White

Many of you may not realize this, but Christelia and I are both very white.  So much so that you need to adjust the white balance settings on your camera in order to take a picture of us.  Of course, if we were to be showing any more skin than just our faces (the most tanned parts of our bodies) pictures of us would be next to impossible.  Fortunately for us, the Thai people (and I am guessing most other parts of Asia as well) absolutely LOVE white skin.

We enjoyed a week long vacation on the island of Koh Chang in Eastern Thailand not too long ago.  While sitting at breakfast one day, one of the staff came by and poked my arm exclaiming "so white!"  I was wearing a tank top at the time, exposing my upper arms, a part of my body not exposed to the sun very often.  Christine and I had a chuckle, and the staff member quickly wanted to be close to us whenever we were in the area.  Amusing to say the least.

The difficulty we are experiencing regarding the fascination of white skin is most lotions, deodorant, body wash, etc have skin whitening acids in them.  Obviously we don't need the help, so this has become quite alarming.  To be honest, finding products without whitening is almost as difficult as taking a picture of me with my shirt off.

Eduardo

Cooking in Thailand

I just finished my first cooking experience with Thai students! I would like to tell you the name of what we made but I am not sure that there is a name for it so let me describe some of the ingredients. Noodles (much like Ramon)and later glass noodles, for protein we had- minced pork that we minced ourselves, fish balls ( balls of meet much like meatballs, but made with processed fish- it tastes like it sounds), spicy tube of processed pork (i am sure there is a better name for that, but i am just trying to paint the true story of what we were eating), hotdogs both chicken and pork, and later the students (grade 7) added fried fish tofu squares and at some point tuna which was called tuna sandwich on the can...kinda funny. Then for the "sauce" we had sugar, fish sauce, lemons, limes, and chili peppers. Now I will share with you the "kitchen" it was a picnic table outside and a hot plate on the floor of a classroom! I about lost it when she asked me in Thai to help them heat the "meats" keep in mind that the kids (there are only 8 of them right now for October course which is much like summer school) think that I am scared of cooking because I told Ms. Rungnapa that I was scared to cook because I didn't know where and what equipment or what recipe to use and everything is in metric and it scares me a little to give a 7th grader that doesn't understand what I am saying a knife or anything else that they could hurt themselves with. So the kids are really trying to help me and get me to do things. So we have mixed most all of the ingredients above plus some tomatoes and onions together and then they want me to taste it, so I do and they ask what should we add. I have no idea...I have never even seen this before much less tasted it! It was quite the experience! After that they just started adding things in and they ate it- all! It was like a feeding frenzy! They all had a fork and went to town out of the same bowl. Crazy!