Chiang Rai - Day Three

Our third day in Chiang Rai was the first official day of Songkran.  We wanted to do the traditional water blessing for the holiday, and so our guide took us to Wat Huay Pla Hung.  We had seen the giant Buddha statue from the plane on our way into Chiang Rai.

What we hadn't seen from the plane, was the great Chinese style temple next to it.

There was even a strategically located chair for fun photo ops.

The sun had come back, and with it, the heat, so the ladies stood in the shadow of the dragon with the breeze coming through a coil, while Jeff (as our family rep) lit good luck incense in front of the temple.  

Then we went inside.  Vivian thought the wooden statues were great and got really into bowing before them.

Elena followed Vivi's lead and got on her knees and bent over.  Young worked on showing her how to put her hands together.  It was really cute.

There were stairs leading up to each new level of the temple.  At each level there was another statue for praying.

The stairs got a bit treacherous towards the top, so Young and I stayed with Elena while Jeff, Vivian, and the guide climbed all the way to the top.  Jeff got some great pictures and put them all together into a panoramic shot.

Then the guide took us to do a water blessing inside and outside.

Next, we went into the town itself to do a little shopping and some quick sight seeing.

We had lunch at a riverside restaurant five minutes walk from our hotel, and then lounged around for the rest of the afternoon, relaxing and enjoying our last full day in Chiang Rai.

The next morning we got up and had a leisurely breakfast outside to enjoy the cool weather.  Then we got on a plane and flew back to Bangkok, home, and the heat.

Chiang Rai - Day Two

We had optimistically asked our guide and driver to pick us up at 9:00am for our second day in Chiang Rai.  Unfortunately, Elena didn't know about the schedule and got us all up pretty early.  We used the time to enjoy the hotel's breakfast spread and the lovely cool weather.  Jeff, Young, and the girls walked around the property, while I sat on the beautiful balcony and got some work done.

Our main agenda item for the day was the Doi Tung villa and gardens.  This is a property that was built by the king's mother later in her life.  The region around Chiang Rai has very good soil and growing conditions, but people were mostly using it to grow opium.  The king's mother made it a project of hers to redirect these efforts.  Now the area is known for coffee, macadamia nuts, and beautiful flowers.  It was about an hour drive to the villa from Chiang Rai, which worked out perfectly for Elena's nap.  It was quite rainy for the first part of the drive, and it was still raining a bit when we got there.

Doi means mountain and tung means flag.  Our guide pointed to these banners at the entrance as an example of tung.

We decided it would be best to visit the villa first since it was still a bit drizzly.  It was actually chilly!

I hadn't packed warm clothes for the girls, but I had a shawl which we wrapped around Elena when she was in the stroller.  We couldn't take the stroller into the villa though, so she was just walking around and enjoying it all.  We also weren't allowed to take pictures inside, so all I have are pictures of the outside.

We each got an audio guide that described the architectural style as a cross between a Swiss chalet and traditional Thai architecture.  The flower boxes had carvings of local images and elephants.

We came in a side door.  The main doors are only used when the royal family comes to stay.  In case you get any ideas, there's a guard on duty.

Vivian got really into the audio guide and listened to the full explanation at each number which was really cute.  The house was interesting, and the view was beautiful, even in the rain.

By the time we were done with the villa, the rain was letting up, so we walked down to the main gardens.  They were absolutely beautiful.

There were also a lot of fun features that Vivian enjoyed.

She was especially excited to find a maze.

We spent about an hour exploring the gardens, and then we were ready for lunch.  There was a little restaurant there, so that's where we got our food.  I tried the chicken with macadamia nuts which was yummy.  Elena has definitely crossed the line from baby to toddler.  She had fried rice for lunch,

and drank water right from the glass.

She's walking everywhere by herself now, but she slowed down and took a nap on the ride back to the hotel.  The weather had cleared up by the time we got back to the hotel, so Jeff and Vivian went to play in the pool, Young took Elena down to the kids's club, and I did some homework.  That evening we left the girls to chill with Young again,

and Jeff and I went back to the Italian restaurant.

This time we knew to pre-order our souffle for dessert.  It was totally worth the extra time and went really well with a glass of port, yum!

Even with the rain, it was a great day, and we really loved the Doi Tung villa and gardens.

