Wednesday, May 5

As I expected, the last few days have been pretty quiet. We've mostly stayed at home, venturing out to get food or groceries we bring home to eat to prepare. We've started talking to agents about apartments to rent, and I'm getting to work on a new creative writing project. I've signed the contract with my school, and have a lot of administrative business to look forward to—I have to get a visa extension, a Thai bank account, a background check from the local police station, passport photos, a doctor's exam and then, at last, my work visa. Thankfully, the school is helping me along the way (and, I believe, paying for my work visa).

We did have a rather unusual dinner on Wednesday night. We walked to the carts by Rama IV Road and picked up some kind of grilled gelatinous squares of garlic chives (made with tapioca starch, maybe? Or rice flour?) and sticky rice. We also stopped to check out a cart where the guy was grilling all kinds of off-cuts over a hot barbecue.

We took a look, had a little discussion, and then pointed to a pig's ear, some intestines, and...a pig...snout? The guy grilled it all, hacked it up into small bits with a cleaver, and put it into plastic bags, which we brought home with the rest of our dinner.

Too much pig snout!

We got too much food, but that wasn't a terrible thing, as the pig's ears and intestines weren't really my bag. The ears were super cartilaginous and I couldn't stop thinking about, you know, the daily experiences of an intestine. But the pig snout was good!

I also made a mushroom larb for one of our lunches—I had a much less complicated relationship with that.

And that's all I have to report for now! I'm sorry I haven't seen any more tiny turtles!