We’re Here!

It feels almost surreal to finally be here!  It also feels GREAT!

We are staying in a hotel downtown for the next 5 weeks until our home up by the international school is available.  It’s a large room (3 bedrooms) and has an amazing view of the city.  It’s located right next to the skytrain and a beautiful park.  It has a very large pool on the 7th floor and a small, tropical pathway as well.  I’m glad I chose this place.  It’s perfect.

Our first morning we woke up to a beautiful cityscape.  We enjoyed the views from our balcony and then headed down to the daily breakfast service.  They have both a Western and Asian breakfast buffet.  The staff were all very friendly and absolutely love our little boy.  When he greeted them with an enthusiastic “Sawadee Krap!” they all fawned on him immediately (and every morning since).  We love our breakfasts here.

We’ve spent the first few days setting up a bank account, working on our ever important paperwork (extended visas, work permit, etc.), and trying to get Candace’s Blackberry to work here (I won’t go into it, but her BB bold happens to be a version that doesn’t appear to work.  We’ve spent far too many hours trying to get it to work…short story is that it is on a frequency that another local carrier might support, but we’ll chase that more another time).

Our MagicJack phone is working great.  The quality is perfect and it’s nice that folks can call us on our old phone number and it just routes over the Internet to the other side of the world.  It’s also come in handy to have our old American phone number as we’ve had to call our cable company on some bad billing, health insurance copay problems, etc.  Skype and FaceTime are also a huge blessing.  It was amazing to chat face-to-face with my Mom as she was on a river boat on the Tennessee River.  Technology is amazing.

We took the skytrain to Siam Centre and MBK last night.  Being the last Friday of the month (payday), it was really packed.  Having Joseph in the stroller was nice for all the walking, but was a real pain on the train, stairs, and pay gates.  The skytrain is fast, clean, and a much better alternative than driving in the crazy traffic.

Our oldest had his first face-to-face with the poverty of a major foreign city as well.  He was pretty shook up about a 4 year old who was begging as well as some handicapped people we passed by.  He asked me later that night if we could forego the xBox I had promised him for all of his hard work on the piano and good grades so we could help the people here.   I am one proud Dad!

Jetlag has been pretty rough, but not as bad as I had thought.  We all slept about 4-5 hours the second night and third night, but slept much better last night!  One especially sleepy early evening, we drug the kids swimming and that seemed to help.  We’ve all been grouchy on and off dealing with the fatigue, but I’ve also been pleasantly surprised by how everyone is pitching in, putting arms around others, and quick with apologies.

So our first full week has been very busy, but we’re adapting quickly and really enjoying Bangkok – the food, the people, the trees and flowers, and yes, even the weather has been great!  I go into work on Monday, so it’s been great being able to get settled and a bit setup in our new lives.