Bangkok or Bust

More Vietnam, January 2009

2010-03-16T19:34:00.000-07:00

More pictures of Vietnam – this is all Hanoi…you’ll see Tim and Caroline trying their hand at carrying the shoulder basket thingies (they are WAY heavier than they look!), loaded with fruit and other stuff – you see them all over Hanoi. There’s also a couple of pictures of the Temple of Literature, where they kept records of their graduates back to the 11oo’s or so, all on stone tablets, and of a lady riding around on her bicycle which is just loaded down with flowers – you see bikes with this much stuff – and often a lot more – all over the place!

Merry Christmas! 2009

2010-03-16T19:23:00.001-07:00

We had another Christmas in Bangkok – a warm, balmy day, quiet neighborhood (lots of people go home for the holiday) and, of course, a visit from Santa! We had a pretty quiet celebration this year – church on Christmas Eve, lots of excitement throughout the night (kids started coming into our room and asking if they could go downstairs at 2:45am – then 3:10, 3:50, 4:20, 4:50 am – finally we just gave up and all headed down at about 5:00am – still dark outside!) Thank goodness, even with all the up and down kids all night, Santa did make it to Bangkok! The big hits of the year were roller blades for the kids and Rick, and a neat Thai rain drum table for me!

Nate Turns Four! November 2009

2010-03-16T18:54:00.000-07:00

Nate turned the “big four” this year! He had a fun birthday, with Grandma and Grandpa here to help him celebrate! Since his birthday was the day before Thanksgiving, and 2 days before we left for Chiang Mai for the weekend, we didn’t really have a big party, but he got to celebrate at home with presents, and at school with all of his little buddies!

Chiang Mai, November 2009

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Another great trip we took in November was to Chiang Mai, up in the mountains of northern Thailand, with Dennis and Nancy while they were visiting. We spent a long weekend there that was packed full of all kinds of stuff! We visited the temple on top of the mountain, Doi Suthep, where the kids got a huge kick out of ringing the gazillion bells they had there! There was also a giant staircase that had big snake/dragon heads on either side as the railing – very cool looking! We also spent some time at the artisans villages, where we saw the whole silk making process, from silk work to spinning thread to weaving fabric, a place where they do elaborate wood carving, a lacquer place, and an umbrella factory (my favorite – it was pretty, at least until Caroline blew into a hollowed out piece of bamboo and got her eyes full of sawdust – that part wasn’t so nice!) The night market in Chiang Mai is also interesting…full of the same stuff you get in Bangkok, but with more variety in the crafts from the hill tribe regions of Thailand. The next day we also hit a big elephant camp. They had elephant shows and elephant rides (yep, both Dennis and Nancy rode elephants for a good hour!), as well as bamboo raft rides and oxcart rides – and we did it all! We stopped at an orchid farm that day, too – lots of pretty flowers, and that night we went to the Night Safari in Chiang Mai. It was very neat – tons of animals that you typically don’t see up close (panthers and other big cats especially!) but the kids were pretty tired by then – Caroline was falling asleep in the trolley that takes you around the safari! So we headed back a bit early and then Dennis and Nancy hung out with the kids while Rick and I strolled around the night market, and got awesome foot massages! (Can’t beat Thailand for good foot massages, and dirt cheap, too – about $4 for an hour!) Sunday we headed to the Chiang Mai Zoo – lots of walking, pretty much your typical zoo, but they did have a new panda bear baby this year, so it was fun seeing the pandas! By the time we got home that night, we were all beat!

More Chiang Mai, November 2009

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Here you can see some of the shots from our adventure day....lots of elephants (Nancy told us she wouldn't be riding any elephants....looks like she was wrong!) and rafting! The kids got a big kick out of the elephants!

Angkor Wat, November 2009

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While Rick’s parents were here, Rick and I celebrated our 11th anniversary and his mom and dad offered to watch the kids for the weekend if we wanted to go somewhere. They didn’t have to offer twice! We ended up heading to see the temples of Angkor Wat in Siem Reap, Cambodia. It was a great trip, partly because it was really interesting, and partly because we had no kids with us!!! The temples at Angkor Wat are incredible, and most were built between the 9th and 11th centuries. They are amazingly well preserved, and have definitely withstood the test of time. We spent one day touring through the temples, and then a second day touring a floating village and some craftsmen’s villages. We also walked around the night market and had dinner and spent time on Pub Street each night we were there. Pub Street was very interesting….it’s full of restaurants and bars, and felt more western to us than Thailand, even though Thailand is more advanced for a third world country than Cambodia. There was a huge amount of diversity just walking around – people and food from everywhere, with English seeming to be the common language. We were also surprised to find that though there is Cambodian currency, the US dollar is preferred. As a matter of fact, if you take money out of an ATM machine, you can only get US dollars! We haven’t carried American currency in a long time now, and the vendors were always surprised if we tried to pay in Cambodian currency since we are American!

Here’s a few pictures from our weekend away! In this bath, there are pictures of Angkor Wat (Rick and me in front of the reflecting pool in front of Angkor Wat), the carvings on the temple walls (they are on all of the temples – all over them – and tell the history of Buddhism), Angkor Thom (one of the temples in the Angkor Wat complex), a little shrine set up in the temple, and a shot of the steep stairs on most temples in Cambodia (interesting little fact….Cambodians believe you must work hard and be respectful of the struggle to obtain a higher level of existence in Buddhism – thus the steep stairs up to the temple. Thais believe everyone should have an equal chance to reach higher levels, and their steps tend to be more gradual and easier to navigate!)

More of Cambodia, November 2009

2010-01-18T19:24:00.000-08:00

And yet some more pictures. These ones are of the temple where Tomb Raider (Angelina Jolie) was filmed – the vines are amazing! There’s also some pictures of the floating village we saw. People live in little boats and huts right on the water (during the wet season) – one boat might house a family of 6, a dog or two, and maybe a couple chickens! Lots of tourists come through here, so you also see little boats cruising around selling fruits, snacks, drinks, and souvenirs…..and drawing attention with their little tiny girl hanging out on a boat with a big snake around her neck! Yep, saw this more than once – creepy!

A Mish Mash, November 2009

2010-01-18T19:15:00.000-08:00

We’ve been plenty busy since I last posted, and I’ll post about our trips, etc. in other posts. But overall, November was just a busy month. It was full of soccer games every Saturday, visitors (Dennis and Nancy,) birthdays and anniversaries (me and Nate, then my and Rick’s 11th anniversary), Thanksgiving, and travel. Here’s a few pictures of highlights of the month. Leah is doing the chicken dance in her picture, taken at the Elementary School games. Nate is all painted up as Batman and hanging with the stuffed dog, TimTam, that each kid takes home from school for a couple of days, Tim & Caroline & Leah and showing off their painted faces (there was some kind of promotional fair where they had free face painting, balloons, etc. – the kids loved it!), there’s shot of me with my friends Jamie and Kathy when we went out to lunch for my birthday, and finally there’s one Thanksgiving shot – we had dinner at our neighbor’s house but I did the turkey and how else do you get a 15 lb cooked turkey down the street but by wagon?!?!?!

Soccer Season! November 2009

2009-11-08T06:25:00.000-08:00

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

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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

2009-11-08T05:54:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-08T05:47:00.001-08:00

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

2009-11-08T05:29:00.001-08:00

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

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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!

2009-11-08T05:09:00.001-08:00

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

Kanchanaburi, October 2009

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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

2009-11-08T04:46:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-08T04:38:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-08T02:40:00.000-08:00

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! :)

Fall Break, October 2009

2009-11-08T01:39:00.000-08:00

Just when it seems like we were back in the swing of things with school, the kids had a week off for fall break! We would love to have traveled that week, but Rick is running out of vacation time, so we spent the week pretty close to home. The kids swam at our neighborhood pool, played with friends, spent a day at Funarium (big indoor playground in Bangkok), and then at the end of the week we took a trip to Kanchanaburi for a long weekend.

Happy Birthday, Caroline! October 15, 2009

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Caroline celebrated her 8th birthday in style! Much like Leah, she had fun taking cupcakes to school for her class, and having cake and presents at home with the family. Her favorite present was the remote control tarantula she's holding below! She also chose to have two of her friends from school, Maggie and Emerson, over for a sleepover. Funny thing was, it was Caroline’s first big sleepover and she was the first one asleep! :)

A Little Beach Getaway! Koh Chang, September 2009

2009-11-08T01:22:00.000-08:00

The kids had a long weekend in the middle of September so we took the chance to get away to our favorite beach spot, the island of Koh Chang, about 5 hours from our house. It was a really relaxing weekend full of sitting on the beach, hanging out on our deck (bungalow right on the beach – awesome!), watching the fishing boats go by, wandering around fishing villages built entirely on a pier, watching the sunset, and eating yummy Thai food! What more needs to be said?

A Little Beach Getaway! Koh Chang, September 2009

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Happy Birthday, Leah! September 10, 2009

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This September Leah turned the big six! She celebrated on her actual birthday by brining cupcakes to school for her class, opening presents at home, and having birthday cake that night! Then the following weekend she had a party with 6 of her buddies from school. They came over and had muffins and donuts (the party was from 9 to 11 am – brilliant, if I do say so myself – all done with it by noon!) and then got pampered in style by getting manicures and pedicures. A good time was had by all!

