Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been tilling bad dirt, spreading, grading, cleaning, and breaking up good dirt, and today we finally laid down 223 square meters of sod (that’s about 2,500 square feet, for the metrically challenged). It cost us only about 7,400 Baht ($212 USD) and hundreds of man-hours, but we’re pretty happy with it.
We’ve changed our lives more in the last four years than, well… ever. Sean has an interesting look on it at his being-revamped blog - a before and after shot of the houses. In the latest shot, you can see some of the stuff we’ve put up since, like a canopy (currently for bicycles) and a playground.
Everything he says in that post is true. And it is a huge blessing to have Sean and Prang living right next door. Seriously, communal living is the only way to go. Either of us can get help whenever we need it, for anything. Strangely, for me the biggest perk of having them next door is perspective. Sometimes when the kids start going downhill, it’s nice to have adults living next door to remind us (or the kids, in some cases) that it’s not about us, that the world isn’t over because one kid explodes, that the kids really don’t know what they’re talking about. If nothing else, it’s nice to have friends so close to support us, and vice versa.
It’s not often we get a family vacation. Last time we went to Pai. This time, we took Pan, Alaypa, Lutiya, and David (our friend visiting from Ireland) to see Bangkok. The kids grew up in villages, and have never been far from Chiang Mai, so it was exciting to take them to see one of the largest cities in the world.
We took an overnight train there on Wednesday night. It came late and we slept in chairs, so we were all dead tired when we arrived. But having only three days there, we still had to go out! On Thursday we went to see the Grand Palace, which was kinda cool - I liked the murals of the Ramayana in particular. But the kids were bored, so we went to find something more interesting at Siam Paragon, one of the largest malls in Asia. We were looking for a discovery museum, but ended up admiring some really expensive show cars and visiting the largest aquarium in Southeast Asia.
On Friday, Isaac spent the day with Cindy’s aunt while the rest of us went to Siam Park. Here the kids got to experience roller coasters and such for the first time. Everyone enjoyed it, though it was hard to find rides that everybody could go on (Cindy and I learned a lot about going to an amusement park with an all-ages family). But really we spent most of the day with Siam Park’s water slides. The last time I went on water slides was in 6th grade. They were packed with people, sometimes taking 30-40 minutes in between rides, and you always got yelled at by someone for breaking some safety rule, but at Siam Park we got a ton of exercise running up the stairs in between rides (a turnaround time of maybe 30-40 seconds), and though there were lifeguards on duty, they only seemed to care about obvious breaches of safety. It made everything a lot more fun.
On our last day, we went to Pattaya. Though not a great beach by San Diego standards, it was still pretty good. Pan spent most of the day collecting oysters, and nearly everyone got buried in the sand at some point. There was something in the water though, as both Lutiya and I got itchy like crazy and couldn’t go back in (Sean thinks it might’ve been jellyfish eggs). After a few hours at the beach, we began the long drive back to Bangkok and the longer overnight train ride back home. There’s some more pictures here.
These vacations are hard to pull off, but they’re a lot of fun and good to look back on, and Cindy and I learn all kinds of things about parenting. I was shocked to realize that, had I let them, our kids would’ve stayed in the apartment all day watching TV, but then I realized that I was the same when I was a kid. Honestly, I don’t know why my parents ever took us anywhere.
I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before. Let me know if this doesn’t work for you. Update: I forgot to mention, the video has no sound. That’s a product of using a cheap digital camera that wasn’t designed for video.
It’s finally a reality. Our houses are finished, more or less, and we are moved in. The houses feel really big, which makes sense. We didn’t design these houses because we need the space now, but because we expect to need it in the future. Jess says she can already see how they’ll be filled. With the way we’ve been feeling lately, I don’t have her faith, but then again we’ve walked this road before and watched God fill the space he told us to create.
Anyway, the future aside, here are the pictures I promised. They were taken over the last few weeks, so the details might change from picture to picture as we’ve gotten work done. I’ve included captions for you. The inside shots are pretty much all from the Heines’ house. I haven’t taken pictures of Sean’s place yet, sorry (though I bet he has).
