Anyway, back to the grocery store. I went to Carrfour which is the French version of WalMart. The meat is just in trays, chicken parts just piled up, uncovered, unrefrigerated in bins and you bag it up and take it to someone to weigh. I'm trying not to think with a Western mindset. Did you know that eggs don't have to be refrigerated at all? I stick with the brown only slightly dirty eggs and veer away from the smaller, bluish, gray eggs-quail eggs perhaps? There is no thought of Costco size packaging, I'm going to be at the grocery store at least once a week, at least! The largest container of milk is a quart or the metric equivalent. It's hard to tell the butcher how many grams you want of hamburger meat or what degrees Celsius to cook it. Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate over here and both it and flour come in plastic bags, I had two carts full and you have to put them on a downhill escalator without steps...are you sensing some of the adjustment I'm having to go through, and that's just a jaunt to the grocery store. I actually saw a girl from my Bible study as I was leaving, in this huge store, I was so excited! A friend-I ran up to her and said, "I'm so glad to see someone I know, I just really need a hug." She's from Peru and there is some language issues or hugging issues and she just stared at me with a smile. I said, "No, I Really need a hug." She just couldn't get it, I refused to ask a third time, she did offer to help with my extra cart though. I will tell you something way cool though, this particular store was playing instrumental hymns while I was shopping, I went again yesterday with Molly and we were just amazed to hear hymns while we were shopping-God is everywhere! I don't think it's an intentional thing, I like to think that God just did that for me, whispering, "I'm in this, I'm here with you..."
There have been several frustrating events this week, Thailand adjustment. I'll cover them at some point. Our first night in the house was not restful at all-lots of new noises, this big property is so cool in the daytime but it feels dark and scary at night. It has all these security systems in place that we still have to figure out, the first night we had the outside motion detectors on and I was up twice and Mark twice checking the cameras after it would trigger, it makes a pretty soft beeping noise that Mark was able to sleep through a couple of times but I was unable to, I think one of the thousands of geckos or a moth may have been triggering it, every time I got up to check the security cameras there was nothing. We are running our air-conditioners only at night, each room has its own system, otherwise all our doors and windows are open-surprisingly, there are few flying bugs that get into the house. Anyway, the first night our air unit leaked continuously on the floor enough to soak two beach towels during the night and to make a really annoying dripping sound all night. Just wasn't restful that first night! Plus, we are sleeping on brand new hard mattresses that are covered in plastic until our sea shipment arrives, at least we weren't on the hard tile floor. The boys seemed to do okay way on the other side of the house thankfully. After four nights and the air system being repaired it's getting easier to sleep. So Wednesday's frustrations were compounded by the fact that I had no sleep the night before. My second and third trip weren't nearly as traumatic.
After feeling scared the first night, I made it my mission the next day to get out and meet the neighbors, they have no idea what has moved in next door!! There are several housed with 6 foot fences and locked gates near us and we are surrounded by lots of Thai people-they are easy to greet just hard to communicate with and the others are walled in and hard to catch. The first day I did manage to meet Nong and her husband that own a little hut by our house and sell cokes, water..I bought a tall water for 10 Baht and tried to explain to them I'm their new neighbor. They have a 5 dogs that lounge around the place and their new house that they are so proud of looks just like a small chapel, if it just had a cross above the front door. I have to carry a stick as I walk because of all the dogs running around. I met another lady on my trek, no English but she smiled a lot and she has a little outside hut I think we might could walk to and eat at. Her name is Birda. As I was returning home I saw a vehicle coming out of one of the compounds that had a basketball goal, so I flagged them down and said, "Howdy!" (Not really about the Howdy but a funny story, Songkran our driver greeted me with a big smile and Howdy one morning this week, it made me laugh! I don't know where in the world he had heard that but guess he could tell it was an appropriate greeting in my case. I tried to explain to him that my Dad is a cowboy and has woo-us (cows), he just smiles a lot, I really like that about him. Anyway, it didn't take long for the new neighbors to figure out I was from America, I was unsure about them. Lee is Cambodian and Sheryl his wife is from the Philippines but they lived in Kansas for over 30 years and both of their boys, Justin 14 and Tyler 9 were born in Kansas. They are only two houses down and were very friendly and not put off by my bombarding them with questions. But because of them I post Our House with a big ?
Last night, the boys came down with a friend to meet our boys, after 30 minutes or so they warmed up to each other. Ironically, I had just made my first batch of hot sauce here and we had two medium bags of some sort of corn chip that we sacrificially shared with them. It took less than 5 minutes for the 6 guys to devour them, they liked the hot sauce (I mean hot, I used 3 little Thai peppers, little about 1 inch a piece and it was smoking. Make the hair on your chest curl as my granddaddy would say!) They weren't a hard group to please though, they said their favorite Mexican food place in the states is Taco Bell, we'll try not to hold that against them though. Shortly thereafter their Dad-Lee came to visit and at one point he told us that he just wanted us to know that Dennis our landlord is in big financial trouble and Lee is personal friends with the builder of this house and they are filing charges against Dennis because he hasn't paid anything on this house. The builder was upset that he had leased it when it is going to the court system, so now you understand the ?. Mark will call our realtor today and just make sure he is abreast of the situation and what we should do. Pray that God will make his will clear to us, if we have to find another house I hope that it can be determined before our sea shipment arrives, right now it would be kinda like moving out of a hotel. I really don't want to have to look again and the boys like this property already, just pray with us. Really it may be no worries at all, the Thai court system is infamous for being slow, slow and we may be gone before it becomes an issue. Our Landlord has been very nice and helpful to us but he is really not liked in this neighborhood, more of that later.
Another prayer concern the political unrest here. We have felt very safe, most of the problems have been contained to Bangkok and the Government center. Some Exxon people were stranded in Phuket when three airports were closed in Thailand because of the protesters and had to take a 17 hour bus ride back to Pattaya. But here is how it affects us personally. The sea dock employees went on strike in support of one of the political parties, the dock where our sea containers are supposed to arrive today or tomorrow, we've been told this will be a one day or two strike. We sure hope. Once it gets to the dock it will take 1-2 weeks to clear customs. It sure will be nice to have our couch, a chair, more dishes-I brought a 5 piece place setting with silverware, one small skillet, a sauce pan, a cake pan, a cookie sheet, sheets for our beds, our pillows, a towel a piece, some beach towels-that all came on our air shipment, that arrived safe and sound on Tuesday afternoon. Okay, I've talked your ears off and I need to get some work done, much more later. Love you and miss you all. I'm so grateful our LA friends were spared Gustav's wrath and are safe and sound. Our Bible study group on Friday morning here were praying for you all, we actually have a woman from New Orleans that is a part of the group-anyway you all were in our thoughts and prayers. Much love!! Here's pictures of the empty ? house, you can see my challenges with the big open room and the deck needs furniture and tons of plants, a thing at a time though.
2 comments:
Very nice! Why aren't you using the bed in the video/lego room? And yes I knew, eggs don't need refrigeration, nor does butter! That is certainly western. Not sure how I would handle the meat sitting out though in the store...eww!
The house is beautiful!! Hope you get to keep it. Know your friends in LA were spared, but lots of damage in Baton Rouge. Seems weird you lived near here at one time!! So glad you werent off line for 2 weeks, been missing your reports.
Love ya'll
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