Outdoor BBQ

One of the teachers finished working here and we went out to dinner to celebrate.  We went out to an outdoor BBQ/hot pot.  Each table had a grill/pot in the center.  The grill is a circle about 12” in diameter.  The middle 5”or so are a pot to boil things.  The outer ring is to BBQ meat. 

Fon and Yok. Fon teaches one of the kindergarden classes and Fon is a secretary/IT person.

It was a buffet so you just get whatever you’d like and throw it in the pot of on the grill to cook.  Since you cook everything at your table there was a LOT of raw meat.  It’s an outdoor restaurant.  It’s hot and there are lots of bugs, but that it just how Thailand it.  They had some little fans rotating above the meat with a bit of plastic tied on to keep bug off.  That helped a bit.  They had a lot of veggies and I liked those.  I ate mostly chicken and veggies with some beef, pork, and fish.  They eat A LOT of pork here.  A LOT, a lot!  Most days our lunch and dinner contain pork.  In addition to things you could cook at your table they had some fresh fruit, French fries, eggrolls and such.  I had a few pieces of watermelon, a little plate of hard, cold French fries, and an egg roll.  I ate enough food to get full and didn’t get sick, so I count that as a win. 

The red plastic that's hanging down is what was attached to the fan.

It seems like almost everyone here loves squid.  

It was a buffet so you just get whatever you’d like and throw it in the pot of on the grill to cook.  Since you cook everything at your table there was a LOT of raw meat.  It’s an outdoor restaurant.  It’s hot and there are lots of bugs, but that it just how Thailand it.  They had some little fans rotating above the meat with a bit of plastic tied on to keep bug off.  That helped a bit.  They had a lot of veggies and I liked those.  I ate mostly chicken and veggies with some beef, pork, and fish.  They eat A LOT of pork here.  A LOT, a lot!  Most days our lunch and dinner contain pork.  In addition to things you could cook at your table they had some fresh fruit, French fries, egg rolls and such.  I had a few pieces of watermelon, a little plate of hard, cold French fries, and an egg roll.  I ate enough food to get full and didn’t get sick, so I count that as a win. 

After we finished eating we sat and talked for a while.  Our leftover food was sitting on the table.  It was getting dark by this time so the bugs were attracted to the lights above and around the tables.  There were bugs flying all over the place and crawling over our food.  That’s just normal and it didn’t seem to bother anyone other than me.  I’m getting used to having bugs around, but I still don’t like it.

One of the other teachers wanted to get a picture with me.  She speaks almost no English and wanted Tang to ask me if I’d take a picture with her.  Tang told her that she needed to ask me if she wanted a picture.  The other Thai teachers (who speak more English than her, but not a whole lot) told her that she needed to say, “Do you want some action?”  She ran it by Tang and Tang let her know that that was NOT the right way to ask me.  Some of the Thai teachers thought that’s what she was supposed to ask, a couple of them knew it was wrong and were being silly. 

A Weekend in Pitsanoluk

 This past weekend we went to Pitsanulok. We went Saturday on the 10:00 train and came home on the 1:45 Sunday train.  We thought we’d go see a movie in English and go to the night market!  We were excited about both of those things.  We didn’t end up doing either… I’m getting ahead of myself.

At the train station we ran into a group of soldiers.  We got a picture.  There are more soldiers around.  That's the only difference I have noticed since the political unrest--more soldiers.

When we got off the train we looked at the map they have there at the station.  We knew that there was a movie theatre that the volunteers in that city had seen.  They told us it was by the Tesco.  The problem we faced was that there were 2 Tescos and we didn’t know which one it was by.  We stood there discussing what to do for quite some time.  We talked to someone who knew a little English and they thought our best bet was going to Central Plaza—a mall and shopping center.  We thought that sounded like a good idea, but weren’t sure about the movies there.  The English teachers who had seen a movie has specifically told us they had gone to the theater by Tesco.  We stood by the map debating for another chunk of time.  After trying to decide for far too long what we should do a man approached us.  “Do you need help?” he asked us in perfect English.  YES!  We told his that we wanted to see a movie but weren’t sure where to go, that we thought it was by Tesco but other people had told us that Central Plaza would be a better choice but we weren’t sure about the movies being in English.  He said he wasn’t sure about the movies, but asked some Thai teenagers nearby and they said Central Plaza was the place to go!  We bargained a price with the tuktuk driver.  He thought the price was far too low, but when we decided to just take the bus instead and walked away he agreed (unhappily) on our price.  We got to Central Plaza and just looking a the signs of what awaited made us incredibly happy: McDonalds, Dairy Queen, The Pizza Company, Auntie Anne’s Pretzels!  Western food and treats make us really happy.  