Chiang Rai for Songkran - Day One

I got back from my trip to the States on a Monday, and we had a family trip planned to start on Saturday.  At first glance, this seems insane, but there was an underlying logic.  Vivian's spring break was that following week, and Jeff had Monday through Wednesday off for Songkran, so it seemed like a waste to just stay at home.  Songkran is the Thai new year and the celebration lasts three days.  Part of the Songkran celebration involves pouring water over Buddha statues at temples as a cleansing ritual to earn merit.  Since it's celebrated during the hottest month of the year, the water part really caught on, and Songkran now means a water free for all.  You cannot walk down the street in downtown Bangkok without getting splashed, hosed, or sprayed at with a water gun.  Out in the burbs, Vivian and some of her friends armed themselves with water guns, and a very brave mom drove them around in her golf cart so that they could spray water at people and get sprayed at in return.

I knew I would be loopy from my trip, so I didn't want to go anywhere too far away for our vacation.  I also knew it would be hot, so we decided to go as far north as we could go while still being in Thailand.  Chiang Rai is up in the northwest of Thailand right near a spot called the Golden Triangle where Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar meet.  It takes a little over an hour to fly there, and the morning temperatures there were a good 20 degrees colder than the ones in Bangkok, so it was worth the airport hassle.  Young had never been to Chiang Rai before, and we thought it would make the vacation a lot more fun for me and Jeff if we had her to help with the girls, so we asked her to come with us.  She ended up enjoying herself and being a fantastic help, so we're planning our future vacations to include her as much as possible.

We got to Chiang Rai around 1:00pm, and we had arranged for a driver and guide to pick us up.  They took us directly to our first stop, the White Temple, officially known as Wat Rong Khun.  It's a new temple, still under construction, being built by a local artist as a merit making activity.  It was damaged a bit during a recent earthquake, but they're working to repair it and make additions.

The temple is simultaneously beautiful and weird.  First you have to walk through hell and all the suffering souls reaching up for help.

You walk by angels guarding the entrance and up the path of balance and harmony.

You're not allowed to take pictures inside the shrine, which is really too bad, because there's a fantastic mural all over the interior walls.  Buddha and enlightenment are in front of you when you enter.  On the wall behind you are lots of pop culture images.  Batman and Superman are there, so are Michael Jackson and the Millennium Falcon.  On the side walls are images of people flying on leaves.  They are all facing towards the Buddha and away from the pop culture.  It's not subtle, but the overall effect is pretty cool.

After visiting the shrine, we walked out one of the side gates

and over to a wishing well.

That, of course, was right up Vivi's alley.  Our final stop was at the "golden toilet."  The bathrooms are housed in a building that is almost as impressive as the temple, but in gold instead of white.

Elena had fallen asleep right before we got to the White Temple, so Young stayed in the van with her and the driver while Jeff, Vivi, and I got the tour.  Then we went back to get her, and I went with her and the guide for round two.

It's the kind of place you could stay at all day and keep noticing little things.  Some of them were weird,

but most of them were beautiful.

After two rounds of the White Temple, we were ready to go to our hotel.  We stayed at Le Meridien which is a chain I had never heard of before we moved to Thailand.  The first things we noticed in the open air lobby were the painted elephants.  Vivi thought they were awesome, 

and she proceeded to sit on every single one.  The hotel staff seemed okay with this, so we just let her go for it.  As we explored the hotel more, we found the painted elephants all over the place, with no two alike.  I think Vivi sat on every single one.

We had two large, connecting rooms.  There was one with a king bed for me and Jeff, and one with two double beds for Vivian and Young.  We put Elena in the room with me and Jeff, since I wanted to make sure that Vivi and Young didn't have their sleep interrupted.  The best part about the room was the balcony.  It was large and had a built in padded bench with big triangle cushions on either end for lounging.  You could look out over the pool and the grounds.

I spent most of our hotel time sitting on the balcony, enjoying the breeze, and doing my schoolwork.  Vivian and Jeff set up camp on the pool loungers closest to the room, and Young took Elena to the kids' club (which was really just a small room with some toys).  You can see top of the wooden gate to the club in the bottom right corner of the picture.  From the balcony, I could keep an eye on my family and wave and admire as required.  It was a perfect arrangement.

That night it was raining, so we scrapped our plans for taking the hotel shuttle into town for the open air night market.  Instead, Young and Vivian ordered room service, while Jeff and I made a run for the hotel's Italian restaurant on the other side of the pool.  It was worth getting a little wet though, since the food was good and the service was excellent.  We had the whole place to ourselves, and it made for a lovely date night.  We decided that our vacation was off to a great start, and we celebrated by ordering decadent desserts and watching the sun set on our first day in Chiang Rai.

