ธรรมชาติ สนุก part I - boat races at the sea, part II - nature walks and babies and animals

trip to the sea for boat racing...the beach is adjacent to what is called the Muslim village

 

the girl to my right was the boat race princess, though she changed out of her traditional costume quickly. the little girl befriended and adopted me - I learned how to make Yom at their booth. the kids on this beach/village spoke absolutely no English at all.

 before photographing the red eagle, which I saw but a random kid had taken my camera

Pitoon, Jenya, and their new friends watching the boat races

 it's not until 2 weeks pass that Pitoon tells me why he was frantically photographing these critters - they're beach tiger beetles, the fastest insects on earth. good thing I copy everything Pitoon does.

Part II

hard to tell if it's best to nature walk with babies or without them...they spot the animals but then get great amusement out of scaring them away. or rather, only derive amusement for about 3 seconds. (animals below are in no way ordered. just around, here and there.)

regardless, my time in Khao Chong is largely spent on nature walking with kiddies here there and everywhere. look at the things we see. or rather, look at us!

pak samong - taking a break

 skink - whaaaaat.

 bat

 flower we cook into the rice for healthy eyes...all our rice is blue

 yayayay! in the kitchen

 nothing to do with nature walks...everything to do with me playing while Jin works

I'm apparently qualified enough to supervise 3 kids at an ascending canopy walk 50 meters high at another national forest in Trang. This is shortly after Suke and I nearly stepped on a snake and shortly before the green pit viper spotting.

 they're super chill...they even let me jump on the bridge.

good thing i could read this (not): don't lean on the railing!

  climbing trees outside the field house. Game's face is priceless. all the time.

he actually climbed much farther up

little nong Game is so darling

weevil larva eating a beetle. dinner table amusement

with Kao the cat, who, according to Pitoon, has "its own life". we often don't spot him for days on end.

babies i love

ชีวิตดี - snippet into life in and around Khao Chong

 habitat...jungle...development

 just going home

 Yuun's 2 youngest relatives showing me around the village

main stop: rubber trees. see how the tree is cut and the liquid drips down into the coconut bowl. little boy managed to break off the coconut bowl shortly after this. i should have predicted this by his mischievous face.

 things you can do in a rubber tree forest/plantation: eat grass

  things you can do in a rubber tree forest/plantation: ride your bicycle

 things you can do at the Khao Chong waterfall: slide down and try not to die

 Yuun and I between two slopes

 

I think this is more dangerous than ideal

 isn't he cute?

he's even cuter!

ทะเลน้อย - journey to the little sea in phatthalung

purple swamphen

 a bridge cuts through the little sea for 7 kilometers. absolutely gorgeous.

 

the little bungalows on the sea

 the boardwalk

purple swamhen's brother, purple swamphen 2

 my little brother Suke, age 12, tired tired tired "when are we going home?"

 but he likes his snacks and watching the birds

 Suke, this is my new home

on the edge of the sea, a row of maybe 30 residences on stilt houses houses grawak mat makers. I of course had to visit nearly all of them.

Scorpion

Today I saw a flying squirrel.

Big, dark, and clumsy - this thing does not glide gracefully. It was my second flying squirrel (Thai: grarawg) of the week.

Or maybe they were jumping squirrels, which would explain their bad flying abilities.

I don't know how to tell you everything about the forest without writing a short story of considerable length. So I'm not for now.

A scorpion just scuttled past me. 7 inches, pinchers awkwardly large. These things are nomadic and seem to seriously lack ambition.

I can make them assume attack position with a stick.

เดินเล่น

     Romantic in the purest sense:

God romancing His creation,

gracing mountains with vines,

valleys with orchids,

the understorey teeming with beetles,

the canopy orchestrating cicadas.

Nong Fim, the baby darling of the botany group, catches my hand

and we dern len เดินเล่น all over the nearest trails,

adopting foot long pods as dissectable maracas

and almond-shaped seeds as inedible kanom.

Whiskery fish dart in the pond,

ants trailblaze as if they are the lone creatures of obligation,

brown leaves crunching beneath us

as the green leaves breed above us,

the morning blaze welcoming us into a glorious daylight

as Nong Fim climbs on my back,

and clings to my neck and clutches our seeds in her sweaty palm,

weary from our forest travels,

yearning for a sweet mango slice.

