Friday, July 9

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 remember throughout this pandemic—I'm luckier than many people, and things could be a lot worse. But Sunday is Roman's birthday and I'm sorry we won't be able to do most of what we'd planned (which mostly involved going to a park and getting massages). I don't know what this will mean for my trip to Immigration next week, and I suppose I'll have to cancel my plans to head to Chinatown with Emma. And man, we're gonna miss swimming in our pool!

But it's only for two weeks. Or, well, we'll see about that. Anyway, I wrote most of the below blog post during the week, before the lockdown announcement, when I was young and innocent and preoccupied with making salads...

On Tuesday, I officially started working from home. After a video call with the Kindergarten parents, my school made a new plan to give the students actual opportunities to practice their English conversation. Starting July 19, I'll be teaching three online Kindergarten classes a day (separated by age group), four times a week. This will likely continue through August. I have until the 19^th to decide on the topics for my lessons (my choice!) and start lesson planning, and to devise a science experiment the kids can do (with their parents' help) on the topic of “food.” I'll create a separate video for that one.

This also means I have plenty of time to...go grocery shopping, cook meals at home, do yoga, meditate, swim in the pool (oh, how little I knew!), watch dumb videos on Youtube, start a new writing project, take pictures of pigeons, and take pictures of everything I eat!

Pigeons!

I've been craving a green salad, so on Tuesday I picked up some supplies at Foodland and...do you wanna hear all about how I made a salad? Well, OK!

I rinsed the hydroponic greens and sunflower sprouts I bought in a mixture of tap water and white vinegar (whether I thought this would protect me from the tap water or possible pesticides, I don't really know), then let them air dry on a kitchen towel. 

Once the greens were dry, I put a couple handfuls into my wok, which served as my mixing bowl. I heated up my grill pan and pressed a salted & oiled chicken breast onto it. While that cooked, I chopped up peeled cucumber, red bell pepper, and roasted almonds, and tossed them into the wok, along with some chopped basil. I made a dressing with garlic, lime juice, sel gris, olive oil, and more basil, and some finely chopped Parmesan (I need to someday remember to buy a cheese grater). I chopped up half the rested chicken breast and tossed it into the salad, and then slid it all into a bowl. And that was lunch on Tuesday.

This was lunch on Wednesday—a chicken salad sandwich with yogurt and mayo on poppy seed rye bread from the Bangkok Baking Company, cucumbers, and a sunflower sprout salad.

Thursday's lunch was pan-fried chicken breast on greens.

And Friday's lunch was an open-face charred broccoli sandwich with cucumbers, kinda like the "broccoli reubens" I made in Chicago but with pickled mustard greens instead of sauerkraut—though Roman told me I can't call them broccoli reubens because the word reuben creates an expectation of a sandwich that roasted broccoli can never fulfill.

Sandwich with cute Thai sriracha sauce and a cucumber salad

I cooked most of our dinners at home, including pan-fried duck breast (you guys, the duck breast cost just over a dollar) with white rice and greens cooked in duck fat.

On Friday, I headed to Sathorn, where I picked up Roman's all-time favorite fried chicken skins, which we ate with sticky rice and fermented mustard greens.

We were able to eat out once—we went to the cart closest to the house and ordered pad kra pow moo kai dao (stir-fried holy basil with pork and a fried egg—I'm practicing saying this in Thai).

We ordered it and waited at a table, assuming we'd probably get to-go boxes, but they brought it to us to eat there! I'm guessing that was our last meal outside for a long time.