ah the oranges

So I think that I have already written one post about oranges, but here comes another one. I never thought that I would find an orange that tasted better than the Christmas oranges that we have at home in December, wow was I wrong. The other day I was teaching a homework class to my grade 6’s (basically I’m there to help them with their English homework, which usually results in me re-teaching everything, because they rarely understand it the first time) and one of them offered me this tiny little orange. It was maybe the size of a golf ball, if not a little smaller. I tried it, and it was amazing. There were no seeds, and it was the best tasting orange that I have ever had. They told me that you could buy them in Chinatown, so as we were downtown this past weekend we went to Chinatown and bought some for ourselves. I’m actually quite shocked that we found them…it was a complete accident and we just happened to walk by the cart where the woman was selling them. I bought a large bag for myself, and my friend wanted to split the bag with me until she actually tried one for herself and immediately went to go buy her own bag. I can’t even describe how good these oranges are, and the only people who are going to get to try for themselves are my parents, because I will definitely be going to buy some when they get here!

After I ate these oranges for the first time in my homework class, I started talking with the kids about how different the fruit is in Canada. I told them how different our bananas are (they couldn’t believe that we only have the big bananas, because the small ones that you can buy in the market are SO much better). They also couldn’t believe how much we pay for pineapple, when you can buy it here on the street, pre-cut and ready to eat for only 10 THB. I also told them about the size of watermelons in Canada. They eat a lot of watermelon here, but their watermelons are the size of our honeydews…I have never seen a large watermelon here. They were shocked when I drew on the board how big watermelons in Canada can be. We talked about more fruits, and food in general (they were really disgusted that we have ketchup and dill pickle chips, and I told them that I was quite disgusted by their seafood mayonnaise and salmon teriyaki flavoured chips).

I am really happy that I have not tired of eating Pad Thai since I have been here. It tastes absolutely nothing like the stuff that we eat/make at home…it is so much better! The lady in the restaurant at our apartment building makes the best Pad Thai that I have eaten so far in Thailand, and we eat it pretty much every single night. Pad Thai and salad are pretty much the two things that we have for suppers (my health nurse told me to never eat salad here, but I need to eat some vegetables sometimes!) Sometimes we have panang guy (which is described as “chicken and rice with red milk curry”), and some of the other dishes, but Pad Thai is definitely our staple food! I am going to get the lady to teach me how she makes it so that I can make it for you all when I get back.

The other thing that I want to take home with me is the way that they serve rice here. You rarely just get a pile of rice on your plate when your meal is served. They usually put the rice in a small bowl and then tip it onto your plate so that the rice is in a nice little dome shape, and then put your sauce or stir-fry beside it. It’s so easy, and it looks so much nicer!

Not much has been going on here lately, November has been kind of a blah month, but it actually went by surprisingly fast and now it is already insanely busy December. We are going away every weekend and my parents are coming on the 22nd, in two weeks! I am also trying to teach my kids about Christmas, Santa, snow and winter, all things that they cannot relate to at all, so it should be interesting. I have pictures, but it’s not the same.

So have no worries Jeff, no enraged elephants have eaten me yet, but I still have a few months left here, so it still could happen…thank you for your concern!