Rice Grains

Today a few students from the school went to the hospital to visit Hiroshi, a fellow student who came down with appendicitis yesterday and had surgery. Oh my, one never knows what one will get into just by going on a hospital visit.

Orek, a Russian orthodox priest who is in our class and owns a car, offered to take us. When we arrived at Hiroshi's hospital room, Orek pulled out a brand new bottle of champagne and insisted on pouring some into some little disposable paper cups to do a toast wishing Hiroshi a quick recovery. No, no, it is not alcoholic, our priest friend insisted. Well, it was pretty much in "medicinal" amounts, so at his insistence I agreed to a tiny cup. Then he insisted on refilling it. Oh yikes; my tummy was feeling warm from my two previous swallows! So at one point I discreetly--I hope--handed it to a fellow classmate who liked it, and she took care of it for me.:) I did enjoy the candies that Orek brought, so I had a couple of those.:)

As for Hiroshi, he looked tired but was doing as well as could be expected. And he was cracking jokes almost like usual. He hopes to return to school on Monday. Time will tell.....

Below are two pictures from the hospital visit. Oh what memories....:)

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Today was day 4 of module 3 in my language school. I was forewarned that this is when learning really gets tough. That is NOT an understatement. So please forgive me if I have rather sparse entries on my blog....

We are beginning to learn the Thai alphabet. There are 44 consonants and lots of vowels (I forget exactly how many, but offhand I would say there are at lest 18). Since I am currently sittin in an internet cafe with a Thai/English keyboard, I think I will switch to Thai letters just to give you an idea of what I am learning. Of course, I don't know how that will show up on your screen?? Maybe it won't??? But here goes: ฟหกดวงลฃผปแอ This is not a word, just random letters, mostly consonants. So anyway, I am trying to drill myself on the new ones we learn each day; if I don't I will be hopelessly lost.

Thursday our team plans to meet for a Thanksgiving meal--in the evening, because, of course, Thanksgiving is not a holiday over here. People still have to work, go to school, etc. It will be nice to be together with a bit of a reminder of an American holiday. And it certainly is a good reminder to be thankful for blessings in our lives.

Saturday I will do a visa run. It is a day trip to Cambodia, I believe, with a meal included. I made reservations with a company that specializes in doing these visa runs. I'm told they pretty much take care of everything for you. I will find out!

After this visa renewal I will need to go to Penang, Malaysia, on my Christmas break, to get my student visa. The school tells me I need to go to either Singapore or Malaysia, not Laos or Cambodia. So it might be a bit more time consuming and maybe a bit more expensive. But I will see new sights!:)

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This past weekend I had a nice time reconnecting with fellow teammate, Trish. She is staying in a different part of Thailand for a few months before returning to Bangkok area. We spent a fair amount of time together, including going out with two of my language classmates to the Jim Thompson House, or something like that, and then eating at a Japanese restaurant. Below is a picture of my friends at the Jim Thompson House. In order, we are Yukiko, me, Trish, and Joy. Joy is from Australia, and Yukiko is from Japan, hence the Japanese restaurant.

Monday I had my big final test for module two. I completely botched the oral, conversational part. My comprehension and speaking leave a lot to be desired. On the writing part of the test, I think I did OK. So hopefully it all evens out.

Tomorrow starts module 3, when we begin to learn to read and write Thai script. I am hoping that getting to read will help reinforce what we've already studied. However, I am told that these next two modules are even more difficult than the first two modules. So time will tell. (Ohhhhh, I just heard a word that I understood on the background TV noise here in the office at the apartment complex! They just said "Wansuk", which means "Friday!!--doesn't take much to get me excited!). Wish me the best as I continue language study!:)

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Last night I had a delightful evening with my friend Aoo and her family. Well, mostly delightful, that is. In Thai culture, I believe it is quite acceptable for women to hold hands in public simply because they are friends. But it is also quite acceptable in this culture to show affection to people of the same gender for other reasons. So when Aoo met me at Dunkin Donuts to take me to her mother's house, I found it rather difficult to let her hold my hand as we walked quite a distance down the street!

However, once we arrived at her mom's house, all apprehension disappeared. Aoo had told me--so I thought--that she was taking me to meet her sister and her mother. It turned out that Aoo was referring to the sister of her mother. So I ate with Aoo, her mother, her aunt, and her aunt's 16-year-old daughter. Their names are Sawinee, Nit, and Ning.

For the first time since I've been here, I sat on the floor to eat. We ate just inside Sawinee's shop so that she could continue to help customers that came along. Sawinee (Aoo's mother) is a wonderfully sweet lady who knows no English. But we had fun laughing at my poor attempts to make conversation in Thai, and Ning, Aoo's cousin, was excited to learn a few English words.