I love fun bathroom signs!

We walked in and it was big and clean and cold and full of delicious foods.   We kept wanting to stop but we decided it was best to go check on movie times before we did anything else.  We went to the theatre and the line was sooo long! Stevie pulled out her phrase book and opened to the ‘entertainment’ section.  We asked if the movies were in English or had English subtitles.  After a lot of pointing and finding another English speaker we got the information we needed. They were showing 2 movies: Spiderman and King someone (don’t remember).  Spiderman is what we were hoping to see.  It was dubbed in to Thai and did NOT have any subtitles.  The movie about the king was in Thai and had English subtitles.  We didn’t care to see the movie about an ancient king (it’s the 5^th in a series) and weren’t thrilled about reading subtitles either.  So we left the theatre and decided to have lunch.  There were a lot of tasty choices and we settled on The Pizza Company.  It.was.amazing!  I got a garden salad (they don’t really have green salad here) and shared a Hawaiian pizza with Lindsie.

After lunch we window shopped until we had enough room in our bellies for DQ.  I got a medium chocolate brownie blizzard.  The large blizzard here is about the size of a small in the states.  I think it was 12 oz and cost between $1 and $1.50. 

There was a market on the ground floor of the mall (The mall is 4 stories tall) and we spend time there wandering, looking, and sampling.  The brownies and rice/caramel treats were good.  The egg yolk sticky treat was horrible. 

 The second from the top is crabs--still in the shells.

There they are up close.

Look at eyes on this mannequin! 

So scary!

They have a store that looks and feels just like the Apple store.  It was labeled as an apple retail resale store called iStudio.  We sent in there and looked around.

This phone case was at the iStudio store.

Then we walked around a little more and a couple girls got soft pretzels and lemonade from Auntie Anne’s.  

We wanted to go to our hotel but we weren’t sure where it was.  Van (the school director of the school in Pitsanoluk) booked the hotel for us.  It belongs to her aunt and all we knew was it was her aunt’s hotel and it was old.  I had really low expectations and thought it’d be like one of the review we read online of another old hotel: “used to be in a nice field by a pond, but now it’s a mosquito filled swamp.”  We sat around for far too long waiting.  We had called Van to get the info about the hotel.  We had facebooked the girls at the other school to see if they could have Van call us.  We sat at the movie theater for about an hour waiting to hear back about our hotel.  After an hour Megan finally realized that was what we were waiting for and said, “I have the information about the hotel!”  She didn’t know that’s what we were waiting for.  We headed back to the Apple (not Apple) store to use the computers to get directions to the hotel.  While we were in there a worker come over and asked us to play a game with her.  She had an exercise app she wanted us to use.  You hold the iPhone and do 20 squats.  It times you to see how fast you do them.  They gave us pins for participating and entered us in to a contest to win a couple prizes.

The app screen for the squatting game. 

Our hotel was actually pretty good.  It cost us $5 each and was clean AND had AC!  

We checked in, relaxed, and rested our feet for about an hour.  Then we thought we would grab a bite to eat and head to the night market!  We were SO so excited about that.  We ate at a plaza across from our hotel called “Big C”.  I got corn soup, Caesar salad, chicken and fries. Surprisingly the soup was the best part of the meal.  After we ate we went to take a tuktuk to the night market.  Is started to drizzle and the tuktuk driver wouldn’t take us.  We gathered that maybe it was cancelled because of the light rain. But we weren’t sure…  We were feeling disappointed since that was the MAIN reason we were there.  We were also frustrated because we weren’t totally sure that it was cancelled.  I threw my head back and loudly said, “Does anyone speak English?!”  Not 10 seconds later someone walked over and raised their hand.  Thank you universe!  He let us know that they close the market if/when it starts to rain.  We decided that since we couldn’t go to the market we’d go walk around Big C.  There was a store and shops inside.  Most of them closed at 9:00 and we headed back to our hotel before 10:00.  The girls and I stayed up talking for a bit then headed to bed.  

The next morning we didn’t have to leave until 8:30 (we usually have to leave the school before 6:30 on Sunday to get to church).  Church was lovely.  There was a baptism.  We took the train home and it was a good weekend even though it turned out differently than we expected.

BIRTHDAY!

I wrote this more than a week ago, but I was waiting to get pictures form a friend.  So here you go!

