Sometimes I say "Thank you" instead of "Hello"

Here are some random tidbits from our day-to-day happenings..

As far as local creatures go, there are lots of pet dogs (some more mangy and disgusting than others), we’ve seen some house cats, but most everything is smaller. As in beetles, cockroaches, spiders, fruit flies, regular flies, mosquitoes, frogs, crabs, and GECKOS. They are our favorite! They’re out during the day, but you see them most often at night and they make the most hilarious noise. It’s so clear it almost sounds like a person. I can’t really describe they’re two-pitched noise, except for that it has a higher pitch and then a lower one kind of like a squeaky toy, but it’s a low enough tone that it sounds like it could be a guy talking. It’s so funny!

We have about 18 people here currently and it’ll stay that way for about 6 weeks. People are from Utah, California, Hawaii, Korea, and more, and they’re all super great! There are three bathrooms in our two story house, each with a shower, and even though two of them are capable of giving hot water we choose not to turn on the heat because the shower is the only place you can go to not sweat.

Still no word on our luggage. Our best guess is that it’s either stolen or somewhere in China. There was nothing in that bag but clothes, but it was ALL of our clothes. We spent over 3,000 baht ($100) on three new outfits and two pairs of shoes, and if we don’t hear from the airline soon we’ll need to spend a bit more on swimming suits, church clothes, and possibly stuff to exercise in. Slightly annoying!

Learning Thai will get easier, but for now we’re working on pronunciation, tones, and basic phrases. We’ve mastered hello, what’s your name, water.. and a couple others. For some reason we’ve both been hesitant to try speaking to people (weird since we’ve both had experience in other countries learning other languages!) but it’s coming slowly. Everything is so new at this point!

Also, our landlady has a dog that basically lives at our house. He’s a little black dog with lots of curly black hair who has sort of adopted us as his second family. Right now he’s in our room with his wet feet on our bed licking my (Justin’s) feet. I’m not sure if it’s making us want a dog more or less..the group calls him Chico, and we’ve decided he needs to learn English so he can understand when we yell at him to get out of the trash. Other than that he’s a lot of fun ;)

And this picture is actually from the first day but I like it so I'm adding it..big Buddha from the temple near our house!!