Sugary Potatoes

It seems as though many cultural discoveries are made at my parent’s dinner table. Yesterday we were eating baked potatoes, and I mentioned how in Thailand the only time I ever ate baked potatoes was when I when to Sizzler, an “American buffet restuarant”, in Bangkok.

Dom mentioned how potatoes, which the Thai word, mang farang, translated literally means foreign potato, are very expensive in Thailand compared to rice.

He said if his sweet grandma ever came to America she would be shocked if she saw people putting butter and salt on a baked potato.

Because if she was served a russet baked potato she would immediately put sugar on it, and then eat it. I wasn’t aware till last night that baked potatoes are seen as a dessert in the countryside of Thailand.

I didn’t try the sugar on the baked potato yesterday, but maybe I will next time. Then I will savor every bite of my potato delicacy and wish that my Thai grandma was smiling away and eating her own right next to me.

Radio Winner

Many nights Dom will come into the kitchen to have a water break from working out. He is usually bopping his head around, doing a little dance to the music blaring in his ears on his ipod nano. The music is typically the kind he grew up listening to: American pop/rock music.

Dom’s old room in Sukhothai, Thailand still has his adolescence plastered all over it. Posters of Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, 98 degrees, Westlife, Steps, Michael Learns to Rock (a Danish soft rock band I had never heard of) make his room look like it could be in an American or European teeny bopper’s house.

Now that we live in America he loves listening to music on the radio, which in Thailand we would only hear on the radio every once in awhile if a cool taxi driver happened to be playing a Western music radio station instead of Thai pop or  a Thai country twang station.

One day he happened onto Kiss 95.1’s website, one of the radio stations he loves listening to in our area. There were all sorts of contests on it’s website, so Dom figured why not and clicked, clicked, clicked and entered, entered, entered his name in quite a few of them, and quickly forgot about it.

Until two days ago. I heard a voice mail on our phone, and it was for Dom. The woman said he had won a Snowshoe Gettaway for two from Kiss 95.1, and gave us the address where we could go and pick it up.

“What??” I was in shock.

Dom had the same response, “What?? I don’t even remember entering that one! Is it real?”

And it was. Today the solemn front desk lady at CBS Radio in Charlotte gave us an envelope that had in it 4 ski lift passes for Snowshoe Mountain, and a letter stating that we got two nights free at the Inn of Snowshoe in West Virginia.

Dom started singing, “West Virginia, here we comeeeee…” and then said,”I have never won anything like this in Thailand! I can’t believe it!” I told him I had never won anything like that in America!

Hopefully soon we will be making our way to West Virginia for a few days to once again do Dom’s favorite thing he has done in America: snowboard.

All because of his love of  radio stations here that play the “foreign music” he always adored as a teen. A love that lead him to search for the radio station online, and to randomly enter its contests.

We love how unpredictable life is, and what sweet presents we happen upon when not even looking for them.

Fusion Food

Yesterday I made chicken with tomato and garlic sauce over fettuccine noodles for dinner. I had made Thai jasmine rice as well as the noodles because I wasn’t sure if the noodles would be enough for everyone. And I thought Dom might want some rice.

But no. He chose the  Italian noodles over the Thai rice. He said he was bored with rice, and becoming more like me who never likes to eat the same thing two days in a row.

“My Thai man is slowly morphing into an American,” I thought to myself with a little remorse.

Then at the end of the meal I looked over to Dom’s plate and noticed something familiar. His saucey noodles and green salad were all mixed up together. His plate reminded me of a Thai dish called yum sap which is a salad with spicy noodles.

“You are so Thai!!” I told him. And he gave me a sheepish grin while he slurped up his Italian-Thai fusion dish.

Thai Kiddo

I was chatting in the kitchen of our friend’s house with some of the people who are in our bible study when all of the sudden we heard these noises coming from a toy in the playroom.

Well, it wasn’t their 1.5 year old son making the ruckus because he was at his grandparents for the weekend. No, the one making all the noise was Dominic, my sweet husband. He was in awe of the fake carpenter’s bench that spoke to him, the mini-vacuum with the little multi-colored balls that popped as he pushed it, and the red and yellow toy car that their son could sit in and pretend to drive.

We asked him if he had played with that sort of stuff when he was a kid, and he said most kids in Thailand don’t because toys like that are so expensive.

“So what did you play with then?”

