Tires, pictures, and a birthday party

It's been quite a week.  On Tuesday I put Elena in the car and drove Young to the fruit and vegetable stands.  After dropping her off, Elena and I went to the Nichada office to pay a bill.  On the way back to pick up Young, I accidentally bumped the curb in front of the Nichada Starbucks.  I don't know if it was the way the curb was built, the way I hit it, or the quality of the tire, but the tire shredded and was almost instantly flat.  I managed to hobble-drive to the Club parking lot and got out to assess the damage.  This is a picture of the tire after it came off the car.

One of the guards came by to check on me.  He didn't speak much English, but he knew the word wow.  I think that sums it up.  I have bumped many a curb and flattened many a tire, but I've never seen anything quite like this before.

My biggest immediate concern though was that Young was waiting for me to come pick her up, which I now could not do.  Luckily, I was still in Nichada, so help was just a phone call away.  Two of my neighbors came to rescue me and Elena, and then we all drove to get Young.

One of my friends has a guy who helps her with car troubles, so I gave him a call.  He put the spare tire on, brought the car back to our house, and gave us his assessment.  It turns out we had one kind of tire on the front of our car and another kind on the back.  My new tire friend gave us some replacement options, and once we had decided what we wanted, called his friend who has a garage to make an appointment to bring our car in the next day.  He showed up again the next evening, took the car and brought it back with four new tires.  The good news is that his services cost about $15.  The bad news is that he said our brake pads are down to 20%, so we'll need to use his services again to fix those.

After all the excitement Tuesday, I was hoping that Wednesday could be a calm study day.  No such luck.  We had people coming by the house all morning.  They were coming to do helpful things like fix a broken bathroom fan, measure the stairs for a baby gate, and hang our pictures, but it felt like I barely sat down before the doorbell rang again.

After doing some picture hanging research, I found out that our moving company would send people to hang the pictures at no additional charge.  One of my neighbors used them and said they did a great job, so I scheduled an appointment.  Three guys showed up, a manager and two workers.  They were awesome.  The manager spoke English, so he helped with interpretation and picture height.  The other two did measuring and banging.  They did a great job centering the paintings and putting them at the heights I asked for.  They also had the special drywall screws for some of the heavier pictures, and they popped them into the wall, no muss, no fuss.

After they left, I golf carted it over to the mall to get cash for my fabulous new tires, and then met up with the magazine editorial crew for lunch at ISB.  By the time I got back from lunch, I just wanted to lay down and take a nap, but Vivi got home from school and tutoring needed to happen, so I pushed on through.

Thursday was a perfect studying day.  Young took over Elena care, and I just worked on my week's readings and response assignments.  It was heavenly.

I was hoping today could be like that too, but we had to go to the grocery store in our car with fancy new tires, but not so fancy brakes (I left plenty of space between me and the car in front of me for gradual deceleration).  That always takes a chunk of time out of the morning.  

In the afternoon, when Vivi got home from school, she told me that I had forgotten that today was library day, and so she hadn't brought back her books and wasn't allowed to check out new ones.  I pointed out to her that she was the one who went to school every day, not me, so she should be the one to remember library day.  Despite my outward firmness, I felt bad.  There's no school next week, and I wanted to make sure she had books for vacation, so we collected up her library books and got in the golf cart to head back to school.

It actually ended up being a fun Mommy Vivi outing.  We went to the snack booth and I got a chocolate chip cookie for her and a strawberry banana smoothie for me (of course she drank most of it).  We also stopped by her classroom because she had left one of her library books in her reading bin.  While we were there, she proudly showed me the stories she has been working on.  Then we went to the library to get new books.  She had to take a moment to enjoy the circle windows, so of course I had to capture it.

Once we got home, we had to get ready for one of our neighbor's fourth birthday party.  His mom had told kids that they could wear their Halloween costumes, so Vivian had on her Elsa costume and left a trail of glitter wherever she went.

Most of the neighborhood kids were there, so Vivi had a great time playing, and I had a great time talking to the other parents.  I had to take a picture of the cake.