So Long, Farewell! August 2009

2009-11-08T00:42:00.000-08:00

After being here for only a year, we got our first taste of the downside of expat life – just when you make friends, they get assigned to a new country and move! Our good friends Melinda and Juan Wheeler made the long move from their home country of South Africa to Bangkok only 1 ½ years ago, only to get re-assigned to Shanghai, China this summer. Jeanre, their daughter, is best friends with Leah, and Ruan, their son, is also good friends with Tim. We were so sad to see them go but we are really looking forward to visiting them next April in Shanghai! (And the upside of your expat friends moving to another country – you now have someone to visit when you go traveling!) Luckily, we were able to spend a little extra time with them in August when we returned from our home leave and before they headed off to Shanghai. We went out with our other friends, the McDermotts, one night, and another day we took all the kids to a huge indoor playground in Bangkok for one last fun day out!

Bowling in Thailand! August 2009

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There are lots of fun things to do here that you don’t normally do so often in the U.S….like bowling! To take all six of us bowling, eat plenty of spring rolls and fried dumplings at the bowling alley, rent shoes, drink soda/beer/etc., it costs next to nothing – maybe $20 tops for two games with all the trimmings! We went last weekend and the kids, as usual, got a huge kick out of it (though Nate does get pretty cranky when he can’t hit all the pins down and get a strike, like he does in Wii bowling! Thank goodness there are kids lanes with bumpers on the side – they help Nate – and the rest of us – a lot!) Some funny things about Thai bowling, though…..they turn all the lights down at 5pm and it turns into “Cosmic Bowling” complete with black lights, glow in the dark balls, etc. The music is blaring, people are busting out bottles of Johnny Walker and Absolut to go along with their towers of beer (didn’t take a picture of one….I’ll have to do it next time – it’s a sight to see!), money is changing hands as they put some wagers down on how many pins they’ll hit (I wanted to get in on the game in the lane next to ours….I think I could have come away with more cash than I started with! :) ) The music is also blaring, and mostly it’s Thai music, though the odd American song is thrown in every now and then (maybe in honor of us, the only Western people there at all that night?!??!!) It’s pretty funny bowling with a bunch of Thais with “Baby You, Got What I Need!” blaring away! We also laugh because there is a wide assortment of bowling balls available, but very few of them have finger holes in them big enough for Western fingers…even mine! Thus Rick’s patented side arm bowling technique you see in the pictures here…..he just kind of hucks it down the lane, puts a big spin on it, and hopes it hits lots of pins (sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t!) Oh yes, and the slight interruption in the middle of your game as they stop to wax each lane – you just kind of pause the game while the waxing machine makes it up and down the lane once, the continue bowling! Only in Thailand! :)

Back to School! August 2009

2009-08-17T21:51:00.000-07:00

We’re back into the swing of things here, with all kids back in school – yippee! They are as happy about it as I am! Tim and Caroline had their first day of school on August 6th (Tim 4th grade, Caroline 3rd grade) and Leah’s first day was the next day, August 7th (1st grade.) Nate also started preschool last week and this year, big big boy that he is, he is going 5 mornings a week and really loving it! He rides the bus to school all on his own with his friend, “my Ryan!” and comes home with stories to tell about school and his friends (many of them Thai – there are only 3 American kids in his class, 2 or 3 more kids from Asia, in general, and the rest Thais.) Here’s a few pictures:

Look Who's Riding! July 27, 2009

2009-07-26T23:29:00.000-07:00

Nate made the big move from riding his bike with training wheels to riding on two wheels! Not bad for a 3 ½ year old! :) Check him out:

Yes, there ARE snakes in Thailand! July 2009

2009-07-26T22:16:00.000-07:00

We’ve seen a few snakes here and there, but this is the first one that was really close to home – in our backyard! We wondered what those little nets were that the gardeners were placing around the base of the back walls to our yard….and know we know….they are for catching snakes! Yikes! This guy was trapped in one of them this past weekend. We’re pretty sure he’s a rat snake – harmless (unless you are a rat or other small animal), but scary looking nonetheless at about 2 feet long! Lucky for us, we didn’t have to do anything to catch it…the guards from the front our neighborhood came and did the snake removal for us! Ick!

Home Leave, June/July 2009 - It's been a whole year!

2009-07-26T22:11:00.000-07:00

We had our first trip home this summer, marking one year now that we’ve been in Thailand (time sure does fly!) It was a whirlwind trip, full of visits with family and friends and LOTS of traveling (we racked up some serious frequent flyer miles this summer!)

Our leave started in June, about a week after the kids got out of school. All four kids and I boarded a flight out of Bangkok direct to Los Angeles. Since Rick didn’t have that much vacation, we left him behind (he joined us about 10 days later.) I was a little nervous I might loose a kid somewhere between Bangkok and LA, but somehow we all made it in one piece with no casualties at all! We spent a few days getting back on the right time zone at my dad’s in Southern California. Since we were totally flipped around on our time zones at that point, we didn’t get out too much. We did, however, make it to Costco, for Costco hot dogs….I had been craving one ever since we moved to Bangkok!!! (And it was REALLY good!)

We headed to Arizona next, where we stayed with Rick’s parents for a couple of weeks. The first week was spent with the kids going to Vacation Bible School with their cousins (they had a whole lot of fun) and all of us going to various doctor and dentist appointments. But we still managed to squeeze in seeing all the family, playing with cousins, visiting friends, swimming, and eating at some of our favorite places, like Serrano’s! J

That weekend Rick arrived, and we were really happy to see him! We’ve never been apart for that long and it was kind of hard on us all. He was pretty bored in Bangkok with nothing to do but work (everyone clears out of here in the summer, leaving lots and lots of men without their families and with nothing to do!)

The following week held lots more visiting with friends and family, and the Fourth of July! We got to see our old neighbors from Dublin Street, a bunch of Rick’s friends from college (one who he hadn’t seen in almost 20 years!!!), got updated on our shots (just Rick and me – two shots each – ouch!), had a few nights out with girlfriends (well, I did!), and saw our good friend Eric, from Tucson, too. We spent the 4th of July at a BBQ hosted by Rick’s friend, Nikki, from high school, and then back to Rick’s parents house where we watched the fireworks on TV – we were all way too tired to keep the kids up and go find some real fireworks to watch! The 4th of July was also marked by Leah losing her first tooth ever! J

The next week took us to Staten Island, NY, to stay with my sister and see my whole family. We spent more time swimming at Katie and Maggie’s birthday party (my sister Liz’s girls), we drove down to Morristown, NJ, where I grew up, and showed the kids around a bit, and had a fantastic dinner out for some delicious Italian food with my sister and her husband, my brother, me and Rick, and my dad and Jewelene (who came out to NY to join the festivities for a few days.) We all pretty much ate until we couldn’t eat another bite, and then ate some more!

On Saturday my whole family got together for the first time ever! My dad and Jewelene were out from CA, Rick and I were there with all four kids (we’ve never taken all the kids there before,) and my two sisters and their husbands and families and my two brothers and their wives and families were all there, too! The Bush clan numbers 12 adults and 13 grandchildren, ranging from 2 years old all the way up to 14 years old! It was really great to spend the day with everyone – I hope we can do it again!

Sunday and Monday brought us a few days in New York City. We headed in to Time’s Square on Sunday, with my sister, Liz, and her family, and my dad and Jewelene. That is one crazy place – especially with 6 young kids in tow! However, we enjoyed checking out the Hershey store (yum) and having brunch, too! On Monday Rick and I headed over to Liberty State Park in NJ with our kids, so that we could take the ferry over to the Statue of Liberty. They were VERY excited about this and it was really neat to see the statue and cruise around New York Harbor! We also ferried over to Battery Park in Manhattan, and tried out luck riding the subways so that we could meet up with my oldest friend, Jessie, from high school, for lunch in one of the parks there. We had hoped to make it to Central Park and maybe the Natural History Museum, too, and to visit with Rick’s Aunt Judy and cousin Jenny and her kids, but time just ran out, as did the kids’ patience and energy!!!! We’ll have to do those on another trip over!

Our home leave was coming to an end and we were in the final days…..we flew from NY to Phoenix and then directly to San Diego, where we spent our last three days at the beach in Carlsbad with Rick’s family. It was pretty low key there – we were too tired to do much! We did go to the San Diego Zoo one morning, which was neat, and pretty much spent the rest of our time hanging out at the beach. The kids had a great time boogie boarding in the surf! Rick and I also got to go out for dinner one night in Laguna Beach – it was a really nice end to a long trip!

We flew back to Bangkok on July 17 and after that long long flight (16+ hours), we were REALLY happy to be home in our own house again!

Misc. AZ pictures - Home Leave 2009

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As you can see, the kids slept any and everywhere! :) And so did Rick....I guess he was keeping the tv remote handy, just in case he needed it??!?!?!

Leah lost her very first tooth on the 4th of July!

Visiting Aunt Lizzy, Staten Island, NY - Home Leave July 2009

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New York City, Home Leave 2009

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Here's an assortment of NYC pictures...me and my friend Jessie, the kids at the Statue of Liberty, one of Nate on the way home (he was REALLY tired!), and a couple of shots in Times Square!

Bush Family Reunion, Staten Island, NY - Home Leave 2009

2009-07-26T21:03:00.001-07:00

Here's some shots from my family's day together!!!

This is me and my brothers and sisters and my dad. Handsome boys!

