Ngoo chin de.

Do you know how with some people, you can pretty much perfectly pinpoint the moment that you two become friends?

Meet Kyaw Myint. He is one of the office staff, does not speak English very much, and is quite awesome. One night last week, I ran out of bug repellant (I had been using OFF! DEEP WOODS!, which meant that I smelled like poison and I still got mosquito bites all over the place), so I asked ML and Jasmine if they would be going to the market at some point the next day. ML tells me to go with Htwee Nge that night, as she is always looking for an excuse to get out of the house anyway. We end up at the local Tesco with A-Pu (Htwee Nge’s father), and after some poking around, I found a nice bug-repellant lotion that smelled like flowers, versus a second flower-smelling one that cost slightly more.

Upon returning home, Kyaw Myint helped me close the gate behind the truck. My student Kyaw Eh was also outside, and asked something vague along the lines of “what did you buy, teacher?” to which I replied, “Chin gai de. Seya-mat ngoo chin de.” Kyaw Myint laughs at this, and repeats “Ngoo chin de! Hahahah!”

With that simple phrase, a couple of mosquito bites and my desire to cry, we were suddenly friends. Joy!

The bug-repellant lotion has about the same effectiveness as the poison spray, meaning that I am averaging 3 to 4 new bites per day. In the beginning, I was bandaging the bites so I wouldn’t scratch. I ran out of band-aids rather quickly.

Sigh.

Ngoo chin de.