food, food, and more food.

Since the last time I blogged, not a whole lot has happened, but I shall attempt to fill in the more important details.

So after an amazing day at the elephant camp on Saturday, we attended a Thai cooking class on Sunday.

our kitchen at the Thai cooking school.

another beautiful kitchen at the Thai cooking school.

chef courtney  :]  wolfgang puck, look out!

The cooking class was held at an organic farm called Thai Farms and was in a local village removed from the city.  The set-up of the whole location of the cooking class was very nice; there were lots of windows in the big room where we were all cooking on individual gas stoves.  The stoves and individual countertop spaces were arranged in a big square so we could look at each other and make funny faces while we were learning to cook.

my self-made meal of Thai vegetable soup, chicken and basil, and red curry.

We were given a list of various choices beforehand, and I picked red curry, Thai vegetable soup, chicken and basil, pad thai, as well as mangos and sticky rice for dessert.  We cooked all day and stopped for lunch in the middle of the day eating our curry, soup, and chicken dish; we all ate outside at a long, wooden table; it was great.   

After more cooking, we took the pad thai with us to eat later, and finished off the day at Thai Farms indulging in our fresh mango and sticky rice – delicious.

I never even knew I liked mangos before I went on this trip!

my pad thai!

my pad thai in a "Thai to-go" bag!

After a long day of cooking and eating, we arrived back at our guesthouse and all crashed!  The nap was well deserved though and felt great.

When we woke up, a couple of us decided to go and check out the “walking market,” which apparently comes to Chiang Mai every Sunday evening.  I could not believe how many streets were blocked off for this market to take place, it was incredible.  You would make it to the end of one street and have three possibilities for other streets to embark down – should I continue walking forward, go left, or turn right?!

As the night went on, the market really filled up too; the streets were overflowing with people.

I was extremely glad we were visiting this market in the cool of night though; walking through the uncovered market with the sun beating down on us wouldn’t have been half as fun.

Seeing as we were all still stuffed from our day of eating homemade (by US!) Thai food, we opted for dessert rather than another meal.  Noah enjoyed a chocolate waffle, and Erin, Aaron, and I opted for fruit smoothies.  There are so many fruit smoothies here – I love it.

(Author’s note: In case I haven’t already mentioned, there are two Erin’s and one Aaron on this trip; three in all.  We are still working on finding an appropriate way to discern between the two female Erin’s.  :] )

Walking home from the “Walking Market,” we stopped at a little side shop and purchased post cards.

I’ve already mailed two of them!  Oh and in case anyone was wondering, it only costs 15 baht to mail a postcard from here to the United States.  That’s roughly 50 cents; quite a bargain, I know!

I just hope my postcards actually make it to their destination :] ..we shall see.

On Monday, the school were we are attending classes while we are here, CMU or Chiang Mai University, was holding their Graduation ceremony so school was cancelled!

Not much happened on Monday; I read a lot for the Asia Literature class we are taking with the professor who brought us to Thailand, and completed our first reading assignment.

Monday evening a group of us went over to visit a school where Burmese students who are mostly migrant workers go for two hours in the mornings or evenings to learn English.  We aren’t quite sure what the exact name of the school is, but the sign outside reads, “Thinking Classroom Foundation.”

There are three different classrooms for each level of English the students are at – Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced.

Mr. Sai who runs the school seemed pretty excited to have us there, and Coe students have volunteered there in the past as well.

the entrance to the Burmese English school.

After visiting the school, Drexler was nice enough to take us “cool dudes” out for a lovely Thai dinner.  A few brave souls at the table tried frog legs, although unfortunately I didn’t hear one positive response on those; mostly I heard that they were kind of crunchy due to “bones”…  Sort of glad I didn’t branch out for those.  The barbequed chicken we all shared was quite delicious though.

On Tuesday, we went to school and learned more Thai language, as well as having a class dedicated to informing us about the ongoing conflict in Burma.  It’s crazy to think that living in northern Thailand, the Burma-Thai border really is not that far off.

Before that class, I had heard some about the conflict there, but my knowledge was rather limited.

It was amazing (and incredibly sad) to hear about how bad the Burmese really have it, and the fact that this conflict and oppression has been taking place since 1962 – yet the government who put themselves in power continues to stay there, and the outlook for when things might change seems uncertain at this point.