Accidental jungle "trek", leeches, ticks, slingshots, and Puff the Magic Dragon: Days 3-7 at Khao Chong

Day 3

Bucket shower.  

This is the first and possibly last day I’ve contributed to the entomology survey. Pinned butterflies for 6 hours. Granted, lunch and translating the meanings of everyone’s favorite English songs took up most of those hours. Gotta love how people listen to music that they absolutely don’t understand. It makes me feel more normal, as I’ve never understood lyrics in English myself.

In the evening, Pitoon decides I’m swimming with him. “We’re swimming,” he says as I unwittingly walk by him stooped down fiddling with a motorcycle. He fixes an antique bike just so we can ride to the waterfall. Said bike has no brakes. Almost die. Pitoon swims in the waterfall and then tries to find me in the pitch black forest, eventually resorting to shouting “YIM!” which is saying something because Thai peeps aren’t the biggest yellers. Though Pitoon isn’t really Thai, I’ve decided, but I appreciate that he was making sure I wasn’t eaten alive somewhere. He forced me to ride his bike back due to the no brakes + downhill + dark night situation.

Pulled off at someone’s house in our “neighborhood” (i.e. jungle houses) and hung out with increasingly drunk Thai men, one of whom really frightens me. Let it be said, for the sake of avoiding repetition, that hanging out with different assortments of increasingly drunk Thai men is what I did and will do and all I can do every evening all month. This is because they are usually always at our outside kitchen/living/hanging out space.

Day 4

Pitoon tells me I’ll go empty the fruit fly traps with Yuun. This is my first trip to the surveyed field site, the current capstone of the entomological research team. (We’re comparing biodiversity with Panama.) “It’s right by the higher waterfall,” says Pitoon when I ask what’s up. I put my keys in my pocket. I hop on Yuun’s motorcycle to head up to the waterfall. I figure I’ll be back in under an hour. 

So dead wrong. 

This is no walk in the jungle. After 20 minutes of hiking straight up into the slippery jungle mountain rock near the waterfall – no trail, mind you because we’re surveying an untouched site – I ask Yuun what the deal is. He laughs, and then gasps for breath. We come out onto the very top of the waterfall and look out at the majestic view of the jungle and mountains below. Okay, this is gorgeous, but I’m under the impression that Yuun brought me this far up for the view. 

So dead wrong.

It turns out we hiked another 30 minutes to get to the first set of traps (we’re talking 5-8 fruit flies per trap so not exactly feeling worth it, science) and another 30 minutes to each of the other sets (4 in total). So we spend almost 5 hours total traipsing literally right through the swinging vines, fallen mammoth tropical trees, wild boar prints that we take a detour to track, and snake pits. Steep as heck. Yuun needs to indulge in smoke breaks to carry on. I need to indulge in the realization that this is one of the most awesome things I’ve ever done and surely the most awesome place I’ve ever seen to carry on. 

Two leeches burrow into my feet (under my shoes…), and I apparently lack nerve endings because I don’t ever feel them. I get back and take off my shoes before I realize that my right sock is entirely soaked through with blood as is the inside of my shoe. Must have hit a capillary. Score 2 for leeches; Score 0 for sensory cells in skin on top of right foot.

The next morning I find a tick in my thigh. This is disconcerting. The ticks in the NW US are pretty big; this one is pretty small. Got to check it out under the microscope. Thank God I happened to notice my new freckle. And thank God I had already stolen lab tweezers to pull out glass from my foot the day before. 

I find out later we ascended 400 meters (not total distance). The side of a jungle mountain, totally freewheeling it. So much respect for this research team now. Pitoon later tells me he’s thought before that he might need to quit his job because his knees can’t really handle the climb. My knees were killing me without any background issues.

“Right by the waterfall,” Pitoon? Thanks for that.

Anyway, a good time was had by all. And by that I mean a good time was had by the leeches and me. Yuun hadn’t slept much the night before so I kept rechecking all the labels after we emptied traps. Because he mislabeled them. Which just wouldn’t do after investing all that hiking. Thank God he got us home because we were literally in the Jungle Book. I will never know how he knew where the heck we were. He is a jungle trekker in the most legit sense possible. And thank God he is a man of honor because goodness knows I was totally at his mercy. (Although I did have those keys in my pocket.) 

