Dinner with Jun's Parents

Tuesday, 24 August 2004

My three boxes of teaching materials (Thanks so much Nate for sending these. I owe you big time!) FINALLY arrived today. What a pain on this end! They have been in Bangkok airport since over a week ago, and they charged for duty tax, storage fees (for each day the box sat there), and delivery taxes (even though it was sent Fed Ex and they kept pushing back the delivery date!). I had to send my passport, visa, and talk to them about every other day to figure out what the deal was. All the while they were charging more taxes! Sometimes, being a farang (foreigner) works against you because they'll take advantage of it. What a headache! But it was because the boxes were so big and heavy, they probably didn't want me to be importing some suspect things. Normal size care packages won't have such a problem. Wink, wink! (=

Tonight Jun's mother invited us to dinner as a goodbye and thanks to Jill. Miss Matt (Our Thai teaching assistant), Jill, and I met Jun and his parents at a restaurant near the river. We ate seafood, lamb, fried fish (and when I asked what kind of fish it was, Jun's mother said "the kind that comes from the river", as she pointed to the river next to us.), tom yum (hot and sour soup, a favorite of Thais), and som tum talay (the popular spicy papaya salad). We finished our meal off with coffee ice cream and fresh watermelon and pineapple. I love the yummy chili pepper sugar that everyone dips their fruit in. One of my favorite little snacks to get are the green mango (which is more the consistency of a cucumber) that you dip in the chili pepper mixed with sugar. Aloy! (Delicious!)

We laughed about Thai superstitions, as they asked Jill and I if we ate frogs (since we saw one hopping by our table), because they believe that if you eat frog, you will have beautiful skin. Yeah, I think I'll stick with Oil of Olay...Also, they made me eat the last piece of food on every plate (little did they know, that is very easy for me to do!), as Thai people also believe that if you eat the last morsel of food left on the plate, that means you will find a very handsome boyfriend! (=

Jun entertained us throughout our dinner by singing Thai love ballads. This little six year old knows every word of every popular song and was definitely not shy to belt out those tunes! He sang in the car ride home, and it was a Kodak moment for sure...