Two Weeks Down!

We’ve officially been in Thailand now for two weeks and I think we’re settling in pretty well! School started this week for Tim, Caroline, and Leah. It was extra exciting for Leah since she had her very first day of Kindergarten on Friday! She LOVED it and already talks about 3 or 4 of her new friends! I think she’s really happy to finally be going to school like the big kids! You’ll see some pictures below of the kids on their first day of school. They have two separate uniforms they wear – one for P.E. days (every other day) and then one for not P.E. days. The regular uniform is the red polo shirt with black or khaki skirt or shorts, and the P.E. day uniform is the T-shirt and black shorts. And every day they have to wear their hat to school. I guess the atmosphere is thinner here in tropical regions and the UV rays are a lot stronger – thus the hat. They have to wear it for P.E. outside and for recess, too, if they are playing on the field and not in the shaded equipment area.

This weekend we also went to the aquarium at one of the malls in downtown Bangkok. It was pretty neat – they had a lot of great exhibits, including a ride on a glass bottom boat where you could see all kinds of different fish and sharks. The kids got a big kick out of the jelly fish, too! In the pictures at the top, only Tim and Caroline are included...Nate and Leah were both terrified of the Shark person!

We also got shown around to some of the better Thai shopping for groceries, meat, eggs, etc. The human resources director and her husband showed us around and took us all out for dinner. They were very very nice and while we felt a little like we were imposing, I think they were also really just very happy to show us around and help us acclimate. They were very taken with the kids – especially Leah and Nate, and herded them around crowded places like a mother and father hen. It was kind of funny – they were more on top of them than we were! Anyhow, I now know many places to go shopping where I can buy things for “Thai prices” instead of “farang” (foreigner) prices.

Finally, today (Sunday) we went to the community church here in Nichada where we live, and met some new people. The kids also really enjoyed going to Sunday school and went without a backward glance – I think all the changes they’ve been through lately have made them much more comfortable with new situations.

Who knows what new experiences this week will bring!

Catching Up!

Whew....I think we're are now about up to date here! As I said before, it's been kind of a long, boring first week here. Rick worked all week and other than running to the grocery store on Monday and again on Friday, the kids and I didn't go anywhere that we couldn't walk to! We spent a lot of time at the park outside our house and WAY too much time playing Wii and Nintendo DS! However, things are picking up!

First of all, many of you know that when we proposed the idea of moving to Thailand to Caroline, her response was that it was a great idea and that when she got here, she'd be catching a millipede to have as her pet. She told us she'd just dig until she found one. Well, no digging was necessary! The little (really, kind of big) buggers are all over the place here! The kids routinely find them at the park here and are thrilled with them. Ewww! Here's a few pictures:

As you can see, the kids have been busy with bugs! This weekend we also went to ISB and got the kids fully enrolled, got uniforms, school supplies, etc. Tim and Caroline did GREAT on their assessments and both of them scored at the 5th grade reading level for reading - smart cookies! And Leah breezed through her assessments and was an easy shoo-in to kindergarten, even though she misses the cut off by a few weeks! I'll post more pictures after they have their first day of school on Wednesday, August 6th.

Finally, today I got a new set of wheels!!!! We do have a driver and a van that is available to use pretty much whenever. Our van is plenty big (seats 11) and very nice, as is the driver (he's not so big, but also nice! ;) ) But he spends most of his days driving Rick to work and hanging out there until it's time for Rick to come home, so it really is helpful if I have a way to get around our community, Nichada, when I don't have the driver. To that end, we are now the proud owners of a spiffy red golf cart! Check it out: OK, I see that you've already seen it at the top of this post...I can't figure out how to move pictures around very well in here, so we'll just leave it as is for now!

After all this that has brought you up to date, we are now looking at school starting this week (yay!), our air shipment arriving at the end of the week after about a 2 week delay....it was supposed to take one week to get here but clearly that isn't the case and the kids have been real troopers about entertaining themselves with only the stuff they brought on the plane with them, and moving into our house at the very end of the month...if our sea shipment isn't delayed, too! I'll be sure to keep posting, so check back soon! :)

We have arrived!

Now that you are caught up on us actually surviving the trip, here's some details about our initial experiences here. Some of you have read this via email (I just copy/pasted,) but here it is again!

We arrived yesterday morning at about 6:30 am, cleared immigration, got our baggage, cleared customs and were on our way. We made it to our temporary apartment by about 8 am and spent some time unpacking. We then hit the Carrefour, which is like a French Walmart, but not not as nice, to go grocery shopping, pick up a cell phone, etc. That was quite the experience! I'm still not quite sure what some of the things are that we bought and though we looked for stuff that we know, there were still some surprises, like the bag of potato chips that we bought that we thought were BBQ chips but it turns out are "hot chili squid" chips - go figure! Rick tried some and said they aren't so bad! Since we couldn't find everything we needed there (maybe its there but on a busy Saturday morning with all the kids along and all of us exhausted, we weren't willing to look too long) we headed back here and I went to the local little grocery store here in our community to get a few more things. One thing we noticed....it will cost us A LOT more to eat here than it does at home - I spent about $70 on what normally would have cost me about $25 at the grocery store - ouch! (Partly that is because I was shopping at our little local grocery store here in Nichada, where we live, and it caters to foreigners and costs more because of it.) The other thing we noticed....we draw a lot of attention here and the kids are really fussed over! From the time we got off the airplane and all through shopping, we drew a lot of attention. People were counting heads and congratulating us (mainly Rick for some reason - like he's responsible?) on having four kids! People also constantly were touching the kids, especially Leah and Nate, and trying to talk to them. Lots of stroking their hair - I think the blonde hair and blue eyes are a real draw!