Yuun and I end up later that afternoon at his family’s house (because he’d decided we’d more than held up our end of the stick that day) and then at the Trang private hospital all in route to get a very late lunch. Apparently I had to meet everyone he knows before I could quench my appetite. After we eat, we stop alongside the side of the road and play volleyball with some peeps. Unclear if Yuun knew them or not, but it hardly matters.

I embarked on such a beautiful run when I woke up this morning, all through forest trails, thinking I was so bold and courageous. I jumped dramatically down a hill yelling “jungle girl!” But then Yuun and I starred in the Jungle Book II and all the sacred memories of those misty morning secluded trails flew out the window.

You got nothing on us, Panama.

Day 5

Pitoon tells me I’m going to the sea to watch the boat races with him and Janyang. The boat races are second in interest to the Muslim beachgoers hailing from the local Muslim village. There are many Muslims in southern Thailand and we even passed a mosque on the way to the sea. “But I have a friend who is Christian,” Pitoon reassures me. 

I’m a hot commodity at the Muslim beach, even though I’m keeping it as Muslim-appropriate as possible, not even wearing a swimsuit under my clothes because I know there's no way in heck I'd ever turn myself into a swimming spectacle for all these eyes. Peeps are real confused as to why I’m here because this is a middle of nowhere vilage beach where probs no farang has ever ventured. I make friends with a flock of girls while Pitoon and Janyang scull the beach and photograph. They seem out of place as well. We leave after the first heat, though the first heat did take approximately three hours to begin.

We see a red eagle and Pitoon says I can keep a shell. 

In the evening, a dad living at Khao Chong sends Dew, his 18-year-old daughter, to chill with me. This girl is cool, she plays football, she’s the bomb at cards, she plays bongos, she’s sporting the super short hair, and she can hunch like nobody’s business. We play cards and she gets a perspective on American gender dynamics: girls can play football, not wear makeup, play drums, be all rad and whatnot, etc. and still be girly girls. I screw with her mind. I get the seal of approval after a lot of initial skepticism. 

Day 6

Pitoon shaves his beard. The most legit Thai beard I’ve seen and all of a sudden, it’s gone. Janyang tells me both that his mother thinks he’s more handsome without the beard and that Pitoon is of Malay descent so he can grow a beard. I learn some more facts from Janyang in this order: Janyang is of Chino descent, has no beard, but has grey hair.

I spend the morning reading C.S. Lewis’ Miracles, which is an absolute must for those interested in the Natural versus Supernatural conversation, or who take interest in the question of the origin of Nature. In fact, I recommend it for all and I apologize Martha for stealing it from you because you’d love it as much as I do. I thinks it contains Lewis’ most compelling ideas and contributions to philosophy.

Swim with kids all afternoon in the waterfall. Moms feed me som dom. Pretty much the Sunday waterfall token as everyone watches me in the water, which honestly feels a bit creepy, as much as we all know I’m not terribly depressed dealing with attention. 

Day 7

Pin butterflies, though everyone keeps trying to induce me to take breaks. I’ve been here for a week and done like 5 hours of any helpful work (besides sacrificing my body to ensure that Yuun doesn’t mislabel the fruit flies), so I stick it out for most of the day.

Dim jokes that Pitoon is leijai, or one who steals many hearts. I relay this information and he says he’ll live 200 years with all his hearts. 

Play with/teach a couple kids throughout the day. At one point, I’m sitting at a table with Suke, a 12-year-old boy, and the local crazy drunk man, the latter of whom gets super aggressive when the boy can’t learn the birdcall I’m attempting to teach him. I peace out of there quick after drunk crazy man grabs me and hits me several times (and by quick, I mean slow, because I didn’t leave the first time, and I felt confused about leaving the boy there). 

I go back home to Pitoon sitting at our outside kitchen watching a beetle the size of a child's fist eat a banana. He tells me I need constant bodyguards, and should tell him if I go anywhere. This all comes as an epiphany to him after hearing about crazy drunk man, and he’s totally oblivious to the fact that all middle aged women do in life is warn me not to leave the house. 

