Today we took our usual trip to the tea shop, and here are a few highlights!
First, it was so fun to see everyone utilizing Christmas gifts we gave them! This hair clip and purse were a part of her gift, and two other women had little purses with them we had given. So glad they are enjoying these little gifts!
We had two little three-year-olds with us. Nothing like sugaring up the kids with tea at 8am! This one crashed on my shoulder within the hour.
Stephen taught the kids to clink their tea mugs! He is so good at making situations fun and/or funny, with or without language!
Pyint Soe loves vegetables, and it’s amazing! He finished my salad for me, even after the mothers all declared it gross and too sour.
After our tea shop stop, we headed off to the market. Per usual, everyone goes in a different direction and Stephen and I frantically try not to lose anyone. This is our only goal for the market: leave with the same number of people you came with.
It is much more difficult than you’d think.
San Aye has a new little pork shop on the street, so she was purchasing items for that. In addition to garlic and chili sauce and little stools, she bought a lot of pork. It was at the pork shop that Na Leh Ton fell asleep on my shoulder waiting for his mom to buy kilos upon kilos of pork parts.
{Side note: One of the things she purchased is a pig head skin–they often sell the whole pig head here, but this was the just the skin off the head. It was whole ears and a whole nose connected by floppy skin. I didn’t even know this was purchase-able, and it was disgusting. I’m also confused as to what you use from this? Is facial skin more tasty than back skin? Meat here is just one discovery after another.}
It was also about this time, as Na Leh Ton was sleeping, that I was feeling very faint. I have been sick for the past couple days and am currently on medicine, so this isn’t abnormal, just unfortunate.
San Aye & I walked back to the main market area where I sat on her newly-purchased stools where her mother-in-law sells flowers. I sat with the many kilos of pork, tofu, and chili sauce already purchased while she went to get the rest.
I was sitting where the sellers sit–a Burmese job–and holding a little Burmese baby in the middle of the Burmese market. The only white girl in sight.
I was asked many times if it was my baby. I was stared at even more times than that. This is probably the only situation yet where I have received that many stares.
But it’s worth it. It’s so fun to hear strangers ask the neighbors who we are, and for them to respond that we are friends, that we live in the same neighborhood, that we are learning language. To hear someone defend you and speak highly of you to others is a wonderful thing to hear, even if you only understand bits and pieces of it!
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