A few weeks ago, Brooke and I decided we wanted to cook a meal for our host family. We went with spaghetti. We bought ground pork, mushrooms, and onions to cook before adding a couple cans of tomato sauce. We boiled the spaghetti, and when it was all said and done I thought it tasted pretty decent. Then we took it to the family... and even though they said it was good, it wasn't hard to read their non-verbal cues. And those cues said "How can they possibly expect us to eat this." But my dad insisted on taking more, and made a point to show us how much he "liked" it. Even so, we had a lot of leftovers for the dogs, who never turn down any extra food. Until they ate absolutely none of the spaghetti.
There have been a few funny language mix-ups. One day my host sister had a test at school. The Thai word for test is "sawp". I asked her how the test was, but instead of saying "Wan-nii sawp bpen yang rai?", I said "Wan-nii sop bpen yang rai?". I didn't understand why she was laughing, until I later found out I had asked her "How was the dead body today?"
Yesterday during my final language interview, I thought everything went really well. Then my interviewer gave me feedback and I found out that multiple times during the interview, instead of saying the word "Kui" (which is the verb for "to chat") I said "Kuai" (which is a very, very vulgar word for a certain male body part).
Early on in training, our medical officer gave us the ever popular Peace Corps sex talk. He gave everyone a condom, then gave everyone a banana. You can probably figure out where it went from there. It was an awkwardly fun time. But, with a total of 60 volunteers, we had a lot of condom-clad bananas to dispose of. Everyone piled them in the middle of the floor to be thrown away. Fast forward three weeks. Our country director was there to talk to us about our upcoming site visits. He moved a table at the front of the room, and made a most unexpected discovery - a totally black banana wrapped in latex, which he proceeded to show all of us while facetiously reiterating the importance of safe sex.
One day, we went to a school to do a "life skills" activity. Basically we played a few games with them, and had a lot of fun. But when it was over we didn't know what to do next. We asked them to teach us something. Together they decided to teach us some Thai songs. They put on quite a performance. They had a perfectly choreographed dance, and one little boy did a solo that had us comparing him to Michael Jackson. Then they asked us to teach them an American song. We all proceeded to do a legendarily awful rendition of YMCA. When we were done, the kids didn't really know how to react... but they gave us some light applause, for which we were both grateful and undeserving.
Last Thursday our ajaan (teacher) treated our four person language class to dinner. Afterwards, she took out two gifts from Chiang Mai. I don't remember what they're called in Thai, but basically they were two mini hot air balloons. The pictures below will explain it better than I could. The idea was to light the fire underneath the balloon, and let it fly away once enough hot air accumulated. Sounds easy enough. But after we lit the fire, the wind started blowing. We almost set the restaurant on fire. At one point, my ajaan put her head inside the balloon. It was crazy. Then when we all let go because our hands were about to be burned off, somehow the thing flew away. And it was awesome. The first picture below is during the near-disaster I just described, while the second is during our much better controlled second balloon launching.
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