Soccer Season! November 2009

Soccer season has begun, and we have three kids who are all playing soccer for the first time ever, on three different teams, of course! Saturday mornings are now devoted to soccer games. We generally have at least two games overlapping, so Rick and I spend our time switching places back and forth so that we can both watch everyone play! All three kids are really enjoying soccer, but Leah is our little underdog….she decided at the last minute to play, and now she’s a little animal out there! J She really gets into playing, and even scored a goal for her team during their first game! Yay, Leah! Even Nate gets into the spirit (he really wants to play on a team but won’t be old enough until next year) and claps his hands and cheers, wears his ISB soccer shirt, and kicks around the ball whenever he has the chance!

Exploring the Khlongs! November 2009

Rick’s company is pretty much the only one in Thailand that gives a day off for Loy Kratong, which worked fine for us since it gave he and I the chance to do something we’ve wanted to do for awhile. We headed downtown to Bangkok and took a tour in a long boat of the canals (khlongs in Thai) off the Chao Phraya river. It was really fascinating – people live up and down the khlongs, right on the water. They are a major form of transportation, complete with a few traffic lights, street (khlong?) signs, and locks that allow the long boats and small traffic off the Chao Phraya river to safely enter the khlongs. There is so much poverty evident, but you also see people smiling, socializing, attending the many temples along the khlongs, and basically just living their lives in a much simpler manner than we are accustomed to!

In these pictures there is a neat Chinese style temple, a spirit house next to a falling down house/hut (spirit houses are at the corner of almost every piece of property here – the Thais leave offerings at them to keep the evil spirits away from the main house!), some cute Thai school boys taking a break from studying, and a lady in what is basically a canoe, selling her wares along the khlong!

Exploring the Khlongs! November 2009

In this batch of pictures there is a man cleaning his day’s fish catch on the side of the khlong, an old man sitting under cover of a really ramshackle little hut (you have to look for him – he’s to the right of the picture), a shot from the seat of our long boat looking straight out, a picture of a long boat on the Chao Phraya river (the water was super choppy and rough on the river – a crazy ride!), and a shot of the Grand Palace from the river – very pretty, and even prettier when you are walking around the grounds of it!

Loy Kratong 2009

Loy Kratong comes along each November on the night of the full moon. The Thais make kratongs out of bread or sugar cane, and decorate them with flowers, incense, candles, and banana leaves. They then light the candles and incense and float the kratongs out on rivers and lakes. The idea behind it is that you are releasing all of the bad things of the prior year and starting out fresh. It also is a festival to worship the water goddess (don’t know who she is!) Here in Nichada, the kids make kratongs at school, then in the evening there is a big party at the pool/clubhouse. The kids can dress in traditional Thai clothes and enter a contest for best costume, there are traditional Thai dancers and music, everyone releases their kratongs out onto the lake, there are games and food, and there is a great fireworks display right over the lake in our community. Lots of fun! (Oh, and the gooey looking picture of blue stuff….that’s what happens when you don’t eat cotton candy fast enough in the humid weather here! Eww!)

Happy Halloween! October 2009

Halloween is HUGE here in Nichada! The kids all dress up and trick or treat, and the maids, drivers, and their kids all don’t dress up but still trick or treat! This year a new neighborhood has open up in Nichada, and it houses all the families from the US Embassy. That was THE place to be this year, because they had a lot of American candy to pass out since they could shop at the commissary at the Embassy!

You can see some of our festivities below….Nate had a Halloween party at school on Friday, then Friday night Rick and I headed to a Halloween party down the street (I was a Greek goddess, he was a construction worker but somehow everyone tagged him as Bob the Builder – it worked!), we carved funny looking Thai pumpkins that are really squatty and not quite orange, and the kids, of course, dressed up. This year we had a gypsy (Caroline,) a cowgirl (Leah,) a construction worker (Nate,) and Harry Potter (Tim) – plus some assorted other kids when we started trick or treating!

One Night In Bangkok! October 2009

One of the big perks about living here is that it is so much easier to have a social life! Between cheap babysitting from our maid (about $2.50/hour, and she’ll make dinner, clean it up, supervise showers, get kids to bed, and the house is spotless when we get home!) and a driver to take you from one place to another (no need to have a designated driver!), plus lots of neat places to go with friends from all over, it’s easy to have stuff to do every weekend if we want! Sometimes we just head downtown and get dinner and people watch. Other nights we’ll go to a movie or bowling, and still other nights there will be a party at someone’s house around here. Always something to do!

These pictures are from one night when just Rick and I went downtown. We headed to our favorite Soi 11 (soi is a street off a main road) where we had drinks on a rooftop bar as the sun was setting (and watched the guys working 20 stories up on the building next door - no OSHA here!), then dinner at a tasty, cheap Thai restaurant, then walked around and took in the night life, including yummy fried bug carts (nope, we didn't eat any!) and our favorite evening stop, the truck bar, where the guy parks his truck, puts down the sides, and has a full service bar, complete with music playing and disco lights going! Can't beat it! :)

Our Star Student!

Leah was chosen as the Star Student of the Week in her first grade class! Isn't she cute???

Kanchanaburi, October 2009

We took a 3 day trip up to Kanchanaburi, which is about 2 hours west of Bangkok. It’s known mostly because it has the river Kwai running through it – which is well known from the WWII movie, The Bridge Over the River Kwai. We traipsed over the bridge (it made me nervous – it was very open to the river, below, which was running fast due to the rainy season), saw some interesting WWII cemetaries and memorials, trekked through the jungle, saw some neat Wats (temples) – one of which was in a cave, hiked up what must have been 1000 steps straight uphill to go in another neat cave (through Leah and Nate chickened out when they saw that the entrance was a two foot wide slit in the rocks, entering into a dark dark cavern), and visited Erawan Falls, a beautiful 7 tiered waterfall in one of Thailand’s big national parks. It was fun to get out of town for a long weekend and see some different parts of Thailand!

And, as you'll see, we took a lot of pictures! These ones are of some neat temples right near the river - one is even in a cave, and another is on a hilltop looking over the valley - pretty! There's also a shot of the monks' laundry hanging out to dry - I just thought it was funny to see that side of monks!

Kanchanaburi, October 2009

As you can see, we took a lot of pictures on this trip! :) These pictures are of the bridge over the river Kwai, a floating restaurant right next to the bridge (we ate there - good Thai food!), a buddist cemetary from WWII, and some nice scenery shots.

Kanchanaburi, October 2009

More of Kanchanaburi...these pictures show the drive up to Erawan Falls, some of the waterfall, itself, the kids playing in a cloud of little white butterflies (there were hundreds of them - they'd land on you and you could just catch them in your hand!) and one of the funny signs in the park (not meant to be funny, but you just don't see warning signs for monkeys in the US!)

Kanchanaburi, October 2009

Still more pictures of Kanchanaburi! These have the entrance to the cave (1000 steps straight uphill to it - 800 meters of stairs, anyhow!), some really pretty pictures of the lake in the area as we drove up to where the cave was, and one of my favorite shots - an elephant crossing sign that was posted on the side of the road! :)