Bits and Bobs

The last few weeks have been quite uneventful hence the absence of any recent posts to my blog.  So it must mean that we are getting used to the peculiarities of Thailand and what would have shocked us 12 months ago now appears to just be everyday life. 
The kids were home sick last week so we were stuck in the house unable to go anywhere, only now are they starting to show signs of improvement. Marcus had a Rugby tournament in Bangkok last Saturday and the kids and I were supposed to go but I couldn't really see all of us sitting in the sun all day watching old men run about the footy pitch.  Marcus was going to stay the whole weekend with the rest of the team but after the day ended he was so tired and sore and starting to come down with the flu he decided to drive home but of course he got lost in Bangkok, as always, and spent an hour driving about trying to find his way out.  That reaffirmed to me that we made the right choice in staying home. 

This week the kids are back at school thankfully and I am getting back to the gym and organising Judd's birthday party which we are having on Saturday.  Well actually I am not organising much, the play center we are having it at do all the work, I just have to get the final numbers.  A task that proves to be quite tricky as Thai parents tend to not RSVP to parties, or so I have been told, they just show up on the day.  Now this causes a problem for me because I need to know numbers in order to have enough loot bags, cake, food and drink plus prizes for the games.  I decided to invite all of Judds kinder class plus some of the expat kids.  If they all show up I may have nearly 30 kids!  Lord I hope not.  So far I have 17 and that is heaps.  But we want a big party for Judd as he has missed out on things like birthday parties and such since we have been in Thailand.  He deserves a big celebration, I just hope he gets lots of presents to spoil him and make him feel like the super special kid he is. 
I can't believe he is turning 4, such a big boy now.  He can dress himself, brush his own teeth, help around the house, clean his room to earn his weekly allowance.  My special little guy is growing up and I feel so sad about it.  I want him to stay little and always be mummies best friend as he calls me.  But with the growing comes the cheeky talk back and thinking he is smarter than us and he always has a response to everything.  I think he picks up some cheeky behaviour from the other kids at school, but I guess its all part of parenting, they cant stay babies for ever.

Next week as we get over Judd's party we are moving house and I cannot be bothered packing all of our belongings up again.  It is such a short move, literally up the street and round the corner.  Marcus has designed a pool fence to be built before we move in, and fingers crossed they install it correctly.  I want the kids to be able to play outside and come and go as they like through the house, but if the pool isn't secure then I will always have to have the doors locked and bolted.  This new house though has a lovely ceiling fan outside so at least when I am out with them to supervise it wont be so hot and uncomfortable.  The house is better fitted out than our current one, slightly smaller and different layout, but very very similar.  I look forward to getting everything in and settled and setting myself up by the pool everyday.  Marcus will love it too, it was his idea in the first place to get a pool.

Oh and Judd got stung by a wasp today up at the park, poor guy.  He was playing on the slide when he started screaming and there was literally a swarm of wasps flying about him.  Thankfully he was only stung once and after some ice and some cream it settled down.  He took it on well, barely cried, I was quite proud of him.  I would have cried for sure.  Nasty little bastards they are, and they don't die like bees do, they keep coming back and keep stinging.  My brave boy now has something to tell everyone about, he wont let anyone forget he got stung by a wasp.

