Puppies and Porcupines

This week has been crazy. Tuesday night I got home from class and told my host family that I like porcupines. Porcupine is men in Thai which I think is pretty funny. I was just trying to practice my Thai plus I do think they are really adorable and I would maybe like one as a pet down the road when I get to site if it seems practical. My family couldn't understand what I meant so I googled pictures of baby porcupines to show them. The next day I get a text from my host sister telling me she is going to be home late because she is in Bangkok. At 8pm she comes home all excited and drags me out to the car. I can hear a puppy crying in the car and then she shoves a box in my hand that clearly has something alive in it. I open the box to see a little ball of quills hissing at me. Then the puppy is placed in my arms and she tells me to bring him into the house. I figured that the puppy was a friends, but nope, she went to bangkok spur of the moment and came home with a baby porcupine and a puppy. The puppy slept in my bed the first night and peed all over it of course. In the morning when I went to check on the porcupine he was not in his box so I had a puppy and a porcupine lose in my little bedroom. Since then the porcupine has warmed up to me and he is so adorable! He likes to try to snuggle though which is pretty painful for me.

On another note, I taught English as a second language this week. My students consisted of 4 monks, 5 little kids, a group of middle aged people, and several elderly women. The lesson my group had planned involved lots of activities where people get up and move around and eat snacks. The monks walked in right when we were about to start and panic set in. Monks are not allowed to sit near women, touch women, take anything from a women, have fun, or eat after 12 (along with 222 other rules). Our whole lesson had to be thrown out the window and we had to make it much less active. But the students still seemed to like it because they all came back the next day and even brought friends! Teaching turned out to be a lot of fun and I laughed harder trying to lesson plan than I have since coming to Thailand.

I also interviewed a 70 year old man who owns a garden area where he uses solar energy, recyclables for gardening, makes his own gas for cooking, makes organic fertilizer and pesticides, has a healing herb room, and makes homes out of mud and rice. People come to his house and he holds classes teaching people about self sustainable agriculture and the benefits of not burning rice fields after harvest time. It was really interesting and I hope that I can find something like that at site too.

I am doing much better since my accident and am hoping that the doctor will clear me to start biking again tomorrow. Training is now half over and in one week I will find out where I am going to be living for the next two years!

Puppy! I named him Mocha, which is the same thing in Thai and English. They already have a dog named Pepsi so I thought I would keep with the drink theme. 

My baby porcupine! Since in Thai he is a men, I have decided to call him porky/porkster. I tried to name him Mowgli from the jungle book but no one here could pronounce it. He has already grown a noticeable amount in the 4 days I have had him which makes me wonder just how big he is going to get...

Using toilets to grow vegetables. Yumm!