Saaw Chiang Mai

We're on school break here during this next month so I'm hoping to use the time wisely and get caught up on some work. It's always harder to go back and write about things that happened a couple of months ago, but I do want to share some of the highlights even if they are a bit out-dated by now.
One of the highlights of my summer is our trip to Isaan. We've been blessed with the opportunity to work with a school in this part of Thailand conducting a two-week basketball and English camp for two years now. This year our team was rather small, but we enjoyed it. We started off the two weeks with a school holiday. In Thailand that means an opportunity to have a picnic at a waterfall! We picked up some grilled chicken, spicy green papaya salad, and ice and headed off for a day of fun in the water.
After a long, hot day of work, there's nothing like sitting around Ms. Rerai's gazebo or making good use of the hammock. The kids warmed up to us pretty quickly. I don't think they forgot us. We also enjoyed preparing food together and spending time together. This picture shows me working on eating some special fish that Mr. Korn made for us. It wasn't that bad except that it was really salty. Carmen couldn't handle it so I took one for the team and ate her plate too. She didn't know about the special fish breakfast sandwiches yet, but I remembered them so I made sure we didn't have any leftovers.
And of course in Isaan there's always plenty of good sticky rice! This year we enjoyed steaming the black rice...it's a special treat for us.
It looks like Kaimook is stocked up and ready to go with two large baskets of sticky rice. At our house we don't usually eat sticky rice so I guess we stock up when we go to Isaan. I still don't have one of these fancy sticky rice baskets, but I plan to add it to my Thai kitchen soon.

I also need to mention that Kaimook is our saaw Chiang Mai, northern Thai girl. They really like talking to Kaimook and having her sing the song on karaoke/party night. Some of the teachers are supposed to come visit us this month, and they had to time their visit with Kaimook's school break. :)