Querido5

Queridos Amigos

I keep finding myself wanting to break forth in Spanish. But though I have not tried it, I doubt speaking in Spanish would help clarify anything. I hear people talking and think I hear some Spanish words. But it’s all Thai (or Isaan).

Things here have been well, though there are no exciting food stories. The only story involving food is the story about Joe and I feeding fish in a park in Roi Et. Throwing food into this lake brought loads of fish crowding to the surface of the water. There were catfish that, I think without exaggerating, were three feet long. But fish are hard to measure honestly.

I recently closed an email with TTFN and attributed it to Tigger. I have received word from readers in the UK that TTFN goes back beyond the Americanized Winnie the Pooh. I quote, “TTFN, which you attribute to Tigger of Winnie the Pooh fame (Americanised version), originated with a very popular radio comedy in the UK during WWII know as ITMA (It’s that man again) so it has a very ancient pedigree.” This trivia/correction contributed by my relatives Phil and Flora Nell Duke.

Speaking of contributions, I have received some questions in personal emails that I thought might be of interest to the greater reading public. One reader writes, “Are the letters characters like in Japanese or Chinese? Can you spell some words with your 18 letters?” I responded, The letters are pretty phonetic like spanish with a few exception rules (many fewer than English). Each letter is named its sound followed by the vowel aw like in saw, followed by a word in which it is used (If English did the same, P would be named “paw panda” or something). So every letter is a vocab word. I have the spellings for these words, but I have not yet learned all the letters in them. I haven’t learned any vowels they are all at the end of the alphabet. Disclaimer: I write this as someone who is learning with some other preschoolers not as a master of the written Thai language.

Another reader asks, “What is the landscape like there?” My response is duplicated below for your reading pleasure.

Landscape? Either trees/jungle, village among said trees (but less jungle), or rice fields. With every village/town is at least one temple. Every temple, government building, school, and hospital has a wall in front of it, and usually a large sign with silver or gold letters on a blue or black background.

When I first got here there were cows and buffalo grazing in the fields, but they have started planting rice and so have penned up the animals in most places. They are now being fed hay from the many haystacks that pepper the landscape (both in the village and in the fields). The hay stacks look like what I think of when I hear haystack except they have a tall pole coming out the top of them. So they are haystacks on a stick.

Another thing sprinkled about in the fields are rough shelters, often just a roof. I assume for shelter from the sun for a midday nap, or for shelter from the rain in a sudden storm. The fields are usually square, usually small. They have small hills/earthen walls separating them from the other fields. They plow the fields with these sweet tractor things; they have two wheels and two long handles (they look kind of like old school plow handles). They hook up all kinds of things to these tractors: plows in the field, wagons on the roads. The operator walks behind them, or if they have a wagon hooked up, the operator rides the wagon.

The roads were good when I got here but have in about a week gone bad. All the dirt roads have turned to mud roads, and the mud roads have turned to rutted roads. The rain is here (that’s why they’re planting rice and bringing in the cows). Even some paved roads seem to be getting worse fast. My best guess is that there is not a good base under the asphalt and so when the ground gets wet underneath the road it doesn’t hold up the asphalt well any more and then heavy trucks start to crack it and tear it apart.

In addition to the cows and buffalo, there are a bunch of ugly chickens and ugly dogs. The nicest looking dogs I’ve seen are here in the village, the worst I’ve seen were in the town of Ubon Ratchathani.

Many thanks to this issue’s contributors. My apologies for the places where I used language more suited to the original questioner than to the general public. The reason for all these pieces is that I am at the end of the day and still have not brought in my laundry and would like to go to bed. I wanted to send all of you something and pasting in a few pieces from other letters was faster than writing something new.

Off to bring in my sheets even if they’re still damp.

Peace

Micah