Yes, we live in Thailand

This has been a week of knowing we live in Thailand.

Right now it's Sunday morning about 8:00. Our maebaan (housecleaner) and her husband are here to fix our kitchen sink. Our landlady is here also to chat with them. Our sink has been clogged for several days. It took us a couple of days to locate Draino. After detailed descriptions of packaging and location at Makro (Thai Costco) from American friends I finally managed to find the last bottle hidden behind several varieties of floor cleaner. Unfortunately it didn't work. We called a friend who speaks Thai well and had him call our landlady and explain the problem. She was hoping he and Dan could fix it, but they insisted they couldn't. Our maebaan's husband, who does some gardening for us, is also a great handyman (he fixed our broken toilet a couple months ago), so they came this morning. The plumbing for our kitchen sink is interesting. The drain pipe goes out the wall, along the back patio and empties into a small cement trench along our back fence. When they opened up the drain and flushed it out with a hose, a dead toad came out. I guess we'd better put a screen over the open end of the drain pipe! While he was waiting for the glue to dry on the pipe, he also fixed our front gate so it rolls better, at least temporarily. Since we have to roll open and closed this big gate every time we go anywhere, that will be very nice.

Our washer has been leaking out of the bottom for awhile now, but a week and a half ago it got to the point where it wouldn't hold water well enough to wash a load. Shortly after we discovered that we got an email about a missionary family that is moving from Chiang Rai to Pattaya, down in southern Thailand. They had a washer for sale, so we immediately called them and told them we wanted it. We picked it up yesterday and have done about 10 loads of wash. Yea! Clean clothes! We were lucky, it is sunny and quite warm. Yesterday even had a slight breeze, so the clothes dried very quickly hanging on our racks. We have room for about 2 loads of wash on our racks, so when there is a large quantity of clothes to wash, warm dry weather is very helpful!

This has been one of those weeks when I am very frustrated at my inability to speak Thai. It makes everything so much harder. If we were going to be here any longer than a year, I'd definitely be studying. We are so very thankful for friends here who speak Thai well and are so willing to be helpful to us over and over and over again!