She's up, she's down...
I've been everything from ecstatic hovercraft to broken down Honda this week. One of my ecstatic hovercraft moments was in seeing the absolutely kind and generous comments many of you left on the last post. Thank you. I love the warmth I felt in the commentbox.
(Some of your comments were moderated at first, which can be frustrating because you can't actually tell what's going through. Hopefully we'll work out the kinks.)
We had to go to the immigration office this week in Chiang Mai, and I'll spare you the long drawn out details, except to tell you that I got there at 7:00 am and we finally got done at 5:30 pm. There were many hot hours of sitting and waiting with grumpy kids who kept telling us that the immigration office was boring, as if we didn't know that.
Here's how Solo feels about the immigration office.
The first picture is from nine months ago and the second from the other day. In his first photo he's just not so impressed, but in the second photo, well. He's downright hostile. The photographer took one look at him, handed me the camera, and said, "You take the picture." So I did.
In the middle of the day we were able to drive over to Carrien's house and visit for a while, and then she graciously watched our kids for us while we went back to immigration and sat around some more. Then we missed our bus back to Pai and ended up all crashing in different spots in her house (which is actually her brother and sister in law's house) and she was gracious and loving and kept handing me food while I was nursing. The way she does.
We were exhausted when we got home yesterday and at first had a little panic party when we couldn't find one of our two remaining chickens. But I listened very closely and I heard her cheeping away. We found her across the street, at our neighbor's house in his bicycle basket with a board on it. (?) Not sure what all that was about, but finding the chicken stopped YaYa's tears.
Isaac was crying really hard and I was having a hard time getting him to stop. Our landlady had stopped by with some apples for us and she thought he was hot, so we took his shirt off and she wiped him down with a cold cloth. I personally thought he had gas, but there was no doubt that it was hot out. (108 degrees!) so I let her wipe him down, him screaming all the while.
I think she went home worrying about it, because this morning Khun Thanom, her husband, came over with a length of flexible pipe and told me he was making air conditioning for us.
I looked at the pipe, trying to understand. He strung the pipe from the trees and put nozzles that make mist into it. I love how he makes things happen so quickly. Now the pipe mists the area around our house and it really does help. If I'm in the kitchen and I get a little breeze with some cool mist in it, I feel different. I feel mistier, cooler, more mysterious, more European.
But speaking of water, tomorrow is Song Kran! Thailand's New Year and epic water festival. The kids have been counting down the months and days until Song Kran for the last eleven months. Oh, how children love a country wide water fight.
I'll close with this shot of Isaac, not screaming.
Just being very, very adorable.
I'm loving the conversation, so tell me- do you have any memories of being doused with water?