Thai Thanksgiving

Well on Wednesday night a Thai teacher came up to us and said something along the lines of, "We have party tomorrow, you come? You cook American food for us?" We kind of mumbled an agreement because we were so shocked then started thinking about the reality of the situation. What American ingredients were we going to find at the local market in one days time? I decided I would get this Thai curry I like because it tastes like christmas and he asked me 3 times, "You make it?" and with each question I replied, "No, I'm going to buy it."
We get to the market and Jonathan is making spaghetti so we find some mac-n-cheese noodles and ketchup, but I insist their version of ketchup is tomato sauce. We think that will suffice because we're already surprised we found that. He then gets some vegetables to put in the sauce and he's done. Then we go look for my curry and the Thai teacher just says, "I think no today," and I'm like uhh okay. Then he goes to get his ingredients which involve several vegetables and the fish stall where the live fish lay in no water just gasping for… water. You tell the lady what you want, she grabs the fish and slaps it on her log cutting board then proceeds to barehanded scrape all the scales off. Then takes a cleaver and cuts the fins off. Asks if he wants the gills off, he says yes, she cleaves them off. Then slices the underbelly and out falls the stomach. Then she throws the fish in a bag and rinses her hands off in a bucket of water she uses after every fish killing.
We drive to this older couples house and its a pretty cool layout. It's super open, like the whole lower level is one huge room. The Thai teacher and Jonathan begin cooking and I have nothing to do so I sip beer and eat all the fruit in sight… by myself. The fruit was really good and they grew it in their massive yard. Meanwhile the older man who owns the house sits on his patio smoking alone and the older woman cleans the bathroom. After about an hour I join the woman in watching a Thai soap opera and then the Thai news.

Jonathan over enthused to chop

Oh you know just mixing sticky rice in a hat on the floor

"Hold those and pretend to cook."

Fruit city

Some weird fruit that was mostly black seed, but super yum

What half my night looked like

Finally dinner is ready!! Its a huge assortment of various fish and macaroni with ketchup. It was pretty funny. The fish was actually pretty good, well one of them. One kind of fish tasted considerably fishy and I'm not being punny.

I like to think he was gasping for air

Even though they breathe out of their gills… 

The table post eating

The fishy fish

The men continued to drink quite a bit of beer and smoke several cigarettes. The non smokers sat inside talking about church, music and future plans. All of my favorite topics when talking to people you don't know very well… Not! Thats when the guitar was brought out. The Thai teacher who invited us began singing "Stand By Me", but only seemed to know one verse and the chorus which I thought humorous. Then he played "Zombie" by The Cranberries which was pretty dang classic. No one knew the song other than me and I only knew it because of my Rock Band days. Then he tried to get me to sing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" so he could get the tune down, but that wasn't going to happen so we moved on. He then tried to play "Hotel California" and all the other boys joined in, but it seemed I was the only one who knew the right words so I kind of stopped singing so as not to look like the only one who didn't know the words.

It was getting to be 9:30 and I was tired and sad that I wasn't with my family eating Thanksgiving food and laughing endlessly and probably arguing, so we started to get ready to leave. I didn't tell everyone I was sad and thats why I wanted to leave, that would have been kind of awkward.
Overall it was a pretty good time. Certainly what one might expect on Thai Thanksgiving. Like wait why is it 85 degrees outside and why is there only fish and ketchup on the table and why is there no toilet paper in the bathroom?
Teaching on Thanksgiving made the lesson plans pretty fun. I had the students make the turkey hands where they say what they're thankful for. Here are some of my favorites.

These guys weren't really into the whole turkey idea.

I thought the descriptions were touching and grammatically humorous.

This one was touching.

Excellent and somewhat confusing decorations.

I want to say its related to Buddhism, but cannot be sure.

My best student and her impressive art skills.

Maybe she'll draw me.

One of my favorites because only a really cool person would include "shorts" as something they're thankful for.

P.S. Sorry for the bad quality pictures, forgot my camera.