When I showed it to Jeff, he declared it awesome, so I guess it's a guy thing.  It tasted good, and everyone had a great time, so it was definitely a successful party.  It was a nice way to end a crazy week.

Last AtB Outing and Halloween Prep

Today was the final After the Boxes outing.  This one was to the Christmas Store and then to the River Tree House for lunch.  I didn't want to miss it, but I also didn't want to totally ditch Jeff who was off today for Columbus Day.  Luckily, we found a good compromise.  We did a morning walk together, and then Jeff rode with another embassy husband and met up with all the shopping ladies for lunch.

Obviously I enjoyed having Jeff's company on the walk, but I was also really glad that he brought his phone with him and could take pictures of some of the Halloween "decorations" that have been up around Nichada since the beginning of the month.  Some of them are only vaguely disturbing (note that there are eyeballs mixed in with the candy).

But they get progressively more disturbing.

Yeah.  That last one is on the road near the school.  Apparently these are the tamed down versions, and there also used to be scantily clad lady ones.  These would be fine for a frat party, but really seem out of place in what is essentially a kid friendly suburban neighborhood.

It was a cool 77 degrees and there was a bit of a breeze, so Jeff and I had a lovely walk during which we discussed whether or not the zombie rabbit had been cannibalized by another zombie rabbit.

After the walk I headed over to the church to meet up with the AtB ladies and shop at the Christmas Store.  It turns out that the Christmas Store is not actually called the Christmas Store. 

They also sell decorations for most major holidays, but it's Christmas that hits you in the face when you walk in.

They had some Mardi Gras looking decorations mixed in with their blue Santas.

In the second room they had more fall and Halloween decorations.

It was fun to walk around and look at things, but it took a couple passes to really process it all.  I ended up getting a fancy Christmas wreath, a decoration for the golf cart (since Vivi has been complaining that everyone else's golf cart is decorated and ours isn't), and a fun Halloween headband for myself, so that I can be kind of dressed up for Halloween without actually having to dress up.

After shopping, we headed to the River Tree House for lunch.  There were helpful signs to get you to the parking lot,

and of course, there was a wat.

But after the parking it got a little trickier.  The restaurant is on the Chao Phraya river, and you have to go down this little alley to get there.  There are complimentary motorcycles with seating attached to take you there, but I opted for walking.

The restaurant is lovely during the day, and at night I'm told it's all lit up and is even prettier.

The menu is like a book.  Luckily, one of our group leaders had preordered a sample of dishes for us to try.  It's typical in Thai restaurants to eat family style, which works well when there are so many exciting options.

Jeff and the other husband showed up right after the food did, and we had a great time eating and talking about the spiciest foods we'd ever tasted, both on purpose and accidentally.

We walked back to the car since we were so full and thought it would help.  As soon as we got back home, I tied the witch hat with legs onto our golf cart, so that it would be waiting for Vivi when she got home.

She was satisfyingly thrilled.  She also like my headband, but I only let her try it on, since I'm afraid she'll manage to dismantle it if I let her play with it.  

I'm determined to make the best of Halloween, no matter how scary it gets.

Roof Top Dining

One of the required Bangkok experiences is to sit on the roof of a ridiculously tall building at night.  You can just have drinks or you can have a whole meal, while you enjoy the breeze and the view.

As far as I can tell, most of the nice hotels have at least a roof top bar, so there are lots of choices.  The roof top experience was on our list of things to do, so when our friends offered to have their driver take us all downtown for the night, we were in.  They're new too, so we weren't really sure how to pick a place to go.  We used the Bangkok Guide, and ended up at the Vertigo Grill which is in the Banyan Tree Hotel and also has the Moon Bar.  The two parts take up pretty much the entire roof of the building. 

Unfortunately, it's not covered, and it was raining when we got there, so they seated us downstairs for a while to start.  I ordered a caipirinha, and I had a moment where I worried I was drunk before I had even started drinking.

