Thursday February 4

no school today. or tomorrow. the students all have exams.

Yesterday I was talking to my next door neighbor singyam about biking. Singyam and i have been hanging out fairly often latley. She noticed that I have been biking alot and told me that she liked bikign too. I asked her if she wanted to come with me sometime so we could bike together. she seemd sort of lonely. I sort of assumed that she would say no. Although she is pretty tough, she's about 67 years old. Singyam told me that she didn't like to bike in the heat so i told her we could go in the morning when it was still cool.

"ok!"
"tomorrow?"
"ok!" she told me
I asked her what time
"6:00 we go" she said
I agreed

this morning at 6 am she was already waiting for me outside. she was dressed for a ski trip. winter parka, face mask, hat, gloves. i threw my fleece on and stuffed some crackers in the pocket to eat on the road. Singyam had a dim flashlight in her bike basket as her bike light. we stoppe at the market a few blocks away to pick up her friend supon that singyam had invited to come alaong. supon was also dressed for a mission to antarctica. we rode all the way to the airport taking only back roads. thailand mornings are shrouded in fog and i imagined we were riding through the mists of avalon bareback on white horses. when the sun started to com up and the pink sky reflected on the fog turning it into cotton candy, i felt mor like i was in rainbow brite's cloud kingdom. we rode pretty far and singyam and supon kept a good pace the whole time. as we turned around to head back, they hopped off their bikes to walk for a few minutes. singyam pointed at her butt as she got off her bike "hurt" she said, wincing. when we got back singyam and supon told me they wanted to go again tomorrow. excellent!

Nit was waiting for us at home still in her pajamas with breakfast ready. she was appalled that we had been gone for 2 hours and "biking ride" the whole time. "wan khanot!" i told her happily (it was alot of fun!). she smiled and clapped at my use of the new thai phrase she had taught me the day before. i traded language with her some more after breakfast, tutoring her in english for nearly an hour. she wanted more but i told her that was enough for today. i had to think of a better way to break down irregular verbs and their tenses to her. she coulnd't understand why the "will be verb+ing" (we will be cooking tomorrow)format i had taught her to simplify the future tense didn't always work.

we rearranged the kitchen to make room for the new cabinet we woudl pick up that afternoon. the amount of clutter in that one room made me want to tear through everything and throw half of it away an i deperatly wanted to put a fresh coat of paint on the dirty faded baby blue walls. i smiled to myself though as I rehung the huge framed clock of 3 holographic kittens next to a calendar with the king's picture on it.

when nit brought me to her office later, she had to teach piano lessons but another teacher there had a free hour and decided it would be best spent educating me a little bit about playing the guitar. i was impressed by how well he was able to teach me without using any english at all. after a while, he gave up and sang me a song. "this is a love song" nit said to me as she walked through the room. she said something in thai to the guy singing that made him blush but he kept playing. when nit's husband came by, looked at me, and said "come," i followed him, no clue where we were going. we picked up nin (their daughter) from school and then walked to the market to get snacks and food for dinner. nin kept asking me what i wanted to eat for a snack. i have no idea what anything was so i told her to choose for me. she picked out some bright pink jelloey blobs and come clear jelloey blobs that had green vegatables in the middle. they were both terrible but i ate them anyway to see her smile. "you like?" she asked me. i nodded, lying.

nit stayed to teach and nah A (uncle A/ nin's dad) took music, nin, and i boating. we drove down a dirt road to a small pond where they stored a red plastic rowboat underwater. we pulled it out and washed it out with a bucket. i was fairly certain that i would sink it when i got in but i didn't (it did sink about 3 inches though). Nah A tied a long to the front of the boat and the other end of the rope to a tree. just in case. we paddled around for a little while while the sun sank and the pond lit on fire from the red in the sky. we stopped now and then for music to put his plastic fish in the water and pull the string that made it wiggle around. nah a. pulled us in with the rope when it got dark and re-sunk the boat. i felt like we were storing away a secret.

nin got her exam scores that night (kids here have to test to get into good schools for the 7th grade) and the results warrented a lottery-win-jumping-frenzy and phone calls to everyone she knew. our giant family dinner that night was one of celebration.