5 Day Weekends, Shopping and Sticky Rice

"Mission trip?" you might ask. "That doesn't sound like much." "It's not really this way," we'd reply. Well, sort of... I have found myself with an inordinate amount of free time this week. Summer is teaching right now, so I figured I'd give you the story about Sunday as well as last night. About the 5 day weekend thing... There were no classes for anyone on Wednesday, because the teachers all had meetings to go to (except Summer and I). Right now, the way the schedule is set up, I don't have any classes on Thursday or Friday. I guarantee, it will get heavier soon. And so, there not being any classes on Wednesday, my weekend started then. I helped Summer out in her classes this morning, though, so I don't feel like a total slacker.

Well, on Sunday, Summer and I took our motorbike and followed Adjan (Teacher) Printt up the rutty, treacherous path up the mountain behind the school. We did well, only managing to stall the bike once and coming close to tipping it over twice. Anyhow, we followed him for about 3-4 kilometers, to where we parked our bikes and went trapsing through the forest. Printt found some good bamboo to cut, an started hacking away at it. It was cool, we helped take it down and then used some big leaves to wipe the bamboo down. It has little hairs/fibers that probably aren't the best to breathe in and can be itchy if you get them on your skin and in your clothes. When we did that, Printt chopped the bamboo into small pieces to haul back down the mountain.

The trip didn't just consist of chopping down bamboo, though. We got to try some fruits that were growing wild. One was a small berry-like fruit that was green and very VERY sour. It left your mouth kinda dry too. But after biting it, if you took a drink of water, the water tasted really sweet. It was cool! The other fruit was about the size of a kiwi and was pretty sour too, but had a very sweet aftertaste. The consistency was less than desirable for me, but it was fun to try.

That night, we went to Printt's house and built up a fire outside. He had put sticky rice with coconut milk in the bamboo (it's a special kind of bamboo, by the way), and we set them up on a grill right by the fire. Then, we just let them cook. People make this all the time (in season) and sell it at the market. When the bamboo is good and brown, you take them off and cut the outside of the shoot off, so it's easier to get to the sticky rice. Ours didn't taste as sweet as the ones you buy in the market, but we are going to try again. This time we'll put some sugar in with it.

Last night we had another adventure. We got to go to the night market in Chiang Mai. Let me tell you... it is awesome! It was a little crazy at first, because they see you and immediately start trying to get you to look at their stuff. "Come, look! I give you good price. You first customer. I give you good price, yes?" Then they would proceed to hock their wares. If you know Summer and I, we are both of the personality where it can be difficult to say no. I was worried that we would spend our life savings that night, but we did alright. One of the things that's fun about the night market is that they expect you to barter. I bought some over-priced dried mangos when we first started, but learned quickly to change my tactics. Everything from food to clothing to jewelry to trinkets to electronics to decorative household items were there. And it is such a tourist place that you have people from all around the world visiting. It's quite exciting! Anyway, that is the story of our lives recently. Summer promises to write a blog soon. All our love to our friends and family.

~M