Three generations of "Dons" - my dad, Don Sr., my oldest brother, Don Jr., and my nephew, Donnie the 3rd!

Home Leave 2009 - San Diego Pictures

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Here's a few shots from the San Diego Zoo and on the beach in Carlsbad!

Father-Daughter Dance, May 10. 2009

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One of the highlights of this month has been the Father Daughter dance that Rick and Caroline and Leah went to! The dance is sponsored by the Girl Guides of Thailand (sister organization to Girl Scouts of America…both girls are in the Girl Guides) and is quite the formal event, held downtown at one of the very nice hotels on Sukhumvit, one of the main roads through Bangkok. As you can see, both Rick and the girls are all very dressed up, and the girls hit the beauty salon before hand to have their hair and nails done, too! They headed out with Leah’s best friend, Jeanre, and her dad, Juan (while Jeanre’s mom, Melinda, and I took Tim, Nate, and Ruan, Jeanre’s brother, for dinner and bowling!) The girls (and Rick) danced and ate all night long, and Caroline was heard saying, “This is the best party I’ve ever been to!”

Snake Farm, May 2009

2009-05-11T02:36:00.000-07:00

We took a quick trip to the Red Cross Snake Farm in downtown Bangkok one Saturday morning. We didn’t actually get to see that much because it closes at 11:30 (better check the schedule ahead of time next time we go!), though Tim has gone there on a field trip with his class, and learned tons! They not only have lots of snakes that are native to Thailand there, but they also use the center as a place to “milk” the snakes and create anti-venom. There are a lot of very poisonous snakes in Thailand, and unfortunately, quite of few of them live right in the community where we live, such as the King Cobra and the Green Viper. There are also Pythons here and Boa Constrictors. We’ve only seen a few snakes…one green one (maybe a viper) crossing the road after we first got here, and then one that our neighbor found in her driveway and the guards at the gate to our neighborhood caught….we’re pretty sure it was a rat snake, which is not poisonous and is actually good to have around because it catches, well, rats! We do find some pretty good sized snake skins (from when then shed) around our neighborhood though, and the kids know very well to stay away from snakes and not go chasing into the bushes after balls and toys! One of the neat things at the Snake Farm was the show they do that tells about different snakes, and afterward you can even hold a big old Python!

Easter 2009

2009-05-11T02:30:00.000-07:00

Easter kind of came and went for us this year…it actually fell on the first Sunday that we were in Australia. The bunny did leave a small treat for the kids in the hotel room, and then when we got home, he had also hidden eggs around the house and left their Easter baskets filled for them! Who knew the Easter Bunny could travel all the way to Thailand and Australia???? Nate did get to celebrate a little more after we got home as his preschool class had an Easter party! It was pretty funny – the Thai kids haven’t really ever experienced anything Easter before, and the concept of finding Easter eggs and having treats in them was all new to them (though they quickly figured it out!) Another neat thing about his Easter party was that his newest classmate was there and it just so happens that this little boy is also the crown prince of Thailand’s son! Nate rubs elbows with royalty three mornings a week!

Australia 2009

2009-05-11T02:27:00.001-07:00

When the idea of moving to Thailand first came up, and we found out we would get two trips home a year (but didn’t actually have to go home…we could go anywhere we wanted), one of the first things we decided is that we would definitely go to Australia! We managed to do that this April for a week while the kids were on break from school for Songkran and Rick had the week off of work for a facility shut-down. We left Friday, April 17th, and headed for Sydney, and had a GREAT time down under!

We stayed in Sydney right at the Circular Quay harbor. It was a two minute walk from our hotel to the harbor, the Sydney Harbour bridge, and the Sydney Opera House! It was like walking through a post card! We did so much, it’s hard to list it all! Not only was Sydney beautiful, with lots to see and do, but there was a real bonus we hadn’t counted on…it was awesome to get out of Asia for a week! Don’t get me wrong, we really like Thailand. But it was SO nice to speak the same language as everyone around you, be able to read street signs, turn on the radio and hear music you know being played by DJs who spoke in English, shopping in stores and finding lots of what you are used to finding at home, enjoying a very clean clean city, and simply not standing out at all! (I’ve mentioned how the Thais love our kids because they are blonde and shiny??? They are constantly being touched, talked to, petted, and photographed by the Thais. In Australia, no one even noticed us!) It was funny, too, that staying right in the same hotel as us were two families that live here in Nichada, the same community where we live in Thailand! (One was our neighbors….we didn’t even know they were heading to Australia!) We also found that though all the sightseeing things we did were really reasonably priced, that food was outrageously expensive! We couldn’t eat at McDonald’s without dropping at least $60 (American) and one night, dinner at a Chinese restaurant was over $150!!!! OUCH!

We started our week out by heading out in our rental car to the Blue Mountains right outside of Sydney (by the way, LOVE the GPS we have….we had automatic directions to anywhere we needed to go!) The mountains are called “Blue” because the oils released by the Eucalyptus trees make it look like there is a blue mist over all the mountains. The area actually reminded us a bit of Sedona – similar red rock formations, forest, etc. We saw “The Three Sisters” which is a rock formation which legend has it is actually three sisters. Their father was magical and to protect them from an evil being nearby when he had to go out one day, he turned them into rocks using his magic bone. He then was out hunting and ran into the evil being, so turned himself into a bird to get away. Unfortunately, he dropped his magic bone when he did and to this day, he is still flying around searching for it so that he can turn his daughters back into humans. We also walked through the rain forest by the Three Sisters, and road a really neat “railroad” (really, a rail car on cables) at Katoomba that is said to be the steepest in the world, right down the mountain to the rainforest below.

Another day we went to the Featherdale Wildlife Park outside of Sydney. We had a blast petting the wandering wallabies, kangaroos and koala bears there! You could feed the wallabies and kangaroos as they just hopped around you, and pet and get your picture taken with the koalas (couldn’t hold them, though –too bad!) They had lots of other neat animals native to Australia there, too, like wombats, the Tasmanian Devil, and dingoes!

We spent lots of time riding the ferry boats around Sydney Harbor and were able to get great views of the Sydney Harbour bridge, the Sydney Opera House, and the beautiful homes and city that are just built all around the harbour. We also took the ferry to the aquarium one day, and to the Marine museum where we got to explore an old navy vessel and submarine and board a very old sailboat. One day we went to the PowerHouse museum in Sydney, too, and saw some neat stuff there!

Another fun outing was going hiking in the Ku-ring-gai Chase national park just north of Sydney. It’s right on the coast, but much of it is up higher, with cliffs down to the water and lots of small beaches and inlets there. It was really beautiful, with very scenic little bays and inlets full of sailboats. A big attraction at this specific park was the Aborigine engravings in one area. We hiked to them and took a look…the kids got a kick out of seeing the wallabies and kangaroos carved into the rock and the people that had been etched in so long long ago! We also thought we could hike up to a pass and then take a path down to the beach, but two hours later, after passing a group who were hiking up from the beach that told us a) it was a steep hike down and b) there were leeches on the way, we decided to just enjoy the scenic view from where we were! :)

Yet another day we headed out to Bondi Beach! It was really neat to see the surfers there and all the people out sunbathing. A few of you have already gotten a laugh at our expense as we’ve told you how surprised we were to see quite a few topless young ladies (not the 50 year old, wrinkled, brown, sunburned Europeans we see on Thai beaches) on the beach….we really and truly didn’t know it was a topless beach! Really! Fortunately, the kids were so entranced by the surfers and then by the Nickolodean event going on featuring SpongeBob on the beach, they didn’t notice anyone missing clothes or ask any questions at all!

Mixed in with all of those outings, we also managed to walk through some of the Botanical Garden right by the Opera House, hang out at the Opera House, itself (didn’t take the tour…it was more than an hour and we didn’t think the kids would hold up!), walk across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, walk through “The Rocks” which is the historical district of Sydney, buy some opals (the girls were really excited about their silver kangaroo charms with an opal in the middle!), and see a couple of Aboriginals playing their Didgeradoos right at Circular Quay.

For all that we saw and did in Australia, we only saw a tiny bit of the country! We definitely hope to head back again some day and check out the Great Barrier Reef, as well as maybe some other areas like Perth or Melbourne!

We have so many pictures, they are just grouped by location below.

Australia 2009 - Pictures!

2009-05-11T02:18:00.001-07:00

Here's some pictures you all should recognize of some of Sydney's biggest landmarks! Some were taken right in Circular Quay (Tim and Caroline with the Aborigine guys!), some from the top of the Sydney Harbour bridge, and some from the ferries out in the harbour!

Australia 2009 - Kangaroos, Koalas, and Wallabies, oh my!

2009-05-11T02:09:00.000-07:00

Our visit to the Featherdale Wildlife Park was one of the high points of our trip!

Australia 2009 - Katoomba

2009-05-11T01:58:00.000-07:00

We headed out of Sydney and into the Blue Mountains one day. You can see the "Three Sisters" rock formation in one of these pictures, and us at the world's steepest railway in another!

Australia 2009 - Ku-Ring-Gai National Park

2009-05-11T01:52:00.000-07:00

One of the places we went was Ku-Ring-Gai National Park, where we hiked out to the cliffs over the ocean and also saw Aborigine engravings in the sandstone.

