The Catch-Up Post

Well, a lot has happened since I last posted what seems like a lifetime ago. Well, actually it was quite a bit more than a lifetime ago – my second daughter’s lifetime that is. Yes, those of you who occasionally click over to Kristen’s blog are already aware of our newest arrival but for those of you who haven’t – SHE finally arrived. She was an early birthday present for her daddy. Her due date was the 13^th of March but she didn’t make it until the 29^th. Many people (myself included) were convinced that she wanted the same birthday as her daddy – the 30^th. She is a sweet little baby and a welcome addition into our home. When she was born she was 3,570 grams (about 7 lbs 15 oz). We had her two-week follow-up appt. this past Tuesday and she had put on nearly 400 grams (about 13 oz) in just 13 days – nothing to worry about as far as getting enough food. After a few days of indecision we decided to call her Adia Nicole. It’s a little different (not too different) but it fits her perfectly. Kristen and I were a little concerned about how Trea would deal with having a new sibling in the house but she has done wonderful. She is kind of testing mom and dad a little bit about boundaries but doesn’t seem to resent or want to hurt the baby. She always wants to help with the baby – change, burp, feed, swaddle, etc. Yeah, you feel bad telling your two-year-old who only wants to help that they can’t but sometimes you just have to. We try to let her help when it’s something that she can do. It didn’t take Trea long to say her name and now it’s “Adia this and Adia that.” For the full details of the birth you can read about it here.

Prior to Adia’s arrival in our home Kristen’s sister, Erin, and her husband came to visit us. I think the plan was to come and visit us AND to see the new baby but it just didn’t work out that way. Their trip to Thailand was kind of a graduation celebration as Chris finished his two master’s degrees. They spent a few days in Bangkok and then came up to see us for about four days before going to a beach down south for a week. I couldn’t help but laugh when I had picked them up from the airport and we were on the way into town and they asked, “So, what is there to do in Khon Kaen?” I think I laughed and promptly answered (truthfully), “nothing.” They had a good time in Khon Kaen just hanging out and seeing the “real” side of Thailand (versus the tourist areas of the south and Bangkok which is a world unto itself). I think Erin was kind of bummed that Adia decided to come THE DAY AFTER they left.

The timing on the new baby couldn’t have been much better. The last day of school was the 16^th of March followed by two weeks of wrap-up and planning for next year. So, we were just finishing up those last few days when Adia arrived and I’ve been able to stay home with Kristen and take care of her. This past week has been pretty dreadful; we’ve all been sick with a cold and are still fighting it.

Yesterday was the beginning of Songkran, the Thai New Year. There are a lot of religious ceremonies and other things that go along with the holiday but really it’s just a 3-5 day water fight. I’ve been told that everyone drinks a lot. Yesterday Kristen and I were driving around and saw people already along the sides of the roads throwing water at passersby (mostly the motorcycles and songtaews where you can actually get someone wet). This was Thursday when most things were still open, Things will be interesting over the weekend. We’re planning on being home most of it but if we feel up to it I’d like to just drive around (with windows up and doors locked) and see how it is.

Well, I have all these things that I want to get done over the break but between having a new kid, a two-year-old, and being sick I haven’t accomplished many (as this is only my first post). Well, that’s a lot so I’ll wrap it up.

Engrish Post 2.2

If you aren't sure "begerry" is supposed to be "bakery." Not that I asked but I just know Thai Engrish well enough by now. Stop by this place for an apple joice or two.

"Please don't make the noisy" - is this a sexual reference? - that from Kristen. This from our hotel in Laos.

For some reason some of the best examples I've seen are beauty related. Unfortunately I only have one picture. A beauty shop that we have here in town is "Porn Beauty." It's too bad but the word in Thai means "blessing" or "happiness" but for some reason they chose to romanize it p-o-r-n. Additionally, while in Laos I saw a "Beauty Salorn" and a "Beauty Saloon." Wonder what it was like in there? "Assy Nail" is one that I see fairly regularly and I just love it. I had to get a picture of it.

Engrish Post 2.1

Well, after a long hiatus another Engrish brog is here!!

This is the packaging from one of Trea's toys. It's true, you can indeed develop intelligence with the muscil that this toy plays. Listen to muscil as often as you can! What's your favorite type of muscil?

From a menu:

This was taken at the zoo on our October trip. Welcome to the Honnbill Ganden. Take a stroll through the ganden.