After some initial teasing, the rest of the group confirmed that my glass was slanted on the bottom, causing the whole drink to tip precariously.  Not sure about the motivation for doing this, other than the tipsy factor.

We stayed downstairs for appetizers,

but then our highly energetic waiter came to enthusiastically tell us that we could now sit on the roof, since the rain had stopped, and they had dried everything off.  We ditched our downstairs table, which only had a view out a floor to ceiling window, and headed for the roof.

Our waiter had to slow his pace, because as soon as we got out there, we had to stop for photo ops.

The food was fine, but way overpriced.  We decided we didn't mind for this time, but next time we would just do drinks and munchies at the Moon Bar.  It was hard to mind about much of anything, since we had good company, good drinks, and a fantastic view.  On the way home we all agreed that this was the first of many roof top nights out.

Chatuchak

After spending the week unpacking, I decided I deserved a break, so I went on the After the Boxes trip to Chatuchak.  Chatuchak has some things going on during the week, but what it's really known for is the weekend market that starts on Friday.  You can get pretty much anything you can think of in Chatuchak.

It seems like most people park at JJ Mall which is at the top of the map.  It has a big parking garage, and as long as you get there early, there's plenty of parking.  

Chatuchak is huge and is loosely organized by what's being sold.  Luckily, the group I was with all agreed that we wanted to go to the ceramics section.  

My goal was to find Benjarong ceramics, a beautiful Thai enamel style.  We found several stores, and it was as beautiful as I had thought it would be.

There are lots of different colors and patterns to choose from.  They are also made in different qualities of ceramic from every day to fine bone china.  I decided I'll shop around some more before I make my big investment, but as I was walking around, I saw this beautiful piece sitting on  shelf, and since it was only $10, I decided it had to come home with me.

After several hours of walking around and looking at pretty things, we all decided we were hungry.  Of course, on the way out of the labyrinth, there was a shop that several people wanted to look at.  I was really thirsty, and there was a guy with a cart selling "bubble tea" so I decided to try the coconut flavor.   The coconut bubble tea is neither carbonated nor caffeinated, which made me want to figure out why it was called bubble tea.  Once I got home, I did some research.

The first ingredient is tapioca pearls.  Which are made from gelled and dyed tapioca.  

They are also called boba.  When I told Young I had bubble tea, she said, "Oh, boba tea!"  This leads me to the conclusion that bubble tea is the western butchering of boba tea, and it helps explain why there are no bubbles in it.

The second ingredient is the smooothie part, which I guess was originally just iced tea, but then branched off to other flavors like coconut.  Finally, you can top it all off with some gummy bits.  I was so thirsty, I drank it without taking a picture, but here's the finished look:

                                    

The coconut part was yummy, but I'm kind of on the fence about random tapioca gummy balls in my drink.

After my bubble tea experiment, we finally made it to lunch.  Most of the easy dining at Chatuchak is the standard Thai set up of the "kitchen" being a table with some hot plates and pots, and the "restaurant" being tables and stools set up under an awning.  The food is usually really good though, so that's what we did for lunch.

For dessert, I had green mango.  You can see a slice of it on the edge of my plate.  It's similar to an apple in texture and flavor, and, like an apple, you can get VERY sour ones, so it's good to be cautious when buying it.

I had fun shopping at Chatuchak and will definitely go back, but my favorite part of the day was the culinary experimentation :-)

Sea Freight!

It came on Monday.  First the truck pulled up.

Then they took off the snazzy yellow Asian Tigers wrap and underneath were the exact same crates I waved good by to in Arlington three and a half months ago.

We were ready for them.  We had labeled the bedrooms with numbers, per our friends' advice.  Jeff and I were positioned in the doorway.  Jeff had a copy of the inventory list and a pen.  His job was to check off boxes as they came in to make sure everything arrived.  My job was to tell the movers where the boxes should go.  Elena was hanging out in her playpen in the laundry area (yet another perk of enclosing it!), so that Young could keep an eye on her and the kitchen arrivals.  

