OK, so it is nearly the end of the year. One of my New Years resolutions will definitely be to write on here more often!!! So let me briefly try to go over what has happened the last few months since we moved here.....
SEPTEMBER:
First biggies, I missed both of my brothers' birthdays for the first time in my life!!!! AHHHH, that was really weird for me.
We spent most of September settling into our new house and neighborhood, getting into a school routine and joining the local home school co-op. I'll bet none of you knew Thailand had homeschool co-ops! :-D Well, it does. And it is set up by the missionary community, but we have a few non-missionary families as well including a Buddhist family.
Also for almost the entire month of September we did not have internet which - more than one person can attest to this - nearly drove me crazy. I could get out about twice a week to an internet cafe near us and check email, etc. But that was really frustrating. It's amazing how important internet becomes when you are separated from people!!!
The weather was another huge adjustment. The humidity and heat was incredible. Having lived in a drier climate for the past five years, this was a big switch. Plus the tropical heat is so different. It makes your face feel oily all the time, you sweat a lot and your skin is always sticky feeling, so you end up showering two or three times a day. You get used to it (sort of) but it's tough. Fortunately monsoon season started up so the rain helped a little bit, but not until the end of the month. Monsoons that is another thing. It will rain so furiously that it will flood the streets over onto the sidewalk. The kids and I measured once and there was over 15 inches of rain. It was up our driveway and everything! Exciting!! One bad thing about this is, the rains drive the cockroaches out of the sewers and up into "our territory". Yuck.
Speaking of bugs!! I got sick around the 10th of September with some strange illness that put me out for a few days. One night during that time I was rudely awakened by a horrible ripping stinging pain on my toe. It hurt so bad it actually woke me up, so I turned on my light to examine it. There was a jagged bleeding cut on my toe. I thought, "Ok this is not a normal bug bite." (have I mentioned the mosquitos and spider bites abound here?) So I looked for a salve and decided to try to go back to bed. Being the smart person I am (HA! :-) I shook out my blanket first and out into the middle of my bed fell a long fat centipede. This thing was about 9 inches long or longer. I just gasped and said aloud, "There is no way I'm sleeping in here!" I knew centipede's were very poisoness, so I went upstairs and woke Marjorie and she put collodial silver on it and in the morning it was basically gone.. A neighbor came by in the morning and he couldn't believe how good it looked and how I had no pain. Every person we told about it was amazed I wasn't in the hospital or at least in excruciating pain. Most people get knocked out on pain killers for a week and tribal guys go on opium highs for days to keep from going crazy.
Ever since then I've had a great decrease in my fear of bugs, and I'm the official centipede slayer at our house since everyone else is too afraid. Hey, after you've had one crawling all over you in bed it can't get much worse, right? Speaking of which I happened to walk into our other downstairs bathroom last week and step on one - barefoot, mind you - even bigger than the one that was in my bed. I trapped it under a ceramic serving bowl, but it was so huge and strong it could move this bowl. Plus it could flatten itself and try to squeeze out. Very disgusting. I ended up spraying a goodly amount of bug spray under the bowl and then duck taping it to the ground - spare the duck tape, spoil the job! Bet Red Green never thought of that one! :-)
Anyway, to continue with September. I got my first real immersions into the culture. It all seems pretty normal to me now since I've pretty much adjusted. Moving all the time has the one plus, that it makes you flexible and adaptable to situations pretty quickly. But I will try to see it with fresh eyes....
The second Sunday I was in Chiang Mai some old friends of mine who live there took me to the Sunday Market which is down by the Chiang Mai moat. I guess what first impressed me was the filth. and the poverty. There were cripples begging on the streets and I saw one of many beaten down stores with the owners' kids running naked. Stray dogs are abudant and the air smells like food, sewage, damp, and incense. Street musicians sit on the ground and play a potpourri of music, traditional and on traditional. People were chattering in Thai but farangs (foreigners/tourists) were shopping around. We looked at several booths, some of which are mats spread on the ground with the goods laid out on it, before stopping to get something to eat. Most of the food stuff where we were was on the temple grounds. (Chiang Mai has more Wat's per capita than any other city in Thailand). So we stood on the temple steps basically, as we ordered. Massive, ornate and painted gold (people should buy stocks in gold paint here), you could peek through the open doors past the red and gold carved columns to the huge gold buddha with offerings of food, flowers, money, and incense burning before it. On the steps are jars labled with each day of the week with two jars for Wednesday because that is Buddha's Day. In contrast with the spendor pigeons live on the roofs and there were stray dogs and roosters and chickens running around old toothless men on rusty bikes and run down old abandoned school with urchins lurking about it. Then we looked at more booths There are carved candles, gorgeous silk products, clothes, jewelry, incense, idols, hill tribe stuff, junk, handmade toys, candles, purses, elephant carvings, paintings, wooden bowls and kitchen gear. A shoppers paradise and so cheap you could buy about 15 times more here than you could for the same amount in the states. And there I was eating sticky rice with my fingers and BBQ pork off a stick. It was amazing to me at the time.
In September the Fields and I also went to visit the Bua Tong Waterfall and sacred pool up in the mountains, which was absolutely gorgeous.
OCTOBER:
We had pretty much gotten ourselves into a school routine. Co-op was Monday 8am -2pm and the kids also had basketball practice at the International school here in our Muu bahn.
On one of the co-op Field trips we went to the rice paddy and water buffalo farms where we all got to try out plowing with water buffalos and planting rice. Water Buffalo are actually quite cute and docile creatures. So you hitch them up to a plow for breaking up the mud in the mud pit where you plant the rice. This means you get into water and mud up to your knees or mid thigh and mess it all up and schlop through it. It squishes terribly and was altogether disgusting feeling under your feet. I tried not to think about it! lol! But I did it! Then you get rice, which looks like green onions with roots and schlop through the mud pit again and push it down into the mud at the bottom. So now your limbs should be completely filthy. If they aren't, you have pretty much failed at the whole point of this crazy operation. It was actually quite fun - gross, but fun. And not many people can say they planted rice in a rice paddy in Thailand using a water buffalo and wooden plow!
October I also met some lovely friends - a family from England - the Mays. They have four kids, three boys and a girl aged 10-15. I have become fairly close to the mother - Ester. She is such a lovely lady and wonderful encouragement to me!!!!
The May's took me on a weekend trip with them and some other friends to Ob Luang National Park and up to Doi Inthanon where we hiked to the top of Thailand's highest mountain where we could look down over the green jungly valleys, villages, and two giant gold, red and purple pagodas, and see the sun through the clouds and the air was crisp and cool. It was amazing!!!
OK so I'll continue on about the last two months tomorrow hopefully!
~Crystal
