motorbikes and the color purple

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Field trip!
We went to see Dara Academy, a school of some 7,000 girls up the road, to sit in on some english language classes. We only ended up really witnessing one being taught (everyone else was doing some midterm testing of sorts) and it was first grade ... oh the cuteness of the pinchy little thai babies. It looked like fun, absolutely.

But ... much more importantly, on the way back I was offered a backseat pass on one of the guy's motorbikes - ah! Fun! I wanna play! That is absolutely on my list of things to do in the next few months ... motorbike lessons and rental. Helllll yeah. It's funny how everyone rides them here - very different from the states. Here you see business men and well to-do women in heels zipping through traffic, it's great. That'll be me soon enough(sans heels)!

So later on, after class, I walked across town to my noodle soup shop (15baht!), walked along the river, trying to kill time before this bar opened that advertises jazz and blues every night of the week. Turns out it opens at 9 instead of 7, (9 being my bedtime these days ... I typically get up at 6 w/the sun to walk/run, eat, and check email before school) so I decided to check out the place nextdoor. It's called The Gallery (focus on a western clientele, eh?) and it was BEAUUUUTIFUL. I will have to go back and take pictures one day.

I have been staying away from anything too touristy, of course, and so avoid the places with very western names ... especially eating-wise, after my experience at Riverside I realized I was paying a 200+%!m(MISSING)arkup just for a printed menu ... but this place wasn't too bad (although I didn't eat, just sat with a beer while I did homework -- eating, I'm sure, is pricier). This place was unbelievable though ... filled with purple orchids of all kinds (purple is one of the king's colors and is used ad naseaum), seating over the river, candles everywhere, just stunning. And one of the waiters saw me working and asked if I was a teacher and then if I would work for him. Which was funny (I said no, by the way, if I've learned anything in the past few days of classes it's that I don't remember anything about grammar structure). What a big kid I am.

It's funny too, this assumption that I would, being an obsessor over words, remember what a morpheme is and know why we say 'some' part of the time and 'any' other times with regard to countable and uncountable nouns, etc, etc. And besides the fact that native speakers just don't care/know why they speak the way they do regardless, they just do it, I had to explain to John (after singling me out again to point out some mundane grammar detail) that poetry has more to do with breaking rules than following them.

And with that, cheers to mending broken rules and growing dizzy with the color of kings.

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