Buying School Uniforms

In the hotel, every morning we have a wonderful buffet breakfast. Can you imagine Thai food every meal? We really love Thai food (thankfully!) and we all eat some combination of it every meal. Yesterday, Ethan had pancakes and rice with fruit and salad, Dustin does an omelet/fried rice combination, Nathan ate some spicy garlic pork with toast, Mark might have some eggs over easy with some sushi...The Thai people eat with a Tablespoon in their right hand and a fork in their left. You use the fork to scoot your food unto the spoon, it's really quite efficient, I like it and we love the food here.

After breakfast we visited yet another housing development. Now this was the kind of area I had envisioned when we first learned we were being transferred here. It had a secure perimeter and tasteful fencing between all the houses not the 8 foot concrete barricades. The house we walked through was gorgeous, every room was surrounded with glass looking down unto the tropical garden and beautiful pool. It had a great maid quarters with a new Thai kitchen. (A lot of houses we have looked at have a separate kitchen outside the family living quarters for the cook, so the pungent aromas of all that delicious Thai food doesn't pervade through your house.) Finally, just what I had envisioned. It had horse facilities with several arenas, a paintball field, an archery field, great club facilities and spa...If it was just Mark and I we would have signed the contract right there but it would be a 50-60 minute bus ride to school, the backyard was a huge common area between 3 homes, as many facilities as were offered the immediate area around the homes didn't feel too kid friendly, more like a showplace. Realistically, I couldn't think how we would arrange all our furniture in so many glass rooms. We brought more furniture than some ex-pats because we could and because we thought it might help the boys adjust easier with their own 'stuff'. We would have to store some of it in the maids living area. It just really wasn't realistic, Nathan will just have to make weekend visits to the paintball field there.

Back to our original house with the terrible back yard, I'll try to swing by and take some pictures of it before they complete some renovations. The administrator of the property met us there and said a contractor has already been hired to paint the entire house, polish all the floors, clean and re grout the bathrooms and hopefully clean up the yard some. What a blessing, I feel so much better about this house, the one that is bike-riding distance from the school. It's just more livable for our family, lots of storage areas, 4 nice size bedrooms, open concept, a dishwasher- which is a rarity in homes here, ceiling fans in some of the rooms which also seems to be a rarity in Thailand. We can get it unfurnished for a much cheaper price than the showplace, saving over 1,000/month. It feels like a normal US neighborhood with kids riding bikes everywhere you just have the tropical surroundings, we will have a coconut tree, banana trees and mangoes in our yard. If we get the agreement all hammered out we won't be able to move in until the first week of September because of all the renovations to be done. Isn't it amazing how quickly a hotel can grow old, the school van will pick the boys up in the mornings at 7am for school, I'll probably be picking them up with the driver's help in the afternoons.

The boys had admission testing yesterday afternoon and all did very well. Dustin made a 100 on the math test, the Administrator wanted to read Nathan's composition on rain to us and said it made her "tingly", she commented that she gave him the subject and he just started writing. All those EIW helps-he had lots of ly words, strong verbs and alliterations. Ethan tested 6th grade level in math and 9th grade in reading comprehension. She was very complimentary to their teacher and asked if I would be available for substitute teaching, it was a relief to all of us to have the testing behind us. The company has some arrangement with the school that we are guaranteed admission but it's nice that they want us! We then did the whole school uniform thing-what a new experience for all of us. The boys seem excited, school begins next Wednesday after a national holiday on Tuesday to celebrate the Queen's birthday.