'round here (in black & white)

It's begining to feel like the end of term. My kids are cheery and so am I. We had a relaxed day and chilled out listening to Raffi, and making paper flowers. Passed the hookah around which helped mellow them all out...

On the weekend we had the apartment-fixing-dudes in to cobble a few things together for us. The in-house fixit man squooged out our plugged tub (ask anyone who knows one of us luxuriantly-tressed Niedzwiecki girls, and they'll tell you that our hair falls out in LETHAL quantities), diced up some faulty lightbulb wires, and attached a new toilet hose sprayer thingy in the guest bathroom (just in case any of y'all who plan to visit have the need to indulge in bidet-type action, or ya just have to hose down your nasty feet after a hard day out shopping).

The call-in guy came to look at our air con. The air con in our bedroom is stoopid. Something is wrong with the temperature guage mechanism, we think. If you set the guage at 25', the air con will go arctic for half an hour. Then it will suddenly cut off, let the temperature climb up to about 30', and then kick in again and knock you frosty. I wear a tank top to bed so that I can survive the hot 'season', but I keep my Gap sweatshirt and a blankie beside to manage during the cold 'season.' On any given night I toss the blanket and sweatshirt on and off about 5 times. Aside from any personal discomfort, of course we also don't really think that this type of rapid cycle weather pattern is very good for Ji to live through every night. The air con man put on a new control panel and cleaned all our air con filters (you don't even want to KNOW what kind of crap comes off of a Bangkok air con filter when it's cleaned. Let's just say that it is pitch black and clumpy. Ew.) However, I don't think that his work was particularly effective as I was hot-cold-hot etc all night last night. Back to the old drawing board as the saying goes.

On Sunday I went to check out the Suan Rot Fai, or Train Park, up near the weekend market. We were scouting locations for a kindergarden field trip. Unfortunately, the park turned out to be just a park, despite advance notice through the grapevine of it having some kind of miniature land or bicycle rental service. Not sure where that park was, but this place wasn't it. Still, a good park. Sizeable, well-kept, nicely plotted flowers, funky trees.

And some totally crazy-ass flowers that I've never seen before. This photo doesn't do justice to the fully opened buds, which looked like space burgers filled with marshmallow stuffing:

After walking through the broilingly hot park for an hour, I went to the weekend market and picked up some choice goodies. Got a few photo frames, and some adorable girly treats to send to Ji's girl-cousins and girl-friends back home.

On the way home, I saw this guy on the subway and HAD to take his photo. This one's for you, famous brother:

In the afternoon, we headed over to the tailor's to pick up Phet's 3 new suits and 5 new shirts. Is he looking dapper or what? That's his official "Hello-I'm-A-High-Powered-International-Development-Professional" face, once which he wears only on special conference occasions.

But enuff about Phet.

Today was Monday and as I said, school was really good. I received a stupendous compliment from one of my students (via his Mum) after school today. I've had many 'challenges' with this kid, and when his mother asked if I'd be teaching him next year I thought that he'd be thrilled to get out of my clutches. Buuut, she said that it would be such a shame if I didn't get to teach the class next year because her son likes me so much (!). Not only that, get this: she said they were watching Million Dollar Baby the other night and her son said that I'm a dead ringer for Hilary Swank. Right on!

I am a perfect-skinned, great-teethed, hard core ass-kicker! I rule! [Bangkok-14-June-2005