Australia 2009 - WWII Naval Ship & Submarine

2009-05-11T01:45:00.000-07:00

We toured a WWII naval ship and submarine (talk about close quarters!) from the Australian Royal Navy...it was pretty neat!

Australia 2009 - Around Town

2009-05-11T01:36:00.001-07:00

Here's some shots of us sightseeing around town! A few were taken from the ferry boats in the harbour, one was taken at Watson's Bay (the point where the harbour meets the Pacific Ocean - it's the one with cliff in the background), and the other two are taken at the Australia Maritime Museum.

Australia 2009 - More Around Town

2009-05-11T01:26:00.000-07:00

Here's some more shots of us hanging out around Sydney! These were taken....one night at dinner on an old boat that was remodeled as a restaurant, in one of the squares downtown where a rock was on a car, and then from the ferries on some of our rides around the harbour!

Australia 2009 - Bondi Beach

2009-05-11T01:02:00.000-07:00

Here we are in Bondi Beach! Spongebob was a big attraction, but the surfers were pretty cool, too!

Songkran! April 2009

2009-05-10T00:53:00.001-07:00

The big Thai holiday in April is Songkran. This is a holiday that is like a new year’s celebration, and is pretty much a 3 day party here, where people pay respect to their elders but then also “wash” away all the bad of the previous year by having massive water fights in the streets! You can go down the main roads in Bangkok (okay, from what I hear, anywhere in Thailand!) and you just have to expect to be doused with buckets of water, sprayed by water guns, and blasted by water canyons from passing by trucks and cars! All in good fun, though! We actually were out of town for Songkran (we went to Sydney…more to come on that) but there was some celebrating even before we left. We picked Rick up from work in the Friday before Songkran to head to the airport for Australia, and he was SOAKED! At work they had had a Songkran party and all the Thais took great delight in dumping full buckets of water over Rick and 3 or 4 of the other expat managers there. Fortunately, Rick had a dry shirt and pants to change into. Unfortunately, he didn’t bring dry underwear or socks! He said his socks and underwear didn’t dry until we hit Australia, about 11 hours later! Ewww!

At preschool, Nate’s class also had a Songkran party. It was really neat because the Thai parents planned it all, so it was a neat introduction to the holiday. The kids swam (his school has a small pool) and sprayed each other with water guns. They also ATE tons of good Thai food! They sang songs, read stories, and then made Thai crafts like making flower leis with frangipani blossoms. The kids also dressed in their traditional Songkran clothes, which pretty much are Hawaiian type shirts. Here’s a few pictures from Nate’s party!

Koh Chang, Again! March 2009

2009-05-10T00:42:00.000-07:00

To wrap up March, we took one more beach trip. We liked visiting Koh Chang, the little tropical island in the Gulf of Thailand, so much in January that we went back in March for a long weekend! This time we met up with our friends, the McDermotts, (also our neighbors) and their three kids. Their kids match up pretty well with ours - two boys, ages 8 and 7, and one girl, age 5 - and they all play together pretty well. We stayed in teensy tiny bungalows on right on the beach. The location couldn’t be beaten – you stepped out of the bungalow and right onto the beach, with the waves just 30 or 40 feet away! However, as I said, they were tiny. I mean TINY! We had two of them and it was a very tight fit for the six of us in our family! We also had a Tokay lizard that lived on one of our bungalows. Tokays are big lizards that make A LOT of noise…they are nocturnal so throughout the night, about every 20 minutes, I’d hear “tokay, tokay, tokay, tokay” (always 4 times!) right outside the wall, and then the lizard’s claws scrabbling across the wall outside. Ick! Very noisy guy! Tokays are also on the big side and known to attack and bite if startled or provoked, so we didn’t mess with this one, no matter how loud he was! This trip to Koh Chang we didn’t do elephant rides or go look at fireflies, like in January. We did, however, spend a ton of time on the beach and in the pool (love the swim up bar!) which was also right off the beach. We ate a lot, walked along a neat fishing pier that goes way out over the water (interesting…people live in the teeny tiny huts over the water – you can even rent a room to sleep in for about 6 dollars a night! Not exactly luxury accommodations, though!) We also saw some pretty cool fire shows on the beach at night while we had dinner – men throwing flaming hoops, daggers, sticks, etc. all over the place – neat!

Nate Starts Preschool! March 2009

2009-05-10T00:28:00.000-07:00

Another big happening for us in March was Nate starting preschool! He was getting pretty bored being home all day with just mom….no other kids around to play with like Tim, Caroline, and Leah had at his age! So in March, Nate started attending preschool at Magic Years International Preschool 3 mornings a week, from 8am to 12pm. It took him a week or so to start to settle in, get used to the routine, and yes, get used to riding the bus (really a van) to school every day! But once he got into the swing of things, Nate loved school! His school is pretty neat, and his class is a big mix of nationalities, but of the 13 kids in it, probably 8 or 9 of them are Thai, and the rest vary from American (just two of them), Filippino, and various European ethnicities. The kids have a huge playground to play on (Nate LOVES this) as well as some really neat “specials” just like the big kids – P.E., Music, Art, Woodshop (yep!), and even Thai class! Here’s a few shots of Nate’s first few days of school. First at home with his backpack on, ready to go, then waiting outside for the "bus" and then actually on the bus!

Tim Turns 9!!! March 2009

2009-05-09T23:52:00.000-07:00

Tim celebrated his first birthday here in Thailand in March – he turned 9! For his actual birthday (March 4th) he had school that, with a few presents in the morning, and just a little family celebration at home that night since he had a Pack Meeting for Cub Scouts, too. He also got one of his favorite meals, Phad Thai, made for him by our maid, just for his birthday! It’s pretty tasty stuff when it is made homemade for you! For his birthday celebration, Tim decided to take 4 of his friends and his sisters (ok, we made him take his sisters!) out for bowling and then to a local hang-out/restaurant, Que Paso (actually it has pretty good Mexican food!) for milk shakes. Tim had a great time!

Hua Hin, February 2009

2009-05-09T23:41:00.000-07:00

February rolled into Bangkok with warmer temperatures yet (no more winter here!) as well as, yes, another trip to the beach ! (You just can’t beat going to the beach here – it’s close, cheap, and really pretty!) This time we headed to a beach a little closer (about 2 ½ hours drive) and a lot more populated than Koh Chang, the island we visited in January. Hua Hin is known as the King and royal family’s summer residence. It’s located on the actual southern coast of central Thailand, right on the Gulf of Thailand. It was a quick trip – just a couple of days – but fun! Besides swimming and playing on the beach, the kids also got to go horseback riding one morning on ponies right on the beach. It was all fun and games until the two ponies (the girls rode double on one, the boys rode double on the other) got spooked by a way, bumped into each other, and Tim and Nate both slid right off the pony and splash, into the waves! They were fine, but there was NO way Nate was getting back on that pony and just to be safe, Leah decided pony riding was not for her, either! However, Tim and Caroline both enjoyed their pony rides, even after that little accident!

More Hua Hin, February 2009

2009-05-09T23:22:00.000-07:00

We also did elephant riding in Hua Hin, once again! Yes, we ride elephants a lot in Thailand….it’s easy, cheap, fun, and there are opportunities all over the place, from downtown Bangkok to out at the beach! This time we rode through an elephant camp where they had about 20 elephants, from babies age 1 year all the way up to one of the elephants we were riding, 50 years old, and maybe older! Caroline actually got to “steer” and rode right up on the elephant’s head for awhile as the “mahout” (elephant handler.) The other kids weren’t quite as brave but we all had fun on the elephants. After our ride, we went to the elephant show and had fun watching them play soccer, paint, ride bikes, give Rick a massage, and feeding them bananas!

Other Happenings in January, 2009

2009-05-09T23:12:00.001-07:00

As you can see already, January was busy! We went from the beautiful cooler weather of December (low humidity, temps in the low 80s – we even wore jeans and sweatshirts on one or two evenings – wow!) to a bit warmer weather. We also still had time to cram a few more odds and ends in, though. Leah seemed to especially have a good month, with a very cool birthday party with neat face painting (see picture below!) as well as a field trip with her kindergarten class to see the butterfly park and observe other things found in nature at one of the big parks downtown. I got to go with them – it was a fun day, if not very long and HOT!

Pinewood Derby - Cub Scouts! January 2009

2009-05-09T23:02:00.001-07:00

January wasn’t all vacations and trips to the beach…the kids also went back to school, Rick went back to work, and we had the Pinewood Derby for the Cub Scouts for Tim! I’m sure seeing a few of these snapshots will take some of you back 20 or 30 years, to your own Pinewood Derby days (either as a Cub Scout or as a Den Leader/Pack Leader!) Sadly, Tim’s car did not win any races, but we were just glad to have it put together and entered in the Derby at all….power tools are a little hard to come by in Thailand unless you want to go out and spend a lot of money on them!!!

