Enablers Asia

Believe it or not, we have already beaten the jet lag!! Thanks to a tip from Jerry and Carrie, we woke up this morning feeling great. It may just be the placebo effect, but we don’t care because it worked! It goes something like this: you put a lit incandescent light bulb behind your right knee for two to four minutes upon laying down to sleep for the first night of your arrival. Now don’t burn yourself, as Lori accidentally found out, but just place it far enough away to avoid injury. If all goes as planned, you should wake up in the morning feeling refreshed, supposedly just having reset your internal time-clock. I know it sounds absolutely absurd… but after the misery of jet-lag, we figured, why not?

It’s so great to be back and get to see the kids once again. The house is decorated and we are gearing up for the children’s first Christmas!! Thanks to both our mothers, we have a gift for each child and can’t wait to surprise them on Christmas!




Oh, and our eyes can't help but water from the soooo spicy food:


Our next job will be to learn Thai. This is not on easy undertaking! Since Thai is a tonal language, it is so very easy to change the meaning of a word by just drawing out the vowel a bit too long, which is often undistinguishable to the American ear. For instance, if you wanted to say liver (pronounced ‘tay’) but instead said ‘taay’ you would be telling the person to die! Hope we don’t make that mistake! Luckily, we can’t remember the last time we ordered liver in a restaurant. Reading it is also very difficult, since they use their own characters, and don’t put spaces between words. Luckily, it makes it lot easier by living here and being able to practice with the other Thai staff.

Today was also the first day of Lori’s teaching career! With the first lesson, the kids have the English alphabet down, and have learned how to say a few of their favorite animals. They are just like little sponges, how we wish that we could learn Thai that fast and with so little effort, they are little geniuses!!

Stay tuned for our next blog entry- celebrating Christmas in Thailand, visiting the hill tribes, building the new home out of shipping containers, and Anders and his side-kick handyman transporting PVC pipe by motorbike!