Watching & Waiting

Wow, I haven't been keeping up real well lately. I was sick with a nasty cold last week, so I just never got around to getting on. :( I'm feeling much better now, though. :) Well, we are a short 5 days away from leaving for our trip to America. Mitsu and I are getting really excited about it! Of course, the baby is blissfully unaware, but I'm sure he will be nothing short of delighted to land in Chicago and be done flying for a month. We're just hoping that he does well on the flights. As long as he doesn't have any signs of diaper rash, and isn't sick at all, he really should do okay. He did wonderful on the flights to Japan and back this May. We are also hoping that the flood waters here in Thailand don't reach the airport. Eastern Bangkok is flooding, and Don Muang airport has been shut down due to being flooded. Of course, we use Suvarnabhumi International Airport, and it's still fine. We just hope it stays that way. The Thai government says it's doing everything possible to protect the international airport, and keep the waters from reaching central Bangkok, but if there's one thing I've learned about Thailand, it's that you can't take anything the Thai government says seriously. We went to our local 7-11 last night, that is literally 30 seconds from our building, and it's been cleaned out. All bread products, water, and instant noodles are disappearing fast.

Not one single bread product left:

Most instant noodles have already been bought:

Absolutely no water left:

Of course, our area is absolutely fine right now, but by looking at the shelves at 7-11, it seems that Thai people around here think that we are going to get a lot of water, too. Let's just hope not. We really, really do want to go to America next week!

We didn't do anything real special yesterday. We bought a lot of souvenirs for people back home to bring to America. Mostly Thai sweets and snacks. I have no idea how well that is going to go. Asian people don't tend to like sugary sweets like we used to back home, so Thai sweets might not be as sweet as my family would expect. Hopefully they don't show their disgust with them openly, haha.

We ate Japanese food last night, which was delicious, of course. :) I took some pictures of Tomoyuki, sitting on his Dad's lap, trying to eat his rice with chopsticks. He absolutely loves chopsticks. He desperately wants to use chopsticks to eat. I told Mitsu that as soon as it seems possible, he needs to start helping Tomoyuki learn to use them. :)

 

He'll get the hang of it eventually! :)

I think we're going to be going to the grocery store today to get a few things, just in case we are stuck inside due to the water.

Well, that's about all I've got for today. Everyone just keep hoping that the airport doesn't get flooded! THAT would be awful.




Take care!

Thoughts of the Future

In 2 weeks and 2 days we will be in Indiana! I am so incredibly excited about it! I will be so happy to be home. I am really bummed that Mitsu can only stay a week, and I will miss him terribly for those extra 3 weeks that Tomoyuki and I will be in Indiana, but I'll just be elated to be at home for that time. My first Halloween and Thanksgiving in 3 years! :)

In just 8 and a half months, we will be leaving Thailand. I realize that there are plenty of things that I will miss about Bangkok, well maybe not a whole lot, but a few things. However, I will be SO HAPPY to get out of Bangkok. Mitsu may be flying to Tokyo in November to discuss our next step. I guess that the main options are relocating to America, going to London, or going back to Japan. Of course, as expected, I would LOVE to live in America. I just think that we could live more comfortable lives in America. Japan's cost of living is incredibly expensive. The houses are very small and cramped, yet VERY expensive. In America, we could live in a nice, comfortable home, have a big yard, maybe even a pool. :) It just feels like we could live so much more comfortably in the states. I also like that America is so diverse, culturally, racially. In Japan, it's mostly just Japanese people. I mean, in a week back in Gifu, I saw a total of 5 white people. No black people, no hispanic people. I do appreciate the diversity in America very much. Back to the housing situation, I found a bit of information on it. In present day, the average size of a Japanese home is  1,021 square feet/94.85 square meters. The average size of a present day American home is 2,700 square feet, or 251 square meters. That's a massive difference! As someone who comes from a farming town, surrounded by wide open spaces, that lived in a comfortable sized home my whole life, it's hard to imagine fully adjusting to those tiny Japanese homes. I just want to live in the Field of Dreams house. Is that really too much to ask?

 Nah, I'm really not that picky, but I just want a comfortable home with space to move around in without much hindrance.