Flying Solo

My doctoral program is pretty much all online, but once a year I also go to a "residency" which is an in-person, week long class.  Walden, my university, offers residencies throughout the year and around the globe.  They have one in Istanbul and Paris this year, but they also have one five minutes from my parents' house in Arlington, Virginia, so tomorrow I am getting on a plane and flying home.  While it will be great to see my friends and family in Virginia, I don't know how I'm going to do with being apart from my family here.  This will be the first time that Vivian and I will be apart for more than a night since she was born.

That paragraph was the start of my blog draft over three weeks ago, and I am now finally caught up enough on my schoolwork and my life to get back to blogging.  The trip went fine, and my family survived without me, but, as always, there was some excitement along the way.

I started the trip by reveling in my solo travel status and taking airport pictures, both of the pretty

and the amusing.

I left Bangkok early Friday morning and flew through Beijing to get to DC.  Beijing is possibly the most intense airport I have ever been to, and they are not set up for people who are using them as a transfer point.  First, I had to walk through an infrared sensor to prove I didn't have a fever and could enter the airport.  They show you this scary video right before you land saying you will be quarantined if you don't pass this test.  Luckily, I passed, but then I had to wait in line for about an hour, because they had one person doing passport check for everyone with an international transfer.  It didn't matter that we weren't entering the country, we had to have all the paperwork filled out, and they sent people back who didn't have all the boxes checked.

It was a good thing I had a two and half hour layover, because I still had to go through security and passport check again to get to the departure gates  At the end, I had about twenty minutes left before boarding.  I foolishly bought a bottle of water, not knowing that they had yet another check point set up after you showed your boarding pass and started walking towards the plane.  They went through everyone's bags again and took away water.  It didn't matter that I had just purchased it twenty feet away.

It was all worth it once I got on the plane though.  I had paid extra for an economy plus seat, and I was in a two seat section next to the window.  No one showed up to sit in the aisle seat, and I didn't have any seats in front of me, just the cloth covered section divider, so I had my own little alcove for the trip.  It was wonderful, and I got a good bit of sleep.  I had no problem getting through Dulles airport, and my mom and sister were there to meet me with big hugs.

I got over jet lag pretty well.  I just faded early in the evening.  The residency was great.  I learned a lot and really started to zero in on my dissertation topic and methodology.  I loved the time with my family, and I got to hang out without at least one friend each day.  I spent the last day shopping and bought Vivi almost a whole new wardrobe.  She's grow so much in the past few months!

It was hard being apart from Jeff and the girls, but we talked on Skype at least once a day, and I knew they had Young to take care of them too.  I had left pretty detailed plans for what Vivi should do each day after school, and I had several friends helping out with pick up and play dates.  Of course there were a couple snafus, but nothing critical.  I know Jeff was stressed about working and being the only parent on duty, but overall things went smoothly.  We definitely couldn't have done it without Young, who took extra special care of Elena and slept up in Vivian's room to keep her company at night.

After seven days in the States, I packed up all my purchases in a humongous suitcase which I figured would weigh more than 50 pounds, and got in the car with my parents to drive back to Dulles.  The first sign that something was wrong was when both lanes of 66 came to a complete stop, but we couldn't have predicted that it would take two hours to get to the next exit, and that by that point I would have missed every flight to Asia for the day.  The traffic was the result of an eight car pile up, so I tried to keep things in perspective and remind myself that missing my flight wasn't that bad, but I was really upset.  I had bought the ticket with points, which gave me a bit more flexibility than a straight itinerary purchase, and after a couple calls to United, we came up with a new plan.  Even though I had missed all the flights going west for the day, I hadn't missed the ones going east, so I could fly through Dubai to get back to Bangkok.  I decided to focus on the fact that I would now be able to say that I had flown all the way around the planet.

The new plan got me home Monday morning instead of Sunday night, so it wasn't too big an adjustment.  I got lucky again on the long flight, and I was the only person in a row of three, so I could lay down across all the seats.  I got plenty of sleep on the flight, and the Dubai airport was a breeze compared to Beijing.  No passport check and just one quick security check with no line.  There was no one next to me for the second part of the flight either, so it was a comfortable and easy trip.

