Another thing that happened this year was that my friend Supatra wanted to come with me to India.
As she is a Buddhist, we went to Bodhgaya and Saranath before we came to stay in Tiruvannamalai, Vediapanur. She was very happy to visit the 'holy places'. But she did not understand the Indians. She could not understand why India is so different. Very dirty and unfriendly was her first impression. Thailand's is very clean and people are very polite to each other.
At my house she was happy as she likes to be the traditional Asian woman. Cooking, cleaning, work in the garden. She would speak in Thai to the locals and they were speaking Tamil to here. She made good friends with some of the ladies that worked in the fields next to my house.
We worked a bit in the garden together and within a short time we had the first veggies from our garden. It was a bit of getting used to, to have an Asian woman in my house. But we both had a good time trying to get to know each other. We did experience how our backgrounds were different and how we were conditioned by our different cultures. Every day was a magical-mystery-tour.
We went to see Mamallapuram and Auroville.
She could not understand the Indians how they made the beach so dirty. And the food she did not like at all. The crazy spiritual seekers in Tiruvannamalai were another mystery to her.
I learned to cook real good Thai-food with her. And she showed me how to buy fish and prawns in Tiruvannamalai. And sometimes we bought 2 kg. crab and had a feast. We also found a good butcher in the Moslim neighborhood. And we prepared some amazing Thai-beef curries.
Another project very close to my house is the Regenboog orphanage. Another Dutch project that was started by Hanneke the doughter of the dutch nurse Erika. ( see the last post.)
So one day we cooked some Thai-chicken curry for all the kids and the staff. Only one had some trouble with the lemon taste. Here in Tamil-Nadu they do not use lemon as much as they do in Thailand. Here they cook a lot with Tamarind.
Here you see Supatra in the new kitchen that I have made in this house last year. The house did not really have a kitchen before. So I worked last year in the hot season, every morning and build a kitchen, work desks with white marble, a stainless steel sink and tiles on the wall. I did everything myself.
It was last year october when I moved to this house. And it had been a very dry and hot summer last year. But I did start a cactus garden. At my old house I had many very big cactussus. And many different ones. They have been growing very well and some are now as tall as me. I also had my first flower. They only blossom one night and close early morning.
The coconut leaf roof is good to keep the house cool in the summer but it is not really waterproof.
It is great place to sit or do yoga. I have a hammock on the roof in the shade.
Twice a group of teachers from the AVS school came to eat Thai-food. Supatra liked it a lot to cook for all my friends. We often invited friends to come and eat. Asians are all about eating, thats what they like best. Cooking and eating.
The only man in the picture is Giri, he does the paperwork for the school and the bookeeping. Next to him is Viya Kumar, the head misstress. Also in this picture is the lady manager of the orphanage; Tamil, is her name.
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