can read about seven Thai consonants and two vowels... out of 44 and 28, respectively. Baby steps, people, baby steps. Did I mention that Thai is hard?

I know some quasi-useful words and phrases, though.

Hello, goodbye, yes, no, thank you, left, right, the color blue, the color purple, beautiful, ginger chicken with rice, chicken, pork, the numbers through 100, "Look at this/that.", "How much is it?"

Hm. I guess that's about it. Now that I can see my Thai vocabulary enumerated, I'm pretty unimpressed with myself.

no more pooh rice for me...

My beloved Cholada Cafe - the restaurant on the second floor of my apartment building that always molds my steamed rice into the shape of a bear - is closing at the end of the week.

I'd like to observe a moment of silence for this loss.

They're moving to somewhere off Sukhumvit Road. It'll probably be better for their business, but I'm pretty bummed about it. Their gai pad king was the best!

And Cute Little Boy will be gone. I'll miss the slapping noise his tiny foam sandals made as he spent the days tearing up and down the halls.

*sniffle*

English Camp is done!

I was too tired to write about English Camp last night, but it went well. The teachers remembered our intro rap, the morning stations ran more or less smoothly, and the afternoon talent show of skits and songs was entertaining.

The kids liked Dirt and Worms, although some said it was too sweet. I never thought anything could be too sweet for a Thai. Chocolate pudding and Oreos is the limit, apparently.

In the afternoon, we voted on the three best songs or skits (out of 10 acts, total) and those teams advanced to play camping Jeopardy. This was fun for the three teams that got to come onstage to play, but the other seven groups got bored pretty quickly.

I came home at 4:00, showered, and crashed. I woke up to eat some leftover tuna sandwiches Nummon sent home with me, and sat around my apartment like a zombie, too tired to go out to dinner with Alyssa, Mariela, and Simone.

Now I can look forward to the October break!

pomegranate

I love how Thai people are thoughtful in really random ways.

I was eating lunch on Friday in the teacher lunchroom, as always. Ekapol came in and sat down at the opposite end of the table, as always. He never sits next to us, for some reason, but he'll carry on a conversation with us from the other end of the table, or even from the next table over.

I was chatting with Mariela and Alyssa when he asked me if I saw the pomegranate.

"Pomegranate? Out there on the lunch table? No, I didn't see it... Where was it?"

No, he told me, not on the lunch buffet table - on my desk. I hadn't seen a pomegranate on my desk, I told him, but I hadn't been at my desk for a few hours.

"Oh, I bought a pomegranate yesterday at a vendor, and he wanted to go home, so I bought another one for you. Have you tried it?"

I told him I'd never eaten pomegranate before, and that I was looking forward to it.

success!

Mariela and I did a pudding test run in the school kitchen a little while ago. It was easy and it tastes great! I'm super excited to make 150 servings of it tomorrow.

Huzzah!

We're English teachers.

I'm sitting in the back of a cab, thinking about English past tenses...

"What's another verb that ends in -ish? Wish... fish..."

"Dish."

"Wish, wished. Fish, fished. Dish, dished."

"Squish!"

"Squish, squished."

"I say squashed - 'I squashed a bug.'"

"But you can say squished, too."

"Yeah, but they're not interchangeable. Squashed is like..."
*smacking one palm down onto the other*
"...and squished is like..."
*slowly curling fingers into a ball as if squeezing playdough through them*

"So, I guess squished is more like a substance oozing out, and squashed is used for things you flatten."

"Yeah. So... the person in the middle of the back seat is squashed, but mud is squished."

"You can't squish just anything."

"Squash, squish, squish, squash."

"Can you squish a squash?"

"..."

homemaking

The students made a list of classes they take in their workbook yesterday. Along with Thai, history, and geography, several mentioned something called "vocational."

I asked Nummon about it. She said the kids learned cooking, flower arranging, sewing, and sweeping.

"Sweeping?!" I said.

"Yes, you know, what the different tools are, how to use a broom..."

"Why do they learn to use a broom at school?"

"Because it's something they need to know later in life."

She said this as if sweeping were a totally normal thing to teach a fourth grader in a school class.

How much instruction is involved, I wonder? I mean, the only way you can really mess up is by holding the brushy end up and scraping the stick against the ground... but you'd think most people would figure that out without 30 minutes of classroom instruction.