What's Goin' On?

Some of our readers have been commenting on the lack of posts...I try to let this process be organic, so I'm not sitting down to forcing myself to write, but rather letting a topic or idea come up. I've also noticed that a lot of my posts tend to communicate frustration, sadness and all the things I miss about America, so I'm trying to leave some space to let the joy of Thailand make its way into my heart.

Let me re-cap a few interesting things from this week (so far.) I got a flat front tire on Perry (our scooter) on Monday as I was driving home from school. As soon as I pulled out of the lot, I could feel it, so I pulled over to take a look and assessed that I could probably make it closer to home before stopping to see about getting it fixed. Well, pretty soon the handlebars where shaking quite a bit so I decided to go very slow and recalled that there is a shop that looks like they do bike repairs nearby (still on the way home) Remember, signs are not written in English and for places like this you kind of just have to know about them, I actually don't think this place had a sign at all. I turned the corner, pulled in and discovered I was correct, bike repair shop! It didn't matter that the guy & I couldn't communicate verbally, he knew why I was there. A head nod and a gesture to take a seat...a short wait while I watched the entire process, him tracing the numbers on the seat of my bike to tell me how much it was...and I was back on the road. It was 150 baht by the way ($4.83) In total, it took about 10 minutes. As I was sitting there I thought about this mom & pop tire place in Humboldt Park, Chicago, near Duprey School where I used to work. These are the types of places where you feel like you have to be kind of brave to even drive up, but they do quick work for really cheap. That tire place in Humboldt Park got me back on the road quickly more than once and you're not paying prices for the name, you're placing cash into the hand of the man who did the work and that feels good to me.

Second event of the week? Yesterday my school was evacuated due to flooding of the nearby Ping River. The river has been high for awhile, but Tuesday night it rained, I mean it really poured for hours, I think it was most of the night and into the morning on Wednesday. I'm not certain, but it may have been pouring for 8 hours...at 10:30ish Wednesday I was told the school was thinking about closing for the rest of the day, by 11:00 most of the kids where on their

way out the door, by noon I left with Sue (I got a ride to work yesterday because of the heavy rain.) First stop, the grocery store, I made it home by 1:00 and by 2:00 pictures were popping up on facebook, the river peaked and overflowed onto streets and middle of the night into houses. Having just gone through this, I don't envy those folks near the river who are now house-bound because of the water. It's nasty, it smells and it lingers. School was also canceled today and possibly tomorrow as well.

I'm feeling grateful that right now our neighborhood is safe and since the water hasn't made it's way into Suan Non Sri as of yet, we're probably in the clear this time.

Friends have been asking if this amount of flooding is normal. From what I've heard, it's not. The Ping River hasn't flooded in 6 years and this moobaan hadn't flooded in much longer than that. The major contributing factor is the unusually long rainy season they've had this year, I've heard that it started very early, in April.

It doesn't matter where you are...sometimes nature takes over. This past winter in Chicago, we experienced the heaviest snow fall in decades! We move half way across the world and experience the longest rainy season in years. I enjoyed those snow days! It felt like I had been given a free pass to do absolutely nothing and I loved it! I'm enjoying my flood days too (even though I don't actually have water at my house.) After doing some yoga, I plan to enjoy a flood day massage!

Baxter checking out the snow after the blizzard in Chicago...February 2011

Interesting documentation of the river rising...

And a rather dramatic version...