Christmas Eve 2007
It's 7am and I really ought to hop in the shower so that I'm ready when Aj. Rien comes at 9 to pick us up and take us to the hotel. But I'm sleepy and it's still chilly so I sit here on the bed wrapped in a blanket typing my Christmas letter to you all! You might think I'm sleepy because we had a lovely farewell party last night. More about that in a minute, but I want to record for myself and for you that I'm sleepy because of my next-door-neighbor dog. He doesn't bark at night – he snores. I've never heard any creature, human or otherwise, with worse sleep apnea than this one. Snort, gargle, snore, snort, gargle snore… all night long. The irony is he's a family pet and whenever it turns cool he's unfailing decked out in a nice thick doggy coat to keep him warm. So he's loved but has a very tough time sleeping and, as a result, so do I. But today I move to the hotel, and neighborhood picnics until 1am, motorcycles at 5:30 am (I can set my watch by this one), wedding parties at 7am, squeaky gates, doves saying grapow and red-whiskered bulbuls calling for C3PO, construction workers in the lot back of the house singing traditional Thai or Burmese melodies as they smooth cement over brick walls, the electronic ditty of the bicycle ice cream man and the sounds of a cook fire being tendered will all be memories very soon.
This has been a great place to be located. We're right out the front gate of the university and as a result there are lots of eating places catering to students and others. I've gotten to “know” the young woman and her mother who run the second stall in the lineup of booths that sell food to students and neighbors, from the pizza place to this one which focuses on Thai food. She's taught me how to ask for stir fried rice and pat Thai, and gently encouraged me to try curries and other delights over the two months I've been here. She's also the one who uses our personal version of “take-out” which literally translates as “go home” – I first communicated by using my fingers to show walking. I don't know what the correct version in Thai is but we have fun laughing together with our own special language. There's the fruit man who sells me pineapple, watermelon and tangerines; the seemingly glum man who ends up smiling delightfully when I buy phone minutes, traditional paper and Christmas ribbon; and the patient women at the Muang Pearl café who always greet me in Thai and ask me how I am. After I answer that in Thai we switch to English for me to order. They provide free wireless internet along with chocolate milk shakes and good food so that's where I try to go to upload blog entries and download schedules. The other evening I was sitting in the front window area typing away and down the sidewalk strolled a baby elephant. It does make you realize you're not sitting at Blue Monday.
At the entrance to my soi, or alley, there's a little guardhouse. I'm not sure what the neighbor who sits out there in the evening is protecting (too many cars from being parked at the entrance? the construction sites? the neighborhood?), but he often builds a small campfire and his family comes to join him. They are three generations with the youngest member about a month old, sitting together talking quietly or laughing. I always feel the urge to sit down with them and sing a round of “black socks” or some other favorite. In the mornings, they're across and up the street selling fried pork on a stick to the early comers to the university. Not many of us walk by, but I always am negotiating around the multiple cars that are pulled up to the curb so that people can grab a quick bite.
On my way in the front gate of the university, I say good morning to the traffic folks and then walk up a sidewalk through a park-like area to the spirit house, turn right and then left at the reservoir. The pond herons are often sitting near the water and swallows fly over to catch insects. I got up early one morning to bird there and saw a flock of about 50 waterbirds (ducks????) flying maneuvers high overhead. There's a lovely little place between the library science building and the Humanities office and classroom building with a small pond, trees and grassy space. There are often birds there – saw a kingfisher once and had an adventure with a white-fronted waterhen who had gotten hooked with a fishing line someone left to catch a fish while they went off on business of some sort. Luckily all turned out well and my last day on campus I saw the waterhen striding along the edge of the pond. The Faculty of Humanities has to do some environmentally-focused project this year and Angsana (Head of the Dept. of Library Science) just told me that she suggested to the Dean that they turn the space into a bird refuge, and that the Dean has agreed and will fund a consultant to suggest plantings and other ways to attract birds to the space.
After you walk by this space you reach the front of HB7, the classroom building which housed us, the International Studies office, and many of the classrooms of the faculty of Humanities. HB6, with the English Department offices is right next door. Because this is a tropical place, there is a huge open plaza with tables and benches where students and faculty gather to do homework and hang out with friends. There's a large display with the King's portrait and lots of gold bunting dominating the area. Scattered around the area are a variety of open air canteens where we often bought good food at very low prices. You can ask your student which was their favorite since each had a myriad of vendors operating from their stalls, with the resultant variety of foods available.
So, farewell parties… Our first farewell was a bit unexpected in that not only did Bob and Lin need to return to the United States for a medical procedure for Bob, the ticket agent was much more efficient than we hoped and instead of leaving after Christmas when the rest of us left for Vietnam, we had only two and a half days notice. On Monday the 17th we were able to hold a lovely tea on the front lawn of the English building and many came by to say good-bye. [Bob and Lin are safe and sound at home now, if not a little chilly.]