Koh Chang Trip

2009-01-10T18:48:00.000-08:00

The high point of our Christmas break was a short trip to Koh Chang, an island to the south east of us, very close to the Cambodian border. Koh Chang was beautiful – exactly what you’d expect a tropical island to be! We drove down there (Rick’s first big solo driving trip – long – about 6 hours each way - but uneventful except for the ticket he got on the way home for driving in the wrong lane! He didn’t know it was the wrong lane and we weren’t really sure why we were pulled over since the highway patrolman didn’t speak English and we don’t speak Thai! We’ve since learned that you don’t give him your driver’s license since that pretty much guarantees a ticket [though ours was only 300 baht – about $8.50] but instead you just hold a couple hundred baht out just below the window edge and he takes that and you are back on your way – no ticket for you, a little extra cash for him!) and took the ferry across to the island. We stayed in a resort right on the beach and were able to do a lot of fun things! The island itself had gorgeous beaches – very fine, powdery sand, neat seashells, and water that was crystal clear, gentle (it was shallow – not more than 2 ½ feet deep - and almost waveless for about 100 feet out from the shore) and warm! It also had rainforest/jungle on the mountains that take up most of the island. We took a short hike through the jungle/rainforest (about 1 km) up to a waterfall, Khlong Phlu, where the kids swam in the water at the base of the waterfall. We also rode elephants (Nate had his first ever elephant ride – he liked it!), went on a longboat ride in the evening (longboats are like a long canoe – very shallow – that are directed by a guy using a pole) through the deltas going inland so that we could see the fireflies in the trees – very neat, though there weren’t too many fireflies out for us, ate a ton of good Thai food (and some surprisingly good pizza – go figure!) right on the beach, played in the pool, and spent a lot of time on the beach. Leah and Caroline got their hair braided, too – Caroline looks like Bo Derrick! J Nate would have spent the entire time digging in the sand if you would have let him – give him a shovel and bucket, some sand, and a little water, and he’s happy as a clam! The kids got a big kick out of finding some really neat seashells, seeing the little fish swim around our feet in the water, finding hermit crabs, and watching the sand crabs scuttling around!

It was really a nice trip and we plan to head back there again soon! There isn't nearly enough room here to post all the pictures that will do justice to the island (there's a 5 picture limit to each post!) but if you want to see more than I've posted here, feel free to check out our album of pictures on photobucket: http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v65/amyks/Koh%20Chang%20Jan%202009/

Koh Chang (Elephant Island!)

2009-01-10T18:32:00.000-08:00

Here's some more pictures of Koh Chang. There's a shot of the Gulf of Thailand, with one of the smaller islands next to Koh Chang in the picture (check out the beautiful blue water!) There's also some pictures of our hike up to the waterfall and the waterfall, itself. Since this is the dry time of year, the waterfall isn't very big and the jungle was a little bit dry, but give it another few months when the humidity goes up and the rain starts and the waterfall will be a lot bigger and the jungle a lot greener! (But check out all those vines hanging down ....it's kind of tarzan like! :) )

Visiting Way Prayoon (or as Nate says, "Turtle Town"!)

2009-01-10T18:16:00.000-08:00

Another little day trip we took was downtown to Bangkok to visit one of the many temples found in Thailand, Way Prayoon. This one was unique, though, both in appearance and in what we found there. Part of it was your typical Thai temple (or Wat) – ornate, big white spire, etc. Very pretty, but not different from the thousands of other temples here, really. But then there was a small section off to the side that had a pond with an odd island in the middle full of little houses – spirit houses. Most Thai homes and businesses have spirit houses in front of them – they put incense and candles and other offerings there (anything from flowers to food to a bottle of open soda, complete with a straw in it ready to drink!) The point of the spirit houses (and offerings) is to attract spirits to the little house outside the home or business instead of having them come inside, where they could cause problems for the people. This little island at Wat Prayoon had all kinds of spirit houses, little caves with gold Buddahs in them, and best yet, a ton of turtles swimming all over the place. The kids got a big kick out of buying a plate of food and feeding the turtles chunks of bananas (who knew turtles ate bananas? Not me!) off of long sticks. We also got roped into lighting incense and candles in front of a Buddah statue by some little old Thai lady who didn’t speak a lick of English but who was very insistent, none the less, that we buy the incense and light those candles!

The Bridge Over the River Kwai

2009-01-10T18:07:00.000-08:00

We’ve been doing a lot of day trips over our long Christmas break and one of them was to the bridge over the river Kwai, in the Kanchanaburi district here in Thailand. The bridge is the same one that was built by the Allied POWs in World War II. They were in a Japanese POW camp and the Japanese made them build this bridge to that they could move ammunition and supplies through the region from Thailand to Burma. After having thoughts of the movie “The Bridge Over the River Kwai” in our heads, the bridge was just that – a bridge over a small river! The kids got to walk over it, though, and learn a little about the history of it. There were also trains on display that had been used during WWII, and the kids got a kick out of those. Their favorite part of the whole trip, though…..getting ice cream and playing on the playground near the bridge! Go figure!

Safari World Adventure

2008-12-28T00:39:00.000-08:00

With all the time off Rick has (from December 23rd all the way until January 7th) we are trying to do some neat things with the kids. So far, we’ve only gone to Safari World (a very cool animal park…more to come on that!) but we also hope to visit some other places like “The Bridge Over the River Kwai” in Konchaburi, about an hour and a half from here, some local parks and temples (at one of the temples you can feed the turtles!), and then from January 4th to 7th, we’re heading down to Koh Chang, one of the islands right off the coast, for a little beach vacation!

Yesterday we headed out to Safari World – it was cool! It’s a huge animal park that has a marine area (we didn’t make it there yesterday but we’ll go back), an animal area, and then a drive through open zoo. The drive through zoo part took about a half hour or forty minutes and the animals were right there – you could have reached out and touched most of them! There were camels, giraffes, rhinos, tigers, lions, and bears (oh my!), lots of birds, storks, pelicans, deer, peacocks, etc. In the dangerous animal areas they tell you to roll up your windows and keep your doors shut – you don’t want a tiger making a snack of you! We even saw one tiger stalking another one, and then attacking it (in play!) The animals are all in pretty much their natural environment and judging by the frisky behavior of the camels and the bears, they felt pretty natural! (I’ve never seen THAT done before! We told the kids those animals sure were doing a lot of hugging!)

After the drive through part, you go into the actual park. There are a ton of shows to see the different animals. We only made it to one of the shows, though (they were spread out over a few hours each.) It was very funny (mostly only to us…wasn’t meant to be that funny!) – we saw the Wild West Stunt show that was set up, yes, in Tombstone, Arizona! Better yet, it was cowboys and Indians doing their stuff, all in Thai! We also saw a Thai lady statue that was spraying water to cool you off as you walked by….but the water was coming from the most unusual places! (Check out the picture, below! You might have to click on it to make it bigger so that you can really see it!) Finally, Tim and Caroline were busy monkeying around, making some new, uh, friends! Rick says those pictures remind him of his frat days back at U of A…those orangutans could have been a couple of his Kappa Sig brothers after a few too many drinks, hitting on the ladies! ;)

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-28T00:27:00.000-08:00

Christmas came and yes, Santa did make it all the way to Thailand! We got a kick out of watching him start his journey way up in Eastern Russia before any of you in the US were even celebrating Christmas Eve! Santa brought all kinds of good stuff for the kids (skateboard for Tim, electronic keyboard for all kids, lots of books, Webkinz, games, Monster Truck for Nate – all he wanted, etc.!) but most of it wasn’t in big packages so it just didn’t look as full under the tree as usual! Caroline noticed and commented on that to Rick, telling him that next year she is going to be sure to ask Santa for some big stuff so that it looks fuller under the tree. Rick suggested to her that maybe we should just get a smaller tree?!?!? That really cracked Caroline up! J She has a great sense of humor!

We kept our Christmas celebration pretty low key. Christmas Eve we just hung out all day, making lots of sugar cookies for Santa and cinnamon rolls for breakfast the next day. We headed to church at 7pm, then home and straight to bed so that Santa could come. Christmas morning started out EARLY! I mean really really early when Caroline came in our room at 2 am, hoping we’d get up but then just complaining that our hard wood floor was too cold to sleep on (isn’t that why she has her own cozy bed in her own room?!?!?!) We held the kids at bay until 4:50am, when they couldn’t stand it any longer and we had to go down and open all the great stuff under the tree! That was done by 5:50 am. Yawn!!!! The rest of the day was spent playing, eating, and yawning. We had our ham dinner early (at 1pm) so that after Nate’s nap, we could head out to the pool to meet some friends and neighbors and swim and eat Christmas cookies (that was dinner) until 8pm, when a) it was too dark to see the kids swimming and b) Rick and I couldn’t stay awake any longer!

Here’s some pictures of the big day!

The Holidays Begin!

2008-12-28T00:23:00.000-08:00

With December came cooler temperatures and much much lower humidity…WHAT A RELIEF! (Really Dennis and Nancy…you should have come in December or January!) We highly recommend that if anyone reading this wants to come visit us, do it in December or January if you don’t like heat and humidity! It really is beautiful now, with high temperatures in the mid 80s most days, and the evenings and mornings even feeling a little chilly, with temps down in the low 70s! (I know, that really isn’t cold but our blood has thinned and it does feel chilly!)

Rick has had lots of time off this month due to shut downs in Microchip to save money, so we were able to do our Christmas shopping downtown on days when the kids were at school, which was really nice! We brought most of our Christmas stuff with us (and wonder now why we didn’t just bring it all?!?!) and all of that was up by the first week of December, too. Some of the really funny things we noticed about Christmas in Thailand were: the use of elves (think Snow White and the dwarfs) in many decorations, the very very bright colors of Christmas trees and decorations (Neon green, orange, pink, you name it, they had it! Not so much the traditional red and green, though!), the fact that there were quite a few decorations the stores and malls (for a Buddist country, it was a surprise!), and yes, the Christmas carols you’d hear being played in stores and malls….in English, but with a heavy Thai accent! J

We were able to lots of traditional Christmas stuff, like visiting Santa (while at the International Food Festival at School – talk about tasty food!!!), participating in the Christmas play at church! Tim had a reading in it, the girls both danced, and all three big kids sang, too! It was quite the production and they did a great job, and making way too many Christmas cookies to eat!