Pitoon teaches me how to use his slingshot. If you hit the target, it sparks. My left arm is totally shot (worn out) holding the slingshot in front of me, but Pitoon says I can probably break a car window if I stand close to it. So that’s progress. 

Actually, I think I’ll be able to challenge him soon. He finally tells me to stop and eat already, but this is only so he can practice himself. 

Pitoon realizes he can’t beat me (read: hits the target every time) and runs inside for his guitar and music book. We sing English songs that I don’t know and he can’t pronounce, listening to the crickets in between. I tell him the meaning of the songs and he wonders if a nonnative English speaker could see Puff the Magic Dragon and know it was a drug metaphor. He promises to watch the film on youtube and decide.

He leijai’s with that guitar on his knee late into the night.

Day One and Two at Khao Chong Trang: crazy Thai jungle man, poker, snakes, tigers, and rural southern Thai livin'

Day 1, Khao Chong in Trang, Tuesday

Off to a great start to the Trang adventure when my middle-aged man seat partner on Air Asia not only helped me read my Thai Bible but also told me all about the Trang rubber and palm oil industries and the dugong – the endangered Thai manatee creature found mostly in Trang waters. Note to self: should have read the Thai Bible in public before now – nothing sparks people’s interest more than a white girl trying to read a book in Thai. And evangelism. Whaaaattttttttt.

Life got even better when Pitoon, the Khao Chong field project ‘administrator,’ picked me up in the oldest, most destroyed ghetto car I’ve seen in Thailand. No comment about it at all, which isn’t Thai-style.

I can’t describe Pitoon – he’s a dude. He went in for the handshake instead of the wai, and though impressed with my Thai, he immediately said he’d rather I only speak English to the peeps at Khao Chong. (He took that back after considering for a moment or two the effects of that command – isolation, starvation, death, etc.) 

“Wait here while I go do some things,” he commands as he gets out of the car in middle of the street after we leave the airport. “Just go look at the shop,” gesturing to a jewelry shop and hair salon. Thanks for that, Pitoon. 

We later stopped at a mechanic’s to pick up super old oily car parts that he’ll use to fix one of his 4 super scary beat-up cars. “I’ll teach you how to drive stick,” he says.

This man’s gotta be somewhere between 29 and 40, probably early thirties, and in many ways, totally not Thai. He sports a sharp manner, assumes independence in people, is outgoing in a laissez faire way, and doesn’t waste formalities pandering to my needs or really caring what’s up. He thinks I’m legitimately stupid for being vegetarian and has absolutely no intention to go out of his way to feed me (although we stopped at Trang’s vegan restaurant). If you know Thai people, you know it’s a rare person who doesn’t want to take complete care of you and think you’re a fragile butterfly. Maybe it’s because Pitoon studies actual butterflies, so he knows that people are people, no matter how white and farang. 

He lives in the jungle. That’s what’s up. Peeps take care of themselves in the jungle.

He makes biofuel from soybean oil in his spare time.

I hitherto thought it impossible to meet a Thai person who didn’t want to feed me (well, there are some caveats to that in the case of my host teachers who didn’t want me to ever leave my house, though now they’ve realized if they can’t lock me up, they might as well stop constantly pestering). And after a trip [tomorrow/Tuesday/written about below] to the neighboring province of Phatthalung, I’ve decided southern Thai peeps are a tad less hospitable. Maybe it’s the heat – just when you think Thailand can’t get any hotter, it pulls a spoiler alert. The south also boasts a heckuva lot of political unrest and insurgencies and murders and Muslim factions and peeps are generally warned not to travel south of Phuket without a lot of research and caution. I’m currently living south of Phuket, and I figure since I’m doing entomological research, they basically makes up for the research part. Also, I am very cautious not to step on snakes.

This is because Pitoon warned me not to step on the heads of King Cobras. Pitoon tells me he’s seen three King Cobras in Khao Chong this week alone: two on the main road and one in our bathroom. “But don’t worry,” he assures me. “I called the hospital yesterday for you and asked if they have the King Cobra serum. They said they do. But I have to tell you that you probably shouldn’t step on their heads when you see them.” And “when” is the direct translation – not “if”. But come on, this jungle is no fun at alllllll -- I can’t even step on King Cobra heads?

