Living in Bangkok

We are settling into a kind of routine here, which I think is a helpful way to get through lockdown. We usually wake up around 7:00am, and I make us breakfast—cracked wheat cereal or oatmeal with fruit, or toast with a little sliced cheese and fruit, or pastries from BBC, or else sticky rice with coconut milk and fruit, with hot tea for me and instant coffee for Roman. We meditate and then take a walk around the neighborhood before it gets too hot. Then I have a couple hours to lesson plan or write while Roman either teaches or lesson plans or plays guitar. Before lunch, I usually do a Youtube yoga class in my office. For lunch, either I make us something simple, or we pick up something on the street and bring it home, or we go down to the cart just outside our house.  Me with vegetable stir-fry and kra pow moo, Roman's fried chicken and khao neo Roman putting an insane amount of chilies on his kra pow moo krob; my pad see ew After lunch, I put on my school t-shir...

I'm feeling a little low about all this lockdown stuff. It just sucks that so many people here are suffering so badly. Hospitals are running out of beds and people can't even get tested in order to get admitted to those hospitals and several people have literally died on the streets in Bangkok. Construction workers are being locked into construction sites and given very little food or care. The vaccine rollout has been a total mess. I think Thai people are in general very upset with how the government has dealt with Covid. There were protests just last week, in defiance of the ban on public assembly: https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/politics/2150783/police-fire-water-cannon-rubber-bullets-tear-gas-at-protesters And, you know, just personally, I feel kinda low—low energy, low motivation to do anything. Over the weekend, we had thought we might go to Lumphini or Benjakiti park, but on Friday, the government announced the closure of all public parks. We took a tr...

I started teaching for real this week. Well, teaching for real online—I teach three classes over Zoom every afternoon, Monday through Thursday. I teach the oldest kids first (5-6 year olds, or K3), then the middle-age kids (4-5 year olds, or K2), and then the youngest (3-4 year olds, or K1). My first two classes on Monday went...not as well as I hoped. The whole point of these lessons is to get the kids speaking in English, and I knew I'd have to do a lot of repeat after me , and that I'd have to call on them individually to make sure they all had a chance to practice speaking. There are only five to ten students per class, so taking time to call on every one of them wouldn't be an issue—and would probably nicely fill up the thirty minutes, I figured. But in my first class, everything went a little haywire with the rollcall. I had a list of all the students' full names, but not the nicknames they use with their foreign (and Thai?) teachers. But that wasn't a big ...

Things have been pretty quiet around here...Roman started working from home this week, so we've both been busy doing lesson planning and Roman has also been teaching online (my classes start Monday).  I've been making most of our meals at home, and we've mainly stayed around Nana, other than a trip to Din Daeng to pick up Roman's laptop from work (and, it turned out, to pick up coconut shakes and interesting fruit).  Here are a few photos from the last week... Special Friday morning breakfast of fresh doughnuts and coffee Buddha statue in Din Daeng Stencil in Din Daeng Dragonfruit and snake fruit (salak) At the one cart by the house that still serves meals at their outside tables Take out lunch--I had gai lan with oyster sauce and spicy green beans with pork, and Roman had fried chicken larb Caught in the rain

Well, one of the news sources I read was wrong, and the lockdown (which the Bangkok government is very pointedly not calling a lockdown) won't go into effect until Monday (tomorrow). Which means we got to have one last weekend out in the world! On Saturday, we went to the Emporium mall and Roman picked up a fancy short-sleeved dress shirt as an early birthday present to himself. We bought a couple bao buns at the mall and took them to the nearby Benchasiri Park. We sat on a bench and ate our bao and drank sodas until it started pouring rain, when we took cover and watched the local pigeons. We tried to wait for a break in the rain to hop back on the BTS, but we were not very successful at staying dry. In the afternoon, I met Emma at a temple near Chinatown, and we went wandering all around the back alleys. I asked her questions about all the food items that have been a mystery to me, she pointed out tiny hidden places to get Bhutanese and Burmese food, and we talked a...

Well, things are about to change around here...again.  On Friday afternoon, the government announced that a two-week lockdown, similar to the one they had in April 2020, will start tomorrow (Saturday) . In Bangkok and other "red zones," people are being asked to stay home, except to buy groceries and other essentials, or to visit the doctor/get the Covid vaccine. There will be a nightly curfew from 9pm to 4am. Travel between provinces is forbidden, and public transportation and groceries stores will be open for fewer hours. Whatever pools and parks and beauty parlors are currently open will close. I never thought this would happen, but the malls will close . I understand it —the number of Covid cases and deaths just keep going up and up and up here and there aren't enough vaccines available and they need to do something . But, you know, it sucks too. We just seem to be chasing the Corona virus wherever it goes! I keep reminding myself what I've tried to remem...