The houses are getting really close to done. We’ve only got one payment left to make. I don’t know about the Abbott’s house, but in our house what needs doing is the front doors, kitchen cabinets, a few floor tiles, the walkway around the outside… and I think that’s it. Maybe a few little things here and there. In any case, they ought to be done really soon, like in a month or so.
I took these pictures two weeks ago, so some things are done already that aren’t done in the pictures.
There’s still lots to do (and pay for) outside of the house. We need a front wall/fence, a front gate, a driveway, and eventually some grass. The driveway, in particular, we need before we can move in. Sean’s truck is four-wheel drive, but our truck will get stuck in the mud for sure if we try it. Not to mention we’ll have to mop everyday. Blech.
พายุ (pa-yú): n. an atmospheric disturbance with strong winds accompanied by rain or other precipitation; a storm.
It’s April. In Thailand, that means it’s the hot season, which is every bit worse than it sounds. And even though it’s still technically the dry season, April does have the occasional shower. And by “shower” I mean “torrential thunderstorm”. The few rains that come in April are loud, windy, thunderous, and uh… lightning…y.
Last Tuesday afternoon, we had one that knocked down one of the large trees in front of our house. I was upstairs at the time, closing the windows to keep the rain out. I heard some loud noises, but I thought they were just transformers exploding elsewhere (that happens all the time when it rains). Then Matt came running upstairs to tell me what had happened. The tree had fallen forward, away from the house and onto the street, where it took down the power lines and two power poles as well on either side of our house. Another power pole had fallen elsewhere in the muban, so 10 or 20 houses could only get out to the main road by walking that day. We were blessed that Cindy was out with our truck at the time, otherwise we would’ve been stuck too.
It took them about 24 hours to get the tree cleared and the power lines back up, so the whole next day we had no power until later in the evening.* Without power in the muban, the main water pump couldn’t run so we ran out of water late in the morning as well. Isaac loved watching the people working outside, especially the guy who cut the tree up with a chainsaw. He was at the window all day for that one. The next morning everything was fine again, except that the phone line to our house was still severed so I had to call the phone company. That took another two days (mainly because they took their sweet time coming out here), but it’s done now and I feel better.
Take a look at the pictures and their captions for more.
* And even then it was spotty - we had to turn off all non-essential electronics so we could watch a movie without the TV shutting off. We considered asking the neighbors to turn off their lights too.
A few weeks ago we took the family bowling for something special to do after what was kind of a hard day for us all emotionally. For Pan, Alaypa, Lutiya, and Isaac it was their first time and they really enjoyed. Alaypa was even playing in a cast, and he did pretty well. The second time we went was for Sean’s birthday last week where they got to hone their skills. Alaypa plays even better without a cast, and Pan is turning out to be a pretty consistent player. Well, at least as consistent as any of the rest of us. Isaac, of course, wanted to play too, and there’s plenty of pictures of his various attempts. View all the pictures here.
Cow or Frog. Those were our two choices for food last time we were up in mountains. When we showed up they had just killed a cow and had all it’s insides and other pieces spread out in front of the front door to the house. The cow was some of the tastiest beef I have ever had but the frogs I passed on. I’ll eat frog if it’s been BBQed over some nice hot coals. But they boiled them in soup so they were all soft. Not really a texture I enjoy. They gotta be crunchy not chewy. Wayland came and we were able to help dad rebuild the fence to keep the cows in and also carry big heavy bags of cow crap to be stored for fertilizer. At least we didn’t have to bag um. Thats a messy job but can be fun if you have a partner to fling it on.
Also the houses are doing very well. Today we just finished picking the paint color and the railing desing for the stairs. They have the ceiling and stucco finished on my house and tomarrow they will begin to put the floors down. The work is going along very fast and with out many delays. I think we should be able to move in around three months or so.
Click here to see more pics from the village. Or click here to see more pics of the house consturction. Or even here to see some cool pictures of Abigail.
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