MicahJohn

I do tend to note strange (hard to find in the USA) foods I eat. I managed to forget to note that a few days ago I ate duck heads. There really is not much meat on a duck head.

Also I would like to here protest against the welding done on the streets and right outside my classrooms. Nothing is done to prevent the light of the torch being seen directly by anyone who might happen to be around. My eyesight is probably daily deteriorating.

Last night I was eating with some folks where I live. At one point they pointed to something and said, “try this.” I asked what it was. The answer was liver. I tried it. As I was chewing I realized it wasn’t cooked. I confirmed that they really hadn’t cooked it. So, last night I ate raw liver.

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.

Ants and ant larvae are quite good on rice. At the end of the same meal I was offered a frog. I was glad I could say I had already eaten some fruit (the end of a meal in Thailand). I was glad because apparently the way to eat it is to just pop the whole thing in your mouth and start chewing. I don’t really want to chew through a frog’s skull.

I like having things to write about. There comes a point, however, when a day is so full of sights, and sounds, and tastes, and smells that it grows harder, rather than easier, to write anything about any of it. The brain is tired from processing so many new and exciting things. And even if it were alert, there are so many experiences to be sorted through it is hard to settle on those which are particularly noteworthy. Yesterday was such a day. 

After language school I walked a few blocks south to see a free art exhibit someone in my language class had recommended. It was a collection of large canvases filled with brilliant flowers. One of my favorites had bright red flowers hanging down in clusters. The background was a deep green. And weaving through it all were very dark, all but black vines. I think all the contrast is what made it particularly attractive to me. The darks in the background and in the vines made the flowers blaze all the brighter. 

After lunch I met Pi Silk. She helped me find music shops I had been told about in Chinatown. It was fun to play several different cellos. One I played had a cutaway body to provide more convenient access to high notes. I hadn’t ever seen (or at least taken notice of) a cello like that. None of the music stores had electric cellos, though several had electric violins. 

My brain was overloaded after several shops filled with instruments. It was utterly overrun by what came next which I will poorly describe. (It makes me wonder how hard and frustrating it was for John to try and relate his revelation in human words to people who had never seen the things he saw. That said what I saw today was not at all in the same category as the things seen by St. John). 

Pi Silk took me into a building filled with row after row of storage cells, each cell was a shop bursting with merchandise. We passed everything from computer speakers to bins filled with old speedometers, from bolts of cloth to dvds. Between the storage cells there was not room for two people to walk side by side. When the walls receded a little the space remained filled, filled with food vendors, motorcycles, and people. 

Separate from the above was a food market. The food market was equally crowded and equally filled with things varied and beyond my ken.  

Along the way Pi Silk fed me certain foods worth having. I drank the juice squeezed from the root of a Chinese Lotus. I ate a boiled birds nest. I’m not sure I could stomach the ethical implications of eating a nest stolen from a bird and its offspring on a regular basis, but as for stomachability otherwise, it was excellent. I was told the nest is made by the bird from its own saliva. I don’t know. It certainly wasn’t very grass or hair like.  

I had the opportunity to meet the parents of Pi Silk. (Chinatown is their home area). Today was another reminder that when my brain is processing a myriad of sites, sounds, etc, my mouth doesn’t do much. I struggle to produce any worthwhile conversation, or even to respond to the worthwhile conversations of others. I just spit out minimal answers: “yes,” “very exciting,” “Nathanael, Gabriel, Judah, Seth, Asher, and Baruch,” “22, 20, 18, 15, 13, 10,” etc. 

I’m off to bed.