6/29/2002 - Strange Stuff

Ok, Ok. We know that we just sent you an update, but these pictures were just too good to let go. They don't really have specific stories that go with them, they're just sort of the weird everyday stuff that we come across. The first picture is of the local fruit which is called "ngo" in Thai - the "o" is similar to the "o" in the word "hot", but the vowel sound is truncated. It's tough to describe, because English doesn't have this vowel. Pretend that you just got hit in the stomach while accidentally choking on some food, and that's the approximate sound of the vowel. And then there's the fact that you have to start the word with "ng", which is really hard for an English speaker (say the word "singing" without the "si"). In English the fruit is called "rambutan", a word whose origin is a mystery to us, and which is almost as difficult to remember because we learned the English name AFTER learning the Thai name. Lisa's personal theory is that this fruit was the inspiration behind the invention of velcro.

And while we're showing off strange spiky reddish fruits, here's another selection. This one is called, somewhat appropriately, dragon fruit. We can't remember the Thai name. We're not even sure that we ever learned it. The inside looks and tastes kind of like a kiwi (except it's not green, and the taste isn't as sharp).

This next photo is of some little beetly thing called "Coolus beetleum." (Well, that's what it would be called if any body ever bothered to ask us...) Kids collect big beetles from the rice fields, and keep them as pets. One of Lisa's students brought a black one to class that was probably about 3 inches long and a inch and a half wide. The beetles come in black with a large variety of sizes as well as this cool iridescent green. We've seen people make jewelry out of the green shell/exoskeleton. A smaller black variety, maybe half an inch long, is much more prolific, and while we're continually sweeping them out of our house, our neighbors are sweeping them into their house. The Thai motto is "If it moves, we'll eat it," so naturally they fry them up. Crunch Crunch. And now you're dying to ask, "Have you tried one?" No, but it's only a matter of time. So far, Lisa has eaten deep fried crickets, boiled silkworms, red ants, and red ant egg clusters (Denny has only tried the ants and a frog).
Lisa: "Um, the crickets were ok, kind of tasted like potato chips with all that grease, but I must say that I didn't care for how the wings kept getting stuck in between my teeth. The silk worms were kind of gross actually, because they burst open as you bite into them. The ants you can barely taste, and the eggs were kind of like eating a soggy lima bean. Even though I've been told that bugs are high in protein yet low in fat and cholesterol, I think I'll still stick with a nice prime rib anyway."

Not only do they eat beetles, crickets and ants here, but there are termites that are extremely prolific that come out briefly in the evening after a rain - so prolific that they interfere with photos we've taken, and they've driven us from our home a time or two (they're attracted to light). They seem to fly around for about 30 minutes, then lose their wings and crawl around on foot. In the morning we get up to find the kitchen floor littered with hundreds of abandoned wings. [If we'd gone to the trouble of evolving wings, we wouldn't be so careless as to just leave them lying around.] Naturally, if the kids get ahold of them before they drop their wings, they become tomorrow's fried snack. We're still working on a good picture for you.

Ok, last but not least is simply a photo of Denny to show that when they say it's gonna rain, they mean it's gonna rain. In our part of Thailand, there are 3 seasons - not too hot, very hot, and rainy. We are now in the midst of the rainy season, and that basically means that almost every day it will rain for about an hour, and then continue to be hot. In the course of about 3 months, our dry part of Thailand gets about 5 times as much precipitation as Fairbanks gets all year. It rains so much here that people generally collect rain water from their roof for a few days during the rainy season and have enough water to drink through the rest of the year.

One time a storm blew out our electricity, which meant that our water pump was off as well. Fortunately it was raining hard enough that Lisa could wash her hair just standing outside.

Love to you all,
Lisa & Denny