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On this weblog we want to give you an impression of our daily life and surroundings: a picture and some text. For more general information, click on News, and if you would like to pray for us, click on Prayer (and/or listen to the voice of God!). If you would like to regularly receive news from us or support us in other ways, then click on Info.
Team Lampang 2010
This is our team in Lampang at the end of 2010: the Cho family from Australia, the Bekker family from South-Africa, Mandisa from South-Africa, Tomoko from Japan and our family. Compare with last year’s photo below..! Our team-website is: www.teamlampang.org.
Team Lampang
This is our team in Lampang: on the left side Rich & Lisa Cho from Australia with Luca (5), Aidan (3) and Sianna (0), in the middle Nick & Trish Bekker from South-Africa with Jonty (5), Emily (3) and Nina (2), and us on the right hand side. The Bekkers are the team leaders, and the Cho are leaving for Home Assignment tomorrow. And we just arrived..!
Our foursome
After Kelly and Emmet had spent two nights in the hospital after the birth, Lukas and Peter came to pick them up. This is in Kelly’s room (which is not the room where Emmet was born…)
Our kitchen
This is how our kitchen typically looks. It’s the only sink in the house, so it’s where we also brush our teeth. We only have cold water here (although it’s usually at least luke-warm). To the left is the door to the bathroom, to the right is the window looking out onto our ‘carport’.
Our car
Mid December we bought this Isuzu Wanderer 1996 diesel station wagon for a wonderful price from fellow missionaries. The price, the model, and the reputation (“no problems”) were just what we had been hoping and praying for! It has been a real blessing, and even a bit of a money saver on trips to the hospital to check up on baby Tuck. We now have 2 car seats in the back, so only 1 extra seatbelt when the whole family is traveling. We hope we can transport all our belongings in one go when we move to Lampang – it has quite a bit of room in the back..!
Jesse tree
This Advent and Christmas season we’re trying something new, it’s called a Jesse tree. Starting on 1 December, every day we hang a symbol (this year: a hand-drawn picture on a round piece of paper, coloured in by Kelly and Lukas) in the tree (this year: a branch that Kelly found outside). Every day a story from salvation history is told, starting with the Spirit of God hovering over the waters, through the Old Testament, until the stories around the birth of Jesus. Lukas really enjoys these times, and insists that he is allowed to pray on his own - we then hear back parts of the story of the day, and sometimes he prays for people far or near.
Orchid nursery
Here you see the edge of the Orchid nursery next to our house. Also in the picture is the guard dog, “Cola”, some kind of Belgian Shepherd. The tree in the background is a mango tree, which is currently bearing fruit (towards the end of the season).
Washing machine
In our ‘garage’ under our kitchen window is our two-barrel semi-automatic washing machine. Looking though our kitchen window, you see through the kitchen, through the living room, and see the light coming through our front windows.
Back door
We use the back door as the main entrance to our home. The padlock is being used when we leave the house. All windows and outside doors have a screen door to keep mosquito’s at bay. Next to the door we have the typical shoerack, because footwear is left at the door while entering any decent Thai house. In our leisure time we often wear sandals or slippers, but when we are ‘in function’ we wear closed shoes, as is expected of teachers – even though we are still only language students, we are missionaries too..!
Our Canada Day goodies
We found some very expensive and rather tired looking strawberries in the supermarket, some yummy chocolate ice cream and were generously given the chocolate caramel squares by a friend to help us celebrate our first Canada Day in Thailand. There were no manufactured fireworks this evening but as we ate our dessert there were some nature’s own flash and boom followed by welcome rain to cool off our “35 C, feels like 42 C” daytime heat.
Hope you all have a great Canada Day in Canada!
