A busy weekend

When we said goodbye to the pupils at camp, P’Mook took us to the province town of Surin. Here Nele needed to buy some skirts which are required for teaching. We treated P’Mook to lunch in Surin: Spaghetti with Black pepper sauce (no rice! But still very spicy…) and we had an ice-cream. Being an ice-cream fan myself, I wanted to try the local flavours, coconut it was! After we paid for the meal (about €7, 50 including ice-creams and drinks) we drove back to our guesthouse. It was then about three o’clock in the afternoon and we decided to get some schoolwork done. Working on a bench in a little garden filled with tropical trees is really stimulating.

When we were a bit bored, we asked if we could help with some chores. I tidied the garden by raking leaves together and throwing them out while Nele was cutting some vegetables for dinner. Later, I was asked to skewer the meat and roast it over a small barbeque pit. Do I need to say we ate it all with rice and that it was spicy? We decided to turn in early and slept like logs.

 Breafast was served at 9 o’clock so we were able to catch up on some sleep. Nevertheless, our neighbour thought he would wake us at 6.30 with some fine Thai music. Goodbye peace and quiet! When we had breakfast P’Nee asked us if we would want to go with him to our school. He had some business to attend to and we could walk around and explore the vast grounds of the school. When walking we noticed some pupils were here, on a Sunday! They were chatting here with some friends, listening to music close to a temple,…

It was fun to see that the school was actually a place to hang out in weekends. While we were walking, we spotted many buildings and around them were big palm trees, all sorts of flowers, big nicely trimmed bushes,… We even saw a blue gecko!

When P’Nee’s work was done, he showed us around the ‘town center’. Nothing more than a few shops but he did show us two very beautiful temples. Nele and I decided to visit the South temple after we were dropped off at our guesthouse. When we arrived we didn’t feel really welcome. Everyone was glaring at us and we were just going to leave when a nice man called us over. He started asking questions and we were eventually invited for lunch! We couldn’t’ refuse this offer so we gladly accepted. It seems that every day, another family from around the temple cooks for the monks and then eats at the temple. The man and his wife, who invited us for lunch, work in a hotel in Bangkok so their English was quite good. After lunch the aunt of the man summoned the master monk to give us a blessing for our projects in Thailand. The master monk was a very friendly man who laughed all of the time. Except when he blessed us, then he was almost chanting and literally pouring liters of waters over our heads and backs. When the blessing was over he even asked for a picture with us Farangs (= foreigners).

When we got back home we read a book in the garden and P’Phen, the mother of our family, chopped up a fresh coconut for Nele and me. We almost inhaled the coconut milk, it was that delicious!