Pitoon also saw a Burmese python on the main road (take the description “main road” with a grain of gravel) through Khao Chong this week. “Wow!” I gasp. “Don’t be impressed – it was only 3 meters and just this big,” he replies as he forms a circle with his hands. The fingertips did not touch. “But we have tigers.”

So Khao Chong is the bomb. And while the ‘Dit also hosts these same animals, Khao Chong is the real exposure spot. I’m not calling the ‘Dit the “jungle” ever again.

I chilled at the field site all Tuesday afternoon, meeting basically everyone on staff in the place. The research commune is part of a national park, so Thai families and teens and random packs of dudes come chill there. There are cooks (I’ve told them I’m cooking with them at some point), gardeners, people who dig ditches (?), etc. 

Some of the peeps I’m working with are Yuun, Jin, and Dim, who are all in their mid-to-late twenties, chill, and super easy to entertain, which is the most a girl can ask for. Luckily Dim is a girl, or else I might be overwhelmed to the breaking point. So many jungle Thai men. (A cockroach just ran across my feet.)

I LOVE LOVE LOVE hanging in a new spot and being the overfriendly effervescent farang. It’s my calling.

This excessive friend-making gets my mind off the housing situation. It’s basically my worst nightmare – living in a house with four men. Sharing a bathroom. I can’t process this yet. I’m going to spend the whole month waking up at weird times to shower. “You can plug in the fan,” Pitoon says as he demonstrates. “Oh wait, no electricity. Mai bpen rai.” Also, there is a hole in my bedroom wall. I’ve locked my door tonight after chilling with the dudes for 3 hours. They get increasingly drunk and increasingly excited about science. Pitoon enthusiastically launches into the field site’s many projects, and I realize I’m not getting to bed for a while. 

To-do list for March: construct a small butterfly “garden” to practice identifying butterflies quickly in the field; collect fruit flies in the field; practice identifying butterflies quickly in the field itself (English common name, Latin name, Thai common name. I’m gonna be such a contribution…they know the English common names way better than I do); termite pinning (they collected heaps of them last month); and pinning the moths from the field survey last week that is a big tropical comparison with Panama. That’s pretty sick.

“So a lot of the time we’ll pin the moths,” Pitoon tells me.

“Great, I’ve done it before, but sometimes the wings fall off,” I reply.

“Oh, that’s no problem at all. Mai bpen rai.” Who knew the Thai mai bpen rai (“nevermind/no worries/doesn’t matter”) also applied to scientific research? 

Yuun, my 25-year-old fruit flies friend, motorcycled me around to see different spots and to climb the waterfalls in the forest: “This is my girlfriend,” he gestures to me whenever we pass someone. “I’m going to bring you dancing with all my friends,” he tells me. “Can you be my girlfriend?” Can’t wait to spend excessive amounts of time collecting fruit flies in the forest with this dude.

Jayang, described – increasingly incredulously and frustrated – his botany project to make wooden objects out of a certain kind of palm. “This work is part of Project Rettan. [Me: “Rettan? Mai roojak.”] RETTAN. R-E-T-T-A-N. This is an English word – how do you not know it?!” As if repeatedly saying some scientific/even common family name of palms will jog my memory. 

I’m heading to Phatthalung province tomorrow to hang out with Janyang’s nephews and visit the temple, as it’s a national Buddhist holiday, commemorating Buddha’s birth, “graduation as the key of the life” (according to Pitoon), and death.

Day 2, Wednesday

Traveled to Phatthalung with Janyang at sunrise while the clouds lay low and the mist enveloped the mountains. GORGEOS LIMESTONE MOUNTAIN PASS. GORGEOUS JUNGLE. GORGEOUS JUTTISONS OF CRAGGED LIMESTONE MOUNTAIN THINGS ALL OVER TRANG AND PHATTHALUNG. 

Nephews Not and Nut (age 11 and 14) and all their friends insist I teach them poker because nobody else will and I’m not an older Thai teen who will mock them. Janyang says it’s ok and then lies in a hammock. We use rocks as chips. We never made it to the temple because we played poker**, Egyptian ratscrew, and speed for five hours. And it’s Buddha’s birth/graduation/death. I’m de-Buddhism-izing southern Thailand one Egyptian ratscrew game at a time. Can’t say that I’m proud. Granted, the kids split their time between cards and making a small fuel fire with candles that they would sprinkle water on and watch burst into a massive flame. Literally hours of entertainment.

