Dear family and friends!
Wednesday the 13th was our one month anniversary! Time is flying by! One month down . . . 22 to more to go!
This week included a lot of walking flights of stairs in the mornings (that is our exercise here), talking to our family via Facetime or Messenger (calls or videos), working in the office, eating lots of Khao Put Kai (pronounced cow put guy - fried rice with chicken) for lunch or dinner at a street vendor just down the block from the temple, going to the street markets for fruits and veggies, going to the lunch market for other yummy lunches.
We've had countless trips to 7-11, a trip to the pharmacy, and trips to the big store Lotus (like Target).
If we don't go out for lunch or dinner we usually eat leftovers from lunch or dinner or Ramen noodles or toast and eggs . And for breakfast: cereal or yogurt and granola. And at most meals fruit! We love the fruit here! So fresh and delicious! Tuesday this week, nothing sounded good for dinner so we ended up buying two meat sticks for 50 cents each and ate a Blizzard from DQ afterwards! The mini blizzards were only $1.50 each. To me, it was a perfect dinner!
On Wednesday this past week, John and I joined a zoom English Class. We will be leading this class in a few weeks so we joined in to see how it was to be done. We will be leading (teaching) English Connect to some native Thai speakers/missionaries each week. These missionaries live hours away all over Thailand so that is why the class is over Zoom. The Mission Leaders were back in town, so they invited the office missionaries (us and the Belnaps) to lunch at a lovely restaurant. They picked out the best Thai food! It was delicious and fun to get to know them better. Wednesday evening, John and I went back to our favorite Corn Som Thum place for dinner. I mean, you have to eat your veggies! Wednesday night is also chore night! We decided to do chores on Wednesdays so we could have the weekends free! So bathroom scrubbing, sweeping, dusting laundry all get done on Wednesday nights. It does not take long to clean our tiny apartment!
An excerpt from my journal: Feb 13, 25 - Thursday - Happy Birthday Emily! I woke up late and called Emily! Haha! It was her birthday here - but not in Thailand! We had a good chat with her. I wanted to go to the big Thursday morning market to buy fruits and veggies, but we slept in! So that did not happen. We went to work and did some morning work. At lunch time, we went with the Belnaps to the Market for lunch. We ate Pad See Ew noodles. They were really yummy! They reminded me of Pad Thai. John found a gyro place and loved his gyro! The place is about a 10 minute walk down Asoke street in the heat of the day! It’s around 90 degrees out! There is a huge lunch room area to eat in that is shady but very warm! Sweat was dripping down my back! President K brought us a treat of avocado smoothies! They were also very good! (that was actually earlier)! Came back to work and worked some more. The Mission Leaders gave us an assignment to attend the Rayong Branch each week. It is about 2 and1/2 hours away from Bangkok. We will drive down on Saturdays and spend the night. The Mission Leaders decided the Belnaps would come with us to Rayong this weekend to help us get acclimated to traveling in Bangkok and being MLS (member and leader support missionaries) at the small branch there. I helped sister Belnap up in the storage room during office hours today and ended up getting a nice shoe rack for our entryway. Yay! After work, we went to the temple. It was lovely. After the temple, we ate fruit, veggies, and toast for dinner. Then I went for a 30 minute walk.
On Valentines day, we went back to the lunch market. John wanted another Gyro and I tried the Khao Soi! Very good! Also very hot! We stopped at 7-11 on the way home to buy some Valentine's chocolate!
On Saturday woke up early, talked to Rikki, went for our stair walk and laps, ate breakfast, showered, packed, and took off to Rayong. We checked into our hotel, ate at a street place - Kao Put (fried rice), then we went to wans and bought snacks. Wans is like a Thai version of Costco! Except without air conditioning and samples. I did buy a lot of snacks though. And I can't wait to go back! After we took a rest at the hotel, we drove to the beach with the Belnaps, watched the sunset, ate Som Thum at a beachside restaurant, and went back to the hotel.
On Sunday we ate a wonderful buffet breakfast at the Hotel. At 10am we attended our little Rayong Branch. It was such a lovely group of people. John and I were asked to introduce ourselves and share our testimonies in Sacrament meeting. There is an interpreter who can translate from Thai to English and visa versa. After church, there was a linger longer where we visited (some of the members are from the Philippines and speak English) and ate snacks. Snacks after church seems to be a common tradition for the branches here. I really enjoy it. It is a wonderful time to make new friends and enjoy yummy food. After church, we made the long drive back to Bangkok. 2 and ½ hours. John drove. We survived. The steering wheel is on the right (wrong) side of the car!! And you drive on the left side of the road here! We were so tired after the long weekend, we got into our Jammies and ate some fried rice from 7-11. We forgot there was a 9pm devotional over zoom, so we had to put nice shirts on to pretend we were dressed in our Sunday best (PJ bottoms were not seen - we hope!)!
And that about sums up our week! Pictures below!
We miss you! God bless you all!
Love John and Shelly, Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa, Elder and Sister Brady
Looks like a wonderful time and yummy food!! So glad you are doing well. Who are your mission leaders? Young Missionaries or Mission Presidency member?? The ones that make your assignments??
ReplyDeleteYay! First comment! :) We are doing great and loving the Thai food and the people! Our Mission Leaders are the Mission President and his wife. They really are a team and both of them are working together to lead this mission. I love that they are called Mission Leaders now!
DeleteCool, I didn't know the name had changed!!!
ReplyDeleteIt was a good change :)! How are you doing??
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