“Dirt! I built a house with it by using water and sticks and even made a canal. It was my favorite thing to play with.”

He said most kids play with pots and pans and other things they find lying around the house, which is what many American kids play with anyways, while all their Toys R Us gifts gather dust in the corner of the playroom.

Also, the other day we were chatting with our friends about when we were kids we would play hide and seek in the dark around the neighborhood, and we asked Dom if they played it too.

“Yeah, we played it too, in the jungle.” We thought that sounded way cooler than playing in the neighborhood.

But instead of joining football or basketball teams, like many American kids do during their free time, when he was 9 years old he started playing video games. He would go to his cousin’s house and play there, or use his snack money to go to a video game shop, or just watch people play at the shop if he didn’t have any money.

It seems like no matter the culture, kids find the same ways to have fun. And when we have kiddos one day we hope they will get to play with dirt, and play hide and seek in the jungle, but Dom says not too many video games because he doesn’t want them to be nerds, but to play sports like cool American kids.

Poke

The other day Dom poked me on Facebook while he was sitting next to me on our futon. He was logged onto facebook as I was logged onto mine, so I saw it right away.

“Aw, you poked me!” I said.

“Yeah!” He said, and then he began to hit my head with the palm of his hand and say, “Poke, poke, poke!”

“What are you doing??” I inquired, as I shirked away from his pounding hand. He told me he was poking me of course. In Thailand apparently to poke means to hit someone on the head a few times.

After I explained to Dom America’s version of the poke is to gently stab someone with your finger and gave him an example by poking him in his side, he said, “What in the world??”

He still thinks his Thai version is more fun, and I must agree, more fun to do it to someone than to receive it though. Go try it out, give someone a Thai poke today.

Dairy Sick

This week, while we were eating at a Thai restaurant with our friends, I asked Dom if he was sick of American food yet.

“I’m just tired of dairy in all the foods! Cream, cheese, milk, it’s in everything!”

He said the day before he went to Hardees. He told the cashier that he didn’t want any cheese in his order. The server was shocked! “No cheese??” Dom had to say it again, “Yes, no cheese please.”

It’s not really that he hates cheese, but Dom, like many Asians, is lactose-intolerant. He was in awe when my mom first gave him a Lactaid pill and that it actually worked, and he could just buy it at Wal-Mart. He thinks it’s cool in America how they look out for the lactose-intolerants.

Not only does America have Lactaid, but recently he discovered the popular soymilk brand in America, Silk. In Thailand an entire refrigerator at 7-11 is devoted to a plethora of soy milk brands and flavors since so many Thais can’t drink milk. But Dom said Silk tastes better than most of the Thai brands.

It was hard for me at first in Thailand to get used to the liquidy yogurt, never eating cheese because it cost a fortune, and drinking chocolate milk that just didn’t taste quite the same.

But now it is hard for Dom to get used to some sort of milk product being sneaked into every meal. I know though as I dealt with the land of only a few dairy cows, so Dom will deal with this land brimming with them, and in the process swallow lots of Lactaid and drink lots of Silk.

Present Attack

It was Christmas Eve and all the family was gathered round. Mom and dad were snuggled on the love-seat, Dom and I on the larger couch, and Nat on the other and Grandma was wheeled up beside us. The Christmas lights were blinking red, orange, green and white in the darkened room, casting a romantic Christmas feel onto the sacred moment.

Dad was reading the Christmas story by the light of the lamp next to him. We all sat listening to the ancient story of God humbly coming to earth as a babe. Well, all of us but perhaps Dom.

His eyes were aglow, gazing at the present mountain range encircling our stout tree. He was antsy, holding the one present that Dad had given him to open for Christmas Eve night, a family tradition, and then saving the rest of the mound for the morning.

Finally, it was time to open our gifts. In our fam the youngest always gets to open presents first, so I opened my gift of a subscription to Writer’s Digest while Dom fingered the tape holding the golden and red wrapping in place. Then it was Nat’s turn to open his cool shirt from Dad.

Dom could barely contain himself. Finally, it was time for him to open his gift.

He ripped open the elegant paper with glee, and in the process he whopped his dear wife’s head with his new DVD box set of Wild America.

“Ouch!” I declared with a giggle, rubbing my throbbing brow.

“I’m sorry honey! I was just so excited!”

Don’t worry, the next day I made sure I was quite far from Dom’s arm’s reach so I wouldn’t get knocked out on Christmas Day.

Dom was so delighted with having oodles of gifts to open. He told one friend from church that he had so many more gifts here in America for Christmas than in Thailand.

“You must have been bad in Thailand, but good here!”

Hmm, perhaps it could be that, or it could be because in Thailand, Buddhists don’t really celebrate Christmas.

But, facts aside, according to Dom, this time of remembering the Gift we have been given through giving and tearing open wrapped up gifts, eating lots of festive food, and hanging out with new family from near and far, is one of the most wonderful times of the year.

Dom is In Love

He was scared. His dark chocolate eyes watched the smooth snow-boarders zig-zag down the steep, snowy mountain and skid to a stop perfectly. Most of them looked like they had just stepped out of a snowboarding fashion magazine with top of the line goggles, helmets with funky stickers, patterned snowboarding pants, and sleek and bright jackets with brand names popping out all over.

To ski or snowboard for the next few days? That was the question. After watching the definition of cool snow-boarders float past us with some skiers mixed in, Dom, my hip hubby, decided on snowboarding.

The first half of our first lesson, he wasn’t so sure about his choice. He could never get up when he went wake-boarding in Thailand, so how would he succeed on this white stuff he had never encountered before?

But he conquered it. By the end of the first day he was the A+ student of our three person class, and by the next day he had become, as the other student put it, a snowboarding rock-star.

Our instructor would say, “Now everyone look at Dominic as he comes down the hill,” or, “You don’t need my help Dominic, go ahead,” or “Not all of you are at Dom’s level, but you will be with more practice.”

It had the potential to get old after awhile, but I was just beaming with too much pride of my hubby to let it.

So now Dom’s dream is to move somewhere, anywhere, where he can go snowboarding all the time. We had relatives in from Brazil, and Dom asked if they had snow there. We were talking to my friend who goes to school in Savannah, GA, one of Dom’s questions was of course, “Does it snow there?”

Now we know that the first place we find with snowboarding and good telecommunications companies is where we are meant to be. Thanks Colorado snow-boarding for helping us to figure that out.

First Frolic

We jumped out of the car in the driveway of my uncle’s mountain house in Keystone. Dom with glee immediately picked up some of the white stuff covering the ground in his non-gloved hand and threw it at my black jacket. I threw the powder back at him and some landed on his cool glasses and grinning face.

“Whoa! It’s wet!” He exclaimed as cold drops appeared on his glasses.”The snow is wet!”

His broad smile diminished a bit. “That means we are going to get all wet if we play in it?”

Time to load on the winter gear. After my uncle provided us with ski pants, ski jackets, thick gloves, snow boots, and hats we ventured out again with our armor to really romp in the snow.

Before going on a walk in the wonderland, he first had to lay down in the snow like it was his new feather bed. So he fell back into it and said, “Ahhh…”.

I told him to move his arms and legs like he was making rainbows. He said, “Why??”

“So you can make a snow angel!”

“Huh?”

After the rainbows were done, I told him to stand up slowly so he wouldn’t muss the snow. He did very well and turned around to see his very first snow angel which was 6-feet tall.

Since laying in the snow was done, it was time for a stroll on what Dom loved to call the virgin snow. It was empty and yearning for some action like a clean piece of drawing paper sitting at the point of an artist’s pencil.

We trounced in it, making two lines of tracks, Dom drew his name, as well as Dom <3 Sher, and a big heart which I sat in the middle of and he took pics. By the end of our walk, we decided that if we were running from the law, after gazing at our snow destruction, they would know precisely where DomSher had been.

On our way back down the path to the house Dom admired the dark green pine trees’ fingers covered with what he thought looked like poufy soap suds. We stared at the white-capped Rocky mountains that were placidly sitting in the distance, held gloved hands, and beamed with excitement at all the firsts Dom would get to have this trip and the ones we would be experiencing together.

What a lovely first frolic in the snow for the Phengchards.

Packin’ Warm

Dom and I have just finished cramming all of our fuzzy, wooly, winter clothes into two large bags to prepare for our Colorado trip. Dom’s bag is much lighter than mine, mainly because he had only a few fuzzy things, nothing wooly, three long-sleeve shirts, one pair of britches (he will wear the other one there) and a T-shirt or two.

We are thankful that my uncle has many winter supplies and are counting down the minutes until our flight in the morning to Dominic’s first winter wonderland!