Pizza on my mind

Upon moving into our apartments, we wanted to celebrate by ordering pizza and drinking some wine (“but Laura, you’re in Thailand, why do you want to eat pizza when there is all this amazing Thai food?!?!?” you ask, with a slight roll of your eyes- you try going two and a half months without cheese and then get back to me.) After realizing we don’t have any wifi to look up a pizza company’s number, we decide to try our luck at 7/11. 7/11s in Thailand are the equivalent to Starbucks in Seattle, or number of empty Zelko bottles/pizza boxes in our house senior year of college. You will not be able to walk more than two minutes in Thailand without seeing a 7/11. In most cases you will be able to see a different 7/11 from the doors of the 7/11 you are currently standing in. We have gone to 7/11s for:

-breakfast

-lunch

-dinner

-drunken snacks (Chelsea and I demolished a family sized bag of chips, four regular sized bags of chips, and two toasties in one night- I call it the Thailand Twenty literally as I am writing this our school manager just came over and asked if I wanted anything from 7/11...I secretly do but naturally will say no)

-sober snacks

-water

-coffee

-beer

-ice cream

-to pay our bills

-for directions (this neverrrrr works out- limited Thai on our part and limited English on theirs makes for lots of nodding of the head and laughing while we both are thinking we have no idea what the other person is saying)

I think of 7/11 as my home away from home. Thai people just call it “seven” because Thais and “L” sounds do not mix. You know that part in a Christmas story where they are trying to sing deck the halls? Fa-ra-ra-ra-raaaaaaa-ra-ra-ra-ra. It is so accurate.

After the first two weeks of trying to correct my students when they said my name, I now just go by Teacher Lala. 

Back to pizza.

We walk into 7/11 and use our limited Thai to try and ask if they know a place we can call to order pizza. After lots of hand gestures and failed attempts, we walk out of 7/11 empty-handed (save for a bottle of wine). We must have looked pretty dejected walking back to our apartments, because as we are walking a car pulls up next to us and the couple inside ask us in nearly flawless English if we needed help. THIS WAS MUSIC TO OUR EARS. No one speaks English where we live- not even the students who we teach English to, lollll I joke I joke. 

They get out of their car and we are so excited we basically just all start yelling PIZZA at them with a crazy look in our eyes. 

After we calmed down we explained that we didn't have wifi and the condo office conveniently changed the wifi password two days after we moved in and then posted this sign:

Okayyyyy iCondo, a little passive aggressive. 

The guy ("You can call me Bank" he said, and I hadn't heard English in so long that I tried repeating "youcancallmebank" really quickly back to him thinking that was his Thai name until I realized he does in fact speak English and his name is Bank) whips out his phone and pulls up the pizza company 's(literally called The Pizza Company) menu. After selecting four different types of pizza (he was so confused and could not believe we all wanted a pizza to ourselves) he ordered the pizza for us in Thai and even told us he would call us when the pizza was delivered. His girlfriend Koi, who didn't know as much English as he did, just kept laughing at us and saying "hungry hungry!". So hungry, Koi, oh so hungry.

Eventually our pizza comes and I have never been happier even though the pizza cost about a day's worth of work and was not even good. Blessed. <3

Koi and Bank probably regretted giving us their phone number after we called them multiple times while they were at work to ask if they could speak to our taxi driver and tell them where we live.

"Um Koi?....it's me....Chelsea..."

I feel like this is one of those stories that you just had to be there to realize how funny it was. But really it was funny. Guess you had to be there.