Tuesday morning — and we awoke in our new home. We slept well, but were so exhausted that we would have slept well flat on the tile, I believe! Our air beds were comfortable. We didn’t realize it would get so cool in the middle of the night, though. Tonight we are scaring up a blanket.
I still have plenty of organizing to do, but we are moved in. Lots of stuff sits here and there without a place of its own yet. My goal is to find a place for everything so that it looks neat in here, at least once in a while.
I made breakfast with my new pink electric skillet. Only, when I opened the box, I found it was bright green, instead. We don’t precisely have a color scheme, though, and taking things back is a huge pain, so I decided to be content with a green skillet. I was surprised to see that the heating element is attached. It can’t be removed for washing, so cleaning this thing will be tricky. It also doesn’t have a choice of heating temperatures. It’s either on or off. However, it successfully cooked Paul’s scrambled eggs, so I think it will be worth the 400 baht ($12) I spent. I’ve dubbed it “Otto” since that is evidently the brand name.
I carried my new dishpans out to the porch and washed my dishes while the sweet smell of flowers drifted by on the breeze. Not suffering hardship here! We even had hot showers. The water pressure wasn’t great, but it sure beat splashing cold water over us with a bucket!
Since it’s Tuesday, the men are slow to arrive. They go home after school Friday and come back today. The ten or so who are here are interested and active, though. They all participate. I heard Philip asking Paul about Bible translations and saw them earnestly discussing the matter.
I only had Isa in my English class, but little Arlong has discovered I am here and showed up bright and early this morning. He joined Isa for English class and picked up the words quickly and without an accent. He may well be my star pupil.
After class I decided to go to the Internet place where I am told you can go online for an hour for 10 baht. I was going to walk there by myself, but Brother Anond insisted that someone who speaks Thai go with me, so Fon cheerfully agreed to accompany me. But we couldn’t communicate well enough to figure out how to get there. I wanted to walk, but wasn’t sure she wanted to walk the mile there and back. In the end she fetched our faithful So Pic and he took us and dropped us off.
What a disappointment! The Internet Cafe was a greasy place with clunky old computers, full of young men arguing in Thai. I guess they were arguing. It’s the kind of language that sounds like a fight is starting when you say, “Please pass the rice.” Worst of all, they had no WiFi, so I couldn’t post my blog. I went ahead and checked Facebook, but it was so s-l-o-w that it wasn’t really satisfactory. Besides, most of my friends were in bed at 2 in the morning!
I discovered that So Pic had left us, and Fon was planning for us to walk back. That was fine with me, since I like to walk. I would have done better if it hadn’t been all uphill and if I hadn’t been carrying a 400 lb. computer case. Well, it probably wasn’t THAT heavy, but I wished everyone had misunderstood in a way that So Pic brought us home instead of taking us. That set me wondering why I had taken Fon with me, anyway. She could tell the guys at the Internet place what I wanted, but I had no way to tell HER what I wanted! She cheerfully puffed up the hill with me though, and we both had a good workout for the day.
But how to post the blog? Where there is a will, there is a way. We have our room at the condo until the end of January. Brother Anond had to bring the Camps back here, anyway, and he and Paul are going to try to find a way to get a hot spot set up so we can use WiFi. Meanwhile I went back to our old room and posted the blog. I also wrote this one and will post it ahead, just in case they don’t manage it.
The day isn’t over yet, but if anything of interest happens I’ll catch you up in the next post!
Blessings from Thailand,
Susan
My handy-dandy “Otto.”
Gourmet kitchen?
A place for everything — almost. And my pink refrigerator.
Sleeping on air.
This is my “office” where I write my blog.