Five star fruits
Four custard apples
A kilo of Long An (aka Dragon Eyes)
Five "beefsteak"-like bananas (the short and chunky ones)
A pomelo, plus a few residual sections from the prior one
A watermelon
One mangosteen
Five limes
One passion-fruit flavored yogurt (OK, I know that's not a fruit, but it's at least a different fruit flavor!)
A half kilo of red grapes
Four tomatos (yes, they are fruits!)
30 green plums
Two Thi fruits (no English translation, but I did find the latin name) which are primarily for sweet smelling rather than eating
One might wonder if we had just gone crazy at the market, but although we might do that, this is a delightful complication of making some purchases for ourselves, and the very pleasant habit of visitors to bring along fruit to share with those they visit (source for the pomelo, star fruits, plums and custard apples,) and sometimes those who visit them (the source of the Thi fruits). On the other hand, my mother would be absolutely shocked to know that there is not a single variety of ice cream in the freezer at the present, (though we do admit to looking over the durrien, coconut and other exotic ice cream flavor options offered in the grocery on the first level of our building.
We had fun Wednesday evening challenging our students in English class to describe in words how to eat a LongAn with directions sufficiently clear that their partner could do it successfully by just doing what was said. Several had difficulty with words like "peel" and "pit" that lie between the outer brown covering and the sweet somewhat aromatic translucent flesh and the central hard seed. The custard apple also has very hard smooth seeds inside each segment that could probably break a tooth if one were not forwarned. The class was attended by a great array of students ranging in age from 14 to 55, and so many that we ran out of chairs in the room. I need to remember to speak slowly though as we have also a broad array of abilities in this "intermediate" level class. Teaching in this setting and in the family relationships class not infrequently presents us with the challenge of cultural translation as well. Just like these fruits which have no temperate counterparts, and often no temperate climate consumers (although we have been pleased to see more and more mangoes, pomelo and even rare dragonfruit of late) at times we find it difficult to transpose
One cultural transposition we have yet to witness is anything close to "road rage." And yet, the traffic is much heavier than the "I had to wait through two light changes"-associated sense of extreme inconvenience one might find in OKC and that leads to hair-trigger horn soundings or muttered words of distain and disrespect. Wading through a narrow street awash in motorbikes, cars, buses, bicycles (electric and standard) along with occasional motorbike-drawn carts hauling construction materials, and the occasional sanitation worker pushing a cart filled with detritus, one would think that impatience and impertinence would soon surface. People make u-turns on busy streets, halting on-coming traffic in the process, cut across several lanes to make a left turn, jump out early on a light,or even run right through a light creating inconvenience or some accomodation for others. Yet horns are rarely interpretable as "That was dumb!" or "You Jerk!" as they might be commonly interpreted in the US. Rather, they more often mean, "I'm here, did you know?" or "Hey! I'm a taxi, Need a ride?"
We speculate that there are a couple of reasons for htis lack of traffic-associated emotional content. First of all, there is a fundamental level of respect for other persons in most interactions (though sadly this does not appl;y to cleanliness of the environment-- but that's another essay entirely.) People define themselves and others in speech and most interactions by pronouns of varying levels of respect and relatiionship- Uncle, Brother, Gentleman, Sir, Friend, child, grandson, etc. Secondly, there is very little sense of time-urgency when it comes to work, events, or most other things. This promotes a sense of understanding that "I don't need to speed to get there on time" that is accompanied by an implicit understanding that if someone is late, they got held up in traffic. (So should we be surprised when people wander into our classes anywhere from 10 minutes earlhy to 20 minutes late?)
No comments:
Post a Comment