The rest of that week was filled with exams and final presentations and final papers. It was a bit stressful but the promise of parties and Christmas helped everyone through.
On Saturday, we had a luncheon for the families on the lawn of the conference center for Payap University. An MC (Jay), good food in plentiful quantities, thank you gifts (a wooden box for their dining tables to hold chopsticks or spices, and a photo of the group in frames the students purchased individually), thank you speeches in Thai (Kelsey) and English (me), and then presentation of one of the 4 skits written for the Thai Language exam formed the program. Lindsay G., Ellen, Eric and Eric did a great job, with a dramatic portrayal of betrayal and true love which engendered many giggles and guffaws from the families. In my comments I noted that the families had done many things for our students – from teaching us how to do laundry properly (father's things never get mixed in with the rest, you do your own underwear and socks, be careful where you hang things to dry as your things need to be below the level of your fathers, etc.), how to use a fork and spoon the Thai way, how to eat sticky rice properly with just three fingers, and corrected embarrassing word mix-ups as students used the wrong tones for certain words and ended up saying things they definitely didn't mean to say. They took us to markets, to work, and off on adventures to Chiang Rai, national parks, the Burmese border and NE Thailand close to Laos. They helped with computer crashes and found (sometimes!) lost papers. They picked us up at strange hours, shared birthdays and much laughter and many tears. They made innumerable trips to hospitals and clinics as the result of adventurous eating or conservative stomachs on the part of students. No family was perfect but each contributed to our experiences in their own ways.
The farewell party Sunday night for the CMU folks was more formal, a buffet dinner on the roof of the Amari Rincome Hotel – with stunning views of Doi Suteup (the mountain we climbed the first Saturday) and a full moon peaking around the building. A different MC (Ellen), more speeches in Thai (Pakou) and English (Dean Rome and me), presentation of gifts, and many, many photos to be taken.
Then, as I said in the beginning of this letter, it was off to the Suriwongse for Christmas. Unfortunately the rooms were not what were shown to me when we went in October to reserve them (they showed me the “deluxe room” which was to have been mine and assured me we'd all be on that floor). However, the students were all assigned rooms on the lower floor which were rather dark and small, so I moved down to join them and we kept the big, bright, sunny room for our festivities. And as several students pointed out, it's the company not the accompaniments which are the important part and the company was exactly what we wanted. A very fancy Christmas Eve dinner complete with roving high school pep band playing carols, Santa Claus and a small university glee club caroling went a long way toward making me happier with the stay. Students stayed up late in the group room to watch dvds (White Christmas and others) and several went to the Christmas Eve service across the river. It was done by Brits so had the flavor of A Festival of Carols which is broadcast on PBS each year.
Christmas morning brought gifts from Santa, stockings to be emptied, and secret Santa gifts, and a game to be played to choose and trade around our “white elephant” gifts. Being in Thailand, where white elephants were traditionally revered brought a new meaning to the phrase. We had a turkey dinner at the Art Café, went our individual ways for the afternoon (with several to the post office!) and regrouped at 5 to see National Treasure II. Any movie with the heroine as an employee of the Library of Congress is special in my heart, and so I enjoyed it immensely. We walked over to Swensen's to have ice cream sundaes and to surprise Jay with Happy Birthday since his birthday's the 26th.
People scattered the morning of the 26th to do their “last day in Chiang Mai” activities – more shopping and post office visits, packing, and for a few of us, an adventure at Macro, a warehouse store, where we bought socks, toothbrushes and toothpaste, simple toys and food treats for 450 ethnic minority boarding school/orphanage students living at a temple school on the edge of the city. The funds were provided by the Beyond Term in Asia fund (set up by alums of the program for this purpose) and a variety of Hmong students from St. Olaf and CMU. Jay organized this, and his host father helped immensely with translating our needs to the store. The CMU Hmong students joined us at the wat and helped us unload.
The next 24 hours evaporated quickly with final family dinners for the students and a wonderful rooftop barbeque for me organized by Angsana and her family. She had wanted to build a device to allow a small campfire and buy a grill so this party provided the excuse. We grilled chicken, beef, and squid, and supplemented it with mashed potatoes, baked-in-the-coals potatoes (very much overcooked which is necessary at any cookout), salads and fruit. It was a lovely way for me to spend a few more hours with Kob, Sunee, Unchalee and Angsana.
And so, it's now New Year's Day and I am finishing this letter in my guesthouse room in Ho Chi Minh City. I will stop here and write again soon. Know that everyone is basically well (with a few minor reactions to the food) and happy (trying to balance being here and getting the most out of it while thoughts are turning to home).
