Parade of Soi Dogs

It's the moment you've all been waiting for! Live, coming to you straight from Thailand... the parade of soi dogs!

In case you aren't up on your backpacker slang, a soi dog is a street dog here in Thailand. The small streets branching off of larger main roads here are called sois, hence where the soi dogs got their name. These animals can be found sleeping on the freeway, cuddled up under a table in the school courtyard, hanging out behind restaurants and practically anywhere there are people (and therefore food). Some are friendly, some are not but overall they are a great source of amusement for us here in Thailand. We have nicknamed many of the soi dogs that we see regularly, and here they are for your viewing pleasure.

 This is Goiter Dog, so named because he has an unfortunate tumor on his right hind foot. In this picture it looks a bit like an oversized toe.

This is one of the many dogs that we call "Ugly Dog". We distinguish them by their colour and how much hair they have left... so for instance if we were to talk about this dog we might call her "ugly black dog with a little bit of hair on her back".

 One of the dogs in the monks' posse. We don't see this guy too often but took his picture because he looked healthy.

 Fat Dawg. This dog lives near a bunch of restaurants and is clearly the recipient of ALL the scraps...

 Sad Dog. This dog has droopy eyes, giving him a sad appearance.

Sleepy Dog. We ALWAYS see this dog lying down or sleeping, except on very rare occasions.

Puppies at the elementary school! This litter has been running around for the last couple of weeks. I am told that their mother is very fierce but the kids seem quite taken with them and bring them their lunch scraps daily.

 Soi dogs in a rare moment of play... They often choose their moment during the national anthem in the morning.

 Swim Dog. One of the healthier dogs at school, she is named swim dog because we always see her wet, after she has been swimming.

Tongue Dog. We think maybe this little fellow had a stroke, or the dog equivalent... One side of his face looks a little droopy and he can't put his tongue in all the way. He is one of our favourites!

Sneak Dog. This dog got her name because she is always sneaking into the area where the elementary school kids have lunch, trying to clean up scraps of food dropped by careless kindergarteners.

We really miss pet dogs back home, but at least all of these characters are good for a laugh!!!

A Cat-Like Robot from the Future

For those of you who are huge manga fans, I may not have to explain myself. If that is the case please stop reading now as this post will serve no purpose but to bore you...

For the rest of us, who believe that the purpose of a blog is to inform as well as entertain, this post will be about the cultural phenomenon of Doraemon.

Doraemon is a cat-like robot from the future, sent back by Nobita's (the show's main human character) great-great grandson. It is a cartoon that has been running since 1969 and remains hugely popular today. Probably 90% of the boxer shorts that my Kindergarten kids wear under their uniforms feature Doraemon, and he is also frequently seen on adults. Doraemon can be found everywhere, on any kind of merchandise... We have seen Doraemon themed cars and motorcycles. There is also a popular program at 7-11 here where you earn Doraemon stickers for your purchases which can be later put towards Doraemon merchandise (we are going for the flatware set). Kids go crazy if you print off a Doraemon colouring sheet for them... Doraemon has a pouch which, much like Mary Poppins' bag, contains any tool that is needed in any situation.

Also important to note. Doraemon had his ears chewed off by a mouse and subsequently developed a phobia of the entire species. Mice please take care not to alarm our blue cat-like friend. 

Other than these facts, we know very little about the mysterious Doraemon as it has never been translated into English. For more information, wikipedia is worth a look... as is Youtube. Even though you can't understand what they're saying, it is still pretty hilarious.

Cooking with KD

Today we had our first cooking lesson, provided by one of the lovely ladies who we work with. We made green curry, spring rolls and pad wun sen (mostly this was just with leftover from the spring rolls filling). The recipe for green curry is as follows.

Ingredients:
Kha (I think this is what it was called, it is related to ginger but not ginger)
garlic
shallot
rind from a type of lime (yes there are different types of limes... this was news to me) which is knocked down with a long bamboo pole from a tree by a neighbour (we didn't have any of this ingredient so had to go down the road to find one)
lemon grass (about 3X as much lemon grass as any of the previous ingredients)
paste made from tiny shrimps (and other things, not sure what this is called)
chillies (MUST be green -it is green curry after all) to taste
chicken
coconut milk
fish sauce

-Put the Kha and lime rind in a mortar and pestle -beat into submission
-add the lemon grass -beat into submission
-add the chillies -beat into a paste (if too dry can add salt here to draw out moisture)
-when the former are pastey, add the shrimp paste, the garlic and the onion (adding these together means that the shrimp paste won't stink)

-fry the curry paste with some coconut milk (apparently if you do this properly you separate the coconut milk and fry the curry paste with what is essentially the coconut cream from the top)
-add the chicken
-add more coconut milk (this would be the less fatty underneath bit)
-bring to a boil
-add eggplants, long beans and chillies that are "just for decoration" (also somewhat spicy)
-just before finishing, add Thai basil, lime leaves (from same tree as landlord lime) and coriander (if you have it, apparently not essential)

Serve with rice/roti/or croissant (one of the staff enjoys this little taste of Thai-French fusion) haha

We can't wait to learn more so that we can cook for everybody back home!!! Delicious!

Kindergarten in Thailand

Now that we have been here for a while, I have been informed that I should post something about my KG classroom since it is different from back home. This is one of those cases of, when you see it every day it becomes normal so I apologize for not sending anything earlier.

