Farmer Frank

Having finished early at Maha-Wittyalay Ratchamongala (Agricultural University of the Auspicious King; aka Farming University) for today I decided to write this post on what it is I do at the farming University. Today I harvested a plentiful bounty of Het Fang (Straw Mushroom), and am now sitting in the office of the foreign language department.

While the name “Farming University” might suggest that I’m out in the fields every day, most of the work is a blend of a biology class and some agricultural exercises. I’ve mentioned the mushrooms before, which is illustrates this dual-learning experience. Having grown a couple batches of mushrooms now, and I thought that bulleted list format worked well for the last post, I’ll explain the process of mushrooming.

I preemptively apologize for any scientifically inaccurate terminology. The reasoning behind what I do is explained in Thinglish, and I’m an idiot at science to begin with.

1.     I always start by heading down to one of the plant science professors office at roughly 9 AM. There I’m given my instructions for the day, which are one of the following options.

2.     Prepare a mushroom culture. I begin by removing a piece of a mushroom and placing it in an empty Whiskey bottle with auger (Thai ingenuity). I’ve gotten pretty good at sterilization, though there has been the occasional burn from getting rubbing alcohol on my finger and placing said finger too close to the flame.

3.     When the mushrooms have successfully grown for a number of days and there’s no sign of contamination, a piece of the new mushroom is placed inside a new whiskey bottle with auger and left to grow for a few days.

4.      When ready, the new sample is placed inside a jar of “spores”. I think they are some kind of grain or seed, but I couldn’t be sure.

5.     Meanwhile, I’ve prepared roughly 120-150 bags of dirt mixed with different ingredients including lye, organic fertilizer, and sometimes straw. Said bags have been cooked in steam for something like 3 hours and left to sit for another 30 or so.

6.     The spores, which by now have started to grow small mushrooms are poured through the bags. The bags are sealed and placed in a room I like to call the “Mush-Room”. Haha, get it? Because all of the Thais sure as hell don’t. :(

7.     This is, of course, only one way to grow mushrooms. Another method is the straw method, which is by far the most dangerous. Beds of straw, dirt, and mushrooms spores are prepared and covered with a tarp. After a week or so, you should have massive and delicious straw mushrooms growing.

8.     First though, you have to cut up the straw with a machete. It was during this first step a couple weeks ago that I managed to flay a small corner of my left index finger. The wound healed admirably and I got a free tour of the Nan Hospital emergency room. Free, is perhaps not the right word, but stitches, a week of daily dressings and finally removal of said stitches only cost about 600 Baht ($18), so a very good price for the services rendered.

I’ve done work like this with orchids as well, but haven’t gotten as in depth of knowledge as with the mushroom production.

What I really respect about the Farming University is that it applies its knowledge in practical and humanitarian ways. I’ve traveled with professors to villages in the area where they educate the locals on how to improve food production while staying organic, or ways to grow cash crops without destroying too much of the soil. I think this really should be the purpose of education. While the US relies indirectly on students to graduate and take the initiative and use their knowledge to benefit others, it’s simply a job requirement of university professors here.

This post has taken me a couple days to write, and I’m finishing it up during the day of graduation for students at the farming University. It’s been a fun and interesting day for the most part, but I tragically forgot my camera. Even though I won’t be able to provide pictures  (but really, that’s nothing new), I’ll try to get a post up on it. Nothing to profound to be observed, but I think it’ll be a good topic to write on and make a decent read for all of you.

I hope you all are having as nice a day as me.

The Game Plan

I would say the way to accomplish my planned catch-up of this blog is to produce content as quickly as I can. That said, a great deal has happened, and I’d like to present this information as coherently as I can. To satisfy the basic questions of just what and how I’m doing here, I’ve written the piece below. It touches on many points that will be given more context and fleshed out in the coming week or so. Until then I hope you enjoy reading about my living circumstances and that you are having at least half as a good a time in your life as I am in mine.

                                                                                                                     

My Living Circumstances

So I live in a cement factory. It’s a sizeable operation, employing something like 50 people. The name, Supsangdao, translates into something like the “Starlight Asset” Cement Company. A pretty enough name, but my host father tells me it’s an homage to the village his factory started in, called “Sangdao”. The factory is placed on land that was originally an asset of the factory when it was in the village Sangdao. And so it is, some 15 years later, that the asset has become the base, and the old factory is an asset of the new business. It’s pretty bustling, but also located in country, so the occasional wandering cow needs to be chased off the grounds. There were six dogs living on the factory but that number has gone up to nine with the birth of some delightful puppies. Supsangdao is located about a dozen kilometers out of Nan, the town where I do all my work/teaching/hanging out/etc.

My host father’s a pretty successful businessman, and while the cement factory is certainly his main income, he also owns a small motel and a few hectares of rubber farms. He’s pretty knowledgeable about economics, and we’ll frequently discuss the trade within Thailand and between Southeast Asia. He’s been asked to lecture at conferences as Thailand prepares to join ASEAN. ASEAN (the Alliance of South-East Asian Nations) is aiming to be something like the European Union within the region, and Thailand will become a member in two years. This his has led to a number of interesting developments, which will be later addressed when I describe my time as a teacher.

My host mother manages much of the financial side of my father’s various businesses, and works as hard as (if not perhaps harder than) him. She still makes time to be a compassionate, determined, and totally All-Star Mom.

Seriously, she’s just great.

My average day has been something like what follows:

1.     Wake up at 6 or 7, depending on whether I’m studying at the farming university or teaching at Satrisinan, a local high school.

