Exciting News!

I have some excellent news: some of our sixth grade students began to read English words today!!! Hooray! I'm so impressed by how much progress they've made, especially considering the fact that we just finished discussing phonics last week. I couldn't believe it! Today in class, some of the students were able to piece together the sounds of fairly complex words, like window. Go little Thai kids! Charlotte and I were so excited, we were jumping all around the classroom. I actually think we were more excited about the entire thing than the students were. While they're making tremendous progress with their English, I still haven't seemed to make any improvements with my Thai speaking skills. I've learned to just laugh and smile along with them whenever I try to say something in Thai. Oh, and we finally managed to take a few pictures while we were teaching today. We'll certainly try to take more, but for now here's one of our sixth graders during story time. They really liked it, especially since the book had pop-ups and funky textures, like fluffy "fur" for the dogs and smooth "bumps" for the frogs. I must admit, though, the book was somewhat tricky, even for a native English speaker. Who knew that U is for Uacaris, a type of monkey? I guess I learned something new today, too.

Story time!

What else? At the office, Charlotte and I are still working on writing the mahout-elephant booklet that we hope to sell at the elephant camp's visitor's center/souvenir shop. So far, we've discussed the history of the Asian elephant in Thai culture, the plight of mahouts and their changing identities from past to present, and the importance of elephant camps to the conservation of domestic and wild elephants. We've only just started and have much more material to discuss, but so far so good!

Skewers at the ready!

There wasn’t much work for us to do at the elephant camp today, though, since we interviewed all of the mahouts last week (to get info for the mahout-elephant profile section of the booklets). However, we still managed to give Tao, Bean, and Nung trunk rubs!

In my excitement about our students’ breakthrough, I completely overlooked our food update. Last night, Charlotte and I gathered together some very tasty bits and bobs for a yummy food stall dinner. I decided that we should try a Thai-style “breakfast for dinner,” so we bought an egg roti (similar to a crêpe with a fried egg in it) and two Northern Thai sausages that were much shorter and fatter than sausages in the US, much like the bananas here. The combo was superb, if I do say so myself! The sausages were super tasty and slightly sour. They went perfectly with the crunchy cucumbers that they came with. Then we had these really funky (by which I mean downright gross) balls. I had no idea what they were, and I’d left our Thai phrasebook at home, so I didn’t get very far trying to ask what they were. I just bought them anyways, and hoping for the best, popped one in my mouth all in one go. The verdict? I don't particularly care for mysterious gelatinous balls. They had a very slick, slimy texterure when coated in coconut milk, and were filled with what tasted and smelled like sugary, pan-fried garlic. It was an interesting combo to say the least. I had to wash them down with my green tea and black sesame milkshake. (I had to add the green balls to my short list of unpalatable items, right next to Charlotte’s funky squid-on-a-stick and this bitter root vegetable I recently encountered in some soup). Aside from that, everything’s in tip top taste and order! 

Egg roti-sausage-cucumber kabob!