This is a picture of my class at work (colouring pictures of the three bears). As you can see, no tables or chairs in the kindergarten classroom. I spend a lot of time sitting on the floor, and then a lot of time washing my clothes because they always end up covered in plasticine, dust or crayon that I have sat in!

Here is a picture of one of my students showing me his work. I hear "tea-SHA!" all day long! They love to show you everything that they do. I think this is a universal kindergarten thing though, not just in Thailand. If you look at the very bottom of the picture you may notice that I (and my students) are not wearing any shoes. Wearing shoes in the classroom is considered disrespectful so we all go barefoot. I have taken to wearing socks (like the kids) after a couple days of tracking black footprints home!

In this picture I am helping one of the little ones write his nickname in English. I am proud to say that most of them can write their names and after this week, nearly all of them can write their numbers up to 10! :)

I like this picture because it shows just how tiny some of these kids are! This is my smallest student (you may recognize baby Jesus from the Christmas play!) having to crane his neck up to talk to me! :)

Things from the market

Since our school is a temple school, it shares its grounds with a temple... sounds pretty simple. Because of this it is both a school and a sort of community centre where community events are held, such as the morning market on Tuesday and Friday mornings. You may have heard us mention the market before as it is somewhat a bone of contention with us teachers here... not because we don't enjoy purchasing fresh produce or delicious sticky rice but because sometimes the vendors seem to us to be selling questionable items to children of such a young age. On the primary side of the school this seems to be less of a problem but the poor matayom teachers really get the short end of the proverbial market stick.

The first example of this was the fireworks incident. A market vendor was selling firecrackers to students, and as mentioned in a previous post they were detonating these mini bombs all around the school. Shane lost the hearing in one ear for the better part of a day as the result of one of these charming fireworks.

The next item children were purchasing before school was hair elastics. Sounds harmless right? Not when they are strung together to create a slingshot from which students shoot tiny paper balls at each other. Watch out or you might lose an eye! However, I suppose you can't really fault market vendors for selling hair elastics to children like you can for selling them explosives.

Following the hair elastics incident came the BB Guns. Shane was collecting them to arm the staff in case of a students' revolt but they started taking up too much room on his desk, so they have now gone to the tough Thai music teacher (who is known to be liberal with his "pia" -a bamboo rod used to smack unruly students). In order to reclaim your BB gun you must go through him, I will be curious to see who actually gets their guns back.

Probably the most hilarious thing that kids have bought at the market though is pets. Here is a conversation we had recently after market day:
Shane: "So, did any of your kids have like, gerbils in their pockets today?"
Hannah: "Um, no... did yours?"
Shane: "Yeah, I think they got them at the market and they were keeping them in their backpacks or pockets or something. There were gerbils all over the place all day."

Oh yes, the old pocket gerbil. I wonder if they cleaned their pockets after having a rodent pooping in them all day. So far on the primary side the biggest surprise that we have had is fish. A student marched proudly up to the front of the room saying "teacher! fish!". Indeed, he had a bag full of fish which he then proceeded to stuff in his desk. I later saw him with the same fish in a water bottle. Their chances of survival are probably slim.

 Kids selecting fish before school

 More fish

 These kids are looking at the vendor's selection of BB guns like, these are garbage! Where is the guy from last week?

Questions to consider when travelling in Thailand

Happy New Year!

We have just returned from ringing in the new year with a little island vacation full of reading, relaxing, snorkelling and taking pictures with our new underwater camera! We spent the long weekend on the island of Koh Tao in a beautiful little resort away from the party beach (time for some peace and quiet!). This place was ideal for spending our entire weekend just staring at fish and other sea creatures.

Sting ray!

 Snorkel mask rings...

 Diving

 Sea horse!!!!

 Our bus on the way to Koh Tao

Shane diving

 Christmas tree worms

 Parrot fish... or as Hannah has called them "Rainbow fish"

A lonely yellow fish... mostly these little guys travel in pairs.

After such a wonderful relaxing weekend we shouldn't have been surprised when we encountered a few tiny mishaps on our way home...

First of all we wondered, what do you do if it starts to rain while you are riding on a songtao (a pickup truck with two benches in the truck bed)... well, we found out that you just get wet. Luckily the rain wasn't too torrential so we arrived at the pier to meet our ferry in relatively good shape.

Unfortunately on the ferry we found out the answer to another important travelling question, does Shane get seasick? Sadly the answer to this one is yes. However, he wasn't as sick as many of the other passengers, particularly one poor girl whose sickness seemed to follow her (and us) from the boat to the pier and then even on to the bus. To get to (and leave) the island, the most economical option is to take a night bus, leaving late in the evening and arriving early in the morning, coupled with a ferry to or from the island.

On our way home we were finally being lulled to sleep (sick girl had finally settled her stomach) when suddenly there was a POP and a hiss, and the bus pulled over with a flat tire. Now, you might be wondering, what do you do if your bus has to pull over with a flat tire at two in the morning in some small town in Thailand? Why, drive slowly down the road stopping at every garage-looking place and knocking on doors of course! Our bus drivers spent the better part of an hour yelling at houses and getting barked at by soi dogs as they attempted to find someone who could fix the busted flat. Luckily they were eventually sucessful and we got safely back on the road no worse for the wear.