**If I taught poker wrong, I blame myself, Eugene, and my childhood Crazy Eights and Other Fun Card Game for Kids book (which did in fact feature poker).

Janyang’s relatives drove me out to the family/community (?) rice field and we toured the farming equipment. His brother-in-law and nephew Nut told me all about how to farm. In Thai. I now know… actually, I still know nothing about rice farming.

Janyang wanted to leave before I did. That’s saying something when you’ve spent 9 hours at a Thai person’s house being constantly badgered, sized up, fed food that you know for a fact has been first eaten by hoards of ants, exhibited to the neighbors, and occasionally criticized. 

Peeps warned me about snakes as I “dern len” (took a walk) this evening. Three Khao Chong workers were quite concerned about my apparent idiocy as I traipsed around and found a real one-story building guesthouse. The rooms have lofts. I have no idea who stays here, and it’s quite abandoned at the moment, but I would like to suggest that I stay there. OK Pitoon? 

He would think I’m a wuss. These peeps surprisingly haven’t really noticed all my street/jungle cred yet. Maybe it’s the language barrier.

My room smells like cat urine. The whole research compound smells like cat urine. An animal on the ceiling just peed on me. A cat named Kao lives here, so that makes sense, but I have to say that during my dern len, the jungle kinda smelled like cat urine. 

 

(If I thought I had mold in the ‘Dit, welcome to Trang. Luckily, I have absolutely no furniture except a plastic chair, a tiny table and a mattress with no bed. But the walls are wood. And if you've followed my blog, or know more about house upkeep than I do (which is easy to do), you know what that means in terms of mold infestations. But it doesn't smell strongly of mold here probably because the cat urine overpowers it.)

Also wrote up what I think is aggravating about Thai social interactions/customs. Janyang’s family inspired me to commit some of these long broiling thoughts to computer after being super put-out that I didn’t guarantee that I’d come back and spend the night on Saturday. But I’ll save those less exciting thoughts for another day. Maybe I should’ve taken a page from the Thai book and said “yes” to Janyang's family but Thai people don’t expect you to use Thai mannerisms, so they would take me at my word…I’m still working on manipulating and navigating social situations with Thai people who hate conflict to the point where they’ll create it but be shocked if you want to address it. If you know what I mean, this is for you. If you don’t know what I mean, I’ll post something later. Jing jing…

GORGEOUS PICTURES OF KHAO CHONG AND PHATTHALUNG COMING SOON. SO SO SO SO BEAUTIFUL.

We are not friends, Kao the cat, so stop biting me.

Myths

My Fulbright crew thought I was 19. Nineteen years old. 

I learned several surprising things about myself tonight -- in Bangkok on the way to Trang, chilling with the many Fulbrighters who've gathered here now that the semester is up.

Nineteen years old. And I'm a "real scientist." And I have a Thai boyfriend. And he's a student.

If only.

Somewhat shocking to be in Bangkok again - the smells, the prices (that I once thought were super cheap!), the fashion (wow, I gotta revamp my wardrobe when I come to the big city - my comparative fashion/beauty rating is far higher in the 'Dit), the pollution, the western influences and companies and stores. This villager is happy it's just a layover, though I could go for some Mexican.

Tarantalas, our pet rat, and Thai graduation traditions

I just took a shower with not one but TWO tarantulas. They eyed me like a hawk...or like tarantulas.

P'Ya, one of my roommates, came home today and asked me about the rat in our trash bin. I'm a little confused because we're talking in Thai and I tell her that I haven't seen any rat. She tells me that a rat's been living in the bin for several days. This particular trash bin has one of those flip lids, and we no longer use it. She flips the lid of the empty bin and looks inside and tells me it's still there. P'Ya behaves strangely - she doesn't freak out, or even look at the rat; she just stares at me questioningly. I didn't overanalyze this in the moment, because I wanted that little black rat far away. So, knowing that cleanliness is not a virtue my roommates possess, and seeing that they'd known about this rat for several days and done nothing about it, I pick up the bin and walk outside.

P'Ya looks shocked. "Bai nai [Where are you going?]?" she asks.