Here’s some shots of the kids with Santa:

Family Pictures

2008-12-27T23:48:00.000-08:00

We also got our family pictures taken at the end of November by the photography teacher at the high school here (also the mom of one of Leah’s buddies in her class!) They came out GREAT!!!

Loy Kratong 2008

2008-12-27T23:40:00.000-08:00

Also in November the kids got to celebrate their first real Thai holiday, Loy Kratong! Loy Kratong is known as the festival of lights, and is one of the prettiest holidays every year. Thais gather after dark by all the rivers and waterways, dressed in traditional costume, and release into the water their “kratongs,” which are made of either bread or a floatable palm base, decorated with lots of flowers (orchids, marigolds, chrysanthemums, etc.), candles, and incense sticks. They light the candles and incense before releasing the kratong and then let it float down the river, releasing all the negative feelings and bad things that may have happened to them in the past year so that they can start fresh.

Here at Nichada, where we live, there was a festival by the pool and Nichada lake (they are adjacent to each other.) Tim, Caroline, Leah, and Nate all got dressed up in their Thai costumes and were able to release the kratongs they had made at school in Thai class out on the lake. There was also a ton of good Thai food, traditional Thai dancing and music, lots of games, etc. – lots of fun!

(Most of these pictures are the kids in their costumes. The one with Leah and the little blond girl is her best friend, Jeanre. The other ones are the Thai dancers at the festival and some of the kratongs floating on the lake.)

November, in a nutshell!

2008-12-27T23:15:00.000-08:00

All of the celebrations were fun….for Amy’s birthday, the kids stayed home with a sitter while we went out to dinner with friends downtown. It was a fun, laid back night. For Nate’s birthday, we had lasagna (his request for his birthday dinner) and cake at home, opened presents, and again, kept it pretty low key. I’m sure by next year when he turns four, he’ll want a real party but until then, we’ll enjoy small family parties, instead! For our anniversary, we always said we’d do something big for the 10th one! We figured we’d go on a trip without the kids to Mexico or somewhere fun for a long weekend. But really, can you top Bangkok for an exotic location to spend your anniversary? There was no trip, but we did go downtown to the Hilton that is right on the river. We had an awesome steak dinner in the restaurant that overlooks the river from about the 10th or 12th floor, then headed up to the bar on the very top of the hotel (36th floor) to check out the view! Imagine our surprise when fireworks started going off right outside the window at eye level where we were sitting! (No, Rick didn’t arrange them for our anniversary! ;) Someone was getting married across the river and they were setting off fireworks to celebrate!)

Thanksgiving was kind of strange! Since, as Rick says, the pilgrims didn’t land in Thailand, there is no official celebration here! So that Thursday, the kids had school and Rick had work. He did take off early, though, so that we could have our turkey dinner with the works (the turkey alone, a 12 lb Butterball, was a whopping $42 – OUCH!) and all eat together (normally he gets home about 6:45 or 7:00, after the kids and I have eaten!) And that was pretty much it for Thanksgiving – it didn’t feel like much of a holiday!

Here’s a few pictures from Nate’s birthday – notice the painfully cheesey smile! (sorry, no pics of my birthday or our anniversary!)

Happy Halloween!

2008-11-03T05:47:00.000-08:00

Believe it or not, Halloween was a bigger deal here than it was in Phoenix! The Thais don't celebrate Halloween but here in Nichada, the community where we live, Halloween is HUGE! Starting about 3 weeks ago, there were big wooden cutout Halloween decorations hung on all the roads throughout Nichada - ghosts, pumpkins, witches, vampires, devils, gravestones...you name it, it was here! Then on Halloween night, there are, literally, thousands of kids (and yes, adults....many Thai maids, drivers, and security guards from the community all trick or treat with their kids - and have their own candy bag so they don't have to share with their kids!) trick or treating here. Lucky for us, we don't live in one of the neighborhoods that gets hit really hard....we only have about 15 houses in our neighborhood. On the other side of Nichada, where the houses and neighborhoods are closer together, they get hit hard! Kids are actually bussed in to trick or treat. There was also a big Halloween party at the club here in Nichada as well as haunted houses, etc. I heard today that in the busier neighborhoods there were 'treats' for the parents, too - beer, jello shots, etc.!

Given all the festivities, we kept Halloween pretty low key. One of the other expats that works with Rick brought his two kids over (ages 1 and 2) and we went out for maybe an hour trick or treating. By the end of that, the kids were all tired and we now have more candy than we ever needed! Funny thing about the candy...I don't know what most of it is! American candy is really a prize here....there were very few Snickers bars and Milky Ways....and the only Reese's Peanut Butter cup (Rick's favorite) that was to be had in our kids' trick or treat bags was eaten before we ever even knew it was there....all we found was the wrapper! (Smart kid...we would have swiped it for sure!) Now we are left with a lot of weird gummy candy, wafer cookie things, and strange gum and chewy marshmellow like candy - yuck!

Our pictures aren't very good but here's a few shots of the kids! Tim was Harry Potter, Caroline a mermaid, Leah a fairy princess, and Nate a construction worker.

October was a busy month!

2008-11-03T05:40:00.000-08:00

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted…we’ve had so much going on this month that I kept waiting for everything to be done to post. The result….a bunch of monster posts on the blog site….sorry about that! To start, October was our month for visitors. Mary, Rick’s sister, was supposed to come out early in the month. Unfortunately, she was flying standby so she could get a free flight here (she’s a pilot for a US commercial airline, for those of you who don’t know) but she got as far as Japan and then couldn’t get on a flight to Bangkok. We were all bummed out but we’re sure Mary will make here at some point! Next, Rick’s parents came. We had Dennis and Nancy here for about two weeks. It was really nice to have some family around for a change. We did a TON of sightseeing and also managed a quick trip to Singapore with them while the kids were on fall break from school. I think they enjoyed seeing us and learning a little about where we’re living now, and I’m SURE they were glad to go home so they could get out of the humidity! We’ve been here for a little over 3 months now and we actually must be adjusting to the humidity (it’s pretty bad) because even on hot days, Rick and I don’t just pour sweat like we did when we first got here. You definitely don’t realize how much you probably sweat in Phoenix since the minute the sweat comes out, it evaporates. Here, it seems to just multiply and before you know it, you’re dripping wet. Gross! Some of the places we managed to see while they were here in Thailand are the Royal Palace (really neat place…too bad it was so hot!), Ayutthaya – an ancient city that used to be the capital of Thailand (known as Siam back then) from 1350 until 1767, when it was sacked by the Burmese and also where we got to ride elephants, the Suan Lum Night Bazaar, Chatuchak market, Muang Boran – a huge park where there are miniature (well, not that small since you can walk through them) replicas of all the major sights throughout Thailand, the Grand Palace, and Ko Kret, an island in the middle of the Chao Phraya River, about 15 minutes from where we live, where they make a local type of pottery. The highlight of all that sightseeing for the kids was definitely the elephant rides (not the most comfortable mode of transportation, I now know this! Also something that terrified Nate – he wasn’t about to get on an elephant!) and for the adults, well, it’s a toss up but I’m guessing that Ko Kret ranks pretty low to the bottom since it was just flooded with nasty, yucky water and we didn’t see much of it. Here’s a few pictures of our adventures. The first batch here is all Ayutthaya. In the next post there are shots of the Ancient City (Muang Boran) and the Grand Palace.

More Pictures!

2008-11-03T05:26:00.000-08:00

Here's a few more shots of our day trips to the Ancient City and to the Grand Palace.

Singapore

2008-11-02T18:57:00.000-08:00

Keep scrolling down to read about our adventures in Singapore....I ended up posting these backwards so you get pictures first, description later! Here's some shots of the kids at the beach by our hotel, Tim and Caroline in the jungle on Sentosa Island, and a very silly shot of our family taken just before we left!

More pictures of Singapore

2008-11-02T18:47:00.000-08:00

Ok, I'm posting this backwards....I meant it to go under the Singapore post, below...but you get the idea! Here's a few more shots of our time in Singapore. These are mainly taken in Little India (and one shot at the hotel pool, I think!)

Look out Singapore, here we come!

2008-11-02T18:23:00.000-08:00

Now to continue the October saga….a lot went on so we have to break it down into a bunch of posts so that I can add pictures! While Dennis and Nancy were here, we also got to go to Singapore for four days (about 7 for them – they stayed a few extra after we left,) which was a lot of fun! We stayed on Sentosa Island, which is a resort island that is just south of the main city. Our hotel was right on the water (South China Sea) and had great facilities for the kids – nice pools, a waterslide, etc. It also had an excellent breakfast buffet – maybe one of my favorite parts of the trip?!?! In addition to the pool stuff, we went to the beach (we were surprised by all the ships and oil tankers right off the shore…it wasn’t all that beachy….there was also oil in the water – not what we expected from Singapore, where everything is pristine and there are big fines for any kind of littering at all – we didn’t let the kids chew gum at all while we were there!), to the aquarium, to a neat dolphin show with pink dolphins (really and truly pink – they are a certain breed that is born gray and turns a really pretty soft pink color as it ages), rode the monorail, cable cars that go across the bay high in the sky from the island to the city, the subway, and plenty of busses (great public transportation – all the “things that go” were Nate’s favorite part of the trip, I’m sure!), went to Chinatown and Little India, and Rick and I even got to go out to dinner one night without kids (thanks Dennis and Nancy!)

