I finally baked something this morning, after a > one-month break! Was quite happy to find jappy (many of them were translated from Japanese to Chinese) baking recipe books - and I got a few at Eslite in Taipei. It takes a while trying to understand the ingredients in Chinese, but it's still easier than the Japanese ones. My stash of baking cookbooks is now more diversified, with several exciting Jappy/ Jap-influenced baking recipes to try!

So I tried out a simple recipe from one of my new recipe books this morning - green tea muffins with cream cheese filling. Back at Berk my fav muffin was the black bottom choc muffin at the Free Speech Cafe - these were extremely chocolatey muffins with very generous portions of cream cheese goodness (sinfulness?) tucked within. My green tea muffins are kinda similar - but a lot healthier cos I put less sugar and less cream cheese...

 

 Sneaking in the cream cheese in the middle... heh maybe there isn't so little cream cheese after all...

 Topped with almond flakes and ready to go into the oven!

 Nice and fluffy and un-deformed!

 Effort to create a 'zen-looking' food plate heh.

Stash of new cookbooks!

Home! 

Got home last night! After a week of early mornings I cldn't sleep past 730am this morning so decided to wake up and be a good wifey haha. Strolled to our neighbourhood NTUC to get some groceries and prepared brekkie for D... I miss and really appreciate the convenience back home. Back at the farm I think I'd need to like stroll a good 20 min to get to anywhere heh.

Surprisingly I found mozarella cheese at my NTUC - and so I decided to make grilled tomatoes wholemeal toast with mozarella cheese and fresh basil from our garden! Paired with fresh mango and dragonfruit topped with yogurt and muesli... Heh felt somewhat proud of my relatively inspiring breakfast :P I think my farming stint (and staying with ppl who cook a lot) has kinda inspired me to be less lazy and to try cooking a bit more (with fresh ingredients).

Hope this is not just 三分钟热度 and I will continue believing in this philosophy haha (though I suspect my enthusiasm will gradually wear off a little).

 Toast, fruit salad and a cup of Nespresso coffee

Had a leisurely Saturday exploring Hualien city after packing copious amounts of various veges the entire Friday! I don't think I can sustain v long in a packing job ha...

Yest was my lucky day- managed to secure a night's stay at a lovely little min2 su4; there I also bumped into 2 friendly locals and they recommended some cool quirky places (cafes, farmer's market, bookshop etc) to check out in town :)

Also had a pretty much full day outing to a dairy farm, old sugar factory-turned ice cream joint place, nearby carp lake and a beautiful beach near the Hualien airport.. Thanks to the friendly farm worker Peng Da Ge who drove me all ard today!

Tmr's my last day of work and it will be home sweet home come Tues! :)

Photos of work and play (sorry the order is a bit jumbled up though):

It's my 4th day (technically 3.5 lah) and I'm actually starting to enjoy myself a bit more.. :) taking a break after a morning of planting (some vege called qing jiang - there are quite a few never-hear-before veges they grow without corresponding English names..) and there was a slight sense of achievement at the rows of vege planted..

An relieved how there is some variety in work done - eg most of yesterday was spent preparing many many substrate trays for germinating seedlings. It was pretty tricky trying to drop ONE minuscule seed into each hole though!!

Though I am kinda getting more used to it, I still think that farming is really hard, tiring work! Even the Sri Lankan worker at the farm says he gets back pain fr farming! Apparently organic farming is even more labour intensive with a greater need to guard against insects, snails, and lotsa weeds.

But the extra work does seem to yield tastier and healthier veges. Both the co owners of the farm are avid cooks.. And my dinners the past two days (of various veges the farm grows) have been pretty delicious. The corn n carrots in particular were really sweet! And I had this vege which was apparently the younger leaves of the bird's nest fern...

Attaching some photos! Blogger mobile doesn't really allow me to caption under each photo, but I'm sure u can roughly figure out what is what lah :)

Maybe I am really not cut out for farming after all

Arrived at the farm yest evening n was immediately roped in to help with some last min packing.. Hmm the place is kinda dingy and sanitary/ sleeping conditions a bit sad.. As result of bad pillow I think I only slept 3 hrs last night (came home late n had to wake up at 530am) - just finished some 3 hrs of bending n squatting to plant romaine lettuce n spring onion seedlings.. Now taking a break to nuah before heading back to work after lunch!

Am not sure how long I can sustain doing this because it is really physically demanding hard work bleah.. N maybe i am slightly spoilt wanting a clean place without being the one to clean up the existing mess heh. It doesnt really help that there are 2 needy cats that keep wanting to play/ be fed n meowing the whole day :P

K I shall stop complaining n remain positive ;)

And so D just left for the airport and I am making full use of the remaining 15 min or so before leaving for the Taipei train station to write a short post using the hotel lobby free wifi...