Our favorite taxi driver met me at the airport and brought me home to my family who all had the day off for Chakri Day.  Chakri Day celebrates the establishing of the Chakri dynasty in 1782 with king Rama I (who I know as a road).  It is also the dynasty that moved the capital to Bangkok, so there are lots of Rama roads.  I take the Rama IV road to get to the embassy sometimes.  It was nice to have a family day together, even if I did have a hard time staying awake.  The whole trip was a bit more of an adventure than I had bargained for, but it was great to see family and friends, and it was really helpful academically.

Night on the Town

We are incredibly lucky in our life here in Thailand and in our beautiful daughters.

The cherry on top of all of it is that we also have the option of enjoying downtown Bangkok kid free.  After our debacle last weekend and in anticipation of a bunch of travel that will keep us apart in the future, Jeff and I decided to spend Friday night downtown.  He also has a work friend in town, so it was a great opportunity to show him some of our favorite spots.

First stop was the Red Sky Bar.  We headed over to enjoy the post-work/pre-dinner happy hour.  The first challenge was figuring out how to cut through the mall to get to the Centara at the back.  There were signs, but after following them, we got to a dead end.  I didn't mind too much though, because I got to discover new things in my favorite mall.  They've redecorated the escalator circle too.

Eventually we figured out that we needed to walk through the parking garage to get to the Centara elevators, because, why not?  We just had to make sure not to get distracted by the half floors.

We got to the bar around 5:00pm, which turned out to be the perfect time.  We had our pick of seats and got settled with drinks before it got crowded.  The daylight view was really nice too.

We enjoyed our slightly smoggy sunset,

and then got our favorite night view with the city all lit up.

After several rounds of buy one, get one free drinks, we figured we should probably get some dinner.  Jeff wanted to go back to Neil's Tavern which is where we went for his birthday dinner when we first got here.  It's either a short taxi ride or a long walk from Red Sky.  We opted to walk and enjoy more of the city.  On the way out, Jeff got a picture of the big curve that decorates the bar.  It changes colors, and he caught it on green.

After a delicious dinner which we ate too fast to photograph, Jeff and I walked back up the street to the Oriental Residence which is right next to the main embassy building.  We had found a great last minute price on a suite there, so we could spend the night downtown.  We went onto our balcony and waved hello to the Red Sky bar which we could see was back on the green light (back and to the left).

I had checked into the hotel earlier while Jeff was at work, and it was hard for me to convince myself to leave.  The sofa was super comfy.

And then they brought me complimentary macarons.  

I was in heaven.  They even had fancy technology stuff for Jeff.  We really liked the hotel, and it's definitely one that we could go back to.  We have a lot more exploring to do though.  

When we got home the girls were happily playing.  Elena's new thing is dumping all the duplo blocks at once.

Young said both girls were happy and slept through the night.  Vivian loves having a "sleep over" with Young.  It makes it so much easier to enjoy ourselves downtown knowing that they're having just as much fun out in the burbs.  We'll definitely be doing it again soon.

Lessons Learned

Vivian had Thursday and Friday off for conferences.  The spring ones at ISB are student led, so she's been prepping for hers for the past week.  I was impressed with how organized it was.  She had a folder with her work and a check sheet on the front for a guide.  She also had an iPad and had done some recordings explaining her work with a picture of the work as a background.  It was really well done.

She was most excited to show us her science work.  They've been studying insects and each student got two mealworms to take care of.  They are keeping them in little tubes.  Vivian moved around the science area like an expert.  She got a paper plate to gently empty her mealworm onto, and then got us a magnifying glass so we could look at it more closely.  She decided he seemed thirsty and got him a piece of potato for refreshment.  It was really cute.

In addition to the two days for conferences, Vivian also had the following Monday off, which meant five days without school.  Originally, Jeff was supposed to be traveling at this time, and so I had made reservations for Young and I to take the girls back to the hotel near Hua Hin that we went to a few weeks ago.  I couldn't cancel the reservation, so we decided to go ahead and do the trip even though Jeff wasn't really excited about it.  I had also booked a taxi to take us there, because I hadn't wanted to drive, so Saturday morning we got in the taxi and headed off even though Vivi was the only one who was excited.

When we got there, they told us that they had upgraded us to the suite on the top floor.  This sounded good, and when we got up there the balcony that ran the length of the room was impressive.