We'll see what happens, but I will certainly be pulling for the states, obviously. :)

Sometimes I can't believe that I've been living in Thailand for more than two years. It's been 2 years, 4 months. Woah. Time goes by so fast! We've certainly made some great memories here, but in general, I just don't like the city of Bangkok. It's sort of depressing, really. The government is so much more corrupt than back home (and that's pretty bad!), the streets are littered with garbage, the air is SO polluted, the prostitution population is just shocking, the HIV rate is high. It's just certainly not a city I would want to raise a family in. Japan is beautiful. It's so different from Thailand. The streets are clean, the air is easy to breathe, the land is so green and mountainous, dogs are connected to leashes. It's a very nice place. Unfortunately, the natural disasters are intimidating. Like I said, the cost of living in unbelievably high. Ultimately, America is home, and with all the problems that I know America has, it still has my heart. It's not perfect, and I certainly don't think it's the best country in the world, but it's home. I love it.

I went to Google and alternated typing in "beautiful Thailand, beautiful Japan, and beautiful America", and am posting a couple of the first images to come up. I guess all of them are beautiful, in their own way. :)

Beautiful Thailand

Beautiful Japan

Beautiful America

I guess I've lived in some pretty neat places, huh? :) 

Well, I suppose that will do it for now with all of my daydreaming and talk of the future. I can't help it, I just love to plan out that sort of thing. Bye for now!

Sick Days

Surprise, surprise, Tomoyuki is sick again this week. He developed a really nasty cough Friday night, and it just kept getting worse. We took him to the doctor Sunday, and I took him back on Monday. He had breathing treatments done at the hospital, and the doctor gave me some Singular to give him, to help clear him up and allow him to sleep a bit more peacefully. Today (Wednesday), he is doing so much better. He's not coughing much, and he's sleeping much better. Let's just hope he keeps improving.
At the peak of his sickness. His idea of total relaxation; watching cartoons naked with a cup of milk.

He was looking pretty sickly in that picture. He looks much healthier, and much happier today. And looking to be having a very lively conversation on Daddy's cell phone, jumping up in the air.

I woke up this morning, and upon entering our living room, was thoroughly disgusted by what I found. It was just an absolute mess. It truly looked like a bomb had went off. And, I know it sounds like an excuse, but 95% of it was my son's doing. He just destroys the place. And, looks so very happy while doing it. When I was a pre-teen/teenager, I was very messy. I didn't care in the slightest about organization, or things looking neat and tidy. I tend to assume that my family and friends still regard me as messy, disorganized, and not caring about cleanliness at all. But, it's the total opposite that I'm an adult. I LOVE being organized, neat ... I just love for the place to look good. I want to live in a nice, clean area. Of course, with an almost two year old around that often proves impossible. Here's a couple pictures of how I found the living room this morning:

 There's the master of disaster himself, surveying the damage.

I couldn't even begin to concentrate with the place looking so awful, so I got right down to cleaning up. After sweeping, mopping, dusting, throwing things away, assembling that alphabet puzzle, putting the slide back where it belongs, here's what it came out as:

Pretty impressive, if I do say so myself! I love how that little boy is in the picture walking around with my slippers on. haha. That's him!

Ahh, the joys of being a Mother, right? I know that I start to freak out sometimes, and I get so mad at myself for that. I love my son dearly, though, no matter how much of a crazy nut he can be. He does bring his share of stress to the household, but we'd be far more miserable without him, him illnesses, and his giant messes. :)

Well, that's about all I've got for today. Take care!

Saturdays in Bangkok

Well, I haven't been keeping up with the blog real well this week. I guess that's mostly because this whole week has really been pretty uneventful. Tomoyuki made it to school every single day this week, which is pretty out of the ordinary for him. It seems like he misses at least one day every week. He's sick A LOT. Personally, I blame Bangkok. The air and the streets are so dirty, I kind of think that nasty stuff gets into his nasal passages, his throat, and just sort of wreaks havoc. He's actually sick right now. He started to get a really nasty cough Friday evening, and it's just getting nastier. His eyes are also sort of red and glassy looking. I picked him up some cough medicine and got some eye drops for him, but so far, he's not really getting better. He'll be sleeping with us tonight. He slept with us Thursday night, too. He started crying in the middle of the night on Thursday, and just absolutely would not stop, so Mitsu broke down and brought him into our bed. I know it sucks for him to be sick, but it's really exhausting for us, too, especially me, since I'm the one that has to stay home with him, take him to the doctor's office, etc. It's tough being a Mother. Really, really tough.

All dressed, and ready to go to school.

