Chicken Heads

Today was our fist day at DEPDC, all of which I spent building the wall. We got there bright and early around 845 and jumped right in straightening bent metal poles. They were like thin rebarb, and once we got the kinks out of them we cut them and bent them into rectangles. The rectangle forming made sense to me and I got really good at it, so I tried to stay with that job as long as possible. I can already tell I'm going to be really sore, especially my back and tricep; I'm going to come home with massive muscles only on my left arm.

The rectangles then got tied onto thicker rebarb to make reinforcements, I can only assume for concrete to be poured around. You can see one getting put together behind me in the picture. We made 4 10 meter forms all day, the last three took about 1.5 hours once we worked out an assembly line system. It was tiring work and we were filthy by the end of it. I was either covered in rust or mud and it took significant showering to get it all off immediately afterwards. But at least it wasn't unbearably hot like I was expecting, instead it rained most of the day and we were under cover. However the rain send a bunch of furry caterpillars seeking shelter in our area and we were avoiding them all day. Apparently they give you a nasty rash.

Besides the caterpillars we also had to deal with what we names Jesus spider. I found (of course it's always me who finds them) a rather large, white spider spread out on a column where we were working and got scared. Thankfully Molly stepped up and brushed it away from us, but Jesus spider angrily ran back towards our cover. Molly kicked him into a puddle, then he started walking on water back towards us. Hence Jesus spider. But that didn't last long and eventually he sank, only to be rescued by a bunch of ants that then swarmed it. We kept an eye on him throughout, but at one point we looked back and he was gone. I am going to assume the ants took him away and ate him. This was the most drama we had all day.

We got home around 5, showered immediately and met for dinner. I was rather excited when I saw that it was tom ka gai soup, the only Thai food that we can make at home. Finally something familiar! I'm second in line to dish some up, getting ready to pour myself a big bowl when the girl in front of me and I notice that what we thought were meatballs look rather strange. After close inspection we realize that they are not sausage at all, they're little chicken heads! I kid you not. I looked up at the Thai woman behind the serving table and pointed to the soup, then my head. She nodded and laughed, probably at our horrified faces. I managed to only take broth and move on, and the soup was fabulous. It's just too bad it was FULL OF CHICKEN HEADS. (TIA) I was going to take a picture of one but I didn't want to be too disrespectful to the cooks... It was bad enough that none of us ate any, so there was a bowl full of heads left after dinner.

After dinner Ava had arranged for a truck to take us down into Mae Sai for the market. I really wanted fisherman's pants. But once we got there weren't any vendors out, so instead we checked out the Burmese border. Mae Sai is the northern most point of Thailand and there is a bridge to Burma at the end of town--a major factor to the high trafficking rates here. A lot of the DEPDC kids are from Burma and cross that bridge every day to get the bus to school. We are definitely going to go back there in the daylight.

Because the market was a bust we stopped by a supermarket instead to pick up odds and ends. We found fisherman's pants, and little did we know they were the same ginormous pants we had to put on for Thai massage. I didn't want them after that, I'll wait to see what I find in the Chiang Mai markets instead. There we discovered that you can get a bottle of beer for 30 Baht ($1), so I'm sure you all can guess what we bought... saving it for after a really difficult day. Which may end up being tomorrow, Claudia and I will be teaching for the first time during the first hour. We still have no idea what to do with them, and since they're kindergarteners I'm sure we're going to have to play a new game every 5 minutes. All without being able to explain ANYTHING, just hand signals. Could be great, could go terribly. We'll see, wish us luck.