Love Letters

We returned from London on a Monday, Tim worked Tuesday and Wednesday, then he had a nice four-day weekend.  It was a Thai holiday - Asalha Bucha and Buddhist Lent.  For Buddhists, Buddhist Lent Day begins a three-month abstinence from alcohol, much longer that the Catholic forty days - pretty impressive.  I'm not sure if this is how all Thai Buddhists practice, but our driver said this is what they do.  The period is called Vassa, and its origins come from recognizing the three-month rainy season, when monks would remain in one place; they wouldn't travel for fear of harming crops or insects or themselves, at a time when travel was more treacherous.  The monks continue this practice today, even though many of them would now be traveling on paved roads.

One of our expat friends recently moved back to the U.S., but was back in Thailand tying up some loose ends.  So we had him over on Tim's day off.   He'd had us over to his house a few times, where his family had a ping-pong table set up in their garage.  The guys got into some pretty intense ping-pong competitions, with lots of requisite trash talk.  He and Tim were able to have a rematch here in our condo's game room, then come up for some pizza.

We knew he was here over the weekend with nothing to do, so we invited him to join us for our usual Friday night out.  We had heard about the Glass House, a nice restaurant right on the beach in Jomtien, just south of Pattaya.  When we met up with our friend there, we discovered that the place is very popular with Thais, and since it was a Thai holiday, there was quite a long wait for a table.  Interesting that Thais go out to dinner on Lent Day.  Anyway, we went next door to La Bocca, where we'd all gone for dinner soon after arriving in Thailand.  (Remember the balloon story?)  We enjoyed a nice Italian dinner and lively conversation on the beach.  I was able to get a picture of the amazing bar, although no alcohol was being served because of the holiday.  I wonder how they reach the bottles at the top?  Plus, a pink baby grand - can't beat that, can you?

The following Tuesday began my second set of Thai language classes.  Three of us from the first class agreed to sign up together for group lessons, and Mika skillfully bargained with the school to get us a good deal on twenty hours with two-hour classes every Tuesday and Thursday mornings - perfect!  I'd mentioned the class to my neighbor who is newly retired from teaching, and she decided to join us as well.  So we had a quartet of students to greet our new kruu, Kuhn Wood.  ("Like Tiger Wood.")

We all seemed to be at about the same skill and confidence level - minimal.  Two have been in country much longer, and have learned a lot "by ear."  One has a Thai wife, so he hears it daily.   Our new teacher is much more of a stickler when it comes to proper pronunciation, which means mastering the five tones: mid, high, rising, low, and falling.  I have found it really helps to be musical, as I am able to hear and produce the tones fairly easily.  Now remembering which tone applies to each word is another story...

I was very glad to be back in the classroom, yet disheartened by how much I had forgotten in the short interim.  Our kruu seems quite a bit younger than our last one, and he seems more self-taught, whereas she absolutely knew how to present the material.  Her organizational style made more sense to me, and she gave us worksheets she created herself.  We got lots of vocabulary and repetition from her program.   Our new kruu is using the booklet the school provides, which to me is not as logical, and doesn't enable the same amount of retention.  But every teacher has their own style, and I'm sure I will benefit from this class as well.

One thing that is new with this class is that we are learning the Thai alphabet - very tricky!  Before, we would just write the Thai words phonetically, using our alphabet.  This allowed us to learn a lot of words, but we couldn't read any of them.  It is very exciting to be able to look at a sign and make out some of the sounds.  Every once in a while I can get a whole word.

The Thai alphabet is made up of 44 consonants and 22 vowels.  Many of the consonants seem to make the same sound; there are five symbols that make the "k" sound, for example.  Each letter also has an associated word to indicate which of the sound-alike symbols to use.  So the sound "k" can be indicated by "kor kai," "kor kuad," 'kor kwai," "kor kohn," or "kor ra kahng."  (See what I mean about writing them phonetically?)  Symbolically, many of the letters look very similar, some with just a right-handed loop versus a left-handed loop, or a serif that extends a bit farther than the other, like our lower-case n versus h.  Thank goodness they don't have upper and lower case.

The vowels are even trickier.  They don't necessarily follow the consonant that their sound follows.  Some go before the consonant, some after, some above, some below, and some on multiple sides.  So for a word pronounced "mai," the vowel goes before the "m."  For a word pronounced "mao," the vowel goes partly before the "m" and partly after the "m."  And we've only learned the first seven basic vowels.  I understand it gets even more complicated.  But if you know me well, you know I like solving puzzles, so this is quite a kick for a word nerd like me.

สนุก (This says "sanook," which is Thai for "fun."  The first symbol is "s," the second is "n," and the third is "g."  The vowel is the tiny mark under the second letter.  I think.)