Last Night in September

It feels like my life this past while has been an endless chain of meetings and food, sandwiched (pun alert), one right after another. Although yesterday was a bit of a break, where I did little but sleep and update flickr, today it was back to the old routine. So the weekend isn’t that relaxing afterall, is it?

Waking up at eleven like I have been doing this weekend is really nice, but something I can’t get used to. Because Dada is back home for a week, I have the room all to myself and can stay up later reading without feeling guilty about keeping her up. Plus, this week I can access all the internet I want – both a positive and a negative. Positive as a means of keeping in touch. Negative as it is an immense time-waster. You know the internet.

I got “breakfast” at the crack of two at the bakery-coffee shop down the road from KSS with some friends. Although we CIEE students all hang out together a lot, some weekends I feel certain people disappear. They aren’t actually going anywhere – our paths just don’t cross. These group outings for meals or to the student activities room at the office are essential for keeping up with the latest in group social news.
This bakery is a weird combination of American and Thai ambiance. When I first saw the décor, my initial association was with a diner. The same glass cake display racks, white vinyl booths – different food. Much of the offering maintains the appearance of American diner food, for example, they offer French fries with fish. When you actually bite into the oversized fish stick, it has a distinctly Thai flavor. I can’t explain what that means exactly. It’s not worse or better, just different.

My coffee obsession continues. I got a cappuccino that tasted like a dream wrapped in a caffeine covered blanket. Mmh. Kat got what she thought was a green tea smoothie. It ended up tasting more like Grape Nuts. Once again, not better, not worse than green tea. Now that’s what I should be getting for breakfast. Too bad the bakery opens at noon.

We U-facs met for what promises to be one of the last times, this time to plan the final workshop, which is bright and early Monday morning. Hopefully, this will tie up the unit into a tidy, little package. Two hours later, Anne, Kat, and I headed downtown on a song taew in hopes of eating at the Asoke vegetarian restaurant. The Asoke movement is a sect of Buddhism in Thailand (fun fact: started by a former TV entertainer) that focuses on self-reliance. They grow their own food, very organic, very vegetarian. I hear delicious too, but wouldn’t know because our journey turned out to be in vain. By the time we found their restaurant – a small building in what looks like a deserted part of the pseudo-suburbs – it was closed for the night. Luckily, a nearby organic restaurant was open. We had really delicious food – Kat especially. Her coconut milk curry came in an actually coconut. Tasted like Thai food from the states; nothing I’ve yet had here. Isn’t that funny.

Somehow, we rolled our stuffed stomachs further downtown to the night market. A little shopping, some necessary, some pleasure-driven, before we hailed a tuk-tuk home. Alas, no lolly-gagging at the clothing stands for we had more meetings to go.

Again with the U-facs (we have dubbed ourselves “Team Food”), this time to start a self-evaluation paper. Although I will not miss the added meetings eating precious hours of my days away, we’re a pretty fun group. Full of opinions, yes. Sometimes over-exact to a point, yes. But fun – heck yeah.

PS - I was tempted to title this post "Wake me up when September ends", but I'm resisting the cheesy song titles as post titles tonight. No promises about the future though.