Thursday, October 20

We are back in Bangkok, and I am back at school.

At least…kind of. For the last two weeks of October, my school asked all the teachers (Thai and English teachers both) to come in, even though we’re all teaching our classes online, and have done so from home for the last month and a half, or whatever it’s been.

I was a little annoyed at first—I had gotten pretty comfortable with my teaching set-up at home, and it just seemed kind of arbitrary that the school was making us all come in. And it is, and we do spend the mornings sitting around doing nothing, when we could just as easily be at home. But, it also turns out it is kind of nice to actually see other human beings.

As things have started to open up again, I’m realizing how comfortable I’ve gotten in my little bubble. Over the last weekend, I had lunch with Darren, and saw Kathryn, and those were probably the first occasions I’ve had to make conversation with someone IRL who wasn’t Roman in…a long time.

So that part might actually be good for me. And it’s probably a good way to start easing into teaching at school…because all the students are due to come back November 1. We’ll see how that goes!

Also, going to work every day means I’ve become more aware of this sidewalk artist. There is a guy who I often see on Soi Pridi Banomyong (the street that leads from the BTS station to my school), drawing complex mathematically equations on huge pieces of cardboard, often talking loudly to himself. Drawings also cover the sidewalk next to his cardboard, but I only recently realized you can see his drawings all and up down the length of Pridi Banomyong (and it’s a long street).

Going to school also means free lunch! Here are the meals they served this week:

Salted dried fish with rice, vegetable soup

Mixed vegetables with pork, soup with pork belly and pineapple

Glass noodles with vegetables, soup with hardboiled egg and tofu

What else? We were thrilled to come home from vacation and discover we have a new roommate.

This is Slim. Slim has been a gamechanger concerning the roach issue.

I didn’t get too close for the photo, because I really want our new roommate to stay and I’m trying to respect Slim’s boundaries.

Roman got me these lovely birds of paradise…

And I cooked meals at home—here are the remnants of my tom kha stock...

We went out for burgers at Artisan Craft Burger…

And we got a surprisingly good lunch at Platinum Fashion Mall. I’ve been reading the memoir Crying in H Mart, which made me want to eat Korean food, so I got a kimchi soup with rice, and Roman got pad Thai.

This was the sign above the dryer in Platinum Fashion Mall—one of the things I enjoy about Thailand is checking out the not-quite-right English translations on very official looking signs and placards: