not to brag or anything...

but i so just did this, and it's only lunchtime:


i'm sorry, but that is just beautiful.

(okay, so maybe พ่อ helped. also, the bottom strip and right-hand section are still un-polished. wait 20 minutes.)

this week has been interesting; i have my morning classes off, but nick has to go to school, so it's just me and พ่อ chappin' (a thainglish word for you, meaning "slapping cement all over a flat vertical surface") away at the walls each day. actually, he had one of his buddies come over yesterday and today to do all the corners in the kitchen, cuz those are hard and take forever. no objections here. anyway, working with พ่อ is fun. he's not a talker, but we do listen to thai radio nonstop, and that's always a party. sometimes it's those morning talk shows that make me want to gag in any language, but other times it's an overly sensitive ballad sung by a weeping thai man. we also have an oldies channel (that inexplicably started playing an amy winehouse song yesterday. what?), a whiner channel, and a thai uhhhh rap channel. but we usually stick to the sentimental man-yodeling, and sometimes, emotion just completely takes over พ่อ, and he can't help but burst out in song right alongside the radio. i love it.

and here's the bathroom thus far:


nick helped on this one late into the night on monday, lovingly (erm) scraping cement from the blocks in order to make the sorta bevelled edge. พ่อ and แม่ think he's on something half the time when he mentions ideas for the house, but i do like those edges. nice one, lovey.

as a side note--or just a complete subject-change, i suppose--lunch:


bamboo stuffed with pork. i didn't decide to take a photo until after i'd destroyed the cute little bundles they were initially. luckily, though, they sat in the cupboard for 12 hours before i got to eat them. if this weren't the norm, i'd be worried. nick still hasn't gotten over แม่'s total refusal to store meat in the fridge, but, as he has said pretty much every time i tease him about it, "well, you don't see ME getting diarrhea every other day, now, do you?"

touchée, monsieur. touchée.