Seminar week of Agroecology/Sustainable Food Systems

This week was really crazy and pretty intense. We had agroecology/sustainable food systems (real name, I guess) seminar and Thai class this week. Foundations was pretty chill because it was mainly a way to get us acclimated with the culture and they knew we were with families so we wouldn’t have much time to work. SFS was much different. Now we are living in apartments so they just loaded the readings on…probably because they wanted to keep us from going out and causing havoc in the apartment buildings. Well, they did a pretty good job. The readings were interesting but heavy. The best part of the week was dinnertime! We went to some cool different places for dinner throughout the week!

One day we went to this place called the salad concept. We were SO excited…we haven’t had salad or fresh vegetables in so long. So, we took full advantage. Another night we went to this really nice hotel restaurant…definitely a mistake but once we walked in we couldn’t walk out. So, we had some good American food and a few beers. I accidently knocked my glass of beer and broke it. The waitress was so sweet but I felt terrible. Saving face is a true thing in this culture. 

On Friday, our final essay was due! We had to create a sustainable food system for Northern Thailand in only 5-6 small written pages. Within those limits, we also had to explain the problem that the food/ag system has been facing. It’s funny because this assignment at CC would have taken me about an hour or two. Here, it seemed huge and everyone seemed to be freaking out. So I gave myself a reality check and Mel and I decided to go out for dinner at this cool market down the street.

We got there and decided to go to this little place where you cook your own meat and veggies on a little grill in the table. How could we mess that up?? Well, we managed. The “farang” in us struck again. We couldn’t understand the menu, luckily there were pictures but pictures of raw meat all look relatively the same especially when the menu is faded so the waitress pointed to one picture and said “gai’ …luckily we knew that meant chicken. So we ordered chicken and shrimp and a basket of veggies and a plate of noodles. The waitress looked at us like we were crazy and kept asking what else. We said that was it. Someone started our grill and she came back a few minutes later with a small plate of a few pieces of chicken, 3 shrimp, veggies and noodles, and bacon. We definitely didn’t order bacon…I have a feeling she didn’t think we would have enough food and threw in bacon because what American’s don’t like bacon? We then proceeded to put the meet on the grill as she attentively watched. Next to the grate, there was water boiling…we weren’t sure why. We started eating the noodles raw (we didn’t realize they were raw) and the waitress came up and said no no no and pointed to the water. So…I dumped my plate into the water…she bolted to the other side of the table to Mel and grabbed her plate before she could do the same. Instead she put Mel’s noodles in a utensil that looked like a ladel with a strainer. And stuck it in the water. As carnivore club members, Mel and I went to grill the vegetables. Not here…those were also to be boiled. We then took some cabbage to wrap our food in and everything pretty much fell apart. We then look to our right at the couple who had just sat down They had PLATES of all kinds of meats and vegetables and one was in charge of the grill, the other in charge of the water and they just had it down. They saw us looking in awe and laughed. We were a mess. But, the food was delicious. Mel gave me some noodles. Definitely didn’t have enough food but that just meant it was time to find some KANOM!!! We were looking for Roti (I think I explained roti before). But, the best part of the dinner was the sauces they gave us. It was sweet but sort of spicy and so delicious.

So, we eventually left and headed of to find some Roti to bring back to eat while we wrote our papers. The place we knew of wasn’t there so we went to look on this back street. We thought we were out of luck when all of a sudden I saw the stand! We were SO excited. It took a while but was so worth it! We finally got back and started writing our papers. Someone I finished that night. We also had time the next day to write but I knew I would rather just get it done.

Friday was great because we didn’t have Thai class, just seminar. We then had a long lunch and went to a factory in the afternoon. In the evening we had a dinner at the school. It was supposed to be at Ajan Mark’s house (the head of ISDSI), but because of the storms, his house is flooded! So, we couldn’t make it. By the way, the storms here are really bad and souther/central Thailand got hit hard. It moved up here but luckily we are ok. Many of the fields and areas by the river are flooded though. Scary!

Thai class was short this week because we got to start an hour later! But, it was still intense. We learned about farming terms and phrases we may need in the villages. At one point, Ajan Sithorn was trying to teach our how to say manure. She couldn’t remember the English word so she said “cow SHIT”. She taught us how to say “shit” in Thai a while ago. It’s hard to tell this story in person so typing it is even harder. Ajan Sithorn is hilarious and always tells us great stories and cool words and proverbs!