It's been a great weekend and the work will begin tmr morning. Feeling nervous and not v well prepared actually cos my plans to read up on organic farming were shelved again and again :P

Just hoping hard first for nice hosts, clean bed/bathrooms!

Photos of: yummy-looking mont blanc cakes at Agnes b cafe that I did not buy; tea at Maokong tea house; sale cookbooks at Eslite bookstore and a very huge piece of fried chicken chop we got at Raohe night market :)

Home-made banana pancakes!

I was inspired by my Laos guesthouse owner to make my own banana pancakes... It's D's birthday this weekend and I had originally planned to bake a nice cake. But time was a little tight with the preps for Taiwan trip and random errands I had to run. So the grand cake plans were shelved and I prepared a mini birthday breakfast instead.

The pancakes didn't look that great, but they tasted quite decent nonetheless :) Actually as D was in a rush to get to work he had the slightly uglier pancakes without the banana-slices topping heh. But he got a rock melon mint fruit shake to go with his brekkie whereas I didn't :P

 Pancake batter (instant one lah) with lotsa fresh bananas!

Dunno why one of my pancakes turned out looking like a zucchini or potato pancake...

 Had two big pancakes drizzled with maple syrup (on a chio MUJI plate haha) to myself !

 One pancake gone!

 And down to the last slice :)

Am off to Taiwan tmr and another 2 weeks of volunteering at a Hualien organic farm. Many family members and friends weren't too confident that I'd be of much use at a farm (actually I am not certain I'm up to it either haha) but hopefully I will be able to rough it out a bit; lose some weight and grow fitter; pick up some useful skills for my own garden and not get too tan...  :)

We finally decided to invest in a mini auto irrigation system for our garden and our gardener came to install it this morning..

As usual he also helped to pluck out some weeds in the garden- and cautioned about a particular one growing in one of the flower pots.. (see 2nd photo) This one had to be gingerly plucked out.. Failing which the violent plucking motion wld instead release thousands of tiny new seeds into the soil!

The close-up photo below shows the yellow seed 'bags' neatly hidden and tucked at the underside of the leaves... These are usually invisible when looking at the weeds top down, which we usually do... Such a devious and clever way of propagating itself!!! And what an interesting science lesson this wld have made for a pri sch child :)

Got home late last night - and my own bed suddenly felt super soft and heavenly! :P

On my 2nd last day (Friday) in LPB I -

treated myself to a leisurely breakfast at Le Benneton Cafe - a quaint french bakery place opposite the temple I teach at in the evenings. I ordered a fruit salad, latte and a chocolate pear puff pastry - this place supposedly has amazing and authentic french pastries. Sadly for me the pear in the pastry was the coarse yellow chinese pear (commonly found here) and not the typical green pear (which I guess they dun get in LPB)... so the choc-pear filling felt a lot more grainy than expected and tasted a little strange heh.

completed a mini feat of buying 20 English-Lao/Lao-English dictionaries as farewell gifts for the novices from a local market (at wholesale prices) and transported all of them back to the guest house via hanging a bag on each bicycle handle;

ran out of patience at my stencil class after 2 hours and made the owner's brother finish the outer circle of my design for me (btw his brother was checking his FB acct in the background); 

and finally towards the end of the day I received a whole lot of little presents (which I definitely did not deserve) from students for a class I co-teach with another volunteer...

 

At the Bangkok airport before catching my flight back to SG - I also discovered that Auntie Anne's (I used to be a fan of their pretzels back in my secondary sch days) also did amazing sandwiches - using sandwich buns that taste faintly of pretzels! Erm it was kinda mildly sweet and had a nice texture. The club sandwich I ordered was really tasty. They may do better in SG today by switching to sandwiches heh... ;)

And so this kinda concludes my mini teaching stint in Laos - it was a good experience but it's also lovely to be home again! :)

p/s: If you recall the Japanese restaurant lady I blogged about in my previous post - I found out upon returning to the restaurant a 2nd time for lunch that she got married on the same day as me in Laos!! So coincidental that I had to double check a few times to make sure we were referring to the same date... :) I guess maybe we were fated to meet heh. 

I finally tried the food at Sonphao Lao-Japanese restaurant this afternoon. Treated myself to a nice tonkatsu set! These days lunch is the best meal of the day where i can indulge a little in nicer food.. The other volunteers don't seem keen to spend more than 3 or 4 US dollars a meal, so we've mainly been having dinner at places where the locals go. I have decided that while i don't mind a more 'local' experience; it's quite nice to treat yourself to better food in a foreign land too :)

The highlight of lunch was being able to chat with the lady owner - in a mix of Japanese and English.. I actually asked her if she had watched the Hotaru series.. But she seemed pretty clueless after having been living outside Japan the past few years.. Maybe I will go back again to show her heh..