The movers worked fast to get all the boxes in, since the sky looked like rain.  The result was a box pile up.

They unpacked a little, but then it was time for their one hour lunch break.  It was torture, since all my stuff was right there, but it wasn't getting unpacked.  Luckily, my kitchen knives were out, so I grabbed one, and started hacking away at the brown paper wrapping.  One of my main goals was to find all of my green and red Christmas boxes and stash them all the way under the stairs, so that I could put other things in front of them.  I worked on that while the Asian Tigers hid from the rain under our covered driveway and ate lunch.

After lunch, they made quick work of getting everything unwrapped and out of boxes.  They were also very efficient about clearing out all the wrappings and empty boxes.  In fact, they were too efficient.  I was trying to save a couple big boxes for my friend's haunted house, but they were gone the second I turned my back.

Jeff took off from work on Tuesday as well, which was a huge help.  His tallness came in very handy when we were unpacking things in our kitchen made for giants.  We had to order dinner on Monday, because the kitchen was not functional, but by the end of the day Tuesday, the house looked pretty good, and we could use the kitchen and dining room for their intended purposes.

It's the end of the week now, and there are still some boxes to be tackled, but it feels MUCH more like home.  I really want to hang all the pictures, but that will have to wait for next week.  For now, I'm happy that the play area is set up, and most of the books are unpacked.  The girls are enjoying it.

Catch up and Kidzania

After Mom left, I cracked down on my school work and the blog totally took the back burner, so now I have to try and do a succinct update on the last week and half.

First of all, Mom left, which was sad, but we're comforting ourselves with the thought that she'll be back soon, and she'll be bringing more fun people with her.  I was very negligent of my school work the first part of the week, so I had to scramble the second half to finish my paper for my Research Theory class comparing two educational theorists.  I wanted to branch out and do something a bit unexpected, but without a good library as a resource, I had to stick to the basics, so I compared Vygotsky and Piaget.  I am officially turning into someone who reads theory for fun.  Oh dear.

I took a break Friday night to go to a new friend's birthday party.  She's German, but grew up in the States, and Vivian has made friends with her daughter who is also in first grade.  They're really nice, and their entire roof is a patio looking over the lake, so it's perfect for partying.  We stayed there until after midnight dancing and singing at the top of our lungs.  Young watched the girls, so we had a guilt free, great time.

On Sunday night I got to have my first Downton Abbey viewing party.  It turned out just being two of the closer friends I've made since I got here, which was actually perfect.  I won't spoil anything for my American friends, but we had plenty of things to offer commentary on, and we got through a bottle and a half of wine, so it was a good night.

On Monday, AtB had an outing to the Jim Thompson Outlet.  I really wanted to go, but I knew that Vivian would have Thursday and Friday off this week for parent teacher conferences, and I didn't want to get into another school work bind, so I decided not to go.  I figure I'll go another time and do a strategic hit instead of spending the whole day there.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were pretty quiet.  I did school work, tutored, and hung out with the family.

On Thursday, we had big plans.  Vivi and I were going to go to Kidzania (since we've already gone to the Funarium, love these names), and I was going to do my first drive downtown while my friend sat next to me as my copilot.  Unfortunately, the plan hit a slight snag.  By mistake, Jeff took both sets of keys to work with him.  I was really bummed, but decided to keep calm and carry on.

I figured my friend could drive, but she wasn't answering her phone, so Viv and I drove over to her house in our golf cart only to find that her car was gone.  Turns out her husband went into work late and took the car.  Whoops!  Vivian was oblivious, because by that point we were at her friend's house, so they just went off to play while my friend and I tried to figure out Plan C.

There was one other mom with two kids who was planning to go with us, and she had a big vehicle, but her husband was also going into work late and leaving work late, so he was planning to take the car.  It took some wrangling, but we finally figured out a husband carpooling system, that would allow the wives to have a car for the day to take the kids to Kidzania.  My take away from the morning was it's fine to make plans, but don't get too attached to them.  I had to keep that in mind throughout the day.

