This is our son with our neighbor's daughter (also with missionary parents). He has loved playing with her for the last 3 months. They would chase each other up and down the drive way and play so well together. He would hold her hand while taking her to our house to play. Sadly she is going to North Thailand with her parents. Many of the missionaries with young children are leaving in the next months so most of Luca's friends will be leaving.
This is my teacher and the classroom where I have been spending 5 days a week for the last 2 months having my lessons. I'm up to model 3 out of 9 modules to be completed within our first year. It's great having one of one lessons as I can go at my own pace and ask questions without fearing what other people might think. We have several teachers at the language centre and my teacher is one of them. We were talking about weddings and funeral's today and I found out the Buddhist funeral takes about 3-5days. One language blunder was when my teacher asked me what I would do to help people become Christians and I said that I would go home (I thought she asked me what would I do if many people in Thailand were Christians! If there were many Christians in Thailand I wouldn't need to be here).
On Monday's in Thailand, you will see a flood of people wearing yellow shirts just like this one. Monday is yellow shirt day in honour of Thailand's King (the longest living serving Monarch in the world). Other days have other colours - Tuesday for example is pink shirt day, but the yellow shirt is the Thai's favourite as the King has almost God like status in Thailand. A fellow student read the Thai writing on my shirt this week and he said it was commemorating the King's 80th birthday with the hope - long live the King. Our hope is that one day many Thai will know the King of not just Thailand but of the whole world and everything in it.
We had a short visit from Lisa's brother this week and it was great to have him around and for the boys to be able to see him again. They last saw each other just after our second son was born nearly a year ago. If you see the dark marks on the bath tub the children are in, I think that's mold. I went to the supermarket to try to find a cleaning product to remove the mold. Unfortunately I can't read Thai yet. So I made the best guess I could and bought a bottle of cleaning liquid which I hoped would do the job. I splashed the product on the bath and left it for 10 minutes to work. When I went back I was overwhelmed by the fumes in the toilet. From the smell, and the fact that my hands started to sting I looked at the bottle again and saw the chemical symbol for Hydrochloric acid as the major ingredient! It still didn't get rid of the mold though...
This is the car which we bought last week, a 2001 Toyota Soluna.
Having a car has made our life so much easier here in Lopburi, especially for getting the children to childcare and for a shopping run to Big C or Lotus which are the two big shopping centres (big by Lopburi standards but small compared to the ones in Bangkok). Since we have a car we are planning to visit the church in Thaa Rua which is about 30 minutes drive away this Sunday.
We arrived in Penang on Sunday afternoon and checked into the 'ghotel' a newly opened hotel. This was organised and paid for by a kind friend from our church as a birthday present for Lisa. The hotel was right next to a big shopping center which was fantastic.
The main purpose of our short visit was to apply for and collect our long term visas. So Monday morning at 8:30am Rich went to the Thai Embassy and started filling out a visa application form. By 9am when the embassy opened there were already around 30 people there all with the same purpose. I had a bit of scare when the official couldn't find my approval letter from the department in Thailand. I made a quick call to the OMF office in Bangkok and they were able to fax over a copy of the approval letter. I was very relieved when we all received our visas the next day.
Medications our son's been prescribed
On the days we have language school we have to take the children to and from childcare. Rich is taking our youngest son strapped to his back and our oldest on the child seat. We thought the days when it got to 40 degrees plus were hard, but rainy days can be an effort as these photos demonstrate. We felt like 'real gungho missionaries' for once.
Tonight I took our eldest son our for dinner at the night market for dinner. The skies were a little grey but we were only going out for 15 minutes so I thought it would be o.k. When we got to the night market it started to bucket down with rain. We had dinner under the cover of a tarpaulin sheet waiting for the rain to stop but it kept on raining. Soon, my feet were covered with 10cm of rain. It was starting to get dark so when the rain eased a little I put my son on the bike seat and started off home in the rain. The road was flooded so it was hard going. I was glad to get home, drenched but safe. I made it sound like it was a great adventure to my son so he enjoyed the experience.
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