Home Sweet Home

A number of folks have kindly asked to see what our new home is like. So, without further ado, I'll share a bit of it with you along with some of our favorite fun and/or interesting aspects of our new neighborhood...

This home has been a tremendous blessing for us. It suits us quite well, and it's very convenient to our office/church/teammates. It's about the size that our house in Atlanta (Tucker) was, and though it has nothing much in the way of a yard, there is a little playground down the street (pictured later), that provides for play space. It's a diverse neighborhood, with houses and townhouses of different sizes; thus people from different socioeconomic backgrounds living in close proximity. We have really great neighbors and have felt very welcomed. The aforementioned soi dogs do steal shoes (thus the closed gate) and wake us sometimes in the middle of the night with their 2 am canine carousing that requires everyone to bark his or her head off in unison, but other than that, they're quite charming. There's one named "Tia", and now Asa refers to all dogs by this name.

We painted the kitchen, and were so happy to do so as this is the first room that hasn't been wallpapered and thus qualifies for paint. It looks quite red here, but truly it has more brown-orange tones. It was a pretty bold choice, but Asa was enjoying escaping in the store while we were perusing colors, making himself a prime candidate for toddler-snatching, so we quickly chose this one and called it a night. The kitchen is great. Not big, but very efficient. AND it has cabinets, which one cannot take for granted here in Thailand (many homes have very little in the way of cabinets). The ants have graciously allowed us to share their kitchen. If we leave any morsel out for an extended period, it's covered with ants when we return. But as long as we put things away and hide the sugar in the refrigerator, they're pretty easy to get along with.

I love the living room, mostly because of the cute kids who like to hang out here, dressed in strange outfits. Note the lovely pinkish/orange curtains behind them.

This is probably the most unique feature of this house. Between the living and dining areas (it's all one long room), there's this odd wall with these spaces cut out. Tim's ceramics fit perfectly here, convincing us that this is, in fact, a great house for us.

This is not our house, but it was worth documenting. This can graces the post outside the house 3 doors down. And it lights up at night! Hee, hee, hee.

This is the Roti man, who comes through every evening about 5:00 selling his delicious concoctions of fried dough with egg and sweetened condensed milk. (Colleen, these will always remind me of our night in Chiang Mai- chocolate roti and white maternity pants:) He makes them hot and to order. We have a number of other vendors that come through during the day, including the som tam lady (this is a very popular dish in Thailand; read a bit about it here), the fruit lady (she has a cart with fresh, cold fruit that she cuts up for you when you order it- watermelon, pineapple, guava or papaya), the tea/coffee man, and the ice cream man.

This is the neighborhood spirit house. Some of our neighbors have spirit houses in their yards, as well, and they're very common at both homes and businesses. For a good description of them, go here.

And this is our little playground, where lots of people gather in the evenings after the heat of the day has subsided. It's a great place to play and meet people, and we go most evenings...

Hope you enjoyed your tour. Y'all come see us!