I turned the big 2-8 this week!  In my mind I know that 28 isn't very old.  But when I think about being here with 18, 20, and 22 year-olds, or thinking about graduating HS 10 years ago... Then I start to feel a little bit old.  Plus 28 feels really close to 30 and that always felt like it was so far away... but it'll be here in a flash.  Anyways...  You're not here to hear me blab on and on about getting old!

It was kind of fun to have my birthday here.  Thailand is 14 hours ahead of AZ so it was almost like my birthday was 2 days long.  And I loved it!

The kids sang happy birthday to me in class.  They sing it differently here (no, I don't mean in a different language...) they hold the first syllable of 'birthday' for 3 counts instead of 1 count.  They also don't sing "happy birthday dear _____" they just sing "happy birthday to you" one more time.  When I told Tang and the kids that we put the name in the song they thought that warranted singing it again!  I think I was sung to more on this birthday than any other one.  My brother Brad even iMessaged a voice recording of him singing to me in an opera voice.  It was so great!

I invited the volunteers to join me for a birthday dinner.  There is a hot pot restaurant across the street from Tesco that I wanted to try.  They all jumped at the opportunity to get out and eat somewhere new.  Prior to my birthday I had only even eaten at one hot pot restaurant and that was almost 10 years ago in China.  I just remember it being so so good.  This one was called MK.

(Our veggie plate.  I tried everything!)

(Megan, Me, and Karlie.  I'm holding a white ear mushroom and it was delicious and tender!) 

(Divine watermelon smoothie)

(During dinner.  That duck is the napkin dispenser.)

Nobody spoke English so we just looked at the menu and tried to figure out what would be good.  Here the waiters stay at your table until you order.  If you aren't ready they just stand and wait for you to be ready.  By pointing and using hand gestures we figured out that two vegetable platters would be a good amount.  The plates had lettuce, cabbage, 4 kinds of mushrooms, tofu, fried tofu, corn, clear noodles, greens, gypsum, green onions, _____.  I also ordered a watermelon slushy (which was divine) and some chicken.  They had two hot plates build into our table with pots of boiling broth.  We dumped all out food in there and let it cook.  We felt like we were having a grand adventure because we didn't know 1) how long to cook it, 2) if we were supposed to put it all in at once, and 3) what all the veggies on the plate were...  We ended putting everything in at once and letting it cook until it looked cooked.  They brought us some sauce that was divine!  We also ordered some extra noodles.  So when it looked done we put noodles in our bowls then dished up from the hot put and enjoyed our meal with the sauce.  It was filling and for the 7 of us (with about half of us ordering smoothies) the total came to around $32!  I could get used to that!

Ake told the girls that if they told them it was my birthday they would make a big deal out of it.  That they did!

They asked for an ID to verify that it really was my birthday.  When we were done with our food they brought out a free banana split.  I had them bring a bunch of spoons so we could share.  I thought that was going to be it (and I was perfectly happy with that).  About 1 minute later they brought out a big poster that said happy birthday and little signs for each of us to hold.  We got a picture and they took one as well.  They light the candles and I make a wish (no, I will not tell you what I wished for!) I then thought that was it.  Just a few seconds later they played a techno, Thai version of Happy Birthday over the loud speaker!  Everyone in the restaurant was looking around so I put my hand in the air and pointed to myself.  It was a fun time.  As we were leaving they brought a framed picture out for me!

Tang had said that she'd meet us at Swensens and treat us all to birthday ice cream.  I gave her a call and let her know we were done.  The girls were so sweet and paid for my food!  We then headed over for ice cream.

I got the birthday ice cream at Swensens.  You can swap out the ice cream flavors on any dessert.  I got almond praline, chocolate brownie, and rocky road with hot fudge and caramel.  It was really good and very rich.  They sang to me there too and took a picture.  Their camera was having a had time and they took 4 pictures and gave us the best one.

We ended our outing with a little bit of shopping at Tesco.  When I got home I Skyped with my Dad for a few minutes while he was at work and got to see his job site.  They I video chatted with my mom and sister as they were eating breakfast.  I love talking to my family!  They then sang happy birthday to me (I told you there was a lot of singing).

While I was talking to them there was a knock on my door.  I opened it to find 4 of the Thai teachers with a cake!  They sang to me and I tried to blow out the trick candles for about 5 minutes.  I was going to lick my fingers and put them out, but 1) that scares me and 2) licking your fingers and using your spit for things is frowned upon over here. [I did that when passing out homework papers in class and the kids freaked.out.]  So I finally got all but 4 out and they put the rest under water.

One of those girls posted this picture on FB.  It's not the best, but oh well!

Then I ended the night by Skyping with my sweetheart.  It was a really great birthday and will be really memorable.  Here's to 28!