The following are a few pictures of our time in Singapore. There's a shot of the girls riding the tram ride over the bay from Sentosa Island, where we stayed, to the city. There are also a couple of shots in Chinatown - one of the whole family, one of a neat building, and above, one of me and Tim on Mosque street. The other picture was taken of Tim at a Hindu temple in Little India.

Happy Birthday Caroline!

2008-11-02T18:09:00.000-08:00

Caroline celebrated her seventh birthday this month! Her actual birthday was on October 15th. She turned seven! For a seven year old, she is incredibly well spoken and really really tall for her age!!! We’re not sure where she gets her height since neither one of us is anything more than average (and that might even be stretching it for me!) On her birthday we didn’t do anything too crazy. It was International Week at school (a big even for an international school, as you can imagine….it was pretty cool – food from all over the globe, kids in costume, presentations about different countries in each class every day, etc.!) so I joined her for snacks from all over the world since that was what the second grade was doing that day. She also brought in a treat for her class and opened presents and had cake (strawberry cake with chocolate icing – her idea, but surprisingly, not bad!) that night with us. Thank goodness Aunt Mary (who was going to hand carry all of her presents we had ordered online for her and sent to Mary in Washington) was able to FedEx everything to us and it got there in the nick of time! (We did learn that import taxes are HIGH though!!! Ouch!) Then Dennis and Nancy arrived the next day, so we had more cake and presents, and now next weekend Caroline is taking a friend or two to Build A Bear downtown in Bangkok and then for ice cream, to have her “friend” celebration (too much going on during the month to fit it in so her b.day is lasting about a month instead of a day…lucky her!) Here’s a few shots of our seven year old!

Croc Farm!

2008-09-23T23:19:00.000-07:00

This past Sunday we took a trip out to the Crocodile Farm...what an experience! In addition to seeing lots of cool animals, I think we may have been one of the main attractions with all of our little blonde, blue eyed kids! The girls were like movie stars....people kept coming up to them and taking their picture, stroking their heads, and wanting to be in pictures with them! Rick and I wonder what they do with the picture of them and some cute kid(s) that they don't know when they get home?!?!?! We were pretty much the only westerners there (the place is a bit far out from the city and not as many tourists go there) which I'm guessing is why we drew so much attention.

In addition to us providing some entertainment, the Croc Farm itself was pretty cool! They had a crocodile wrestling show, complete with guys putting their hands and yes, heads, into the crocodiles' mouths, and elephant show where the elephants were skateboarding, walking on a tight wire, painting, driving a cart thingy, and coming right up to the stands and taking money from your hand with their trunks (they suck up folded bills like a vacuum cleaner and hand them right to their trainers - neat!) The kids (except Nate, who was scared) got pictures with the elephants and got to pet them. And speaking of pictures, you'll also see one below of Rick with a crocodile! It freaked the kids out to see Daddy right there with one! The place was also pretty much a zoo - but not like any zoo in the US. I felt bad for the animals because the cages were small and not always in the best of shape, but I have to say, I've never been so close to a tiger that I could put my hand into the cage and pet it, if I wanted to (and I didn't!) The kids held the hand of a friendly monkey who was reaching through the bars shaking hands with everyone, and Leah pet a racoon, too. Believe me, lots and lots of Purell hand sanitizer was used that day!!!

Happy Birthday, Leah!

2008-09-23T22:58:00.000-07:00

Leah celebrated her 5th birthday on September 10th! On her actual birthday, a Wednesday, she took cupcakes into school and we celebrated that night with just our family. Since we were in the middle of moving that week into our house, we didn't have our party until this past Saturday, September 20th. Leah had a great time with 7 of her girlfriends from school and her brothers and sister, swimming at the pool here in our neighborhood, playing, and eating birthday cake! One of the neatest things about her party, in my opinion, was that she had kids from the US, Canada, Thailand, and South Africa, and one other country (not sure where) there! That definitely wouldn't happen at home in AZ!

Now What's Up With Us!

2008-09-14T01:19:00.001-07:00

Now that you are updated on the big happenings, here’s a little of what’s been going on with us on a day to day basis.

The kids are loving school! They have friends from all over the world….an experience that just wouldn’t happen in the US! Leah’s best friend is from South Africa, Caroline is good friends with a little girl from Thailand, and Tim seems to be friends with everyone from everywhere….Ireland, Thailand, the US, Australia, you name it! They are getting involved in lots of activities….Tim is in Cub Scouts and the girls are in Girl Guides (international equivalent of Girl Scouts.) Caroline is a Bluebird and Leah is a Littlebird. Each kid is also taking an after school class – Tim is in team handball, Leah in beads and bracelets, and Caroline is in a making stuffed toys class. There were probably 75 classes to choose from, and if we had wanted to (and had unlimited funds for after school activities!) they each could have been in a different class each day! All three older kids are also taking Thai in school, and also really enjoy that. Tim seems to be picking it up the most quickly, and will wander around the house spouting out phrases in Thai that only he understands! J

Nate hangs out with me every day. He goes to the store, rides in the golf cart with me, plays on the playground, etc. The highpoint of his day is picking the kids up from school – he loves the playground at ISB, their school. He also LOVES our driver, Yai (rhymes with guy) and runs around saying “Yai Yai the driver guy!” If it’s the weekend and we aren’t going anywhere and Yai is here, Nate will head outside and hang out with Yai. Yai, fortunately, seems to like Nate just as much, and will pull him up and down the street in the wagon, play ball with him, etc. If you were around Nate much at all before we left AZ, you’d know he talked but half the time you couldn’t understand him. Well, since being here, he’s also had a speech explosion and talks like crazy, 95% of which you can actually understand!

For me, I’m busier than I thought I’d be! We have a maid Monday through Friday now, and that is really a strange (but good) thing to get used to. (Everyone here has one….I haven’t met anyone yet that doesn’t have a maid!) She keeps the house very clean, does all the laundry, irons everything (I’ve never before had my underwear and PJs ironed!), makes dinner about four days a week (some Thai, mostly western food – all good!), and keeps an eye on Nate if I need to go somewhere without him. She also will babysit if Rick and I want to go out on the weekend, which is really nice. You probably wonder what I do with all my time now that I don’t have to clean the house, do laundry, or make dinner?!?! There is so much to do here, if you want to do it all, that you could have your day filled pretty much every day. I’m involved with the women’s group that meets once a week at church, a newcomer’s group (only once a week, too, only for 6 weeks), and I run Leah’s Littlebird group along with someone else. Between that and running kids to and from school and to and from activities, I’m pretty busy. I also am still teaching online for Grand Canyon University, and that definitely fills in a lot of time.

Rick is really liking work a lot. He’s getting busier and busier and more involved in a broader range of activities the longer he’s there. His commute is really the worst thing, overall, of anything here in Thailand. He leaves at 6:15 am and doesn’t get home until about 6:45 or 7:00 pm (later on Fridays because the traffic is so bad!) But he enjoys working with his group of engineers and has made some friends amongst them and with the other Americans at the facility, which makes things go much more smoothly for him day to day.

We also celebrated Leah’s 5th birthday this past Wednesday! It was a pretty quiet celebration here at home. She took cupcakes into school for her class that morning, then had Phad Thai for dinner (made especially for her by our maid, Goon), and more cupcakes for dessert. We’re going to have some of her little girlfriends over to swim at our neighborhood pool next weekend and have a little party for her then.

Here’s a few more pictures of kids, etc.:
(Leah’s topless because I didn’t want her to get chocolate icing on her school uniform shirt. The other pictures are taken in our carport and on the street right in front of our house!)

Our Permanent Digs!

2008-09-14T00:34:00.000-07:00

We finally moved into our house! Yippeee! I suppose the delay really wasn’t that huge but it sure felt that way to us. First, our sea shipment was supposed to arrive on August 29th….but it was a week late. Then, Rick’s work permit (which we needed to have the shipment released from customs) was supposed to be ready on August 28th……but it was about 10 days late. Then, even though we had both the sea shipment here and the work permit in hand……the Port Authority went on strike because of the protests in Bangkok over the current Prime Minister…..yet one more delay! However, finally on September 8th, we moved into our house and now we have all of our own stuff around us! It was like Christmas, sleeping in our own beds, eating off our own dishes, having more clothes to wear, opening boxes full of toys and kids stuff, getting our bikes! We still have a few piles of stuff to put away but mostly, we are settled in now and just need to buy a few things for the house, hang some pictures (we have concrete walls with less than a millimeter of plaster on them….it’s HARD to get nails into them!), etc.

Here’s a few shots of the house, inside and out:
(Nate was asleep - that's why he's missing! The outside pictures are the front door and the backyard.)

Our First Visitor!

2008-09-14T00:12:00.000-07:00

It’s been a long time since I’ve updated the blog….I couldn’t get on the site because of password problems. But that’s straightened out now so get ready for a big update! I’ll split it into a couple of posts so that the pictures make sense.