Coincidentally, the very same day of our class on the struggle in Burma, was our first night teaching English to Burmese migrant workers at the MLC.  Going into it, I was sort of unsure of how well I would do with teaching English, but it went much better than expected.  I, along with two others, were placed in the “Advanced” class and pretty much served as people other than the teacher for students to converse with and practice their English.  It felt so nice to use a skill, speaking English, which I feel I probably take for granted a lot of time and to be utilizing it to truly help other people.

Most of the students there were in their teens and 20’s; I don’t know what I was expecting exactly, but I guess I wouldn’t have guessed they would be that young.  It probably works to our benefit that we are all about the same age as most of the students; it gives them the opportunity to practice with native English speakers who are close to them in age and can relate to them on a certain level.  The students in the classroom we worked in all seemed to have pretty upbeat attitudes about life and even learning English which was refreshing and touching; especially considering the circumstances most of these people come from.  

This ended up being a very powerful and enjoyable experience.  Erin and I agreed that our faces hurt from smiling so much.

The night was made even sweeter when on the way home we were finally able to indulge in ROTEES!

We were walking along passing a bunch of people and street vendors cooking up all sorts of food.

We were chatting about how we were all still pretty full from dinner, and I commented, “About the only thing I could possibly eat right now is a rotee..”  And what do you know?!

The very next vendor we pass is a woman who happens to specialize in rotees!  It was fate.

For those who’ve never been introduced to the deliciousness that is a rotee, it’s a Thai desert, basically like a crepe.  You can get a rotee with just about any topping: sugar, condensed milk and powdered sugar, condensed milk and chocolate, strawberries, chocolate and bananas, etc.

There is actually a “rotee man” who sets up shop right outside of 7/11 (they have a TON of 7/11’s here) on the corner of the street market full of food and right across the street from our guesthouse, but sadly he has been MIA since our second day in Chiang Mai.

I’m hoping he’s just on vacation or something, but we’ll see.  No one quite knows where he up and left to, but it’s probably a good thing we aren’t tempted by his delicious fried dessert every, single evening.

Although before finding rotees elsewhere, a few of us would literally go and check every single night to see if he was back yet; we were dying to try rotees!

It was worth the wait.

I tried the rotee with chocolate syrup, condensed milk and sugar; it was soo good.

I am quickly finding all of the food to be incredibly delicious here… this could be rather dangerous.

On Wednesday, we had more classes at the university.  We even learned about the legend of the Thai Rice Goddess.

After a full day of classes (aka two, with a two hour break), we came back to the guesthouse for an early (Iowa) dinner, and it was off to teaching.

We had another rewarding and powerful night; especially as the teacher had to explain to the students what the word “refugee” meant.  There were two new volunteers in our “Advanced” class that evening and in telling a story about schools they had visited in another Thai town mentioned the word “refugee.”  A Burmese student named Shamela, who’s rather lively and isn’t afraid to speak up (even in English), quickly raised her hand and asked the teacher, “What is ‘refugee’?”

Towards the end of class, we were also invited to yoga in the park by Shamela, and we are planning on trying that out this Sunday – more to come on how that goes.

Later on that evening, a bunch of us sat on the rooftop (they have a nice little patio-like area up there) and enjoyed beverages.  I discovered 7/11 to have the quintessential “Big Gulp” that night!  Coke never tasted so good.

The next day, Thursday, was just another day in Chiang Mai.

We went to school and attempted to learn more Thai – we’ve moved on to food and ordering and all of that fun stuff!

That evening Drexler took us all out to dinner at a noodle shop so that we could practice the wonderful Thai we had mastered earlier in the day :]

I ordered large, flat rice noodles without soup and with pork.  They were quite delicious.

It was fun being able to practice our Thai on actual Thai speakers in real-life situations, especially granted Drexler was right there should we mess it up completely and need back-up.

After the yummy noodles, we took a group field trip to a now-infamous bakery among our group.  A couple of students stumbled upon the bakery on one of our first days in Chiang Mai, and the rest is history.

That night was my first trip to this bakery, and wow, was it worth it!

We typically don’t get a ton of bread here, unless you specifically seek it out - like when ordering American breakfast food at our guesthouse, so seeing such a wide-assortment of yeast-based products was quite a treat.

I indulged in the chocolate croissant; needless to say, it quickly became a new favorite.

Today is Friday, which means the weekend and more exciting sights and trips…

Soon to come.