The day after we got off the plane. We stayed at our teammates Ken and Alison’s house. We have such fond fond memories of our first few days in Thailand here, where we kept pinching ourselves and saying we were here! We also slept some glorious sleep here, knowing our long journey had been completed.

Our very first Thai meal! At a restaurant called “Northern Thai” right down the road, our teammates took us here for lunch the day after we arrived, where they recommended we order Khao Soi, a dish served popularly in Northern Thailand. It’s not pictured–that is chicken wings, a fried reality the first month or two we were here, as the kids slowly acclimated to Thai flavors. Getting more Western options like this for them allowed us to eat at Thai places at all. I don’t remember being overly impressed with the Khao Soi (plus it is a hot soupy dish, and that felt somehow wrong to be eating on such a hot day), but we’ve since eaten it here again and  all over Chiang Mai (it’s a staple), and it really is the best at this restaurant! It is about 30 baht, or $1 per bowl.

We stayed in Khao Lak, an hour north of Phuket. This beach town was hit hard by the tsunami of 2005 and had to be rebuilt significantly. When Brenden made his two missions trips nearly a decade ago to help with tsunami relief efforts, he is pretty sure he was just miles from where we stayed. Small world!

We were grateful for our little hotel room. We just needed something basic, and it was special to have so much uninterrupted family time.

We got creative with nap times, pulling the curtains around Maja’s crib (which the hotel provided) and putting Emerson in the bathroom. Maybe both options are kind of gross, but we were still jet-lagging and needed our sleep.

Watching Cars with Daddy–a rare treat to watch such a full-length feature. We did a lot of lounging and recuperating from several very intense months of preparations. In fact, these first couple weeks, I have more pictures than one would think possible of sleeping babies in big beds.

Maja’s favorite “elephant pool”.

We did a lot of playing on the beach.

The kid’s got some serious swagger.

The beach we were at reminded me more of the serene, quiet NC beaches than the tropical, exotic paradises you see in pictures of Thai beaches. The sky was huge and never-ending (my favorite).

A lot of observing new things. I still find Maja crouched down looking at this or that bug.

The truth is we ate a lot of french fries. And we can’t blame the Western cravings on the kids alone (I wasn’t expecting that either). We ate our meals with symphony recordings of Toni Braxton’s “Unbreak my Heart” and operatic singers trying out Mariah Carey’s “Hero”. The 1990s covers, done in all genres, literally made me laugh out loud and feel happy. Thailand loves some 90’s music!

Halfway through the stay, the hotel staff approached us and said they wanted to upgrade us to a pool villa on the other side of the property to give us “the most perfect beach holiday” or something like that. For free! We were over-the-moon and so happy to spread out some more. (The little private pool was just steps outside the sliding doors of this room–I’m not sure we’ll ever get this opportunity again!)

Slippery floors and a spilt glass of milk made for some glass in the forehead.

But it didn’t keep Emi down for long.

We were so grateful for this chance to catch our breaths before heading back to Chiang Mai.

Upon returning to C.M., an immediate search for houses began. Craig and Kara, our teammates, drove us through neighborhoods for an afternoon, where we wrote down numbers of all the “for rent” signs we saw. Holding the kids in our laps in the backseat felt very, well, third-world and exciting (scary) to me. They, as you can imagine, were happy as larks. This is a picture of them in front of a rental home we checked out.

Craig, Kara, and Jake. As head of HR, Craig faithfully guided us through every step of the process in the year leading up to our arrival. They took amazing care of us our first few days here, and then promptly flew to America for 5 weeks, giving us the keys to their home and truck. I know God knew this is how it would work out timing-wise, and we thank Him for this bit of independence as we made big decisions and acclimated.

Our first map. With some phone problems over the first couple weeks, we had no GPS to lean on. We still laugh at our first time driving as a family in the truck–it was, shall we say, tense!

We were blown away that this kid was hanging out the back of the song taew (taxi). So blown away we even took a picture. And that’s why I so badly want to capture all this initial newness–because now, we’d probably do it ourselves!

Bamboo makes the world go round in these parts.