Monday, December 6

On Wednesdays, I have to go to work early to kids when they get dropped off, so I take a
motorcycle taxi (it's also the only day I wear the school polo shirt)

This week at school, I fished a large, very alive frog out of the toilet. I also fished a little girl’s plastic ring out of a koi pond. And I wrote the following text—as dictated—on a card: Happy Father’s Day! You love pizza. I love you. You can drive a car without falling asleep even when it’s night. You’re really strong and you’re a super hero.

My job is pretty funny sometimes.

I also got a Covid booster this week, and spied some of the merch available at the vaccine center:

On Friday, I went out for dinner at an Indian restaurant with my friend Elle. We finished the meal with Indian sweets, which she loves, but which I always find nicer to look at than to eat:

On Saturday, I had breakfast with my friend Nikki, then ran errands and baked some pumpkin muffins at home. In the evening, Roman and I got massages, and then headed to On Nut, where we wandered around the small sois, picking up khao neo, strawberries, jackfruit, and papaya, and checking out the heap of refuse at the sugarcane juice cart...

We also stopped at a street food cart, where we got pad see ew for dinner and sipped on soda waters.

On Sunday, I volunteered for Bangkok Community Help Foundation—the organization Roman did some painting when we first arrived in BKK. I met up with a small group at the Art Hostel in Ekkamai, and we spent a few hours packing bags filled with five kilos of rice, a bottle of cooking oil, a bottle of fish sauce, four cans of mackerel, six packages of Mama instant noodles, one small bottle of Tiger balm, a toothbrush and toothpaste, and two masks in a plastic pouch. I've been wanting to volunteer with them for a while but it kept not working out, so it was nice to have a chance to do something a helpful with my time. 

We took a photo after we had packed all the bags. I don't know where I was looking. 

On Sunday afternoon, Roman met up with his coworker, Joan, to check out a shopping market, so I ordered in one of my favorite meals—som tum khor moo yang, or papaya salad with grilled pork neck, plus sticky rice. 

Monday was a holiday (in honor of Father's Day), and Roman and I headed to Chinatown in the late morning. We wandered the small streets, peeking down back alleys and eyeing the paper lanterns, dried sausages, and yellow candles for sale.

For lunch, we headed to a cheap but bustling soup shop, where we got two bowls of soup with rolled rice noodles, crispy pork, pork loin, pork tongue, and pork stomach.

And we stopped in at a cute little cafe for delicious, pillowy, just-fried round doughnuts, which we ate with pandan custard.

On a final note...both of my co-teachers recorded videos of our students singing for Father's Days, to send to the parents. They're too cute not to share.