"Mai roo. Tii nai go dai. Mai tii nii. [I don't know. Wherever - not here]," I reply, thinking she wants me to dump the rat far from the house.

I walk a fair distance from the house and dump the rat while P'Ya watches me from the doorway. I walk back and P'Ya has an odd expression on her face.

"Why did you do that? [in Thai of course]" she interrogates.

"I don't like rats in the house," I say confusedly.

So she finally tells me that everyone thinks I keep the rat as a pet, so no one got rid of it. I'm shocked and insist that I don't like rats in the house and would never keep a pet rat. She eyes me suspiciously...she doesn't believe me. No one ever believes me around here. I can't decide if Thai are  suspicious of foreigners, or suspicious of everyone. But I digress...

Why in the world would I keep a pet rat in the trash bin? If I were to keep a pet rat, I wouldn't keep it in a place where it could EASILY get in and out in the middle of the kitchen. In what world would you see a rat run into a trash bin and assume that your American roommate must be keeping a pet? THERE ARE RATS AND ANIMALS ALL OVER THE PLACE. Next thing you know, they'll tell me that they didn't do anything to curb the ant wars because they thought I'm keeping the ants as pets.

If anyone around here kept a pet rat living in the trash bin in the kitchen, it would not be the American.

Apparently I'm the self-appointed animal control of the school, as I keep attempting to save everything from insect and rat infestation. Also, I've now ridden my bike over not one but TWO animals: a cute baby puppy and an orange lizard with a bright turquoise neck and head.

Gift inspected the scene of the crime after the puppy incident (I was screaming like no first degree murderer would ever dare), and either I did not actually break its spine, or its mommy carried it away for burial. I've closely watched the neighborhood puppies since that date, and they all seem to be walking normally. But that puppy screeched, and I rolled right over it. As for the lizard, not clear if it's dead or just in shock. I'll inspect again tomorrow.

Yesterday was graduation - only the 200 seniors and teachers, no parents. I skipped most of the somber ceremony after the incense smoked me out, but I came back for the last hour. (I'll post pictures when I manage to upload them.) The teachers and students insisted I sit with about 10 teachers in chairs facing the assembly. At the very end of the ceremony, the students came and knelt before the teachers in the front and the teachers gave blessings and tied a white cord around the students' wrists.

It was the sweetest thing I've yet experienced in Thailand. Students lined up in front of me, and I blessed them in Thai and English and tied cords on their wrists as a symbol of my blessing. I theoretically blessed them, but the students one-upped me and poured out blessings themselves since I'm closer to a peer to them than are the Thai teachers.

My students told me how much they've loved me and how they think I'm a wonderful teacher! In fact, I'm a terrible teacher because - look at the wording of the last sentence of the previous paragraph - no one actually said this in English (well, one girl...score), and I'm more like their crazily enthusiastic babysitter who lets them play cards even though cards are illegal here and makes them play games all the time and makes them talk talk talk even when they're tired tired teacher we're tired.

(Furthermore, I only taught two of the five senior groups, and I only taught those two groups for about 2 months until my host teacher informed me that it was time they learned real English for the test so I couldn't teach them anymore (haha the Thai teachers teach English classes totally in Thai and focus on grammar so no one can speak at all, as this is obviously the way kids are tested).)

I still sobbed with these beautiful children and felt nostalgic and thought we'd never seen each other again and exchanged hugs (only because I'm American) and wai's (Thai bows), and we told each other how much we'd miss each other.

30 of our 200 students will attend college. The others may go work in the industrial plants north of Bangkok or help their parents in the fields.

God bless you, little ones, and may your life be filled with everlasting joy.

So graduation and classes are a thing of the past as of yesterday. The younger students take finals next week, but I'm headed to Trang on Monday, a province near the Malaysian border. I'm volunteering as a research assistant at the Khao Chong national forest, which hosts an entomological and botanical research site partnered with Harvard and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Supposedly internet works well at the site, so I'll keep you updated on how I conceal my total lack of knowledge from the research team. My entomology professor at Harvard used to research at Khao Chong, so it's a fun contact and should be fantastic for my Thai and growing ant phobia (only because I'll be licensed to kill ants "for science"). And isolated. But I'll have my alive butterflies in the forest and my dead butterflies in the lab.

Also, capsicum is a beast.