Fun with Friends

Last week we met a family of four girls, which was like heaven for Vivian.  In fact, the first time we stopped by their house to pick something up, she didn't want to leave, so I let her stay while I finished running errands and then came back for her an hour later.

Their mom home schools them, and even though the pace is slowed down for the summer, they had an art lesson on Wednesday that they invited us and another family to join them for.  It was a really interesting lesson on Vincent Van Gogh, and their mom had a series of activities for them to do to familiarize themselves with one of his paintings, learn about other artists and their styles, and then do some painting of their own.  She had a whole painting area set up for them, and she even lent Vivian a smock.  Needless to say, Vivian's finished masterpiece is now decorating our fridge.

I took Vivi home for some lunch and a rest, and then she went back to hang out with the girls, while their mom and I went shopping and ran errands.  Since I don't have a car yet, it's difficult to get to the stores I need most which are Home Pro (read Home Depot) and Big C (think Wallmart, but the Thai version).

I needed to go to Home Pro to get a bug zapper for the outside laundry area, and I needed shelving for the room off the kitchen that Young and I have decided will be the pantry.  The name may sound like Home Depot, and even the store layout looks similar, but the service is SO much better at Home Pro.  I found a big outdoor/indoor bug zapper sitting on the shelf, and so I picked it up, but one of the salespeople stopped me, and explained that I didn't want that one because it had been sitting out.  She proceeded to enlist two more salespeople with a giant rolling staircase to get me one from the top shelf that was still in the box.  To assure me that it worked, they took it out of the box, plugged it in, and one of the men took a pair of scissors and stuck it into the thing, so that I could hear the bzzzt sound that indicated bug destruction.  I'm not sure what the expression on my face was as he stuck the metal scissors into the electrified machine, but I made sure to smile back at his proud grin, and say my kop khun ka (thank you in Thai).

The same saleslady helped us find the shelving and recruited more men to get newly boxed ones for us.  Then they got another man to push our heavy cart to the cashier and out to the car where he loaded everything in for us. Beautiful.

To cap off our Wednesday, I took Vivian to a Tae Kwan Do class, that three of the four girls attended.  I dropped her off at the class, and she was smiling and excited.  When I came back an hour later, she was sitting off to the side, and the very nice teacher told me that she had gotten overwhelmed by all the new people a bit into the class, and so he had her just sit to the side and watch for the rest of the time.  I felt awful for not staying, and I realized that she had hit her limit on new things she could process.

Today I decided we would have a lazy day.  We mostly hung out at the house.  I went to a welcome coffee for the local Nichada social group.  I was planning to leave Vivian and Elena with Young, but Vivian insisted on coming with me.  I thought maybe she was feeling clingy, but once we got there and she saw other kids, she totally ditched me.

The coffee was nice.  There were more new people than old people, and I spent most of my time getting to know the other ladies on my street who I hadn't gotten a chance to talk to yet.  We stayed for about an hour and then went home for lunch and a nap.  In the evening, I let Vivian play for a bit with the neighbors.  We put her to bed earlier tonight than we have been doing, so I'm hoping tomorrow will go smoothly.