This is one fine specimen of Engrish. Seems like some of the best examples come from China where someone just looked things up in a dictionary and pieced them together. This is from a set of a geometric rulers (protractor, angle ruler and ruler). "Needed the paterfamilias accompany, if the children haven't 3 years." I love it!!

This is Criminal!

So, after an extremely lengthy hiatus I will attempt to get all of you (the thousands of loyal fans) caught up on my exciting life. Time here has been passing by so quickly. Unlike most schools here in Thailand, our school has a two-week break over Christmas and New Years. They are able to do this because it is a private school and can do whatever they want. The reason that they do it is to accomodate the foreign teachers, many of whom like to go home and see family. There are EIGHT of us. I'm not complaining but it seems odd to change everything for a handful of people but whatever. Anyway, we went to Utah over the break to see family but more importantly to attend Kristen's younger brother's wedding. Due to the wedding we were fortunate enough to get some financial assistance from Kristen's parents, otherwise I don't think we would have made it back to the states quite yet. I am making really good money compared to most Thais but not nearly enough to fly home.

Our trip home was much to quick but was a much needed break for us. Chantrea was a great traveller, all things considered. Her worst leg was the first flight (one-hour) which was from Khon Kaen to Bangkok. There were about 20 minutes of complete meltdown (probably due to cabin pressure and ears that wouldn't pop). During those 20 minutes I thought, "What are we doing? This is going to be a disaster." As I said, that was the worst of it. She was restless and cried some but what kid her age wouldn't be. For a two-year-old she was wonderful!!

We arrived in Bangkok and had a about an hour and a half to claim our baggage and catch our next flight. We knew we would be cutting it close but it was absolutely insane. When we got to immigration the officer there informed me that were we to leave we would be invalidating our visas (which were good through the beginning of May). Kristen and I were both under the impression (obviouly incorrect) that we could leave and come back one time on our then current visas. He informed us that we could get reentry permits there at the airport which would allow us to keep our visas. Unfortunately, we didn't have any pictures, any cash, or any time to apply for those so we just left and figured that we'd get it figured out when we returned. More on this later.

Over the week of Christmas, Kristen's parents had rented a house in Salt Lake City in which the family could all stay together. It was close to the mouth of the canyon and was obviously a rental for skiers but it was perfect for us. We took turns on who cooked dinners. The house had a pool table and pinball machine in the basement, lots of televisions, and plenty of room to just hang out. Christmas was nice and the wedding was wonderful. It's pretty amazing that all of Kristen's siblings are now married in the temple. Trea remembered her cousins and had a great time with them. She impressed everyone with her Thai. They were always wondering what she was saying. Half the time she wasn't even speaking Thai. At one point her uncle Mark was repeating some of the words that he had learned from her and she corrected his tones. It's awesome. It was funny to see her with her older cousins. Their favorite movies are movies like Cars, and Cinderella. Trea -- she prefers Spiderman and U2 concerts. It's so weird. I think I figured out the other day what her first (and probably only) four syllable word is: "elevation" said like it's sung, "el-e-vay-shun."

One thing that made the trip really difficult was that she was up for 3-4 hours (more some nights) almost every night. She finally got just about on to Utah time a couple days before we headed back. Luckily, she readjusted to Thai time much quicker.

I'm really happy that we were able to visit my siblings and there families in Utah even though it was rather brief. We spent about three days with my grandma and it was great. My grandma is one of the greatest people ever! I just love sitting and talking with her. She is so interesting and has tons of stories to tell but even more impressive to me is that she is always learning something new. I feel really at peace at her place.

Interesting: While at my grandma's place the temperature never got above about 35 and then we back to Thailand and it was about 90.

We've now been back in Asia for two weeks. We got visas on arrival which are valid for 30 days. We then needed to go to Laos to try and get non-immigrant visas before those 30 days were up. I decided that since we had a school holiday on Tuesday of this past week we would go up on the weekend, apply on Monday, pick them up on Tuesday (it takes 24 hrs. to process) and could be back to teach on Wednesday -- I want to miss as little time as possible because I feel kind of guilty that it's our fault that we have to do all this. So, we had a nice trip to Laos and found Vientiane to be a very nice city. We enjoyed eating out. Because of the French colonization Laos has great breads (which Thailand does not) and you can find baguettes all over the place. We went out for Italian, Indian, French, and to a Scandinavian bakery. So, that was great but on the visa front we got hosed. Apparently Thailand passed a new law in December that requires that anyone applying for a non-immigrant visa to work in Thailand needs to submit a criminal record or background check. Of course, as with most Thai laws, this is completely stupid and nobody who needed to know about this did (ie the school). So, after a frustrating trip (and an extra day in Laos) we ended up getting 30-day tourist visas and are still trying to figure out how we're going to get everything settled.

