RED Onion EVS I Niki is in Thailand

Hi all again, here comes a short summary of what I have learnt so far. Short, as explaining would take ages or well, you know the other option… Try it yourself. 

July was obviously THE month of learning. So I began at the basics: how to get up really early and learnt to go to bed again, really early - also, how to exist in degrees varying between 30-40. All. The. Time. Basically, I had to re-learn how to sleep. 

 

Another basic step was food. People were surprised when I told them I like spicy - and then I was surprised what they actually mean by spicy. However, I adapted and now I can tell by the looks of the food if I (or anybody I know at home) could eat it. About ingredients: even the things I know are a bit different here. When they told me that the little green tomato-like balls are eggplants, I thought it must be a translation error. Or the famous morning glory, which I'm pretty sure was named by some foreigner with hangover. But Google is my friend and helped me to confirm that they were right. Turns out I knew even less about plants than I thought...

Cooking here is just like what you expect from master chèfs - throw everything you have at hand to a pan, add some soy and oyster sauce (and of course chili) and done. Put it on some rice and enjoy.

Oh and never forget that ANYTHING can be fried - even ice cream.
Let's see some other aspects, though: I have learnt to trust Thai people - try going home from ~350 km, on a 13 hours trip only by relying on 2 stickers on your T-shirt and let me know the result. Extra conditions: do not speak a single word of the local language and expect no-one to speak English. Here it was like: putting us here, sending us there, and then voilà, we're at home. One useful tip though: know how to correctly pronounce the name of the city you're going to.

Same goes if you're on a walk and just get tired of walking - you can count on someone to ask you to sit on the back of their motorbike in 5 minutes. If you are in such a small village like me, then you don't even have to say where you're going, they would know just by looking at you. The only other blond European in the district is a man, who's been living here for 15 years so there was no space for confusion. 

Language in 10 words: 5 intonations and no space between words in writing. If I know one thing, it's that “ka” is the most important word. Or at least the most used. It means please, okay, agreed, correct, good, thanks, no problem and so on and so on…
Unfortunately the different tones do not make any sense to my Hungarian ears so even when I'm trying to repeat what they say I don't succeed. Or when I do, that's totally by accident and I never know how I got that one right. Long story short: it's really unlikely that I'll be working with my Thai language knowledge after getting home. Sorry, bosses.

And a quick glance into teaching: kindergarten is a playground. For teachers.

And now something I'm still learning: how to let go of everything that's not positive. Stress? Nope. Hurry? Nope. Plans? Nope. Problems? Nope. Timetables? Nope. Anything not happening as you agreed/thought? 5555.

Niki Solymosi