Playing with Daddy's cell phone

Mitsu and I went out for our date day today. We got home earlier than usual, though, so that we could be with Tomoyuki, and let the babysitter go home. We started out by going to this very, very secretive DVD store here in Bangkok. Mitsu's coworker suggested it, because they have all kinds of Japanese TV shows, so we went to check it out. Well, it turns out that it's all copied, bootleg stuff that is violating all sorts of copyright laws, we're imaging. We're assuming that's why it was hard to find, and you have to have be in possession of a super secret card to get in. They did have all kinds of stuff, too. We found some Sasuke DVDS (Ninja Warrior in America), which I LOVE. They should be delivered tomorrow. I don't really think that we're going to become frequent visitors, but it is a cool little place. After that, we went to Central World, had lunch and saw a movie. We watched 50/50 this week with Joseph Gorden Levitt, and Seth Rogen. It was by far one of the best movies we've seen in a long time. I cried, which isn't really surprising for me, but it was worth it. It was an awesome movie.

We didn't do anything particularly riveting tonight. Mitsu found some eggs from Japan at the supermarket today, that are safe to be used for tamago gohan (rice with egg). Since the egg is raw, it's pretty important that it be of good quality.That's one of his all time favorite foods, and Ｉｔ's been about two years since he's had it, since we've been living in Thailand. I think a lot of my American friends and family would be mildly disturbed by tamago gohan, but my husband swears by it.


Here's a photo:

It's just plain steamed rice, with a raw egg place on top, in the middle, and some soy sauce added in. After all this time, I'm still a little freaked out by it, actually.

Well, that's it for now. Hopefully we'll do something far more exciting in the days to come. :)

Our Weekend

Saturday is date day at our house. I look so forward to Saturday every week. It's the one and only time that my husband and I have any time to ourselves. We have a maid/nanny three days a week, and on Saturday she stays with our son from 9AM to 5PM. Living abroad, not having any friends or family to watch our son every now and again was very, very frustrating until she started babysitting every Saturday. This weekend, we did our usual, lunch and movie. We ate at a wonderful Chinese restaurant that specializes in dim sum. We usually get just dim sum, but were both wanting to try something new. We both got noodles. I ordered "Tan Tan Noodles". I have eaten Japanese style tan tan noodles before, and enjoyed them very much, but these were the authentic Chinese ones, and that was some of the spiciest stuff I've ever eaten!! It was a strange kind of spicy. Not so much a chili spice, but a thick, thick taste of pure pepper. It was way too much. I managed to choke down about half, but I couldn't eat another bite beyond that.

Whew! It was spicy! I don't know what it is about me, but whenever I want to be adventurous and try something new, I almost always tend to choose very, very poorly.

Let's see ... after lunch we went to the movie theater and watched Contagion. It was great. I really liked it, but I'm not sure that a hypochondriac, such as myself, should watch it. It really didn't freak me out too bad, but it does sort of make you think. Why is that all of those devastating pandemics originate in Asia? Eeks.

That night, we ordered in Chinese food. Bangkok has a fantastic delivery service. You can choose from probably 50 restaurants on a website, and go through all the ordering system online, and it'll come within about 40 minutes. It's pretty awesome, especially for foreigners who have trouble calling and talking to the people. Anyways, we ate rice, Chinese spinach, noodles, and sweet and sour pork. Tomoyuki LOVES sweet and sour pork. Lately, though, eating with him has just been a total disaster. He is far more interested in squishing his food between his fingers than eating it. By the end of the meal, his high chair, the floor, and himself are a complete mess.

Just desperately trying to get that pesky bib off!

He was smiling at his Daddy in this picture.

Like I said, dinner time is just a total disaster lately. It's certainly hard to look forward to, knowing that I will have a messy baby and a messy floor to clean up.

Well, that's all for now. See ya again soon & have a great week!

Life in Thailand

My first post! I'm new to blogging, and am not entirely sure quite yet what I'm doing, but I'll give it a shot. My name is Kari, I'm originally from Indiana, and am now over here in Bangkok, Thailand with my husband and son. I met my husband, Mitsu, in May of 2008. He is from Japan, and I decided to move back to Japan with him in January, 2009. We were married May 1st of that year. We welcomed our first child, Tomoyuki, into the world in January of 2010, and here we are nearly two years later, as happy we were the first day that we met. I'm consistently battling homesickness, but I do love exploring all these new cultures, trying all this new food, and meeting so many different people. It's an amazing adventure! We have lived in Bangkok for a little more than 2 years, and have about 9 months left. In total honesty, I'm not real wild about Bangkok. It's dirty, strange odors are constantly invading my senses, the air pollution is stifling, and the streets are just littered with garbage. I do much prefer Japan for it's beauty, and cleanliness, although Thailand is far more foreigner friendly. We aren't sure where we will be going after my husband's work is up in Bangkok, but we're preparing ourselves for another major change. 

 I am starting this blog mostly for the benefit of family and friend's back home, so that they can feel more involved in our day to day lives over here. However, I would love to meet some new people on here and hopefully connect with people who I have some things in common with. :)