Mister Donut

May 13, 2014

The volunteer teachers are here!!!  It’s really wonderful having other English speaking teachers around.  I’ve had the chance to get to know them and they are delightful.

Sunday morning (Saturday in AZ) I did face time my brother.  He just happened to be at dinner with our parents, his wife, two other brothers and another sister-in-law!  They were out eating Mexican food and I got to talk to each one and pretend like I was really there.  My mom ‘fed’ me a chip with salsa on it through the phone.  I may have cried when I didn’t really get to eat it… I miss Mexican food fiercely!  A couple days ago I was craving a Chipotle burrito bowl.  I would have given just about anything for one.  My mouth is watering just writing about it! 

Speaking of food, Karlie this is for you (my sis-in-law has requested lots of food pictures):

Some kind of meat with carrots and bean sprouts.  It was REALLY tasty!  Tonight we had chicken with snow peas and a dumpling sort of thing on the side.  Lunch was green cauliflower with ground pork.  They eat a LOT of pork here.

The volunteers got in around 2am Sunday morning.  I was really hoping that they would get back sooner and we could go to church together.  I found out that in order to get to 9:00 church you have to leave the school around 6:20.  I haven’t ever been to the train station and didn’t feel comfortable riding there alone that early, finding my way to the church from the train station, and everything involved with that!  So I watched some general conference and took notes.  It was really nice.  

When the volunteers went in to town to the Tesco to go shopping I passed.  So I felt like under the circumstances I made good Sunday choices even though I didn’t get to a sacrament meeting.

Yesterday evening I rode into town with the volunteers.  A lot of people stopped to watch 7 Americans pass on bicycles.  It was like a mini parade for them!  LOTS of people look/stare at us.  In the store I caught 5 pairs of eyes locked on us at one point.

They have parking areas for the scooters and bicycles. 

In Happy Plaza there is a donut shop called Mr. Donut.  We got some delicious donuts!  I got two.  One was a Bavarian crème with powdered sugar on the outside.  The other was a twisted one which they had cut in half and filled with custard and crème (on the left in the picture.  it's called Flocky Chou...).  One was 25 baht (about $.75)  the other one was normally 15 baht on sale for 10 baht (about $.30).  We also found an ice cream stand that had ice cream for 30 cents a scoop.  I got double chocolate. (I feel like I should inform you that I didn’t eat my donuts then, I saved them for the next day…)

 Me, Stevie [the head teacher], and Karly

Geneva, Here are the grocery store pictures you requested:

dessert cakes

 Some kind of spiky fruit

 More fruit

 Veggies

Yucky looking packaged meat

Apples that look like noses

 Pringles.  I was amused by the flavors.

Almost all the chip type snacks came in seaweed flavor

The meat section....  ..... 

We were amused by the model in these packages 

I'm glad that's not spelled with one l 

 This is what I bought.  Well, this is what I tried to buy.  They wouldn't let me have the asian pear... The took it and set it to the side.  Two other girls tried to buy one and they took those away too!  We figured that we were supposed to have them weighed in the produce department or something. We'll try again...

 Watermelon seeds!

Cute little cracker/frosting snacks 

I spent a lot of time today planning and getting ready because…..TOMORROW I have my first day of teaching.  I am equal parts excited and nervous.  I hope it all goes well.  The building where I will eventually be teaching isn’t done yet, so we are in a different building and I don’t have a room.  I’ll just be going into the Thai classrooms.  It’s not ideal but it’ll be just fine.

Last night I was walking back to my room and Megan was walking to get her laundry.  We were walking along when we saw something bad!  We thought it was a scorpion, but he didn’t look exactly like one… He was like a spider-scorpion hybrid.  Megan grabbed a big stick and tried to hit it off the sidewalk into the dirt.  She didn’t hit it quite right and that devil started running.  He was quick.  He ran.  We screamed.   He lifted his tail like he wanted to strike.  We were fine, but he was still on the sidewalk.  It was pretty close to the volunteers’ room and we thought it would be best for him to  be gone.  We decided that it would be best to get the guard and let him take care of the little brute.  I went and fetched Bin while Megan kept an eye on the dirty creature.  Bin came, took the stick, and crunched that bugger.  Yuck.  I get the creeps just thinking about it.

Apparently there are centipedes here.  There was one by the girls room the night they got here.  I saw it the next day once it was dead and being eaten by ants.  I do not look forward to seeing those alive.  I DID see a millipede, but that wasn’t bad.

The school gave me a call phone today.  Nothin’ fancy, but it’ll be good to have in case of an emergency.  I like that it has the squiggly Thai numbers.

We have AC in our rooms, but they don't want us to run it all the time.  I want to offer to pay for it so I can run it all the time!  I think that when I get back to the states I'll either feel really grateful for the constant AC or I'll be used to the heat and feel frivolous running it constantly.  They ask us to just run it from 7:00pm to 7:30am and 2-4 in the afternoon.  We are supposed to set it at 25 degrees celsius (77 degrees fahrenheit).  That with a fan feels really good.  Today it got up to 99 with 70% humidity! Tomorrow it's supposed to get up to 97 but feel like 111.  I get sweaty really easily and usually shower more than once a day.  The Thai people almost all shower twice a day.  Tang's mom showers three times everyday!  I wish the shower water would get a little colder.  I hope my body continues to adjust to the heat and humidity.  My hair is pretty much always up and I plan to keep it that way!

I think that's all.  Until next time! (And remember, I'd love for you to leave a comment!)