Me Want Food

I just had my first meal from the school canteen (cafeteria).  It's actually a pretty sweet set up.  You have to go around 11:30am, after the chaos and swarms of students have calmed.  The lunch lady who served me spoke some broken English to let me know that her son was in my class.  Her son is quite smart and will probably achieve his dream of being a doctor.  There are about six or so stations at the cafeteria serving all kinds of different foods.  I just looked around at the different bowls overflowing with I know not what, and pointed to something that looked good.  I got a to-go box of white rice, some kind of yellow curry-looking chicken mixture with what very well could have been squash, a piece of fried chicken, and a plain old hot dog, no bun, no condiments.  If you don't like fried chicken and hot dogs, Thailand may not be the place for you.  I'm not quite sure why these particular items are of such popularity here, but I have never seen so many KFCs and hot dog vendors in my life.  And I'm friggin' American.  I thought Americans loved their fried chicken and hot dogs, but boy have I been duped.

All I want to do is eat.  I mean, I eat pretty often in the states, when I was in Mexico and Italy, I love eating all the time anywhere I go, but this habit seems somehow exacerbated here - that is, highly encouraged by an enabling snacking culture.  Often times other teachers will bring food into the office for communal enjoyment.  Just this morning I had the pleasure of glooay tot, fried bananas, and kanom dtan, a mildly sweet tamale-like food made from the inner rind of palm fruit ground down and mixed with flour, then wrapped and cooked in banana leaf.  A few days ago someone brought in sai mai, which you can only find in the closest big city about 40 minutes away.  It consists of a doughy green tortilla-looking substance within which you wrap thin noodles made of sugar.  When you bite into this strange burrito concoction, the sugar melts in your mouth the same way cotton candy dissolves on the tongue, but the sweetness is tempered by the dough.  Much like Italians, Thais appreciate mild sweets.  Even the cakes, doughnuts, jellies, and frostings are not nearly as rich as you might find in the U.S.  Of course, I simply use that as an excuse to eat more :)