Full Recovery

It took a bit longer for my full recovery than we expected and we left Wangpikun only recently. I continued to rest last week with only occasional trips to the school to check email. Tuesday, February 13 we went to Aranya’s house for dinner and her aunt joined us. Aranya’s aunt gave me some advice about my cold that I really liked! Have a massage! Aranya’s aunt gave me a massage that night and returned the next morning to give me another one. On Valentine’s Day, the students were giving away “Luve” stickers and Karl and I ended up with a small collection. We had brought a box of children’s Valentine cards with us and would give them to the students that wanted one.

On Thursday, February 15 Karl went with some of the English teachers to a nearby primary school and taught a couple of classes. He really enjoyed himself and said the younger students were a lot of fun. Friday there were school elections and unlike American schools where you vote for each office, here they voted for a group of students who would fill all the offices. On Wednesday, the students who were running had given speeches. Since I don’t understand Thai, I can’t tell you what they promised if they were elected but I’m sure it was something like free ice cream in the cafeteria. So during the day Friday, the Wangpikun student body cast their votes and then assembled at the end of the day for the vote count. There were three groups, the “Best Girls”, “Freshy Teens” and “Power One”. The group “Best Girls” was actually a group of all girls. Each ballot was pulled out of the box and the selected group was read off. The students would clap and cheer for the group they supported each time the group got a vote. At first the clapping and cheering was pretty loud but as the count progressed through the 600+ ballots, the students weren’t as enthusiastic. The group that won the election was the “Freshy Teens” and they had about half boys and half girls. In fact, An was part of the “Freshy Teens” group. He is the student that stayed with us a few weeks back when the other teachers and students were at the scout camp. After the students left for the day, Karl got a lesson on riding a motorcycle from To. Karl has ridden a motorcycle before but it was years ago and a refresher course was a good idea. To said that Karl was a good student, but I still insisted that Karl have a bit more practice before I joined him on the motorcycle.

Saturday morning, Karl got to show off the results of his practice and he drove us to the Saturday market on the motorcycle. Since I really don’t like motorcycles and have a fear of falling off, the ride wasn’t particularly enjoyable. This has been the case regardless of who is driving the motorcycle; unfortunately for me motorcycles are the primary mode of transportation in Thailand. We saw many of our friends from the daily market here and stopped to chat with them as we looked for the few items we wanted to purchase. Karl got this picture of one of our friends, Karim, who is Muslim. For such a small town, Wangpikun is quite religiously diverse! After taking me to get another medicinal massage and then home to rest for the afternoon, Karl rode around on the motorcycle and explored areas of Wangpikun that he hadn’t been able to reach by foot. Here are some of the pictures that he took.




Sunday we went to church once more and got to say goodbye to our friends there. My arrival at church this week prompted the question that I had been hearing all week “hi lao?” Which literally translates as “lost already?” and it means “Is your cold gone?” In the evening, we went to Aranya’s grandparent’s farm a little ways outside of Wangpikun. These are her grandparents on her father’s side of the family. One of the ways they make money is by baking wood in earthen ovens called turtle ovens. In the picture below, I am standing between two turtle ovens at the farm. The baked wood is then used as charcoal in what amounts to a concrete bucket. The charcoal is placed in the top half of the bucket and started on fire. The bucket is constructed so that the ashes fall into the bottom half and there is an opening where they can be scoped out. When it’s hot enough, a wok, cooking pot or any type of pan is put on top of the bucket over the fire. Aranya’s grandmother made dinner for us using this unique stove. In the picture, she is stir-frying some vegetables in a wok. We also had steamed chicken which was cooked in a big double-boiler balanced on the stove. The farm was nice and quiet since they were so far away from anyone else. When it was time to go, we found that it was also very dark when you didn’t have many neighbors. However, they have a glorious view of the stars at their house!