It's Been A While

It has been a while since I last posted a blog. I think this could be for a number of reasons. One being the fact that I don't think anything of any great significance has occured recently that was worthy of a good blogging. We have been busy getting the house ready. We have been trying to find work and get our visa situation taken care of. I guess those reasons are all a blog in itself.

Anyhow- So things are great here. After multiple trips to Tesco Lotus and Big C, which are Thailand's Wal-Mart and K-Mart duo, strategically erected right next to each other, we have everything we need in the house. Oh yeah, I just remembered, a major reason we haven't been blogging is because our internet has been messed up, but I think last night I did it, I solved the inter-webs. Anyhow, we got a rice cooker, wok, stereo, utensils, plates, cups, cutting board, new sheets and comforter, a rack to dry clothes (No dryers here, just washers), a fan to keep maris cooled off (a story in itself).

We have air conditioning in both rooms and the main room, but because the main room's ceilings are so high and open, the air doesn't really cool it off. BUT the bedroom gets frigid. Maris likes to turn it on all day to about 15 degrees celcius, which is somewhere in between a cold Alaskan Winter and Anarctica at Midnight. She likes to hole herself up in the room from the hours of noon til abotu 2, the hottest of the day. I have kind of grown to hate the air conditioning. It was so cold in the room last night that the windows were sweating on the inside and out. It's hard for me to breathe when every breath I take is coated in air conditioned moisture. But we will just roll with it until I get sick and can point out to her that I am not actually a hypochondriac, I just think that keeping a room that cold unnaturally is bad for one's health. We shall see :)

So the house is set up, we love it, couldnt be better. We had an ant problem and when I say ant problem, I mean every crumb of food, may it be at the bottom of the toaster, in the cracks of the sink, on the floor, even the remnensce of cheeto dust in the keyboard attracts about a million ants within 10 minutes, working together to carry said crumb to their layer like a Greek Goddess. It is quite entertaining to watch, but they had to go. So we got two kinds of sprays, a little ant hotel that tricks them into bringing deadly crumbs back to their homes and some good old fashion witch craft. We read putting cinnamon and pepper on the tables and floors keeps them away, so we tried it all. We have no more ants. We won.

We have birds in the house sometimes, but they are fun. Maris feeds them bread outside. We hear random cat fights outside sometimes. The hustle and bustle of our thai neighborhood is quite exotic. Maris recently found a snail the size of a fist in our garden, he was named Super Bingo, after his predecessor, Bingo, we found a few days before that was miniscule compared to this guy.

I recently started building a bamboo bar on the patio. Just for something to do, I like to build things and haven't gotten a chance to do it in a while. I went down the street to a little part of the jungle filled with bamboo wares. Tables, huts, bars, small buildings- all made completely of bamboo. I had a woman cut me some bamboo while maris held her purse close to her stomach watching a gaggle of wild roosters surround her. I caught a glimpse out of the corner of my eye of Maris sitting in one of these little huts clutching her purse to possibly use for defense against these angry roosters. It was quite a funny site. Had it been a dangerous animal I would have given her a hand, but roosters, come on- It's funny to watch.

So anyhow, I got a bunch of bamboo and started building the framework of what will be the most bad-ass bamboo bar to date. Here are some highlights.

We have also been cooking a lot. We have perfected the following:

Green Curry with Veggies

Massaman Curry with Veggies

Massala Curry with Veggies

Veggie burger Made from scratch

Garam Massala Spice

Hot Basil Spaghetti

Vegetable Spaghetti

Grilled Cheese sandwiches

Baked Bean on toast with Cheddar ( my breakfast)

Fried Rice with Veggies

Veggie Rice Burgers

All of those things are delicious and we eat them a lot. If anyone wants any recipes just let us know!

So things are good. School starts back Nov 2 and we will have answers from schools by then which coincidentally is the day our visas run out. So we have the decision to go to Malaysia to make a border run ( not as illegal as it sounds) for an education visa then do it again to get a Non-Imm visa (needed to work in Thailand) or waiting to hear from a job then making the run just to get the Non-Imm visa (counting on hearing from a job BEFORE the 2nd to get us the proper paperwork). You don't need to try and understand any of that, its quite complicated- Just know that we are alright and have a plan for everything. We will be working soon and bringing in money. Til next time!

_Brock