New Home

Finally, got moved into a place where I can put everything away and settle in.  Host families are invaluable in a foreign country and I learned a lot living with Thai people.

Observation is a valuable learning tool and being in a native home afforded lots of opportunities to see how people live.  There are a few things I know about, like in the morning Pawn would go to the food shop and get some wonderful greens.  I have no idea where the food shop is located, so there are still some things to figure out.  At least I know people shop early, 6 a.m. or so.  In the meantime, I got cereal and milk and plan to eat that for breakfast for the next few weeks, I have missed it in the morning. 

The house is fully furnished, really she left a lot of her stuff.  I hope to pack some of it away and make the space more my own.  Not sure what is okay so I will go slow.

This house is not new so I have one wall in the kitchen that is a chain link fence material.  As a result I have some interesting roommates.  I learned after the first night to put rags under the gap below the front door, lots of beetles seemed to attracted to the light.  My toilet is not squat, it is sit down, but it does not flush.  You need to pour water from a large barrel in the bathroom to flush waste.  One night, I scooped the water into the bowl to flush and a frog jumped out.  Cute, little frog, but startling at 2 a.m.  I have several small geckos who chatter.  When I first heard them at the home stay, I thought it was a bird close by.  I also have at least one large gecko, picture attached.  I have decided based on nothing that it is the same one every night.  It is not at all aggressive, but peeks around a shelf or from behind a box on the floor.  I would like to name it and am open to suggestions.  

I am still an oddity here, but the village is very small and people are getting used to seeing me.  There is a little store on the corner with a very sweet young couple who have a new baby, maybe 8 months old.  I can get my jugs of water, soap, detergent, snacks, and Thai snow cones there.  I went today for water and she was rocking her baby in a hammock.  She asked me to rock while she fixed my snow cone and took my money.  There is so little formality here.  People are very practical and just seem to do what makes sense.  I was of course happy to rock the baby.  

I have a language teacher.  He is a retired school director.  He taught Thai and speaks English well.  He has been very generous with his time and is teaching me starting with phonics.  He is also willing to help me with everyday words and phrases and is really pretty challenging.  It will open so many more avenues to get to know people if I can speak the language better.  In some ways it is an easy language, but in other ways it is very difficult, lots of very foreign sounds and here in Isaan, their own dialect.  Hopefully, I will die before I get senile with all the brain exercise!