Kris
It's 7am and I really ought to hop in the shower so that I'm ready when Aj. Rien comes at 9 to pick us up and take us to the hotel. But I'm sleepy and it's still chilly so I sit here on the bed wrapped in a blanket typing my Christmas letter to you all! You might think I'm sleepy because we had a lovely farewell party last night. More about that in a minute, but I want to record for myself and for you that I'm sleepy because of my next-door-neighbor dog. He doesn't bark at night – he snores. I've never heard any creature, human or otherwise, with worse sleep apnea than this one. Snort, gargle, snore, snort, gargle snore… all night long. The irony is he's a family pet and whenever it turns cool he's unfailing decked out in a nice thick doggy coat to keep him warm. So he's loved but has a very tough time sleeping and, as a result, so do I. But today I move to the hotel, and neighborhood picnics until 1am, motorcycles at 5:30 am (I can set my watch by this one), wedding parties at 7am, squeaky gates, doves saying grapow and red-whiskered bulbuls calling for C3PO, construction workers in the lot back of the house singing traditional Thai or Burmese melodies as they smooth cement over brick walls, the electronic ditty of the bicycle ice cream man and the sounds of a cook fire being tendered will all be memories very soon.
This has been a great place to be located. We're right out the front gate of the university and as a result there are lots of eating places catering to students and others. I've gotten to “know” the young woman and her mother who run the second stall in the lineup of booths that sell food to students and neighbors, from the pizza place to this one which focuses on Thai food. She's taught me how to ask for stir fried rice and pat Thai, and gently encouraged me to try curries and other delights over the two months I've been here. She's also the one who uses our personal version of “take-out” which literally translates as “go home” – I first communicated by using my fingers to show walking. I don't know what the correct version in Thai is but we have fun laughing together with our own special language. There's the fruit man who sells me pineapple, watermelon and tangerines; the seemingly glum man who ends up smiling delightfully when I buy phone minutes, traditional paper and Christmas ribbon; and the patient women at the Muang Pearl café who always greet me in Thai and ask me how I am. After I answer that in Thai we switch to English for me to order. They provide free wireless internet along with chocolate milk shakes and good food so that's where I try to go to upload blog entries and download schedules. The other evening I was sitting in the front window area typing away and down the sidewalk strolled a baby elephant. It does make you realize you're not sitting at Blue Monday.
At the entrance to my soi, or alley, there's a little guardhouse. I'm not sure what the neighbor who sits out there in the evening is protecting (too many cars from being parked at the entrance? the construction sites? the neighborhood?), but he often builds a small campfire and his family comes to join him. They are three generations with the youngest member about a month old, sitting together talking quietly or laughing. I always feel the urge to sit down with them and sing a round of “black socks” or some other favorite. In the mornings, they're across and up the street selling fried pork on a stick to the early comers to the university. Not many of us walk by, but I always am negotiating around the multiple cars that are pulled up to the curb so that people can grab a quick bite.
On my way in the front gate of the university, I say good morning to the traffic folks and then walk up a sidewalk through a park-like area to the spirit house, turn right and then left at the reservoir. The pond herons are often sitting near the water and swallows fly over to catch insects. I got up early one morning to bird there and saw a flock of about 50 waterbirds (ducks????) flying maneuvers high overhead. There's a lovely little place between the library science building and the Humanities office and classroom building with a small pond, trees and grassy space. There are often birds there – saw a kingfisher once and had an adventure with a white-fronted waterhen who had gotten hooked with a fishing line someone left to catch a fish while they went off on business of some sort. Luckily all turned out well and my last day on campus I saw the waterhen striding along the edge of the pond. The Faculty of Humanities has to do some environmentally-focused project this year and Angsana (Head of the Dept. of Library Science) just told me that she suggested to the Dean that they turn the space into a bird refuge, and that the Dean has agreed and will fund a consultant to suggest plantings and other ways to attract birds to the space.
After you walk by this space you reach the front of HB7, the classroom building which housed us, the International Studies office, and many of the classrooms of the faculty of Humanities. HB6, with the English Department offices is right next door. Because this is a tropical place, there is a huge open plaza with tables and benches where students and faculty gather to do homework and hang out with friends. There's a large display with the King's portrait and lots of gold bunting dominating the area. Scattered around the area are a variety of open air canteens where we often bought good food at very low prices. You can ask your student which was their favorite since each had a myriad of vendors operating from their stalls, with the resultant variety of foods available.
So, farewell parties… Our first farewell was a bit unexpected in that not only did Bob and Lin need to return to the United States for a medical procedure for Bob, the ticket agent was much more efficient than we hoped and instead of leaving after Christmas when the rest of us left for Vietnam, we had only two and a half days notice. On Monday the 17th we were able to hold a lovely tea on the front lawn of the English building and many came by to say good-bye. [Bob and Lin are safe and sound at home now, if not a little chilly.]