Taking back control

I had a mini meltdown this morning.  I went to pay my water bill at the 7/11  as usual yesterday and was told since I was 1 day overdue they cannot accept payment and I have to go to the Pattaya Water Authority.  This happened once before and the nice people at the office of our village took care of it for me so today I dropped into the office again on my way home from yoga to see what I could do and the conversation got so confusing I struggled to keep my temper.  They said OK to paying it for me but then in the next breath they said they needed 300baht extra as it was overdue.  Now I know that this was a load of crap because I have had an overdue bill before and there were no extra charges.  I got that yucky feeling that they were trying to screw me out of money, it went from 400baht for the actual water bill, plus 300baht as a fee then a mention of 1000baht to have the water meter replaced as the water meter man was going to come and take it away.  Now 6 months ago I would have been so flustered that I would have handed over any amount they wanted just to be rid of the problem but not today, I was not in the mood to be screwed around.  I ended up taking my money and the bill off the counter and telling them to forget about it.  I was so angry, not so much at them but at the way Thailand tries to screw the westerner out of every penny like we are millionaires or something.  They assume that since we are here working our company picks up the tab for everything, but our company does the bare minimum so alot of the expense of living over here comes out of our personal money so I take it very personally when they try to screw me.  I stormed home and by the time I unlocked the front door I was in tears, then Marcus rang from Bangkok needing me to transfer money to his account and I just felt so overwhelmed and lost and foreign that I could barely speak to him without sobbing.  It took me about an hour to calm down, shower and ask around for help but in the end I called the man at the office again and asked him to draw me a map so I could find the water office myself.  If I was in Australia and I had a overdue bill I wouldn't expect some random person to drop what he was doing and run off to pay it for me so I thought why should I expect it here?  It turned out that I have driven past this water authority building a hundred times and it was really close, as I drove in I noticed a sign saying Express Payment for Water Usage and I drove up to this little booth with a man inside and handed him my bill and he asked for the exact amount that was owed, gave me a receipt and off I went back home.  So it turned out that the girl at the office was trying to screw me, I didn't owe any extra for being late.  As I drove home I felt such a sense of triumph and achievement, it is funny but living overseas in a non English speaking country accomplishing the smallest things like paying a bill feels amazing and gives me back that sense of freedom and control that I took for granted living in Australia.  I almost feel like I did when I first moved out of home when I was 17 and I had to learn how to fend for myself but at least back then I could ask any stranger for directions or help but here the chances of finding someone who speaks fluent enough English to understand me are slim and makes it all the more challenging and stressful.  But I did it today and I now know where to go and what to do should it happen again in the future and I can stand on my own 2 feet and not let people take advantage of me just because I look like a stupid lost 'Farrang'.

Dilema and a day of fishing

We have had a interesting couple of weeks.  Lillie started school and has taken to it like a duck to water.  I thought I would have alot of trouble getting her settled and used to being away from me, but no, she sold me out like sponge cake.  First day yes she did cry a little but her second day came and whoosh she was off running inside waving goodbye.  So I have had what I thought would be oodles of time to do my own thing but I was surprised to discover how quickly it goes by.  An hour or 2 at the gym, then a quick grocery shop, a few returned emails, lunch and then wham I am back in the car picking them up.  My days are busier and I am more tired now they are both in Kinder than I was before but it is a nice tired, it is a feeling of accomplishment like I actually did something with my time, nothing world changing of course but its a hell of alot more than I was doing which consisted mostly of watching shitty daytime TV and constantly snacking.  When I am bored I eat and I don't seem to be able to feel full.  It is a sure sign that if I am constantly walking back to the kitchen I need to get the hell out of the house and get busy.  Now Lillie isn't going to be in school all day everyday like Judd but 3 days a week I think is enough to give her a break from me, learn new things, socialise with other kids her age and make some friends.  It is already showing positive signs on her, she is attempting to sing the alphabet song already, she also is talking alot more and interacting alot more with us.  She even started signing a kinder song that Judd learnt in his first semester that surprised me as she sang it very well and even used the hand actions.  I have one minor or it could be major problem with her being in kinder, well this kinder in particular - they don't have a pool fence around the school swimming pool - for an Australian to see this and for an Australian to send her kids to a school that doesn't value or recognise pool safety it is a huge conflict with my morals and everything I have ever been taught growing up in North Queensland.  I mentioned my concern to the school principle and I even went so far as to have a meeting with the owner of the school and he made it very clear in his gentle Thai way that he has no real intentions of ever putting a fence up as he believes the landscaping around the pool area is enough of a deterrent to keep the kids away.  Now these plants he is talking about lining the edge of the swimming area are little stick like palms that bunch together to create a sort of screen but I tried to explain to him that a mere bush or plant will not deter a determined child, it only takes one adventurous little 2 or 3 year old to wander away from the supervising teachers and it is a silent death when a child drowns, they don't bob up and down screaming for help, they just slip in quietly and sink straight to the bottom and no one knows until they make the gruesome discovery later on.  But still this obviously well education Thai man had excuses for every argument I could make and all I had to do was to leave there with his assurance that there strict methods of supervising the children will prevent any accidents from happening with that pool. 
Now for Judd I am not so much concerned because over the part month he has begun to swim without his floaties and can swim solo now for the entire length of the communal pool in our village which is approximately 18meters in length.  Pretty impressive for the little guy.  We are so proud of his development and he is really turning into a "little boy" and moving out of the toddler phase.  So for him to fall in I am confident he can swim to the edge and climb out and also the pool is only 90cm deep so he can stand up in it.  But Lillie is far from being able to swim to the surface if she were to fall in, we have been working on her for some time now but she is still so young.
So the point to this story is that I love their school and they love their school and I trust them 100% with my children but could I ever live with myself if something terrible was to happen and my excuse for sending her to that school was that it was the cheaper option compared with the other international kindergartens in town.  Can you put a price on your child's safety?  I know that Australia can be accused of wrapping our kids in cotton wool and being over cautious, but pool safety to me really a non-negotiable.  I have watched the teachers at this school and they are very careful and cautious with the children but wouldn't it make sense to child proof the pool just in case there was that one child who slipped away quietly? 
I just don't know what to do.

