Thai Cooking Class

This past Saturday Tammy, Kimberly, Tara and I took a cooking class at the Thai Farm Cooking School. We met our teacher and the rest of the class at a market where our teacher showed us where to find some of the ingredients that we would be using for the day. Then we drove about 15km outside of the city to the organic farm where we spent the day cooking. We each had our own station and made several dishes of our own choice. I made green curry with chicken, tom yum soup with shrimp, sweet and sour chicken, pad thai, and mango with sticky rice. I really enjoyed learning how to cook the different dishes and the food was more delicious than I expected! The dishes were pretty simple to make, I just hope that I'm able to find the right ingredients back home. By far the worst part of the day was when I got a hot chili pepper in my eye when we were combining the ingredients using a mortar and pestle....We also got a recipe book that has every dish we made as well as several others.

tom yum soup with shrimp

cooking station

our hilarious teacher, showing us how to "sexy stir fry"

green curry with chicken, and sweet and sour chicken

making pad thai

pad thai in progress

mango and sticky rice

Kimberly, Tammy, Tara and me

Thai Dance Video

Here is the video of our dance performance. I'm in the second row on the right.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5kUCCNmUe8&feature=youtu.be

Thai Dance Performance

Today was the big performance for our Thai dance class. First, we had our hair and makeup done by some Thai students and got into our traditional Thai dance costumes. I don't think I've ever had so much makeup on in my life. Once we were ready, we joined a large group of others at the university for a short parade to the performance site. We were the first performance of the ceremony so I didn't even have time to get nervous before we began dancing. I'd guess there were about 300 people there. The ceremony was to celebrate the new year and to bless the students for the next school year. After our performance we got to watch some other Thai festivities. One that I really enjoyed was a tall bamboo stalk, about 25 feet tall, with 200 baht (around $7) at the top. Groups of students attempted to stack on top of one another to get to the top and grab the money. However, the bamboo was greased with vegetable oil, which obviously caused some difficulty.

Here are some photos of the day. I believe someone took a video of our dance and I'll be sure to post that once I find it.

all the girls

Kimberly, Tammy, me and Tara

Emily and I getting our makeup done

my Japanese roommate, Honoka, and me

hair and makeup

A Look at Payap University

This post is long overdue. I've been meaning to post photos of the campus at Payap University, and show some pictures of my dorm room, so here you go!

the chapel...Jack likes to play piano here

another view of the chapel

Pentecost...the building our classes are located in

similar vegetation to St. Lawrence...

Paradornparp International House (my dorm)

view from my window...my roommate waters this outdoor plant on the windowsill every day

my bed

Video

Here's a video that was created by one of our program coordinators that shows some of the things we have been doing in Thailand. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-K2cHF9a8M

Spring Break Recap

I have made it back to Chiang Mai! Tammy and I arrived late last night and were met at the airport by P. Jew, our favorite songthaew driver and good friend. It feels strange to be back in my dorm room after two weeks on the road. It's nice to be back on a normal schedule, but I'd much rather be adventuring around or spending a few more days on the beach. I'm down to four weeks left of classes. My time here has flown by! I will be done with classes on May 17, and then will be doing some traveling (to where...not positive yet) before getting back home to Bolton Landing on May 30. I've already asked my parents to reserve the St. Louis for an evening cruise upon my arrival. Here are some jumbled photos from my travels that I wasn't able to upload during the trip. Tammy had a waterproof camera that came in handy during Songkran and on the beach.

A short snorkeling outing after scuba diving. 

In Bangkok for Songkran, an entire block was blocked off and was filled with bubbles!

International Pillowfight Day in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (try to find me!)

snorkeling

Songkran

Playing in the waves of the Andaman Sea

Songkran

Sunset over the Andaman Sea in Khao Lak

Tammy, Mitch and I got to feed this 30 year old elephant watermelon after a long day of moving logs 

Songkran

Tammy making friends at the Mekong Delta

Houseboat on the Mekong Delta

Angkor Wat

cairns at Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat: I really loved how the roots of the trees grew in, on and around the temples

Angkor Wat

Monkeying around

The view from our morning hike in Krabi (1,237 steps!)

longtail boats at Koh Phi Phi

our scuba diving site

beach at Khao Lak