Less impressive though was that the entire room was open, unlike the "junior" suite which had the bathroom between the living room and the bedroom making it easier for us to hide from Elena at bedtime.  When I called the front desk to see if we could downgrade, the lady I spoke to told us she was really sorry, but the hotel was completely booked and no other rooms were available.  That was also the reason they couldn't help us out with the fridge that didn't get cold, which meant Jeff was stuck with warm beer.  Not a good start.

Vivian really wanted to go to the pool to try out her new inner tube and go down the water slide, so I left Elena with Jeff, and took Vivi down for some pool time.  She had fun on the slide, and then floated around making up games.

When we had come for Chinese New Year, there were lots of English speaking kids, but March and April are the summer break for Thai schools, so all the kids there this time were Thai and didn't speak English.  Vivi shared some smiles, but couldn't really find anyone to play with, and in the kids club, the movie was in Thai with English subtitles.  Vivian, being the reader she is, thought the subtitles were a fun challenge, and took the whole thing in stride, but I felt bad.

As the night wore on, it went from bad to worse.  Elena wouldn't go to sleep and wailed at the top of her lungs.  Jeff tried to put on a good face, but I could tell that the crying and warm beer were not making him happy.  The tipping point came in the middle of the night, when Vivian woke up crying.  She's had a cold, and she was so congested that she couldn't clear her throat.  She cried, she gagged, she ran to the bathroom thinking she was going to throw up. Elena woke up and cried because Vivian was crying.  It was bad.

We got the girls settled, and everyone but me fell back asleep.  Both the girls were whimpering in their sleep, and it was the saddest little sound.  At that point, I decided we needed to go home the next morning, and not try to push through to the second night we had planned.  I was really regretting taking the taxi, because it meant that getting home was going to be a problem.  I was already upset about the taxi, because when I had called and asked how much the trip was she had told me it would be 3000, but then when we got there, she said, oh no, 3000 each way.  Well, our favorite van driver had told me it would 6700 roundtrip for the van.  I figured his vehicle was twice as big, so it cost twice as much; turns out I was wrong.  I decided since the price was pretty much the same, I would send the van driver a text (it was 2:00am at this point) to see if he could pick us up the next morning.  He forever cemented his place in my heart as the best driver ever when he responded five minutes later with an okay.

When everyone woke up the next morning, and I told them we were going home I could tell Jeff was relieved.  Vivian was a little disappointed, but quickly got over it when she realized she could play with her friends at home.  We all spread out comfortably in the van for the ride home, and I knew I had made the right call.  It was not a fun experience, but I learned a lot from my mistakes.  The most important takeaway was that I need to stop stressing about planning activities for Vivian when she doesn't have school.  She's perfectly capable of keeping herself busy, and hotels with a baby are stressful!  I realized that when Vivian was one she had only ever stayed in one hotel for one night.  Elena, on the other hand, has already stayed in six different hotels.  Our life here is already a vacation, so we don't have to leave our house often, and when we do, we're going to have Young come with us, so that it can be a vacation for me and Jeff as well as for the girls.

Beauty and the Beast

The travel company of Beauty and the Beast came to Bangkok, and I thought it would be perfect for Vivian's first full length musical experience.

I think it was actually the first professional musical I ever saw (Mom, feel free to weigh in).  I still remember going with my high school drama class to see a preview in New York before it opened.  

As Vivian and I were sitting and listening to the opening announcements (please silence your cell phones, no photography), they mentioned that this was the 20 year anniversary of the Broadway version of Beauty and the Beast.  Doing the math in my head, I realized that, yeah, that high school trip was twenty years ago.  I could never have imagined then that twenty years later I would be sitting with my six year old daughter watching the same musical in Bangkok, Thailand.

As with any experience we've had in Thailand, there were some quirks to it.  It began with getting to the theater which is, of course, in a mall.  Everything in Bangkok is in these giant mall complexes, and, on the weekends, that is where Thais go to hang out.  This makes the parking ridiculous.  I've written in other blogs about trying to go to our local mall on a weekend afternoon (major traffic jam in the parking lot, Jeff dropped me off) and about getting to Siam Paragon early enough to get a parking spot, only to find myself double parked in when I was ready to leave.  When Thais double park you in, they kindly leave their car in neutral so that you can push it out of the way.  Unfortunately, they'll do a whole row that way, so you really have to start pushing at the back of the row.  I don't like to push cars in the best of circumstances, but I definitely didn't want to do it dressed up and keeping an eye on Vivian.  Final decision, call our favorite taxi guy.  He usually takes Jeff to the airport for trips.  He's honest and uses the meter, which is rare, and so far he's shown up every time.

