Up Early Again

I can't seem to sleep past that 3am mark, I seem to be functioning okay on 5 or 6 hours of sleep but I keep waiting for it to catch up with me. Every other family member seems to be adjusting better to the time zone than me. Ethan told me he wants to take a 6am walk on the beach and that he would wake up on his own-yet to be seen!

Mark is officially 'legal' to work in Thailand now. Monday we started out at 8am to the US Embassy to get a visa-which made no sense at all to us since we had already obtained a 1 year visa in DC but Mark's Thai liaison said, "Things are different here, must go to Embassy for other visa." Anyway, it only took 3 hours to sort out the confusion and figure out what they really needed, thankfully the boys had brought books, I didn't sadly, but had lots of opportunities to visit with all the other people waiting in the lobby. I sat by this man from Tennessee, an older man who had a strong Southern drawl (I know-pot calling the kettle black!) whose passport and wallet had been pick pocketed the day before at a street market. It's a good thing I sat by him-he needed me!! After 30 minutes or so I noticed that he had no paperwork and obviously didn't see the stolen passport paperwork on the wall. I helped him fill it out before his number was called. He was flustered and a little more than ready to get back to the States. After finally getting the all important piece of paperwork we went to another place of bureaucracy to get the official work permit, we had to sign a lot of papers and the liaison sent us on our ways without our passports and will finish the procedure for us and deliver our passports and work permit on Thursday. We are very grateful that step is behind us as yesterday we ran into a British 'fellow' and family, at a school visit, who ironically is one of Mark's new employees, and they have had a glitch in their paperwork and don't know how long it will take to sort it out and until then he will continue to be unable to work here. We finally returned to our hotel around 2 pm and ate lunch there. We had some nice wraps and sandwiches and a Starbucks treat-to our dismay the coffee concoctions are exactly the same prices as the US prices, it really makes it seem ridiculous when you are comparing it to coffee down the street for 1/4 of the price.We then started out for Pattaya. I'll put some pictures up of Bangkok, as you can see I only have learned how to do a slide show!