Thankful for lanterns

Gaaah—okay, it has been a really crazy few weeks. I’ll get right into it.

The day before Thanksgiving was a big Thai holiday called Loy Krathong. Very briefly, it’s where you light a lantern to illuminate Buddha and release it, along with all negativity, into the sky or down a river to make a wish and thank various gods. The day started out with making krathongs and a show in school, then ended with an incredible dinner at a local hotel. There was a huge beautiful buffet, live music and dance performances. It was expensive, but worth it. All around town it was a less dignified affair—closed-off streets, loads of food vendors, fireworks going off everywhere—noisy, alive, fun. I couldn't believe what I was seeing all night, and so far it's my favorite Thai holiday. I made a video but didn’t add music to this one because I’m having trouble making the music come in & out when my videos play (but be aware, sound does blast into this one at the 33 second mark), and I’m so behind on updating this blog, so screw it-- here’s the quick/rough cut:

The very next day was Thanksgiving. Obviously we still had school, but the main event both Thursday and Friday was the MUN conference. Model United Nations is THE club to join at this school. All the cool kids are doing it and involvement is huge. This year, our school hosted a massive regional conference that brought 300 kids from other schools. On Friday night, there was a big party at school and parts of the campus were decked out like a Thai night market. There were about 30 food stands, live music, a DJ by the pool; it was noisy and fun and unlike any school function I’d ever seen.

I made about 300 dill pickles for the event, which is what I was doing on Thanksgiving night. I should explain the random pickles: a co-worker here likes my pickles (I’ve told that story before). During a staff meeting, when the MUN organizer asked if anyone could contribute anything as vendors, pickle girl turned to me and said, “You should make pickles.” I turned to the MUN teacher and said, “I can make pickles,” and he said okay. So that’s why there was a random pickle stand at the party. Some of the Thai people were so confused by the flavor.

I spent that weekend cooking for our family’s tiny Thanksgiving dinner. Due to the limited availability of some things, it took extra effort. For example: green bean casserole. No French-cut green beans, so I bought some Chinese long beans, blanched them, and French cut them by hand. Made my own onion topping, which was the best my kitchen has ever smelled. I have roasted my own pumpkin for pie for the past few years, so that wasn’t a big deal, but the sweet potatoes took a little more work to make sure I found all of the unsavory wiggly things inside of them. (yep.)

Kim Davis and her pies. "I'm gonna eat them ALL!" I could only find 6" tins, so I made four instead of two...

And there was no turkey to be found in Thailand this year due to reported bird flu in the US, so I roasted duck legs instead. They were so cheap, so easy, and so delicious that they will be on my regular dinner roster now. 

Only some of the duck parts available at our "Costco." Lots of heads. My culinary school would have been thrilled to find big cheap packs of duck skin. 

And this is totally off-topic, but while we're at Makro, guess what this is? MSG. All of it.

Here are those processed meat balls I mentioned before.

So our Thanksgiving was on Sunday night, and we had a teacher in-service day on Monday. All of us were expecting the usual day full of meetings with a few mildly amusing team-building exercises thrown in to keep us awake. We’d received an e-mail about wearing active clothes and bringing bathing suits, and most of us sort of rolled our eyes about it. Greeeat, blergh, what lame thing are they going to make us do...

WELL. Weren’t we all thrown for a gigantic loop.

They surprised us with this full-scale, professional-grade “Amazing Race” thing. They had team t-shirts printed, and had name tags already stuck on them. We threw on the shirts and were sent off to a local coffee shop, the hospital, the school’s computer lab… some of the clues were in balloons floating in the middle of the pool (hence the suits)… We had to build tents and solve puzzles… there was a thing with half the team blindfolded and the other half shouting instructions using code words. We had to play a hole of golf in exactly 12 shots. We had to rappel off the roof of the school. Check out this professional development right here!

I wore makeup that day, and you can see in this video that I had sweat it halfway down my face at this point. Also, fun fact: a few days after this video was taken, I was wearing those same shorts while scrubbing bathrooms and split the seat wide open. They were just that old and threadbare. I'm so glad they held out that day, although the video shot from below would have been hilarious.

The hardest challenge, by a long shot, was the frog. Get this: we had to cook and eat a frog. But they were live, in a basket. We had to kill it first. No joke. I don’t know anyone who didn’t have a problem with this, particularly the Thai teachers who are mostly Buddhists. I am normally a good sport, but I flat-out refused. One of the school heads, a British guy who is pretty religious, was on my team and I could hear him in the kitchen going, “I’m sorry mate! Oh god, I’m so sorry!” It was awful. Then we had to cook it and eat it, all hacked up and bony and UGH. I’ve had frog before, but it was the legs, and it was in a swanky French restaurant in Holland, they were in garlic butter and I’d had a bit of wine. Very different experience. (A side note to my vegan friends: I know the setting makes no difference in the life of an animal. I know I just talked about how delicious duck legs are. The hypocrisy does not escape me. And admitting that does not absolve me.)

Anyway, the couple that owns our school also owns a resort in town, which is where we played the golf and where this crazy goose chase ended. They had a huge lunch buffet for us and gave out awards to the winners. I haven’t done anything even close to this since my camp counselor days in college, and it was the most fun I’ve ever had at work. I said to an American co-worker, “So this is what money can do [in a school].” Ten days later, it's still a big topic of conversation at school as we all have stories of what went on within our teams (and discuss animal-killing hypocrisy).

So that’s where I was, a bam-bam-bam of activity in less than a week. Over the weekend, Nick took his solo trip to Chiang Mai, then it was time to prepare for finals, which are now almost over. Whew. 

Next week is our last week of school before Christmas vacation, and the whole week is dedicated to preparing for the school Christmas show. This is apparently a quirk of Thai schools: they love performances. We’re just honoring local tradition. The C student in me thinks this is great, although I have volunteered to put together the staff dance routine, and given that the majority of our staff is heterosexual men, it’s hard to find dance moves that don’t involve… well… shimmying.  

If I ever want to get this posted, I’ll quit here. My mind has become possessed by thoughts of how much I love living here, love being an expat (next post: Cheating at Life… my god, am I cheating it so freakin’ hard), and I never want to go back to the US. I have to, but every day I'm like nooooo don't make me go back pleeeeeease. If I get into that now I’ll be writing for hours. Stay tuned for some cheery Christmas anti-patriotism!