Of course I still had to triple confirm with him to make sure he showed up at the right house at the right time, and then I pulled up Google maps while we were driving.  With typical Thai logic, there are two malls fairly close to each other that have almost exactly the same name.  I had a bad feeling that he might try to go to the wrong one.  Sure enough, he turned right when he should have turned left.  I asked him to pull over and showed him the map.  He did an, "Ahhhh," like he finally understood why I had said the theater name ten times, instead of the mall name.  The mall is called Esplanade, but when he saw it written out in Thai, suddenly it all made sense to him, and he said, "Empanad!" Apparently, this is like how Central is actually Centon, and Thais have no idea what you're talking about if you say you're going to Central Mall.  On the flip side, we say bubble tea instead of boba tea, so the moral of the story is always triple check, because mispronunciation leads to miscommunication.

In the end, I was really glad we got the taxi though.  The parking lot was such a mess that the traffic was backed into the main street.  It was no problem for us though, because we just hopped out right in front.  That gave me and Viv time to explore the mall a little, look around the theater, and find our seats, no rush, no stress.

At first Vivian was worried the play would be scary, because there are parts of the movie she finds scary, but she quickly got into the performance and was watching intently, no fear.  It was almost as fun to watch her as it was to watch the play.  During intermission we had some interesting conversations about things like why the orchestra was in a pit and what was different between the movie and the play.  Vivian said she really liked the Beast's song which ends the first act.

By the end of the play, I could tell she was getting tired.  She moved slowly on the way out of the theater.  Luckily, getting home was easy.  I just called our taxi buddy and he came around to the front to meet us.  I had agreed to pay him an extra $10 to wait for us for three hours.  While it may seem a bit crazy to hire a taxi to take you to a play, wait for you for three hours, and then take you home, it was the best solution I could come up with to avoid the pitfalls of going to the mall on the weekend in a country where taxi drivers you wave down on the street will typically either try to cheat you or just refuse to take you where you want to go.  It ended up working out perfectly, and we made a memory that I will treasure, and I hope she does too.

Makha Bucha

Vivian has a lot of days off of school.  There are standard school holidays like teacher work days and seasonal breaks, but she also gets lots of Thai holidays I've never heard of before, case in point, Makha Bucha day this past Wednesday.  It's a Buddhist holiday celebrated during a full moon.  The observant Buddhist goes to temple at night and there is a ceremony with candles.  It's also a day when you're supposed to try to be sin free, so maybe that's why there's no work or school.

It's kind of weird to have no school on a Wednesday, so I wasn't quite sure what to do with the day.  I didn't feel like going downtown, so I thought it would be worth a shot to see if Vivian wanted a pampering day.  I told her she could have a massage, get a hair cut, and we could go out to lunch.  She thought that sounded great.

I booked us for the shortest massage I could find, and one that was only head, neck, and shoulders.  Vivian is very ticklish, so I knew she didn't want anyone going near her feet.  She was excited in the beginning, but she wanted the lady to do it very gently.  The lady giving her the massage didn't speak any English, and, even though it would seem to be common sense to take it easy on a kid, didn't seem to understand what we were asking for.  Vivian said she didn't like it when the lady pushed on her back, but it was okay when she rubbed her head.  Verdict: she doesn't want another massage.  Oh well.

After that, we went to get her hair cut which she was really excited about.  She has wanted it shorter for ages.  I told her it had to be at least long enough for a ponytail.  We compromised on shoulder length, and we're both happy with the result.  The original plan was for her to get the little braids in the front as well, but by the time we got to that point, she just couldn't sit still any longer, and said she didn't want braids after all.  It's too bad, because they look really cute and cost almost nothing, but I could tell she just needed to move.

She ran the whole way to the club for lunch and then proceeded to run around outside and feed the fish while we waited for our friends to join us.  Luckily, we were the only people there, so the kids ran around and played with just a brief break for food and drink.

The next day was a free dress day at school, but Vivian's favorite part was her hair, which she got lots of compliments on.  I almost forgot that she had a play in Thai class which parents were invited to come watch.  One of my friends sent me a reminder text, and I raced to school at the last minute.  I'm not sure if our golf cart is going to last for three years, given the speed bump abuse it's subjected to, but I made it just as Vivian was about to start.  It turns out she was the main character, an elephant.  She did a great job and here's the grin to prove it.