Home Sweet Home

In our last post we shared a photo of the outside of our home, but we thought it would be fun to upload some images of inside our house and the area around us.  Mom: enjoy this little pictorial tour of the neighborhood!

This is our home, as you probably saw in the last blog.  The truck does not belong to us, it belongs to the orphanage home here, it was just briefly parked in our carport.  Now we have our bikes in the carport (left for us by last year's teachers), and Gabe hung his hammock between the two posts in the carport.  We don't leave the hammock up all the time, as we wouldn't want it to be a dangerous toy for the home's kiddos to play with, but we're looking forward to utilizing it, particularly when we don't need to camp in front of a fan in order to stay comfortable!

This is the driveway going toward our duplex.  The driveway to the left (before the water tower) is ours.  There's a second duplex right behind the water tower out of sight of the camera.  The large structure on the right is the Ban San Faan home.  As you can see, there is also a soccer field where the older boys and members of the community come to play "futban" every evening.  There's a second soccer field behind our house. 

We went for a walk the other day and tried to capture some of the local scenery.  This is a house (with  dry rice paddies) that is just down the road from us.  This is a more modern structure, as it's built with concrete and bricks and tile. 

This is a temple a little further down the road.  The temple compounds are called Wats and they are everywhere.  They are usually very ornate, bright buildings. 

This is a scene on our walk.  As you can see, the roads are quite narrow, so when we walk we keep our eyes and ears open for cars and we try to jump off the road.  The red vehicle is called a Songtaew, which is the most common form of public transportation.  Different colored songtaews have different routes in Chiang Mai and the surrounding towns.  The vehicle is a small truck, with a canopy (with open windows) on it and two benches facing each other on the inside.  You hail songtaews as they're driving on the road, they pull over, you tell the driver where you're going, hop in, and then ride until your destination.  When you want to get off, you push a little button/buzzer that lets the driver know to pull over, you hop out, pay your fare (usually 15 or 20 baht - about 50-65 cents), and you continue on your way!

This is one of the older style of homes - it is made of teak wood upstairs, and originally it would have just had posts/silts for the house to sit on.  Many of the older homes have now been enclosed on the bottom with brick or concrete. 

Inside our house we have geckos.  We do have screens in the window, but the geckos come in under the door or they shimmy in through the cracks between the screen and the window sill.  This gecko, unfortunately, was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  He is now a skeleton - this unfortunate accident must have happened when the last person stayed in this house!

We were Facetiming with our family yesterday and we had a gecko running around on the wall, so we turned the camera so our nephew and niece could see it.  We told them that the geckos lived inside with us, but we hadn't given any of them names yet.  We asked Noah, our nephew, what we should call the gecko we were looking at and he promptly named him "Mike."  Since we aren't sure exactly how to tell the geckos apart yet, all the geckos in our house are currently being referred to as "Mike." 

Our internet was a little sketchy for the first few days, and these two fellows did a lot of work to get a booster set up on the corner of the duplex in front of our house so that we'd get internet INSIDE our house (and not just sitting in the front doorway).  We are thankful for their willingness to drill holes, climb ladders, and otherwise serve us to provide internet and wifi in the house! 

We regularly make smoothies for breakfast, and it's been fun to experiment with different kinds of fruits!  This is a dragon fruit, which was delicious added to our smoothie! 

A different shot of the dragon fruit, along with the little bananas that grow around here.  We have a banana tree outside our bedroom window, in fact! 

In Thailand, as elsewhere in tropical/Asian cultures, shoes are pretty much forbidden inside the house (other than a designated pair of sandals or "houseshoes").  So one of the pieces of furniture that we were quickly supplied with was a shoe rack.  Can you BELIEVE the number of shoes we have?  Four of them are Gabe's and the rest are Dani's... :) 

 This is our front/communal room.  The front door is to the left of the photo.  The chairs, fan, footstools, and couch were all here when we arrived.  We bought the little shelf to set up our "charging station" for our various electronics!

This is from standing by the two black chairs.  We brought the banner from home (it's block prints of Pacific NW birds that one of Dani's colleagues gave us as a wedding gift) with the hope of brightening up our little space.  The door to the kitchen is visible on the left.

Looking into the kitchen - we have a small table and two chairs, and a 1/2 bath (no shower) straight ahead.  We keep our two bowls, two plates, two knives, two forks, two spoons, four mugs, and 2 glasses under the table where it's easy to get to them when it's time to eat!  We did purchase the electric kettle because even though it is hot, we are BIG tea drinkers!  We brought the net produce bags hanging from the door handle in the foreground from home.  We figured they'd come in handy for the open markets.  The sink is to the right of the photo. 

Gabe working in the kitchen.  His back is toward the table and chairs.  We have one shelf (in front of Gabe's knee) where we put all of our kitchen equipment.  That includes our magic bullet cups, spare blade, and lids, a pot with a lid, a pitcher, and a large bowl to mix things and/or use for salad.  Our kitchen also came equipped with a toaster, a frying pan, a two-burner portable electric stovetop and a fridge.  On the fridge, as you might be BARELY able to see, is all of the photos we received in Christmas cards this year.  So if you happened to send us a Christmas Card photo, you are up on the fridge and regularly being prayed for!  Thanks for brightening up a little corner of our home!

This is looking into our bedroom.  Just to the right of this photo is the door leading into the kitchen.  We have a KING size bed which seems huge to us but also very convenient since it is hot at night and having a spouse's body generating heat RIGHT next to you isn't always enjoyable! 

This is from the far side of the bed looking toward the back/left side of the photo above.  That fan is pretty much our new best friend!  We have one in the bedroom, along with the one in the living room and in the kitchen.  This means that wherever we go in the house, we can keep air movement.  If you notice above the curtains, there is also a wall-mounted air-conditioning unit.  We only use it at night when we're ready to go to bed to cool down the bedroom.  It is a blessing to have it available for getting the temperature down more quickly than the outdoors cool off.  The door to our bathroom is barely visible on the left of the photo.

Looking into our bathroom - it is a large space!  That's the shower corner straight ahead.  Obvious the toilet itself is there on the right, and the edge of the sink is sticking out on the left.  After a shower, the floor is squeegeed down so we don't slip too much!

Directly across the hall from out bedroom door is a second door going into our second bedroom.  This room is pretty bare at the moment - we don't have any furniture in it besides a rack to hang our rain jackets on - but we could definitely get it outfitted in a jiffy if someone was to come visit (hint, hint!).  There is a bathroom in it just like in ours, and lots of space to the left of where the photo is for a bed.  I think we could make it quite comfortable if someone wanted to come use it!