Dear Friends and Family,

After a draining day at school/work, a few girls walked through Siam Square, up sky bridge stairs, through one humongous mall and down into Gourmet Market. This girl was eager to show her friends my version of heaven � and all were ready to indulge in some retail therapy. We walked in and immediately ran into the elegant sloped tables filled with an array of dried fruit. These tables are always intriguingly stocked by several Muslim ladies dressed in black with their heads covered completely in yellow and the veils secured beneath their chins. The dried fruit at Gourmet Market is amazing and there are little, white, tulip-shaped bowls filled with samples to further lure the customer. There are the recognizable dried strawberries, dried mango, dried cherries (pricey) as well as a myriad of unrecognizable dried fruit: the salty Chinese plums (stone intact), the flower-like rozelles, dried cantaloupe and my new favorite of dried tamarind encrusted with sugar. The tables, piled high, spill with color while the customers linger in front � our hands darting in and out to sample the wares while other customers strategically sweep in to grab already-weighed bag of goodies.

After a hard day it is hard to restrain oneself from grabbing every bag in sight � only the number of Baht in my wallet and the memory of the tiny ants that sometimes share my W House compartment keep me restrained. Late into the evening, tapping away at my keyboard, I often boil water in my hotpot for tea and pull a small handful of salty plums or rozelles out of the un-ant-inhabited fridge to fortify my efforts. Oddly, I am not eating a lot of chocolate these days.

What are rozelles, you may ask? We girls have run across dried rozelles and rozelle juice (which is actually too sweet unless diluted with 7-Up) and have asked this question many times. We always ask this question when Google is too far away to answer. In fact, now that Google is around� a few minutes of research did not yield any results. Must investigate further� another day.

Yet what is even more amazing than the dried fruit at Gourmet Market is the fresh fruit � well, fresh fruit at Gourmet Market is sublime but everywhere there is wonderful-looking fruit. From my first breakfast at W House, I�ve been intrigued by a white-fleshed, black-seeded fruit that tastes vaguely like kiwi while the skin is one step beyond vivid pink. After class, the boys go bursting from the classroom, down the stairs to the fruit stand just outside the lobby and bring back clear plastic domed cups with colored straws and filled with bright pink smoothies. This makes me feel a bit like their kid sister (�how come they get something so nummy and I don�t???) so on last week I went to down to get my own. Due to poor communication, I ended up with a pineapple smoothie � and no, there was not even a tiny speck of pink in my drink. I had to ask the boys their secret for ordering and yesterday I succeeded in getting my very own bright pink smoothie � which I tried, liked and then handed off to one of the other boys (He and I have it worked out: I sample and then he finished the bulk of it. I even get him his own straw). Anyway, the white breakfast fruit and the secret ingredient in the pink smoothies is the same fruit: dragon fruit. Dragon fruit always has a gorgeous pink exterior but comes in either the white or bright pink meat variety. Pop dragon fruit in to a Google Image search� aren�t they gorgeous?

I�m still struggling a bit in the search for good food. Why? Two reasons: (1) Time. I�m a full-time resident � devoid of the time to try a different restaurant every night as was my original intention. (2) Location. I�m living in the midst of the Thai version of a large stipmall. Although last Friday, the girls and I went to a wonderful restaurant called �Krok� where I promptly fell in love with the décor which is dark paneling off-set by colored paint, dark wood tables & benches, and decorated with the wonderful clay pots filled with delicious herbs. The food was good too. The place also has the good-sized clay pot mortar and large pestle sets that are used to make the Thai green papaya salad. My friend and I both badly covet one our own set and we�ve concocted a plan to steal a few of these from Krok � my job will be distraction while she is going to slip the large bowls under her shirt or in her bag and run. Hmmm� well, this plan is admittedly a bit rough. Stay tuned for the particulars!

I wish I could send each of you a Thai papaya salad in the clay mortar and pestle set� in the meantime, a pic of Gourmet Market must suffice.

I�m returning to my previously scheduled intensive lesson planning. Many happy meals to you all. --Laura