The rest of that week was filled with exams and final presentations and final papers. It was a bit stressful but the promise of parties and Christmas helped everyone through.
On Saturday, we had a luncheon for the families on the lawn of the conference center for Payap University. An MC (Jay), good food in plentiful quantities, thank you gifts (a wooden box for their dining tables to hold chopsticks or spices, and a photo of the group in frames the students purchased individually), thank you speeches in Thai (Kelsey) and English (me), and then presentation of one of the 4 skits written for the Thai Language exam formed the program. Lindsay G., Ellen, Eric and Eric did a great job, with a dramatic portrayal of betrayal and true love which engendered many giggles and guffaws from the families. In my comments I noted that the families had done many things for our students – from teaching us how to do laundry properly (father's things never get mixed in with the rest, you do your own underwear and socks, be careful where you hang things to dry as your things need to be below the level of your fathers, etc.), how to use a fork and spoon the Thai way, how to eat sticky rice properly with just three fingers, and corrected embarrassing word mix-ups as students used the wrong tones for certain words and ended up saying things they definitely didn't mean to say. They took us to markets, to work, and off on adventures to Chiang Rai, national parks, the Burmese border and NE Thailand close to Laos. They helped with computer crashes and found (sometimes!) lost papers. They picked us up at strange hours, shared birthdays and much laughter and many tears. They made innumerable trips to hospitals and clinics as the result of adventurous eating or conservative stomachs on the part of students. No family was perfect but each contributed to our experiences in their own ways.
The farewell party Sunday night for the CMU folks was more formal, a buffet dinner on the roof of the Amari Rincome Hotel – with stunning views of Doi Suteup (the mountain we climbed the first Saturday) and a full moon peaking around the building. A different MC (Ellen), more speeches in Thai (Pakou) and English (Dean Rome and me), presentation of gifts, and many, many photos to be taken.
Then, as I said in the beginning of this letter, it was off to the Suriwongse for Christmas. Unfortunately the rooms were not what were shown to me when we went in October to reserve them (they showed me the “deluxe room” which was to have been mine and assured me we'd all be on that floor). However, the students were all assigned rooms on the lower floor which were rather dark and small, so I moved down to join them and we kept the big, bright, sunny room for our festivities. And as several students pointed out, it's the company not the accompaniments which are the important part and the company was exactly what we wanted. A very fancy Christmas Eve dinner complete with roving high school pep band playing carols, Santa Claus and a small university glee club caroling went a long way toward making me happier with the stay. Students stayed up late in the group room to watch dvds (White Christmas and others) and several went to the Christmas Eve service across the river. It was done by Brits so had the flavor of A Festival of Carols which is broadcast on PBS each year.
Christmas morning brought gifts from Santa, stockings to be emptied, and secret Santa gifts, and a game to be played to choose and trade around our “white elephant” gifts. Being in Thailand, where white elephants were traditionally revered brought a new meaning to the phrase. We had a turkey dinner at the Art Café, went our individual ways for the afternoon (with several to the post office!) and regrouped at 5 to see National Treasure II. Any movie with the heroine as an employee of the Library of Congress is special in my heart, and so I enjoyed it immensely. We walked over to Swensen's to have ice cream sundaes and to surprise Jay with Happy Birthday since his birthday's the 26th.
People scattered the morning of the 26th to do their “last day in Chiang Mai” activities – more shopping and post office visits, packing, and for a few of us, an adventure at Macro, a warehouse store, where we bought socks, toothbrushes and toothpaste, simple toys and food treats for 450 ethnic minority boarding school/orphanage students living at a temple school on the edge of the city. The funds were provided by the Beyond Term in Asia fund (set up by alums of the program for this purpose) and a variety of Hmong students from St. Olaf and CMU. Jay organized this, and his host father helped immensely with translating our needs to the store. The CMU Hmong students joined us at the wat and helped us unload.
The next 24 hours evaporated quickly with final family dinners for the students and a wonderful rooftop barbeque for me organized by Angsana and her family. She had wanted to build a device to allow a small campfire and buy a grill so this party provided the excuse. We grilled chicken, beef, and squid, and supplemented it with mashed potatoes, baked-in-the-coals potatoes (very much overcooked which is necessary at any cookout), salads and fruit. It was a lovely way for me to spend a few more hours with Kob, Sunee, Unchalee and Angsana.
And so, it's now New Year's Day and I am finishing this letter in my guesthouse room in Ho Chi Minh City. I will stop here and write again soon. Know that everyone is basically well (with a few minor reactions to the food) and happy (trying to balance being here and getting the most out of it while thoughts are turning to home).
Kris