Looking through a glass onion

An onion lived on top of Pete's refrigerator for a few weeks. It pathetically reached for the window on the other side of the room, until we decided to make a home for it.

Pete poked some holes in the bottom of a plastic container, and then we went across the street and dug up some dirt. It wasn't very good dirt. It was dense, rocky dirt. But it was free.





Pete put Onion Friend on the window sill. Maybe we were too late. Onion Friend didn't exactly thrive, and most of his leaves fell off. But a few weeks later, the dirt was full of life!

you can get anything you want

I didn't celebrate Thanksgiving a month late; I just wrote about it a month late!

Some rad people (from BELLINGHAM) hosted a Thanksgiving party on the Saturday after the holiday. There was turkey. And pie. (They have Costco in Korea, so it was a lot like home.)

Here we are, fat and sleepy:


Thanksgiving festivities included some party games (which went from charades to more "we don't have to stand up to play this!" question and answer games as the day went on) and American tv shows! We made a list of things for which we are thankful, and took a picture, and it was good. Happy really late Thanksgiving, all.

Down came the rain

On Saturday night, Stephanie and I sat at a table full of Thai engineers (and one who was Japanese.) We talked about the stuff you usually talk about with Thai engineers, and I taught them the hottest dances from America: the Itsy Bitsy Spider and the Macarena. They were very receptive and gave me some new moves for a real cultural exchange.





I was impressed that they also remembered my name when I encountered them again later that night. And a little ashamed, because I remembered none of theirs.

Drink up me 'earties, yo ho!

Thailand has a lot of Johnny Depps. Some of them are the goateed-and-bespectacled sort, some of them are Captains Jack Sparrow, and some are just shaggy-haired 1990s heartthrobs. This one of the Captain Jack persuasion is a taxi driver on Ko Samet.



I didn't actually catch his name (he said it's "Fan," which means boyfriend or girlfriend, so I'm not sure I believe him.) I only met him briefly late Friday night, but our interaction expanded my Thai vocabulary with things it's not polite to share.

Like a rhinestone cowboy

In his time on Ko Samet, Audi has perfected many techniques for impressing the ladies, including breakdancing, suavely spewing playing cards in all directions, magic tricks, and pumping iron.



Audi and I sang some karaoke, which always makes for a fantastic night (even though I'm the only person in Thailand who doesn't know any Jack Johnson songs.) I'm particularly proud of our rendition of "Rhinestone Cowboy." I rocked "Joy to the World" myself, among other things. Um, like 6 other things. There weren't many people in the karaoke bar.

He's also an accomplished stylist, and despite his previous attempts to beautify her with a butter knife and a lighter (not at the same time) Stephanie trusted him with shears and was rewarded with a pretty sweet haircut.

Once upon a dream

Guess what I did this weekend. Yeah, I went to Magical Crystal Island. Stephanie came back into town and we went to the island on Friday night and stayed until Sunday. Autumn and Bert joined in the fun on Saturday with some of the TEFL students. Autumn asked "how was your night?" and I realized that even if the answer had been, "we didn't find a room so we slept on the beach and there were mosquitoes and then a dog pooped in my hair," it still would have been followed by an "It was AWESOME!"

In an effort to avoid posting the same AWESOME stuff I post whenever I go to the island, this is the first of four posts this week about interesting people I met on the island this weekend.

I watch Lost. Or I did, until I came here. I am not up on the new season. Without spoiling things for those of you who have not yet been converted, it's kind of reasonable to think that by some twist of space and time, Lost island ended up a few km out in the Gulf of Thailand. It's more reasonable once you realize that Benjamin Linus runs a burger joint there.



He claims that he's never heard of the TV show, and he thought we were kidding when Autumn and I asked for his picture. The logical conclusion is that if Ko Samet isn't Lost Island, then this isn't Ben Linus. Otherwise I just hope he doesn't move the island away now that his cover is blown. I don't think I could cope.