My Breakfast Lady and Rapping Students

The two things that made my day:
1. My breakfast lady. She sells pork skewers and sticky rice on the street across from my apartment, and I usually stop over and buy some from her before going to work. She is out there cooking as early as 7am. Don't knock pork and rice for breakfast until you try it. Anyway, I stopped by and our encounters are usually awkward because she asks me questions in Thai and it takes me forever to answer. We try to small talk and I use some English words that she doesn't understand, so there's a lot of hand gesturing and laughing and smiling going on between us. Today she was out of sticky rice. I said that's ok and I ordered some pork from her. Then she said she was going to get some more and it would take 5 minutes. I figured since she was going to get a new batch, I'd wait around. I said ok. (All of this is in Thai, and was a much longer conversation than needed due to my inadequate Thai skills.) So she hops on her motorbike and rides down the street wearing her hat and apron. I stand and wait, wondering where she goes to buy sticky rice at 7:30 in the morning. She comes back seemingly empty handed. I was a little disappointed but she hopped off the bike and hands me one serving of sticky rice in a bag. She went all out of her way just so I could have sticky rice! I thought she was stocking up, but she made a special trip just for me; I couldn't believe it. There was another Thai woman standing right there and my breakfast lady said under her breath to the woman, "pen ajaan...maw chaw." ("She's a professor at CMU.") Talk about special treatment! Tomorrow I'm bringing her chocolate for her nice gesture.

2. Two of my young female students did a presentation on "How to become a rapper." It was so funny watching these two tiny, perky young ladies give advice to the class on how to throw down mad hip hop rhymes. I loved it. At the end of the presentation, they wanted to give a rapping demonstration, so they turned their backs to the audience, put on obnoxious diamond bling necklaces, and turned around and started shouting "yo yo yo! man! yeah! check! check it!" Then they rapped something like "gimme gimme....teacher....gimme gimme...A! A!" I did give them an A. It was spectacular.