Below are a few pictures from where we live. They have places we would like to live in, and some where the locals live. If you look at the second picture we are the blue house. Just Kidding!!!. That is a group of local houses though. Actually, in the first picture with the houses right on the water and the edge of the condo tower showing (we live in an identical one across the lake), just to the left of the condo tower (a little pink corner of house is showing) is our house. The white building along the lake in the middle is club house where the pool, stores and all the other activities are.

We went by the house last Sunday with the kids. They are pretty excited. We also met our first neighbor. Her family is from Cincinnati (I think). She had 4 kids, 2 in college in the US and 2 here, one of them Tim’s age. It was interesting that she works here and her husband was a stay at home dad. He is currently back in the US with the kids so she was here by herself. We put all of our travel power converters into our Air shipment which has not arrived so we don’t have Wii yet. Luckily she lent us one. She was very informative. She told us how to get McDonalds, Burger King, Swensons and Pizza Hut home delivered. I guess you just call a number and they bring it to you. Very Handy!! She also informed us about why you get a maid in Thailand. It is not so much for the cleaning and kid watching, but more for when you go to the store, and out to do things, to have a reasonable interpreter. The Thai maid may cost a few hundred dollars a month, but if she cooks, and you let her do the shopping, she can save you hundreds a month in food costs. That local grocery here will drain the wallet faster than anything. It also looks like there are tons of kids on our new street. When we were leaving, there was a group of adults with about 8 kids playing in the street down at the other end. We were tired and trying to go by ISB with the kids so we did not stop, but it looks like the street we live on will be similar for the kids to the one we left. As for the lady from Cinci, she has been here for 1 year and they love it. She said it will take a couple of months, but once we get our bearings, things are really good here. That was nice to hear.

For the rest of our first week, Rick worked (Monday through Friday) and I hung out with the kids. It was a LONG week since we were stuck at the apartment (no transportation unless he sends the driver back for us...and by the way, his name is Yai [rhymes with "sigh" and not Chauncey!] and even if he did, we didn't really know anywhere to go but the grocery store and you can only go there so often! We spent the week walking around the community, playing in the park, meeting just a few people (around Thursday the place started filling up fast as people arrived here for the start of the school year), etc. The kids had fun playing with a couple of Italian kids here in the park next to our building a few days ago...they are hoping to see their new friends again soon. It was kind of funny - the mom was telling her kids, in Italian, how old my kids are and Leah later said to me, "Mom, that lady was speaking Spanish...I heard her use numbers!" Pretty good pick up for a four year old, I though! Anyhow, here's a few pictures of where we live, taken from our balconies on the 11th floor (we have one in every room!) I'll fill in more later on what else we've been up to, with a few new pictures, too!

The Journey!

I'm a little late in posting all this but as you can imagine, the past few weeks have been pretty crazy for us all! I'll break up the posts a little to bring you all up to speed with our new life here in Bangkok, Thailand!

After weeks and weeks of packing and preparing, we finally set out for our journey on Thursday, July 24th. We had a HUGE amount of luggage but then, when you are moving a family of six halfway around the world, there just is no easy way to travel light! I think we checked 7 or 8 pieces of luggage (including 2 car seats) and for carry on, we had 10 or 11 pieces - it looked like a small tour group was departing as we loaded up the car(s). We actually had to take our van and a truck to get us all to the airport and had two vans pick us up from the airport here in Bangkok when we arrived. There's a picture of us and all of our luggage below....you get the idea!
The trip was surprisingly uneventful. We had a quick flight to LA, a three hour layover there, and then we boarded our non-stop flight to Bangkok at 11 pm. The kids (except Tim) all slept for an hour or so in the business class lounge in LA, so they were awake and raring to go when we boarded the Thai flight. We got on board, immediately were served a huge dinner once we were airborne (thank goodness we ordered kids' meals for the kids - I don't think they would have been big fans of the pate (spelling?) and poached salmon! They then passed out after eating and everyone slept for at least 6 hours or so. The kids spent the rest of the 17 hour flight playing video games, dozing (or sleeping in the case of Nate -gotta love Benedryl), coloring, and really behaving FAR better than I expected.

We arrived here at 6:30 am Saturday morning (big time change!) and went immediately to our temporary apartment and once unpacked, headed out to the grocery store to get some food. the kids all passed out by about 1 pm and slept clear through until 1 am, when they woke up raring to for the day! Rick and I both were asleep by 5 or so, so at least we got a bit of sleep, too. The next couple of days were spent slowly getting onto this time zone so that we could start to explore our new community a little and take it all in!

Here's a couple of pictures of us heading out: