The view from the other side of the world

It's absolutely gorgeous here, and I'm just now really beginning to appreciate it. This is a panoramic (yeah...my camera does that. Nbd.) shot of the area where I work....it's like a little oasis. It was cloudy today so it wasn't satanically hot like it is usually. I'm getting used to always being damp and sticky, because the heat here is eternal.

After work today my mom and I went teo. Teo is a word that has no translation in English, but it basically means go out for fun. We walked down the street to the house where Gao lives. She lives there with her two sisters (at least I think they were her sisters) and probably a whole host of other family members. They are the most precious little old women I have ever met. Check out this picture Gao asked me to take of them. I can't get over it.

After Gao's we stopped by another house and just chilled and ate sunflower seeds with a couple neighbor women for awhile. Then we headed across the street to the pastor's house and talked with his wife and little girl. It was fun...everyone here is so nice and smiley all the time. I don't think I've ever seen an angry Thai person.


Outside the pastor's house there were these circles of boiled mango drying in the sun (like fruit leather).

The little black dots are bees and flies, and there is no cover over the mangoes. The first thought I had when I saw them was "Welp, I'm never eating one of those again." But of course, when we left the house they shooed the insects away and peeled one off for me. It had three dead ants inside. Yum.

When we got home I showered and then we ate dinner. During dinner we started doing some Thai-English-Thai translation, and then we took it to the couch and that's what we've been doing for the past couple of hours. It was so fun. In her attempts to pronounce the sentence "How are you doing?" Maani kept saying, "How are do you-ing?" It cracked me up. There was a lot of repeating, but a lot of laughing too. It was some good family bonding time.

Oh, not like I'm keeping track or anything, but the dog-eating story was retold twice today. It's how they introduce me...but hey, I'm glad to be the topic of conversation.