On a lighter note we took the kids on our very first fishing expedition today.  I have always thought fishing would be so boring but today I surprised myself and really enjoyed it.  We took the kids to a local Barra Farm just around the corner a bit from where we live.  It is owned and operated by a Aussie and a Kiwi, 2 expats that have been in Thailand for years.  There are 2 big ponds filled with local Barramundi and many other species and a bar with a decent menu and cheap beers and there are staff there who put the bait on your hook, will even cast for you, reel in for you, take the hook out, clean and cook for you all for the bargain price of something like 300baht, that's like $9 AUD.  So we sat there for 3 and a half hours today and we did all the baiting and casting ourselves as we aren't total nitwits and we had such a good time.  Lillie wasn't so keen on it, but she was tired and eventually fell asleep so it was just Marcus, Judd and myself sitting by the pond waiting for the little fishies to come and take our hooks.  Judd loved it, we thought he might do it for 15 minutes and then be over it but he continued to sit there and hold his rod and kept asking "when are the fish coming? did I get one yet?"  He was so cute and when he finally did get one he pulled it out all by himself and was so proud.  I think I took something like 77 photos today as it was just the perfect setting for family shots.  The kids were calm, we were calm and we just sat.  I would take them back every Saturday if they let me, it was really a simple and lovely family day out.  I really do believe that it is the simple things like going fishing together that are the best, rather than dragging them about shopping or sight seeing places they don't understand.  I said it before but I think we need to simplify our lives a little more, take a step back and stop living so fast.

Lillie at Kindergarten

Lillie started kindergarten this week and it was a total success.  Her first day I took her into her classroom and she cried and clung to me like a monkey but they said she eventually settled down but didn't really get involved with her other classmates.  However on her second day she ran inside when I dropped them off in the morning and blew me a kiss with a big wave and happily went to her classroom with her teachers.  Her third and fourth days were the same, she loves getting dressed for school and having her hair done and especially loves putting on her new school sneakers that have a picture of Barbie on them.  On her fifth day, Friday, I left her there for the whole day and she happily had her swim lesson, ate her lunch of carrot soup (which if I ever tried to serve it for dinner it would be met with a screaming match) and she even laid down with all the other kids and had her daytime nap.  I still cant believe that her first week went so well.  It is such a comfort to know that she is happy and well cared for and is also starting to learn.  Already she is learning her ABC song and as the Queens Birthday is next week she is learning to do the traditional Thai Wai and say Sawatdee Ka (basically hello and goodbye) as the parents are invited to attend a special Mothers Day ceremony which is also celebrated on the Queens Birthday. 

As well as being her first week at Kidner it was also her 2nd birthday on Tuesday and I supplied a special ice cream cake with candles for her class to celebrate with her.  Then in the evening we had a second cake and opened her presents with just the family at home.  We decided not to have a big party for her this year, but next year when she is old enough to understand and enjoy it more we will give her a big one.
Judd is enjoying having his sister at school as well, they don't see each other during the day as they are in separate classes but when he sees her in the afternoon at pick up time he runs down the stairs and gives her a huge hug and kiss hello.  Such a sweet boy.
I spent my time going to the gym and trying to start a new routine and bust out of some old habits.  I also got to spend 3 hours in a salon on Friday and have my hair styled and thank the Lord I finally found a hairdresser who listened to exactly what I said and gave me the exact hairstyle I wanted.  I am so grateful and it is amazing the boost it gives my self esteem just to have a decent haircut and colour.  I enjoyed my alone time this week, I enjoyed being able to do the grocery shopping without arguments and tantrums and I enjoyed sitting quietly and eating my lunch in peace without constantly getting up to put a naughty toddler back to bed for her nap.  Lillie's behaviour has changed also this week.  She is more than happy to go to bed each night as she is tired from her day at school and she isn't throwing as many tantrums as before.  I think having her in kinder a few days per week to give us all a break from each other is a very good idea.  I didn't even have the 'guilty mum' feeling after I left her, I felt light and free.  I did feel a small pang of guilt for feeling that way but I believe in the old adage " happy wife, happy life" as well as "happy mum, happy life"  it doesn't rhyme but its true.