Highlights of the Thai Coffee Hour

How are you? I hope you and your family are fine.

Last night I hosted the Thai Coffee Hour for the Cosmopolitan Club. Maybe I have not told you about my joining this club. Well, I was invited to be the program chair for the fiscal year 1997-1998. I was reluctant at first. You know me, I'm in a way a shy person! To be a program chair, one ought to be quite outgoing, right? But after some consideration, I decided to accept this honored invitation and give it a try for a year. To make the story short, this is how I was involved in organizing the Thai Coffee Hour on Thursday, October 23.

To me the exciting part was the preparation. Since the theme was loy krathong (floating banana leafcup to ask the goddess of water for pardon that we have polluted her), the most beautiful festival in Thailand, krathong had to be made. To be authentic, we wanted to have real krathong made from banana leaf. Well, how can we find banana tree in Urbana-Champaign cornfields? So I looked around and tried to find the substitute. Ah hah! While waiting at the bus stop, I spotted the cannah plants which have leaves similar to banana leaves. So the evening before the day of the coffee hour, in a chilly weather, a few leaves were quietly cut and a few marigold were secretly picked.

We were so lucky to have Jieb (Sudsanguan Chusacultanachai), a graduate student in biochemistry, who is skillful in Thai music and craft. She aesthetically made the krathong. Not only did she make the krathong, but also trained other Thai students: Niramol Itchayapruks, Supaporn Charoenchaimongkol, Surapoom Somwangthanaroj, Vasin Punyakanok, and Ronnachai Chokdee, to play Thai musical instruments (/kim/ = Thai dulcimer; /saw-u/ = Thai fiddle; /saw-duang/ = Thai fiddle) and perform the Thai folk dance (/rum-wong/). Applause goes to all these students who devoted their study time to practice for the event.

Yes, I was quite excited to be an emcee. I guessed I did OK. Many people showed up. They seemed to enjoy observing the loy krathong demo; tasting the Thai desserts from my kitchen (/kanom gleeb lum duan/ = Thai flower cookies), everyday cookies, and sweet potato in coconut milk and the cake that Andrea kindly baked; listening to Thai traditional music (/don-tree-thai/); and participating in the Thai folk dance (/rum- wong/). The authentic krathong and the artificial krathong (made from paper into a shape of a lotus) were both admired. One of the Cosmo residents was so interested to learn the art. Jieb briefly showed her how it was made. She was so pleased.

I personally hope our friends had a good time. I hope you have had a good time reading this letter. Last but not least, I wish you were with us at the Thai Coffee Hour.