Letter 9 - Water Taxi and the Bus!

 Dear Family and Friends, 

This was a great week! As you all know by now, we love our office job on the mission. What could be better than a cool air conditioned office (when it is in the 90s plus outside), working with a cool couple (our good friends the Belnaps), and only a cool 1 minute commute to work? Not much! Except . . .

Field trips! I love to get out of the office as much as I love to be in the office! So this was a terrific week with a perfect mix of in office time and out of office time! Here are all the places we had to go:

The post office! Yay! If I am typing away at my desk and John says, "Shelly, I need to put a letter in the mail." I jump out of my office chair so fast, papers flying, grabbing my bags, and saying, "let's go!" It's about a 20 minute walk and by the time we get back, I usually need a coconut or Oreo smoothie to cool me down. 

A condo! Yay! John also needed to "close" one of our missionary houses. Basically, the mission no longer needs that condo to house missionaries. So we took a train ride to speak to a manager about shutting the condo down. 

More condos! Yay! OK, I have to say the absolute most favorite thing for us is to spend some time with the missionaries. These young men and young women are working so hard to share the gospel of Jesus Christ! They are really a shining light! On top of that, they are so fun to talk to and get to know! We scheduled a ton of visits this week. Some of these visits took up half of our office hours. Most of these places we reached by above ground train or underground subway. But . . . we got to try some new modes of transportation this week: The Bus!! And The Water Taxi! I loved the Water Taxi! The bus was . . . well, a bus! Haha! Payment is different on the bus and the water. You have to have cash and there is a person onboard whose job is to take your money and give you a ticket. And the price you pay depends on how far you are going. So I pull up my GPS and point to my stop and they tell us what we owe them. It is a fairly inexpensive way to travel and it is a lot of fun! 

Zoom meetings! Yay! We usually head out of the office up to our apartment for the zoom meetings so we don't disturb our office coworkers. This week we had a zoom meeting with the English Connect Coordinators in Hong Kong. We got a little training on how to run our English Connect class over zoom. Which leads me to the next zoom meeting . . . English Connect with the ESL missionaries. It is always so fun to meet with the missionaries - even over zoom! And there was one more zoom meeting just for me. I am starting my Thai language tutoring up again. I have the greatest tutor - Malia! She patiently meets with me and encourages me to practice and work on my Thai! I am trying to learn some basic phrases and also how to pray in Thai.

The Temple! Yay! We always love a trip to the temple. I still can't get over living right next to the temple. Highlights this week were running into a friend from Portland. Brother Tunks who is often serving in the Portland temple had made a trip to Thailand to serve in the temple here for a couple of weeks. We have run into him a couple of times (but I did not get a picture). I did take a picture of a new friend from Russia that I met on Wednesday evening in the temple. It is so much fun to meet people from all over the world! 

Lunch! Yay! We love to go to lunch! Whether it is heading up to the 5th floor for PB&J or walking outside to purchase some Thai street food, we love going to lunch. This week some sisters that we visited invited us to lunch the next day! And so we went to EAT AM ARE! This is a hamburger place just a couple of blocks from where we work! It serves great American food and sometimes you just have to have a burger. Well, John does. I had some Teriyaki Chicken! Haha!

The other highlight of the week was a visit from John's brother, Rick, and his girlfriend Belle. They flew over from the Philippines and spent some time with us. I took a ton of pictures and we crammed a lot of fun activities and sight seeing in a small space of time, so I will share all of that in next week's blog! 

We love and miss you all!

Love, 

John and Shelly (mom and dad, grandma and grandpa, friend, relative, and so on!)

Waiting for a water taxi ride on the klong (Thai word for canal). 

 Walking through the subway! We couldn't resist! We were supposed to dance and act peppy on the screen! John got a crying face emoji! I guess he wasn't peppy enough! Haha! 

One of the tall Condos we have to inspect! 

Not the whole condo of course - just the missionaries apartment :)

7-11 vending machine in the Condo lobby! 

My new friend from Russia! 

Huge elephant statue above the Erawan (Elephant) Museum! 

We plan to visit this museum sometime soon! 

Outside another condo we are about to go inspect.

View from our missionaries' condo! 

Waiting to take the Water Taxi for the first time! This is a really inexpensive way to travel. 

It cost us only 18 Baht (53 cents US).

Water splashing as we sail along (thank goodness for the plastic covering).

View from the water taxi.

Another way to travel is a songthaw (seen in the picture in front of the motorcycles). We haven't done that yet. John used to when he was a missionary here in the 70s. The most popular way to travel is on the back of the motorcycle taxis. We have not done that yet either! 

Riding the bus! 

The streets are so busy here. Thankfully, there are a lot of 

pedestrian bridges to use to cross over the highways.

Street food carts line the sidewalks everywhere. 

We often see small stores set up in front of people's homes. 

These dogs were not very happy to see us walking down their street!

Our visit to Sister Taylor and Sister Bullock! 

Their house was safe and super clean! 

Another bus ride back to the office! 

Bus ride followed by one more water taxi ride! 

Here comes our ride! 

Seriously . . . this was a fun day! 

Lot's of waves when water taxis pass. I should have taken a motion sickness pill! 

The guy in the orange vest takes your Baht ($$) shortly after your board!

A terrific end to a wonderful week - lunch at Eat Am Are with the Belnaps (our co-office workers and the Sisters! (Sister Hill and Sister Endaya)! John enjoyed his double bacon cheese burger!