I'm sure I had more to say but am hitting a wall after all of these ramblings. Anyway, I've been collecting some more Engrish gems to share with you and I'll be getting those up soon. Hope you like the new formatting but if you don't I don't care because I do and it's mine!

Zoo and More

Okay so, this post was actually written on the 28th of Oct. but I had saved it to my computer thinking that I would add to it. I completely forgot that it was there until just now. I'm up at 1:30 AM -- can't sleep. The Philippina teacher across the street has the chicken pox (undoubtedly caught them from Kristen's class -- they've had five or six kids get them) and I keep dreaming that I've got them. I've never had them so I really, really, really don't want them now. I'm going to try and go in to get a vaccine for them tomorrow. Anyway, here's the post.


Well, I did promise a post about our recent mini-vacation so here we go. As mentioned previously, over the semester break we took a mini-vacation to Korat. We would have loved to take a vacation to a more exotic place – beach or island but decided that we ought to take things a little slower and easier since Kristen is still recovering from her bout with morning sickness. Therefore we decided on Korat because if things weren’t going great we were just a 2 ½ hr. bus ride from home. The bus ride down was really nice. We went on a VIP bus. They served a small meal and the seats were really big and comfortable. While in Korat we splurged and stayed at a nicer place ($35/night). It was really sweet because we were on the ninth floor and had a corner room so we had these huge windows that opened out and looked over the city – although the skyline in Korat isn’t quite what it is in some cities :-).

The Mall in Korat is huge and we had a great time just walking around and seeing all the different shops. We ate a Sizzler which was another nice treat. The highlight of our trip was the zoo. I had a thoroughly enjoyable time. Trea had a lot of fun too although I’m still not sure if she enjoyed the animals or the small playground more. The funny thing about the zoo was that we were taking pictures of and looking at all the animals while most of the Thais were checking out Trea and some even wanted to take pictures of her. I guess that to them she’s kind of like an exotic animal. They had a couple of elephants (an adult and a baby) out along the sidewalk that you could feed sugarcane to or you could ride the adult. Anyway, we stopped to feed the elephants. This proved to be a hilarious event. Trea FREAKED OUT (FROKE OUT). Even watching daddy feed the elephant freaked her out. Kristen held Trea and tried to feed the elephants. I know it’s bad to get so much laughter out of your child freaking out but it was really funny!

We had decided to stop and see some ruins on the way back to Khon Kaen. Little did we know what this would involve. We had to take a 2 ½ hr ride on a non-air-conditioned bus packed with people and our child was tired and cranky. The ruins (Pi Mai) were nice but once you’ve been to Angkor Wat no other Khmer-style temple is going to really inspire awe. Fortunately, on the way back to Khon Kaen we had air-con on the bus but this time no seats (they were all full).

The ultrasound went well. The baby is doing well and appears to be healthy. Unfortunately, the baby was too small to determine the sex. So, we’ll just have to wait and see. Hopefully we can go and get another ultrasound done because I don’t like surprises. It won’t break the bank at $15.

Kristen and I purchased our first car together this past week. Last Friday, Nuansri’s son brought us a car at school to look at. It was a white European car (manufactured by VW but under a different name). It looked all right and we decided that we would think about it. After we went home and had been hanging around for about a half hour we got a “knock” at the door. Nuansri’s son had sent a friend of his over with his car that he was trying to sell – a 1992 dark blue Honda Civic. We liked the way it looked and took it for a test drive and were sold. So, we actually bought the car on Tuesday. I’ve only driven it a few times but it’s SO nice to have a car.

Also, I am now officially the elders quorum president of the Khon Kaen branch. I actually was a bit surprised by this. At first they told me that they were going to call me to be the pres. but then a while later they said that I was going to be one of the counselors so when I got interviewed again and was called to be the elders quorum pres. I was a bit shocked. I am excited to be serving but I’m really in the dark a lot here. I think that I’m going to have to get to know the missionaries really well.