This week has been ok.  The morning dreads have been replaced with the morning “nooooooo”.  But I think that is a little better.  The main issues I’m having is the foggy brain, just being so tired early in the evening and the very frustrating lack of wifi.   I want to learn Thai, but nothing is sticking.  I can’t go watch videos on line because I can’t get on wifi.  The wifi hotspot that Xplore Asia sent me is useless.  The school’s wifi might work for an hour or not at all.  It seems like after school I cook or do one or two things and then it’s late or I’m tired.  There might be a time warp in my house that also take brain cells away.  It’s the only thing that makes any sense.  It’s getting hotter so that may contribute too.

Monday, I only had two teachers show up for teachers English class.  I wonder if I’m not making it fun enough.  Is it too hard?  Do they think they want to learn English, but really don’t?

Tuesday, a teacher brought me breakfast.  It was a “sandwich”.  This sounds wonderful.  I look in the bag.  It’s a hotdog with butter, ketchup and lettuce.  I don’t care for ketchup so it was a hotdog with butter.  I’ll make a salad later with that lettuce.  That evening, I went to the market.  I also got gas for the stove in my house.  So, now I can fry things.  Next week I’m looking forward to eggs for breakfast!  Tuesday night I cooked up a ton of greens that my next door neighbor bought from a student.  He bought them to be nice, but he doesn’t cook.  So I kept some and left the rest in zip lock baggies at his door.  I hope he eats it, but who knows?  Maybe if I had cooked rice too.

Wednesday evening I went out to dinner with the missionary, Laura.  I got to go see the church she is working on.  She is overseeing the building of the new church.  It’s also a nice time to spend with another native English speaker.  She’s lived in Thailand for quite a while so she has some good pointers too.  She also understands that salads are not a strange thing, but can be quite delicious.

Last night I was supposed to teach teachers, but there were none.  I think there’s still some interest, but I think maybe once a week is more their speed.  Who knows?  I took the opportunity to do laundry.  After that, I thought I’d go see if I could get a pedicure.  Laura had shown me a place where a lady does hair and will also do nails.  But, it wasn’t open.  Well, that’s about the extent of the things I can think of to do in town so I went home.  The rest of my evening was cooking and defrosting the refrigerator.  Defrosting the refrigerator in 5 easy steps – take food out, unplug refrigerator, open door and let ice melt all over kitchen overnight, put food back in, plug in.

Wednesday during the afternoon assembly, I looked over and saw a cow in front of the school.  He was too far away to get a picture, but I thought it would make a great picture of rural life.  I figured I’d get the picture later when I was waiting for Laura to go to dinner.  Not more than 20 minutes later, I go looking for the cow, but she is gone.  Then Thursday as I’m coming home with a bag of wet laundry balanced just so on the back of the motorbike, who do I see, but the cow walking down the street.  If I stop for a photo now, it will unbalance my bag.  I’ll just go home, hang the laundry and get a picture of her when I head to get my nails done.  Five minutes later, she’s gone.  How far could a cow get in 5 minutes?  Where did it go?  They don’t move that fast, do they?

Today when I got to school, a student brought me breakfast from one of the other teachers.  I have no idea who it was from since my ability to remember teacher’s names is only slightly better than my ability to remember Thai words.  It was something beautifully wrapped in leaves and the leaves smelled horrible.  I unwrapped one and of course it involved rice.  It looked like sticky rice around some pink fruit.  It tasted ok.  Later in the morning, I ate the other one.  On closer inspection, it looked like half a banana wrapped in rice.  The pink color is a mystery.  After school today, my plan was to go get a massage!  Yay!  It wasn’t open.  I waited for awhile, just in case.  I texted the phone number on the window.  I figured calling them would be a waste of time since they didn’t speak English and I could say massage in Thai, but I’d have no idea what their answer would be.  Maybe with a text they could translate.  But, no response.  Well, let’s go do that pedicure.  Not open either.  I settled for a lime vanilla ice cream bar from 7-11.  Once again, I ran out of ideas for a night on the town.

Now that I’m sitting in the time warp, I’m thinking how is it 8:00pm already?  Screw it, I’m going to bed.  I have to finish packing for the weekend and then I’m done.  I have to get up early because rumor is a bus will come to the bus stop around 6:30am and there may not be another bus to Tak in the morning.  Or there may be many.  No one seems to know.  I’m going to Mae Sot for the weekend.  It’s a larger town on the border of Myanmar and should be something interesting to see for the weekend.

(c) all rights reserved Kimberly Fiore