Our Ma would sit with us while we ate, and she would ask us questions. Generally, the conversation consisted of questions like, "Are you cold?" and "Do you like the food?", though on occasion she would try to talk to us about something else. On this morning, Laura had gone back inside for a moment, and our Ma was trying to talk to me about the stay. I was having a very difficult time understanding her. As had happened several other times during the stay, though, another woman who lived in another part of the house came over to help. This woman (maybe 10 years younger than my Ma) repeated my Ma's question, and I could understand what she said. I think our Ma must have a very strong accent because we could always understand what was being said after someone else repeated it but not when she said it.
The woman who had helped me understand my Ma sat down with us. She pointed to my leg and said "white", then she pointed to herself and said "dark". This was the second time this had happened during our trip. A few nights before, Laura and I sat inside the house with our Ma and sister and watched a Thai soap opera. Just as I had been thinking about how "white" the Thai people in the show looked, our Ma pointed to Laura's arm and said "white" and then pointed to her own skin and said "dark" (in Thai, of course). I found it strange that there was such an emphasis on our having white skin and not on us looking different in other ways.
On occasion, our host sister sat with us while we ate. Our Ma would have her serve us our rice, and sometimes she would make our sister eat a bit of food, but she never ate nearly the same portion that we were given.
As usual, we saw our Pa for about.. 10 minutes. He never spoke to us other than an introduction on the day we arrived. He would sit in front of the kitchen and sip coffee in the morning, and we would not see him again until the next morning. Apparently both of our parents worked on a farm, though our Ma seemed to be around the house all of the time--this could still make sense as there were roosters and chickens all over the yard that needed tending to. She also is a weaver--making skirts in her spare time. She told us the skirts cost about 1000 baht each.
A couple of boys who lived in the neighborhood would be around the porch while we were eating breakfast. On Saturday morning, though, they were chasing roosters. After watching them chase around roosters for about 10 minutes, I finally saw them catch one. One of the boys held the rooster and pet it for a while while the other boy ran around chasing another. Once both boys had roosters, it was time for them to fight. We watched as the boys shoved the roosters toward each other, forcing them to kick at each other. They had been very calm animals, and it did not seem as though they wanted to be attacking each other, but after some coaxing, the birds attacked each other, and the boys immediately separated them and locked one away. The boys walked around with the rooster that was not locked up, and they then found another rooster to carry around as well, but it seemed that the fighting was done, at least for the time being.
It was then time to go to the temple and head back to Chiang Mai. We grabbed our bags from our room (which our Ma then took from us to carry to the temple), and headed across the street. As we were leaving our little neighborhood, our Ma grabbed the hand of a little girl (I'm not sure I'd ever seen her before) and took her with us to the temple. She even posed in a picture with our Ma and us. We never had an explanation of how she knew the family, but I thought it was a good example of how close the community is. There always seemed to be people coming and going from the house, and we could never tell if they were occupants of the house or friends or relatives.
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