Leapin' Lizards!

There was a lizard in my room the other night. We are staying with friends of the family right now in Thailand. Their home is a little older, but still nice; my room has a marble floor for goodness sake. But the other night, as I flipped on the light for my room, a gecko ran down the wall and behind the curtains. I screamed and hightailed it out of the room. My dad and 5 kids came in and stared at me blankly. "It's okay," one of the 9-year-old twins told me. "Yeah," replied his 13-year old sister. "They eat bugs. They're good." I guess lizards are common place over here. It's my fault really. Reptiles are not a good thing back home. Here they are okay. Check. That night I went to bed nervously scanning the walls, pulling my blankets up high over my head, and praying the gecko wouldn't run over me. "He's just eating spiders, he's just eating spiders," I kept repeating to myself. Lizards are better than spiders right? Right??

One thing I've learned on this trip, now that the travel/tourist portion of our journey is over, is that while I love to travel, I am not cut out to be a missionary any time soon. But God bless the ones who are. We are staying in an area where primarily Christian workers and missinaries live. It's kinda like little America/Austrailia over here. It is nice to see what the life of a missionary is like, seeing how this will be my dad's life from now on. Now it might be crazy to hear this, but quite a few of the Christian workers here have housekeepers. But it is not as extravagent as you think. For less then $200 USD a month, a housekeeper comes in full time and will clean, do laundry, iron, everything. Some even cook too. Today, after running some errands, I came home to my sundresses freshly pressed and hanging in my room. It was quite a novelty. That I will miss!! But with young kids to raise, ministries to run, I think the extra help is really a blessing to those missionaries.

Right down the street from us is Grace International School which caters to children of Christian workers. The school is really nice; the pool is probably one of the prettiest I've ever seen! With the cost of housing so low here, I imagine it was inexpensive to build. Every night they have dinner available by the pool. For the 7 of us to eat, drink and get dessert was like 400 baht ($12). The kids played ping pong while we waited for our food to cook. They even made me vegan noodles! It was a nice evening to just sit by the pool in the dusk, especially after so much rain the past few days... well, until the bats came out. Suddenly I was ready to go home.... (do you see a theme forming here?).

Across the street from Grace is a little cafe called Sojo's. Sojo's is cute and quaint; it reminds me of a coffee shop in Tulsa I used to go to a lot. A lot of farangs (foreigners) frequent the place because of its western food offering. It seems to be the place where missionaries get to know each other. "So where are you from? What area do you work in here?" seems to be the normal questions. There are a lot of young families here. While the kids were at soccer practice one day, my dad and I head over to Sojo's for an unsweetened iced tea (hard to find around here) and chips and salsa. I was stoked; I hadn't had salsa in 3 weeks and I live off that stuff. So I'm sipping my iced tea when the chips arrive. They set it down with the little saucer of salsa. You know when you ask for a side of ranch at like Chilis, and they bring out the small condiment dish full of it? Maybe a couple teaspoons worth? Well that's what they served here. Maybe 2 teaspoons of salsa. I looked at it, and seeing as salsa is a food group to me, I knew that would cover me on one chip, maybe two. But know what? I survived. I'll just double up when I get home.

Now when we stray from little America here, we use what's called a songtawl to travel around. Songtawl stands for red truck, and that's exactly what it is. It's a pick-up truck with benches thrown in and a roof. Not the most glamorous thing in the world, and not as cute as the little scooter tuk tuks, but to cart 7 of us around it's cheap and useful. There are hundreds of them here. You just have to be careful while boarding and unloading. I was stepping into the truck today when he took off, I started to fall off the backstep but threw myself forward and landed on the bed of the truck. My dad laughed. I said, "That's one for the blog." They also have these annoying blue trucks driving around with signs and blaring megaphones. If you remember on Back to the Future when a similar truck was driving around saying "Reelect Mayor Goldie Wilson!" Well it's like that but instead of soliciting voters it is for important things like.... eat at Burger King! or, attend Muy Thai boxing tonight! But no, my songtawl took me somewhere very important: to Starbucks and for a manicure-pedicure! (For the records $12 for both. So awesome).

So anyway, we've kinda just settled into every day life in Chiang Mai. No more tourists but living day to day. Chiang Mai is very very pretty and I know my dad is going to love it here. He doesn't mind lizards so much.