The funniest sentence made by a monk (in his late teens) today was.. "I want to be beside you forever" (he was trying to make a sentence with 'beside') I was amused cos half the monks seem pretty interested in making these silly love-themed sentences... But I guess it's normal to think abt these things at their age... They wld prob be extra attentive if their Lao teacher teaches a "how to write love letters" class haha.. But oh well that is definitely not going to happen ;P

(photos of set lunch and caramel pudding :P)

I was correcting a student's sentence in class this evening and the contents of his little paragraph made me feel bad for him; and for children in his village.. Apparently there is only a primary school in his village- and the closest secondary sch is 10km away.. So children who wanted to go to sec sch had to either stay with relatives or in dorms...

We're so fortunate in SG - it makes me upset to learn of the still patchy access to education opportunities here, but it's so hard for me to do anything to change things..

Cultural immersion ;)

Lao women seem to be extremely good with handicrafts (some men too actually haha) - earlier in week I noticed our guesthouse cleaner Loth knitting a bunch of things and asked her to teach me.. after some initial difficulty i managed to learn how to knit the stitches required for a simple scarf... But apparently the row I did was substandard so Loth undid my knit work (to my horror) and said she wld redo it for me to continue.. Within one afternoon I ended up with a small nicely knitted portion of a pink scarf to work on :)

When my fellow volunteer and I returned from the night market with Lao skirts we got, Loth also had advice to share.. Apparently the position of the hook on my skirt was wrong- it was not placed in a position where the seams on the back wld nicely accentuate my bottom or smthg... And so Loth offered to change the position of the hook for me today.. Very well... I clearly needed to learn how to wear my Lao skirt properly ;)

We also went for an ethnic fashion show cum hip hop performance at a restaurant closeby- and were treated to a pretty interesting showcase of Lao ethnic costumes (modelled by shy students).. The hip hop performance that followed was quite surprising - the Lao teenager boys were really good at it; appeared quite confident and hip; and many struck up various challenging stunts/ poses.. This was something I didn't quite expect of Laos youngsters cos the ones I know are all kind of shy (the monks). I suppose when there are no strict behavioural rules to adhere to, teenagers will naturally behave like normal teenagers.. want to appear cool etc ;)

My chill Saturday ended with a crepe dessert at a roadside restaurant which cost me only 7000 kip (abt 1 plus sing dollar) - will likely do nothing v much tdy too before starting again to prepare lesson plans for the coming week tonight :P

(attaching some photos taken on the iPhone - the night ones aren't v clear but u get the idea :) )

It is suddenly Day 5 of teaching - there's been some hits and misses with my teaching but overall I think I've managed to do a decent job with my beginner monk class.. As they seem to be relatively engaged and my games managed to draw some giggles from an otherwise v reserved and shy bunch of kids/ young teens. For the more advanced monk class I just assist the Lao teacher, though at times I cringe when something taught seems a little off and I am not quick enough to explain in a simple and clear manner to the students why they shouldn't say or write things in a certain manner..

My iPad also turned out to be a useful teaching aid - the support facilities for teaching r rather lousy, no printer except at the sch; patchy flash cards here n there so pretty much had to come up with my own materials to cater to my own topics.. The volunteer handouts provide a bunch of ideas; and thankfully J provided some useful sites too :) I drew a body parts worksheet yesterday heh... Bit amateurish but I guess gd enough for my purposes lah ;)

In another private sch class where I assist another volunteer, the kids have also voluntarily appointed me as their spelling teacher - so during their 5 min break a handful of little girls sit gathered ard my table to practise spelling new words in unison... Quite amusing but am quite happy to take on the role..

Hopefully everything goes well today n I will have the weekend to nuah yay! :P (attaching a photo of my banana pancake brekkie at the guesthouse n my worksheet)

First day of teaching!

The first day 'at work' was pretty busy n i forgot to be homesick ;) so many things happened but I guess I'd just blog abt the key things that struck me/ happened:

Good resources for teaching English seem to be really lacking in this place- I flipped thru the 'textbooks' the kids were using n to my horror found many misspelt words, colours that dun look like the colours they are supposed to show etc etc... The kids can def benefit a lot more fr just more accurate, better written textbooks.

The library I volunteer at also doesn't allow girls to come in pants (though I dunno who enforces it I will not push the boundary as yet) n so I had to bike there in a skirt n stupid me also brought a tote bag which kept slipping down my shoulder as I was biking. BAD idea, n I shall be smarter tmr.. And when I finally reached home at night after evening classes n dinner, I was greeted by a cockroach in my room! Usually I wld get D to get rid of it but was left to my own devices tonight n I squeamishly killed the invader with a flip flop.. Luckily for me this Lao cockroach didn't seem v agile so the murder was not too difficult..

There's a bunch of transportation issues n lesson plans to think abt but I think I am so ready for bed!

Having not been 'away' away fr home for a while I am suddenly experiencing a sudden bout of insecurity n neediness :( hopefully I will get over it soon and not let the worry wart in me take over my person n consciousness too much :(