MicahJohn

Yesterday night my landlady introduced me to the music teacher at the school where I am going to be teaching. He teaches all sorts of music, including Thai folk music. I was quite happy to make his acquaintance.

Discoving that I had not yet eaten dinner, my new music teacher friend took me with him to eat noodles. I didn’t realize he was taking me to his hangout. While eating noodles I met several of his friends, many of whom are also teachers at Benchama.

One of his friends purchased some scorpions and crickets from a street vendor. He offered them to me. I ate a large scorpion and two small crickets.

I’ve now completed day one of a three-day, nationwide water fight. The root of it all is pouring water while giving a blessing. What comes from that root are pickups loaded with tanks of water driving back and forth on the main roads drenching each other. There are even official places you can stop to refill your tanks. There are not so official places to buy huge blocks of ice to give your water a little extra punch. Along the sides of the roads there are also groups of people with water guns, buckets, and hoses.

I went out today with several friends in a friend’s truck. Some of the ladies and a newborn stayed in the cab of the truck. Some of the little kids went back and forth between the bed and the cab, depending primarily on the frequency of trucks with ice water. Another thing that prompted the kids to return to the cab was the powder. A lot of people pat cooling powder on your face when your truck gets stuck in traffic.

Very much very fun!

After breakfast at Randy’s house yesterday, I went room searching with Lynn. We looked at six rooms. We found two that were good possibilities (each with a very different set of pros and cons). After a nap I made my choice.

I’ll be living in a room right off a man made lake. I’ll be about a kilometer from where I’m going to be teaching. I’ll try and get some pictures up in the near future.

After a great night of sleep, Randy, his 3 year-old son, and I launched into a full day. We started by squeezing my stuff into the truck. I say squeezing because the bed of the pickup was already close to full with a 100 liter tank and two large oxygen tanks. We did manage to get my two large trunks, my guitar, and my two backpacks to fit somewhere.

That task completed, we drove to the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) where Randy is studying aquaculture. He spent the morning checking out lab equipment he is going to need for his experiment in Ubon. Levi and I looked at fish in the ponds, caught a frog, drank some chocolate milk, and sweated like there was no tomorrow.

After lunch we began the process of loading truck with the lab equipment, concentrated seawater, and the Kung (the Thai word for a creature that I would describe as a cross between a shrimp and a crayfish). We put the (big, heavy) jugs of concentrated seawater in the bottom of the 100 liter tank. On top of them we placed a large tub. After pumping water into the tub and getting the oxygen tanks aerating the water we began to add our 60 or so Kung to the tub.

One of the Kung flipped itself out of the net during the transfer process and fell between the 100 liter tank wall and the tub. I, trying to be helpful climbed up on the tailgate to have a look. My added weight gave enough slant to the tailgate to send the tub from which we were transferring the Kung splashing to the ground. Fortunately the tub did not utterly capsize. But some Kung were lost in the sloshing of the fall. We recovered those that were on the ground, and some (but not all) of those that had landed in a nearby pond.

The loading done we braced ourselves for the 10 hour trip to Ubon. Our first stop we discovered that vibrations had opened the oxygen valve wide open, nearly depleting one of our two tanks of oxygen. We bought some tape, secured the valve, and continued on our way.

The highlight of the trip was a stop at Chokchai farm. I had an amazing burger there.

We arrived in Ubon a little after midnight. By the time we were finished transferring the Kung to their new home. it was almost 2:30. I spent the night early morning at Randy’s house.

Sunday night I moved out of the church where I have been staying. I didn’t say goodbye as well as I would have liked, in part because I wasn’t packed as soon as I had planned because my clothes hadn’t dried fast at all due to exceptionally high humidity.

Pi Tot drove me from the church to a lady’s house outside Bangkok where Randy (one of my friends from Ubon) and I were going to spend the night. Our hostess had prepared quantities of delicious food for us. After eating my spaghetti, fried chicken, and fried rice, I went to bed and had a wonderful night of sleep. Perhaps the best since I’ve been in Thailand. I slept on a real mattress. There were not cars or dogs out my window. I woke to the morning sun coming in my window.