2.     Eat the breakfast with my host parents that my mom has cooked. Because they usually consist of a couple of dishes with meat and vegetables, Thai breakfasts are pretty hardy, and being Thai food, are also delicious.

3.     Get a lift to the Farming University or high school with a driver for the factory. I almost always go with Lung Virat “Uncle Virat” (not the Virat from the previous post, which was a typo by me that will be corrected soon. I traveled to Mei Sai and Chiang Rai with Note, Virat’s son. They’re a father-son team working at the factory, and that is as delightful as it sounds). Lung Virat doesn’t speak a word of English and has an incredibly thick Thai accent. We always try to make conversation and neither has any idea what the other is saying. But he’s quite friendly and an outstanding driver and could easily be a member of the Vin Diesel’s crew in any of the Fast and Furious movies. 

4.     Arrive at the Farming University at 8:30 or my host aunt’s shop at 7:30. My father’s sister owns a hardware story about a block and half from the high school, which my host brothers use as a place to store clothes, motorbikes, and really anything else they might need for school. When I get dropped off there I usually walk to Satrisinan from there.

5.     If I’m at Satrisinan, the high school, I’ll generally sit back and watch the general assembly, which begins at 8:00. It’s fascinating and will be discussed when I talk about teaching. If I’m at Ratchamongala, the Farming University, this is when my work begins. The past couple weeks I’ve been working on growing mushroom. It’s a lot more interesting than it sounds and can sometimes be pretty fun. I’ll discuss the art of mushrooming in more depth when I write about the Farming University.

6.     I’m sure this layered timeline is a little difficult to follow, but it now gets much simpler. Back at Satrisinan, the high school, classes have officially begun. The schedule of the teacher I work with and occasionally fill in for is different everyday, so I might have as many two or three classes between 9 and 12, but some days there might be none at all.
At Ratchamongala, I mushroom until whatever work I’m done is assigned, almost always by 11 am. When the work is done, I head back to the English department office, where I check email, read, practice my Thai, and help correct tests and papers for the teachers.

7.     Lunch Time! Regardless of location, I eat at 12. If I’m at Satrisinan, I’ll eat at the cafeteria, which has a pretty wide selection of Thai food. As Thai food it’s satisfactory, and as school food goes, it’s top-notch. Tons of options, from noodle soup to chicken skewers with rice as well as a sizeable selection of desserts.
Lunch at Ratchamongala is rarely at Ratchamongala, since my advisor in the English department takes me out, often with at least some of the other teachers. I generally let the teachers pick a restaurant and have yet to be disappointed.

8.     Upon finishing lunch, I try very hard to get in a nap. Occasionally my schedule at Ratchamongala or Satrisinan prevents this, a wretched ordeal for all involved.

9.     If there are classes to teach, I teach them. If there are mushrooms to grow, I grow them. Often I still end up with a couple of hours of free time until 4 PM, when both schools finish.

10. As I’ve mentioned above, my house is a bit of a hike through heavy and Asian traffic (yes, the drivers satisfy every stereotype you have about them). Therefor I generally try to kill time in Nan, which is not too difficult. I visit parks, read at coffee shops, or exercise at the sports stadium. The Nan Stadium is a wonderful place. It’s relatively quiet, filled with trees, and is truly a community asset. Every time I’ve gone there to bike or run it’s pretty busy with people using the track, swimming in the pool, playing football (sorry, soccer) on the field, or participating in fitness classes at the gymnasium. It’s really a quality place and I manage to get there almost every day.

Nan is a really swell place to be, and certainly deserving of its own blog post. People are incredibly friendly, though sometimes a bit shy around farangs (white foreigners) regardless of how well they speak English. While I don’t have quite enough Thai to get past basic introductions, I’ve found that if I approach someone in Thai and they speak at least a bit of English, it’s usually enough to open them up. I’m curious if this is the case for any of the other YE’s in places with limited English.

11. I mentioned that my host father owns a motel. It’s quite close to the stadium and I have a room permanently under my name where I can shower and change after going for a run. The Dao-Lu-Aung (Yellow Flower) motel is not the Four Seasons by any means, but it’s nice to have a place I can be alone and decompress without having to bike home.

12. At this point it’s maybe 6:30 or 7 PM. I meet my host family at the motel, and we go out for dinner. Because my host mom and dad are running the factory they don’t have time to cook so I have eaten out almost every single night in Thailand. This isn’t much of a problem because prices in Thailand easily accommodate such a lifestyle, I get a bit of freedom in what I can eat, and I also get some control over how much I eat. The other exchange students I’ve met here have stories of host families shoving piles of food at them every meal. I’m entirely comfortable with the fact that I’m going to get fat (for Pete’s sake, I’m eating Thai food for a year. It would be a sin not to get fat), but it’s nice that I can at least stave off the inevitable.

13. We head home around eight, later if my host family runs errands. I’ll diddle on the computer, avoid updating my blog, do some reading and go to bed.

There you have it, a day in the life of Frank Meyer. It’s occasionally a bit boring, usually filled with fresh experiences, and every second of it is wonderful in different ways. 

Blog? What Blog?

I'm Sorry.

Really, truly, I'm sorry.

I have not forgotten this blog exists. It might look that way, but I haven't forgotten.

 I think I owe it to anyone who is still checking this blog to write at least something about how I'm doing.

Spoiler Alert: I'm doing outstanding. This past month and a half has been maybe the best stretch of time in my life so far. I'll tell you as much as I can, but just about everyday has been an adventure and I;m bound to forget all sorts of exciting bits.

And so, an update is coming. Not tonight, and probably not tomorrow. But soon.

Until then,

Sawatdee Khrap!