I will need to find out what I bought from Sawinee last night. As we were sitting around their little table, I saw what I thought were small cans of iced coffee in the frig that also contained quite a bit of alcohol for sale. In fact the only word I could read on the cans was "coffee". So I thought it would be a token of my appreciation if I bought something from the shop. When I asked the price, they immediately mentioned something about beer. I quickly "corrected" them and said, no I wanted the can of coffee.

This morning as I took a few sips, I began to wonder if there might not be something a wee bit stronger than mere coffee. But I am not a connosieur of such beverages, so I still don't know. I do know that there were pictures of two bulls butting heads, and oh yes, one other English word: "strong". So was I drinking strong coffee or strong something else?? For fear of becoming too happy for class in Bangkok, I opted to dispose of the remainder of the can--just in case!:)

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Yesterday I ate lunch with my Indian friend Shilpi. She took me to an Indian vegetarian restaurant. As I expected the food was quite tasty. Conversation was difficult, but we both tried. It can be trying when you so badly want to be able to communicate well and language gets in the way.

Today Hiroshi and I traveled back to the On Nut BTS sky train station together and then ate lunch together. We had a conversation about Christianity (in English). He said he never had a Christian friend before. It was a good conversation.

Tonight I ate at one of the little restaurants down my street. I told Lek, the cook, to make whatever she wanted for me. I am tired of always ordering fried rice or noodles. So she made me some kind of soup that I won't even attempt to type! I think it had seaweed and tofu in it, and she served it with a HUGE plate of rice. I ate not even half of the rice, but the soup I cleaned up. It was really delicious. Below is a picture of Lek and then a close-up of the soup.

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Friday afternoon I studied Thai with Hiroshi. I was doing very badly, so we switched to me helping him with English for a while. Then we went back to doing a bit of Thai--mostly homework.

From there I went to Tom and Candice's house to babysit Eliza and Clair for the evening. They had a bit of fun with silly putty:

I spent the night at the Mast's house, and on Saturday I went with them to Leoland, a little water park on the top floor of a mall. I had a lot of fun there; it was very relaxing except for the water slide that looped out over the city. That one was a little scary; I had visions of me flying out of the slide landing on concrete several stories below. A 12-year-old girl from Australia assured me that her dad, who weighs 90 kilos, survived the slide, so I gave it a shot!:) Guess what? I survived!

After lunch I left to do some shopping in the mall, and I actually found a few skirts to buy. Skirts seem to be fairly difficult to find just anywhere. So I was happy to find a couple that actually fit (never mind that they are size large, including the shirts I bought to go with them; in fact, one shirt is LL--extra large??!!).

Today I went to ECB (Evangelical Church of Bangkok). It is an English service, but there are a variety of international people who attend there. The young people were in charge today, so it was full of energy.:) They had a very good message on the importance of living what we say we believe.

The rest of today has been fairly relaxing. I do still need to study Thai a bit. Tomorrow I think I will be eating lunch with Shilpi, and Indian gal in my class. I suspect we will do Indian food, because she is very strict about her diet. The rest of the week?? Who knows what will turn up? :)

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Last night I was walking up my street back to my apartment and what did I see but......

...an ELEPHANT!! Sorry the picture is so bad, but it was so dark I only hoped I was aiming my camera right. Of course, the camera flash got the attention of the young man riding the elephant, and before I knew it, he was standing in front of me wanting to sell me elephant food. I turned him down, feeling a bit mean, but I decided I could try another time when I can see what I'm doing!

I wanted to write a bit about my day last Saturday. That was the day when I went with a group of people from Streams of Blessings Church to give a service for AIDS/HIV victims in a neighboring province. To make a long story short, it was a privilege to be there and to share Communion with them. I was not allowed to take pictures, so I can't post any of the service there.

After leaving the clinic, our hosts wanted to take us sightseeing a bit. We stopped briefly at a Buddhist temple to see...

...BATS!!

AND...

...MONKS taking pictures of bats and...

...a SNAKE!

So then we had lunch on the river and looked at all the politician's houses along the river while we ate.

These people are some of the most generous people I have ever met--once again they wouldn't let us pay for anything.

Following are a couple river scenes.

Our final stop was at an old Chinese market where they say movies get filmed on occasion. There a few of the group handed out tracts, and Pastor Plaa had the privilege of leading an elderly lady to Christ. We had an uneventful ride home. Well, it was a little bit eventful for me. At one point I felt in my pocket and discovered my house key missing. But I didn't say anything because I didn't want my friends to worry. I had ideas of what I would do. But when the van stopped to let someone out, the van driver tapped me on the shoulder and handed me my key!! So I have no idea where he found them, but he must've seen them fall out of my pocket. How else would he have known they belong to me?!:) Anyway, I was thanking God for taking care of that detail.:)

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