First Day of School

Another year, another picture. This year we looked through all of the "First Day of School" pictures, it was amazing to see them change each year. Where did the time go? Can you see Ahnika's braces? She has handled the aches and pains well, she has said several times that she misses fresh vegetables. A mom doesn't hear that very often.

The Night Before the First Day of School

What a difference a year makes. There is simply no comparison to this August and last August, things are amazingly easy the second time around. Since we arrived back in Bangkok on July 27th we have been relaxed yet busy. We have been putting a few more things together in our apartment, baking a lot (all three of the girls) because we now have a bigger kitchen, a full size oven AND a mixer.

Gary and I have spent a lot of time at school, but in a mellow way whereas last August was so stressful: new bank accounts, work visas, setting up internet connections, buying bikes, learning the basics of Thai, buying school uniforms for the girls, figuring where each meal would come from… the list goes on.

But now it is Saturday night and I am ready for school on Monday and I won’t be going in on Sunday. The girls took care of their own uniforms and not only are they familiar with the school they are so comfortable here they were both student hosts today for incoming new students.

Yes, we are still busy. But the stress and anxiety of the unknown is gone. The girls still want to return to the states next summer and that is the plan. So that means that those of you who want to visit us have 9 months. We do have an extra bedroom and bathroom. We also have a lovely new golf cart, bright red, that we are enjoying as we scoot around our community. So if you come to visit us you wouldn’t even have to ride a bike in the heat.

Our Visit to the States

I am writing this as we are flying countless hours back to Thailand, our temporary home. After a mere 5 weeks in the US we have seen so many familiar, wonderful people and it has been great to reconnect while being fed, loved and spoiled. Someone labeled our situation as “rock star status” … need I say more.

Years ago as Gary and I pondered when to go abroad we felt strongly about two things:
1) we wanted the girls to be old enough to remember the experience
2) we wanted them to know where their home and history was. We didn’t want our girls to fall into the category of “third culture kids” or those who move so often that they feel they don’t have a home country and culture. After spending a few weeks in the states, we all know exactly where we belong.

As I sit on the plane I am going through the pictures during our short visit, I have tears in my eyes as I write this. I am simply so grateful.

During the past 5 ½ weeks we have been in 9 different cities….and slept in 12 different places…at least Gary and I have slept in only 12. The girls had many more, it was a sleepover marathon and they wouldn’t have had it any other way. Thank you to each of you who helped us out; with a meal, a bed or a ride here or there. It does take a village, and we know where our village is.

Back in Bangkok

We arrived safely in BKK last night around 10:30 pm. It was close to 24 hours of travel and 4 countries: Canada, US, Japan and Thailand. In all of these countries we had to go through immigration, the longest line was the US immigration- and the slowest I might add.
Arriving in BKK was such a different feeling than last year, there was no anxiety and we were able to return to our "home" complete with familiar bedding and personal items.

We are all jet lagged and it should really hit us in the next few hours as it is night in the US. But our wonderful mae bahn tackled the unpacking and we are almost done already. She was glad to see us, but brought us the sad news that her husband passes away two weeks ago. (He had a stroke at the end of May) She is so loyal to us and says she will not need any time off now that we have returned.

It is nice and sunny here, 89 F and humid...it was raining when we left Seattle and 62F. After several mild-no cold- weather in Seattle I am fine with the temp here. Now I can wear my sundresses! I wore my jeans almost every day in July and I only wore them 3 times during the last year here....

Hope all is well with everyone,
Missing you all already,
Kristy

Carbon Footprint....in the Rain

I posted on FB the other day how proud I was of myself for biking everywhere. Since moving to Thailand we have not bought a car, and we are not planning on it. Our little planned community is so small we can bike everywhere and we can even bike to the nearest mall.
The other day I biked 7 minutes to school, then after school I biked to the bank, the grocery store, walked to the seamstress and met Ahnika at her doctor's appointment- all with no car. We are all feeling responsible and "carbon footprint conscous." Fast forward one day later...
Ahnika and I came out of the market to a serious thunderstorm and a downpour! We threw our grocery bags (cloth bags, mind you) in our bike baskets and began furiously pedaling! Almost instantly I had a large raindrop in one eye and counldn't see a thing from that eye and could barely see through the rain with the other. "Go faster, Mom" Ahnika shouts at me.
The rain was warm, but there was a LOT of it. We were laughing most of the way home, squinting and enjoying the puddles that were already forming.

We pedaled home in under our usual 7 minutes and we were completely drenched.
The groceries were drenched- the paper bag of flour was wet, the cereal box we already soggy and collapsing...in 7 minutes.

Now I am from the rainy NW, but this we don't usually do our grocery shopping in the rain. So I as I was trying to salvage the flour I thought to myself, "sometimes you just gotta have a car... and a footprint."

Bali April 2011

Bali Blog

I’m learning that you can tell a lot about a country, and the people that live there, by the traffic. Bali transportation, like Thailand and all of SE Asia, is dominated by motorcycles; scooters to be more precise. The scooters in Bali carry anything and everything as in Thailand but the roads are smaller, rarely more than one lane each way. Drivers honk, but it’s more to say excuse me than get the hell out of the way. Although might has right, scooters are allowed to weave in and out of traffic with impunity. It’s a very relaxed chaos here.
Bali is definitely a place to relax. We only had time for one day at the beach but the beach we picked was gorgeous. Small, with white sand and anchored with contrasting volcanic black rocks on each end. Uncrowded, quiet, and tops optional, with a few mom and pop shops selling drinks and a bit to eat.

