Opportunity Blog

New house from the road.

I have been in and out of Thailand since September, but have not had much time for this blog. Anyway, our first house has been finished since September although it was only about three weeks ago that our family moved in. We have temporary water and electric power hooked up. In a bit less than two months we will have the permanent water and power in. The second two pictures show the back porch cooking and eating area.

Back porch kitchen/living area.

View from the back.

It’s nice having someone there now. I usually visit with them when I go out every other day to run. We have some packing gravel on the half of the road we frequently drive on and the other half is dirt. Both held up very well to the worst area flooding on record earlier this year. It makes a great running surface, and since the ring road is exactly one kilometer around it is easy to track how far I run.

I normally get there at seven in the morning do five kilometers. I have been trying to get a couple of the older girls there to run with me a lap or two. One especially is very sports minded and likes me to come see her at her games. I think she would do better in basketball especially if she ran more. I noticed she has trouble hitting the basket when she is tired from a lot of running back and forth on the court.

Yesterday, Saturday, after visiting a bit I was just ready to ride off when some of the older girls came out and told me they were all going swimming later that day at 2:00 PM and asked if I would like to come. I have heard about the pool somewhere in Nang Rong but had never been. I told them that would be great, and I could bring my SUV and haul a bunch of them in that.

I got there later and found out the parents knew nothing about going swimming, but since I was there ready to go it would be fine except that the weather had turned out a bit cool for swimming that day. It was not cool by my standards, since I grew up in north Idaho, but these were Thais and they were concerned the girls might get colds.

I guess I got snookered. The girls knew that once the farang volunteer had driven up all ready to go their parents would not have refused to let him take everyone if conditions had been reasonable otherwise. My Thai is still not great and that can also lead to a bit more confusion in situations like this. I’ll have to be a bit more careful.

Still, it is great to see our girls getting happier and living normal lives. In the past some of them have had much more serious situations to contend with than figuring out how to outwit the local farang.