When we finally got to Kidzania both Viv and I were very impressed with the set up.  It really was like a miniature city.  The only weird part is that it was a night time city, which I didn't really care for, but you got used to it.

At first, Vivian was enjoying herself.  She went to the bank to get her Kidzania money.

Then she and her friends wanted to learn to be fire fighters, so we got in line and waited for a while until we realized that Vivian wasn't going to make the cutoff for maximum number of kids and would have to wait another 20 minutes.  She and I decided to explore and find something that didn't have as long a line, so she learned how to pump gas

and change a tire,

but it was really crowded and loud, and she started to have a bit of a meltdown.  I thought she might need some food and a change of venue.  I knew there was a Subway in the main part of the mall, because it's the same mall that has Ocean World, so I asked if she wanted to get a sandwich, and she said yes.  I also asked if she wanted to go to Asia Books at Central Mall, and she said yes.  She said she "hated" Kidzania.  I think it's probably worth another try on a day that isn't also a Thai school holiday, so it won't be so crowded.  

But, in the moment, I had an upset kid, so I went to plan, what are we on now, maybe J?  I got her to Subway and fed her which perked her up a bit, and then we walked on the sky path above the main street to Central World which is on the other side of the Wat.

We got to Asia Books, and she went right to her happy place with a book.

I sat next to her for a while until my stomach growled, and I realized that while I had been very diligent about feeding my child, I had forgotten to feed myself, so I bought her some books and we walked over to the dumpling place at the mall.  

She read while I drank carrot/celery/pineapple juice and ate dumplings, 

and then we walked back to Siam Paragon to meet up with the friends we came downtown with.  She was very happy by that point, so I think the day was saved.

Friday morning I had my conference with her teacher who had very nice things to say about her.  The only negative was that Vivian is a bit overenthusiastic and doesn't always wait for her turn to participate, but I know where that comes from (sheepish smile).  She's doing great academically and socially, and she really seems to like the school, so I'm very happy.

In the afternoon, we invited over some friends who don't live in the Prestige area and went to hang out at our playground.  We inadvertently drew our regular street crew to the playground too, so it was a big playground party.  The kids all had a great time.

Today we took it pretty easy except for an impromptu trip to the mall.  Apparently we get two True bills, but when I went to pay our bill a couple weeks ago they didn't mention anything about an outstanding bill.  Therefore I was very surprised when we no longer had cable television this morning.  I called our Nichada rep, and he called True, but the only way to fix it was for me to go to the mall.  A Thai mall on a Saturday afternoon is no joke, so I brought Jeff along.  It's a really good thing I did, because the parking lot was a bumper to bumper mad house.  He dropped me off and drove around the neighborhood, while I went in and paid the bill at the True store.  It was insane, and I have officially decided that I am never again going to the mall on the weekend.

Since tonight is the first Saturday of the month, it's Secret Garden time again.  They have face painting this month, and Young really wanted to take Vivian to get her face painted and Elena just because she loves Elena.  The party started at 5:00pm, and we were planning to meet up with friends between 5:30 and 6:00, so Young took the girls right at the beginning while Jeff and I got ready.  

By the time we got there, Vivian had had her face painted and then sweated it all off in the bouncy house.  There were slight hints of pink and white around her forehead and cheeks.  Luckily, the face painting was free because Vivian went through two butterflies (both of which sweated off) and finally ended the night as a cat.

We're getting the hang of the Secret Garden thing now.  There are long tables set up near the bandstand, and that's where you can get food and pitchers of beer.  We set up at a table with various friends we collected throughout the evening, and that was home base.  Vivian and the other kids could run around and do the free stuff like face painting and playing with play dough, and then come back for water and a hug.  Throughout the evening one of the other moms with a baby and I walked around the fair to check on the kids in their native habitat, but there were people everywhere who we knew and who knew our kids, so it was really safe and fun for them to have some independence.  We're already looking forward to next month's Secret Garden night.