Even our bike ride was relaxing. We were taken up country and coasted down, down, down through villages, farms, and of course, terraced rice fields. Our guides were in no rush. They allowed us to take all the pictures and video we wanted. They moved when we moved and stopped when we stopped. They answered all our questions and made us feel at home.
The terraced rice fields are an incredible site; a modern day Machu Picchu. In Thailand, water is moved with small engine water screws. In Bali the water simply flows downhill through a series of irrigation channels. In Thailand, machines are used for plowing, planting, and harvesting. In Bali no machines are used, just an ox for plowing, every thing else is done by hand. At the end of our bike ride we where served lunch among some rice fields in different stages. After watching people cut, thrash, collect, dry, etc. Ahnika commented that she had a new appreciation for rice.

We had a great rafting trip. The classification was in the 2-3 range but the water was warm and the canyon filled with plant life. There were a couple sections 50 to 100 yards each where the basaltic canyon wall had been carved depicting Balinese stories. It was recently commissioned by a local hotel but looked like something from a lost generation.
We spent a day diving a World War II ship wreck near our second hotel in Pandang Bai. The ship wreck had become a huge reef covered with life. We also paid a local with a very nice Polynesian style boat a whopping $20 to take us to his secret snorkel location. It was one of the best snorkeling sites I have been to. He also took us (just to satisfy my comparison curiosity) to a touted snorkel location described on many inter-net pages. It was good, but hiring that local was money well spent.
And of course there was Ubud. The arts and crafts where great but Ubud has become too commercialized, and overrun with hoards of people coming in on tour buses.

10 Best Things about Bali by Kristy
10) Green, green everywhere- so many shades of green
9) Banana leaves, folded into bowls, used as placemats, woven into curtains
8) Clear water and colorful coral
7) Art: batik, carvings, jewelry, baskets and paintings
6) Self-sustainable living
5) Smiling school children walking to school in colorful, ironed uniforms
4) White sandy beaches
3) Woman carrying amazing things on their heads: tables, fruit and rice
2) Daily ceremonial offerings of flowers; outside of businesses, temples and your hotel room door
1) Peaceful, kind people


Check out more Bali pictures at the following link

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1660021754592.73476.1658637733&l=9f3b24ee62..

Kayaking in Laos

One of the three parts of ISB’s mission is to produce caring, global citizens. What better way to do this than to shut school down for a week and send kids off to do just that. Ahnika, for example, went to a school in Bangkok to paint. I’m not talking artwork, I’m talking painting the walls of an old school. Because Ahnika is a freshman, and freshman pick last, most of the more exotic trips were already filled.
I, on the other hand, went with seniors to kayak the 4,000 islands group of the Mekong river, in southern Laos. We spent the days kayaking, biking, hiking, inner tubing, and site seeing. The nights we spent interviewing local people to learn what life is like for an average villager along the Mekong river. Students were broken into groups that had at least one Thai speaker. Thai and Laotian languages are close enough that a conversation could take place. The students would write questions together. The Thai speaker would translate and someone else recorded. After dinner, students would take turns reporting to the group what they learned about the people through their conversations.
It was very obvious to the students that they lived a privileged life. They learned a lot about the people, their families, their hardships and the way progress of the outside world was changing their lives. But the trip was about having fun too. We kayaked every day, sometimes twice a day, never in serious rapids, but plenty to keep a bunch of rookie kayakers thrilled. Most of the students had never kayaked before. Teaching them how to coordinate their paddling in these double kayaks while also teaching them how to steer was no easy task. They would run aground, run into bushes, run into each other. They would splash each other, whack each other with their paddles and go in circles.
The area we kayaked was home to some notable distinctions. The Khone falls are the widest stretch of falls in the world. Covering a width over 6 miles meant you never saw the whole thing at once but the sections we did see where beautiful. We were able to spend time watching the Irrawaddy Dolphins. These are a species of fresh water dolphins that are considered highly endangered. The river is also home to the Mekong catfish, the largest freshwater fish in the world.
The river is very warm, not bathwater warm, but warm enough to float down the river for close to three hours in an inner tube.
Although there are lakes and rivers all around Bangkok and its suburbs, the water is not clean enough to swim in. The Mekong was the first body of fresh water I have swam in since I’ve left Seattle. The lead guide told us we could swim in the river. I think he meant wading, because he had a strange look when I actually went out into the river and started swimming. The current was strong enough that at about 15 to 20 yards off shore I would swim facing upstream but not get anywhere.
The last night of the trip we spent camping on a huge sand bar about a mile long and one half mile wide. There were seven senior boys that needed one more body for some four on four touch football. They asked me to play like they were asking some guy in a wheelchair. There was even a little argument as to what the teams would be. Obviously nobody wanted the old guy. Well the old guy held his own, toasting his defender, “the captain” of the other team, for a long touchdown and getting a pick to preserve a 3 to 2 victory. Of course I didn’t let them know that I could hardly walk the next two days.
The experience was awesome, from kayaking in a unique ecosystem to eating dinner prepared by village families, I can now truly say I am a global citizen.

The first picture reminds me that life is what you make it. The second picture is the group queing to run a stretch of small rapids between some very large rocks. The third picture is a set of trees that have been pushed over year after year when the river floods during the rainy season.
The fourth picture is sunset from a village. Fifth is a village house. The sixth picture is a forest losing its leaves. Here forest lose their leaves in January and February in preperation for the hot season that lasts March through June. The seventh picture is an ruin that dates back four to five hundred years. The stone in the eigth picture may have been used for sacrifices.