Canada Day Press Release
“The entire Canadian population of Lopburi Thailand gathered today at one
house in a usually quiet neighbourhood near the Thesabaan. In this
country where the celebration is not marked by any public holiday, merry
makers rose early to celebrate before the work day began. By breakfast
time rousing renditions of "Happy Birthday, dear Canada” and “O Canada,”
complete with prominent waving of portable Canadian flags, were ringing
out across the local orchid plantation. The festive fare planned for this evening consists of red apples, strawberries and chocolate ice cream and chocolate caramel squares. The guard on duty for the property where the festivities will be continued this evening is on full alert to ensure that high levels of chocolate consumption do not result in any rowdy behaviour that might offend the neighbours, who, also foreigners, are rumoured to be planning independent celebrations of their own for later in the week.“
On the motorbike
Andre, Lukas and Tiaan on auntie Lee-anne’s motorbike! Andre and Tiaan, South-African brothers, are Lukas’ friends ever since we got to Asia. Andre is 6 and sort of a big brother to Lukas, and Tiaan is 3, more of a peer (but better coordinated and able to speak much more). Lukas is really propelled in his growing up by the interactions with older kids.
Our veranda
We have sort of a square veranda upstairs on the corner of the house between the bedrooms (Lukas’ bedroom is sticking out on the left side). It has tall wooden shutters that we can fix open or closed with a latch. We often keep some open to let whatever breezes there might be blow into our room through the screen door. We haven’t spent any time on the veranda just lounging but maybe that will come one day. The porch area on the ground floor leads to our front door (which we don’t use).
Three times a day
The custom in Thailand is to shower at least three times a day - and possibly more if it is very warm or you have gone exercising! It is considered proper hygiene to wear a clean set of clothes after each shower, the last being your pajamas. Smelling nice is very important here! To get the water flowing, turn the red lever on the tap by the wall - standard temperature of the cold water about 20 degrees. Cold showers are welcome in warm afternoons. To get warm water, choose your temperature by turning the dial on the water heater mounted on the wall. Warm water is welcome in the mornings, especially after a rainy stormy night has cooled the air down. When we first arrived in Asia all we wanted was cold showers but now we often use at least lightly heated water. We must be acclimatizing!
Splashing about
Lukas loves playing with his bath animals - he tries to count them or has little conversations often featuring an emphatic “come on!” from one duck to the other! When the bath is done, we tip out the water onto the floor which doubles as a shower stall, with a drain in one corner! Watch out for wet feet when getting to the toilet! Our manual flush feature toilet is water conservation conscious - dip the dipper into the blue tub and wash down - water use per flush, 1-3 litres, depending!!
Welcome bouquet
Greeting us when we walked into our living room/dining room was this wonderful bouquet of orchids arranged from orchids grown in the orchid nursery right outside our front door.
Staircase to dreamland
Lukas chasing his birthday balloon up the staircase to the second storey of our house. The upper part of the staircase is very steep for a toddler (Lukas doesn’t think so..!).
Our Garage
Our clothes drying rack is on the left, cleaning supplies straight ahead, twin barrel semi automatic washing machine hidden behind lattice on the right. We have no car - our personal transport currently consists of two borrowed bicycles and our stoller!
Our kitchen
This is how we found our kitchen upon our arrival here. Notice the big plastic bottle of drinking water on the counter as the tap water is not potable. We have a cold water tap only, although late in the afternoon we get a pipe’s worth of really warm water. On the far right is our gas range with stove top and oven.
On a street corner near our house
We daily round this corner when dropping off and picking up Lukas, when he goes to a place called Shiloh in the mornings of working day. This is our first elephant-in-the-‘wild’ sighting..!
Our house, called Thesabaan Front
We’ve never lived on our own in a house this big! It has a small kitchen, a small bathroom with shower and hand-flush toilet, a larger living room, and 2 bedrooms upstairs, with a common balcony/veranda type space on a corner.
Thailand - Language Orientation Training group 59
To give you a feel for some of the people we encounter in our day to day life here, this is the group we have started out with in our language learning (plus kids). So that is from left to right: Peter & Kelly + Lukas, Karoen (The Netherlands), Deon & Corne + Andre + Tiaan (South Africa), Philip (South Africa), Lee-anne (New Zealand), and Lisa (Australia).
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