Things are going well here and we are really settling in. At the end of August we had our first visitor. Rick’s brother, Paul, was in Asia on a big business trip and headed out to Bangkok for a weekend to check out our new digs. Of course, we weren’t in the house yet so he got a taste of apartment living, instead. It was really nice to see someone from home….and to have some delivery service from home, too! Paul brought all kinds of important stuff like Leah’s birthday presents, bubble gum (hard to find here!), and Oxi Clean, just to name a few things! Let’s just say his suitcase was a lot lighter when he left Bangkok!

We did try to get out and about and see some tourist kind of stuff while Paul was here, too. We headed out to Wat Arun, the temple of the dawn, with the intention of going to the Royal Palace after that. Wat Arun was really neat (See pictures below!) and a bit different from many of the other temples around here. Because of the protests going on in Bangkok, we took kind of an indirect route to get there (not a good idea to drive through the middle of an angry mob!) and the kids got to have their first ferry ride across the river. The water was muddy brown, like all the rivers here, and full of floating plants. The kids, however, liked it anyhow! We also went to the Temple of the Reclining Buddha (can’t remember the name in Thai) and saw a giant gold Buddha figure that was easily 100 feet long! The kids got a kick out of putting little 1 baht (Thai currency) coins in the collecting jars in there….I believe there are 100 jars and they put a baht in each one! We were headed to the Royal Palace after that but didn’t make it over…it had already been a long day and we were tired from the heat and humidity, so we headed home. That night we took Paul out for some really good Thai food, though, at a restaurant right on the river near us. And Sunday we headed to Chatuchuk market…..a weekend flea market that covers acres and acres. It’s like a dollar store that goes on and on and on and on! You can find absolutely anything there from handmade furniture to pets to used shoes to Thai crafts to silk flowers to silk fabric to magazines from 1986…you get the idea! We also hit one of the big malls downtown, MBK, for some electronics, had lunch at Hard Rock Café Bangkok, and the of all that, the kids thought riding on the BTS sky train (raised commuter train through Bangkok) was the most exciting!

Here’s some pictures of the weekend:

(by the way, the one of Leah and the little statue is funny….she saw that statue and said, “Look, that queen is holding the remote for the TV!” )

Two Weeks Down!

2008-08-10T06:05:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-08-03T06:41:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-08-03T02:27:00.001-07:00

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!

2008-08-03T02:13:00.001-07:00

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:

The Countdown is On!

2008-07-05T07:43:00.000-07:00

Time is flying! I can't believe how close we are to moving - only 19 days to go! We officially leave the US on July 24th and become residents of Thailand on July 26th, when we get there. We have passports, visas, airline tickets, all of our shots done (whew!), a furnished apartment there until our stuff arrives, then we'll move into our house there (should be around the first week of September), the kids are enrolled in school, and in another two weeks, the contents of our house will either be shipped or put into storage. It's been a crazy couple of months! We look forward to getting the moving part of this over with, so that we can just arrive in Thailand and start settling in there and enjoying exploring our new home!

It's Official

2008-05-31T15:32:00.000-07:00

Rick and I returned from a whirlwind trip to Bangkok this past Wednesday. We flew out last Tuesday, arrived Thursday morning, Bangkok time (you loose a day going over since you cross the international date line) and were busy from the time we got there until the time we left! However, we accomplished a lot!

Thursday and Friday were spent getting acclimated to Bangkok and to a time zone 14 hours ahead of our own. We also spent a lot of time checking out the kids' school and finding a house.

The school was really oustanding...it's an international school that is located right in the middle of the community we'll be living in. There's a huge amount of diversity there, with most classes representing about 8 to 10 different countries. Since it is a private school, it gets all kinds of neat corporate sponsorship which results in things like the Nike Athletic Center there, complete with a pool, gym, indoor/outdoor equipment, dance studio, etc. There is also a very nice performing arts theater and more neat technology there than I've ever seen at another school! We're sure the kids will really love going there and they are already very excited about it!

The neighborhood where we will live is also very nice. It's made up mainly of ex-pats, like ourselves, with plenty of Americans in the mix. The houses are all western style and BIG! We settled on a four bedroom home on a cauldesac in a neighborhood that is packed with kids and very close to the school. The nice thing about the whole community is that it is very self contained (school, grocery store, urgent care health and dental clinic, dry cleaners, health club, olympic size pool, church, etc. all on the grounds of it) and very safe. It's got a guarded entrance and then once you enter into each, each neighborhood also has its own guard at the entrance. You see people just cruising around in golf carts (we're going to need the stretched model to fit us all!) and little motor scooters. Once you are inside the gates, you could really be anywhere in the US!

Over the weekend we also managed to do a little sightseeing, which was fun. We went to the Royal Grand Palace, where Thai kings have lived off and on for hundreds of years. We also went on a Tuk Tuk ride (a kind of 3 wheeled motor scooter with a covered bench on the back that is used as a taxi) that took us all over the place (to see a temple with a big golden Buddah - neat, to a jewelry show room and to a silk showroom - we didn't want to go to either of those places but it seems the Tuk Tuk driver was in charge of our destinations!) We hit a huge outdoor market that is set up every weekend - the Chatuchak market, where we saw quite a variety of stuff - trash and treasure - for sale! There are over 9000 stalls there, with an amazing variety of stuff displayed! We also spent some time downtown in Bangkok, which reminds me a lot of being downtown in Manhattan - lots of big buildings, traffic, and pollution, but lots of really interesting people and sites, too. You see people zipping around on motor scooters with kids clinging to their backs, food carts everywhere (I think the Thais must eat 10 times a day) with some really interesting looking foods, buddhist monks walking around, people from all over the place (we didn't feel out of place at all as there were so many Westerners wandering around, too), and probably the funniest, a baby elephant getting walked down the middle of a very busy street!

Monday and Tuesday Rick went out to the Microchip facility where he'll work in Chacherngsao. He got a taste of the commute (about 1 1/2 hours each way - ouch!) and a taste of more Thai food in the cafeteria! He also got to get a feel for the place and meet the people he'll work with. All in all, a productive couple of days for him. While he was there, I spent some time riding the SkyTrain through Bangkok and checking out some of the local shopping malls so that I'd have an idea of what will be available to us when we move. Also productive for me!

Wednesday found us at the airport by 6am to start our very long trip home! We were glad to finally arrive in Phoenix early in the afternoon Wednesday (there's that big time difference again - we gained a day coming home) and happy to be home and see the kids again. Now the real work starts...packing and getting ready for the move at the end of July!!! Stay tuned for more details! :)

Here's a few pictures from our trip:

Us at the Royal Grand Palace

Downtown Bangkok, view from our hotel

The Beginning

2008-05-07T16:14:00.000-07:00

Well...kind of the beginning after the fact. The beginning really starts way back in January of 2008. Rick called me one morning and posed the hypothetical question of, "What would you think about moving to Bangkok, Thailand?" To which I replied, "Let me think about it." An hour later, I called him back and told him I was in....I thought it would be an adventure.

From that point on, our lives seemed to be dominated by discussing this potential move....would it happen? When would it happen? Who else at work was possibly in contention for it? When would we hear something? How would the kids handle it? What other cool places could we visit? Should we sell the house or rent it? When do we start packing? And maybe the most pressing, what in the world will we do with four kids under the age of eight on a 24 hour journey from Los Angeles to Bangkok?!?!!? (Any ideas you have are welcome -please share! ) In a process that seemed to move slower than molasses, we got from point A, that first phone call in January, to point B, now, on the verge of a gigantic, life changing move that should happen in mid July.

Why in the world would we move? What's in Thailand for us? Are we crazy? There's plenty of answers to those questions!

We are moving because an interesting job opportunity was presented to Rick to train some of the Thai engineers at Microchip's facility there to do what his group does here in Chandler, AZ. The job presents a challenge to Rick, a new direction for his career, and just lots of possibilities. For our family, it means exposing the kids (and ourselves) to an entirely different culture...to many different cultures, for that matter, if we manage to travel like we hope to while there. It will broaden us all and expand our concepts of self and of how we fit into what is rapidly becoming a global society. We'll see parts of the world none of us has experienced before, meet new people, and basically have the adventure of our lives! And yes, we are a little crazy to be doing this, but we've thought it through very thoroughly and feel confident in this choice for ourselves and our family.

We'll be living in an expatriate community just north of Bangkok called Nichada Thani, and the kids will attend International School Bangkok, where they'll mix, mingle, and learn with kids from all over the world. We'll fill you in on more details about house and home, school, etc. as we get them. Rick and I are heading over in about two weeks to find housing and get the lay of the land, and we'll know a lot more after that trip.

Right now, we are looking at the gazillion details that come up when planning a move of this magnitude for a family of six. What to ship? What to store? When to get the kids' passports?What immunizations do we need and how do we make it as painless as possible for all of us (I think I might be as a big a baby about this as the kids are! Unfortunately, I don't think anyone is buying me an ice cream cone, a Webkinz, or any other big treats after I get my shots and I probably need more shots than the kids do! I might, however, at least get lunch out of the deal!)

So that brings you up to speed with what has been happening with us for the past five months and how we now find ourselves soon to be residents of Thailand! We'll be sure to keep you updated on the process - keep checking back for details and photos!