Just put some eggs

I am feeling the pressure to make my blog extremely awesome.  First of all, Mrs. Bannon, my sixth-grade teacher and the cornerstone my English grammar knowledge, is now a loyal follower of this blog.  Secondly, my oh-so-clever-and-remarkably-witty-bestest-pal Abigail Catherine Bertrand Poats is now settling into her Princeton in Asia post in Beijing and she, obviously, has upstaged me with her blog.  It is a lot funnier than mine and I only read the post that she wrote before she left America.  I have a feeling Abby's blog will get increasingly funnier as her Chinese students discover she is the world's most gullible person. God help her. I will include the address if you promise that you will only read her blog in addition to mine because I cannot stand to lose followers.  Plus, I know some of you have just started the monotony of the rest of your lives at a desk and will be looking for things to make it look like you are working.  (Poatsinpeking.blogspot.com)  Third, Magee is in the Dominican Republic for Peace Corps, and although her blog has more grammatical errors than mine, it is filled with wonderful descriptions of her life which seems way more interesting than mine and she has the whole e.e.cummings lowercase style thing going on which really makes her blog cool.  I am super jealous that she speaks Spanish because she has already had more fun encounters with Dominicans than I have had with Thai people in three months.  I REALLY want a charismatic 13-year-old to take me off the street, put curlers in my hair, and play dominoes with me!  

Just now, when I told Neuki that I needed to make my blog extra-super-dee-duper, she said "just put some eggs."  This, I think, is a semi-joke possibly related to a saying in Thailand which might have something to do with the fact that anything is better with an egg on it.  I mean, not everything, but as far as meals go, I agree.  Even before I discovered the Thai obsession with egg which is "kai" in Thai, I had my own love affair with adding a fried egg to everything I could put in my mouth in South Africa....pizza, bananas, croissants with brie, hamburgers, endless possibilities for deliciousness.  I know how to ask for an egg prepared in many different ways in Thai because all Thai food is better with egg.

So, it has been a while since my last post.  I have been busy.  Some of the classes that I was complaining about before have been postponed or cancelled but I have new ones in their places.  I am currently teaching a class on interviewing to Engineers which pretty much consists of me taking things from the ND career center website and giving it to my students, no plagiarism involved.

Last weekend, I was an honorary member of the Business English Department's English Camp in Rayong/ Pattaya.  Pattaya is a beach that is the Thai equivalent of Ocean City.  It is pretty much the armpit of the country, but camp was super fun.  The Business English students speak English very well, so it was nice to actually get to know some students personally.  The older students hazed the freshmen with the typical eating bananas and hard-boiled eggs with chillies inside, painting their faces, rolling in sand, chanting things and weird rules, etc.  There was the standard binge drinking one night, scolding the next morning, and secret drinking the next night.  The last night, after slightly painful skits and karaoke, I was lucky enough to witness the initiation ritual of the faculty.  Of course, I cannot say what it was, but it involved taking care of an egg (more eggs, ha) for the weekend.  The students whose eggs cracked were physically and mentally tortured at the hands of a fourth-year with a megaphone in front of the rest of the upperclassmen who were pretending to be extremely mad about the broken eggs.  I mean, how could the freshmen be trusted in the faculty if they can't take care of an egg??  Tears were shed out of pain and group-bonding and finally all things were made dandy again with candles and singing...typical.  Ms. Frank could have designed the ceremony herself (shout-out GV '05).

Now I am back to the grind in Khon Kaen.  I am really working on my Thai, but the stars have to align for me to be understood.  I have to remember the word, remember which of the five tones it has AND...here's the kicker... actually get that tone to come out of my mouth correctly.  This gets increasingly harder with the number of words I attempt to string together.  BUT I know the days of the week, lots of food, the colors AND...drum roll please... I can write my name, first and last, in Thai!  


This weekend I will judge a debate competition from 8:00 to 4:00 on Saturday and hopefully find time to clear the mud I have on my pig's tail, meaning grade a ton of papers.  I also need to do some serious planning because my adventure begins in three weeks.  Jess arrives the 19th and we will set out as soon as possible.  I cannot wait.

Love you all.  Choop choop.  Kiss kiss.
เอริน(Erin) เมอร์ฟื (Murphy)

Typing that name just took me longer than writing the whole rest of the blog!