Going Domestic

friday blues

Very bummed out today. Firstly, my MacBook has been gone for two week. Much of this delay in it's repair can be blamed on the anti-gov't protests in Central BKK, as iStudio (what the Apple dealers are called here) has been closed. Anyway, I am doing a really bad job of blogging and keeping up with the ones that I read due to all of this.

Also, I received an invitation to join a web forum* for the foreign families in Vietnam (which is where we're moving - somehow I neglected to mention that before!), and it's sort of been oen of those situations where too much information is not a good thing.

Now I'm worried that there won't be a space for Madeline at the school that we think will be our first choice. It probably sounds very whiny of me to worry about that right now, and I realize it is. I just wish that somewhere, someone would have something positive to say about the school that would be our second choice. That would go a long way in terms of putting my mind at ease a little. I am also trying to prepare myself for looking at homes that don't come with ovens (what an interesting difference, no?), showers that are not contained and flood the entire bathroom,  and being blown away by the cost of utilities. It also sounds like the neighbhourhood that most closely would resemble the one that we currently live in is hard to fnid a vacancy in, so that's something else that stresses me out a little. I like the familiar. I'm sure that surprises no one.

*The website is actually a really nice touch, and no doubt I will appreciate it once we're living in our barely affordable oven-less house, homeschooling Madeline because her first grade teachers are too busy eating pho to teach her anything :)

nine weeks

Today, I chose our moving-out date - June 11 - and frankly, it's time to leave Thailand. I am tired of this apartment with the ants and the mold, I'm tired of the hot, and I am tired of traffic on the commute into Bangkok. And also tired of wondering if the raging anti-government protests are going to affect plans that I've made, errands that I have to run, etc, like they did on Saturday when the four of us needed to pay a bill at the Siam Paragon shopping centre. We ended up having to abandon our car at the Intercontinental Hotel and walk a fair distance to get there, and we arrived a mere half-hour before the mall was shut down due to the demonstrations. The protesters that we waded through for a crazy number of city blocks were thankfully a cheery lot ...

Some things are certainly going to be easy to say good riddance to, but I don't know what I am going to do the first time that Madeline dissolves into sobs about having goodbye to her friends. I keep trying to push all of the farewells into the deepest reaches of my mind, and wouldn't mind keeping them there until the very last minute, truth be told. It's kind of funny how I lived in Calgary for five years, and really had no one to miss when we left, but after three years here, I feel so sad about the people who we're leaving.