back to school

It's now just barely back to school for folks in Toronto, but we've been hard at work here in Delhi for more than a month. Feels like the year's half over by now! Ji has started grade 3, though he'd be in grade 4 in Canada. Seung Yi has started the equivalent of junior kindergarden, which is known as ECEC at our school. Seung Yi also just turned four recently and is Full Of Beans these days. Half an hour ago she came into the room where I'm hiding out and working and said, "Mom, I'm hundwee, can I have some food?" I replied that she should go ask Phet for some help. Hey, he was back near the kitchen, and I was waaaay down the hallway. Seung Yi's retort? "Don't you want to share your love with your girl?"

Suddenly I DID feel like making her a sandwich!

Things here, as usual, are busy busy busy. Two weekends ago Phet and I went away for the first time ever, leaving the kids with Iaimon while we enjoyed a long weekend in Bangkok. We were on double-duty: I went with a group of women from work to celebrate Patricia's 40th birthday in style, and Phet went because he needed to get a Canadian visa for his Dad so he can go to Pheuy and Betsy's wedding in October. And THAT meant that Phet's Dad also came to Bangkok, so it was a big, huge fiesta of a good time: 8 beautiful ladies out shopping and eating and partying, plus 2 mellow Lao dudes tagging along when asked. Good times. It is always such a pleasure to go to Bangkok. I spent the first day just sniffing and breathing in all the smells. I love how Bangkok smells. It's a mix of incence and heat and ripe fruit and garlic and then the occasional blast of eye-watering chillies being fried up, all suspended in a transit exhaust haze. May not sound good to you, but I LOVE it.

The one negative thing about going to Bangkok from Delhi is that the flight times suck big time. It's less than a four hour flight, but they schedule the departures at 3 am, which is SO GROSS. The good news is that the new airport in Delhi is finished and it is just lovely. Phet and I were chatting one night, and we realized that every major city we've moved to has had an old and rickety airport when we arrived, and then has built a spanking brand new airport by the time we've left. When we first went to Hanoi the airport was miniscule and literally had old tire treads on the baggage carousels. Now: beautiful! Then we moved to Vientiane, which had a ye olde aiporte, complete with hand written wooden signage. When we left: new! Shiny! With an elevator! In KL, the new airport had been under construction for awhile, and is currently one of our all-time favourites. It is ridiculously unblemished and features this incredibly fast train service in and out of town, which is good because it is really, really far away from the city centre. Then we moved up to Bangkok and were treated to witnessing the birth of the new Suvarnhabumi airport. We always actually really liked the old Don Meuang airport, complete with circa 1978 Mc Donald's colours interior design (yes, yellow AND brown) but of course the new airport is a huge improvement and they make the taxis turn off their motors while they're waiting for customers, so it's also much fresher and cleaner. Now, finally Delhi. The old airport was one of the same old school style ones, with looooow ceilings and rickety bathrooms. I personally loved the way it smelled smoky (continuing theme: Thaba bases her love of places in great part upon their smell) but it was defintely NOT world class. Now? The departures section is lovely. There are the usual large banks of check-in desks, and a massively high ceiling. The best part is that now after passing through the passport control area, there is a spacious shopping and eating section before you get to the gates. Previously, there were just the gates, suddenly after the passport check, and then squished in next to the gates there were a couple of small kiosk-style food outlets, like a Coffee Day and more recently a Subway. Now there is a large duty free shop with, like, 36 kinds of single malt scotch, followed by many different restaurants and a big food-court-ish spot that has one place callled Idli.com! The gates are big and comfortable and easy to navigate. I have to admit I was sceptical about whether the airport would be finished, let alone finished nicely, but kudos to the folks who put it all together and the thousands of workers who constructed it: the new Delhi airport is wonderful.

The actual trip to Bangkok, once I got over the stupid jet lag, was great. On the first day, I met up with Phet and his Dad at the - whoo hoo - Shangri La hotel on the banks of the Chao Praya river. My father in law is doing well and seemed happy and mellow. Phet and I zipped off to eat some noodles at the Robinson's near Saphan Taksin, and picked up a few shopping items, then I went to nap for a few hours. In the evening, we took a couple of my colleagues out for grilled seafood on the streets of Chinatown, and had an early evening. The next day all the other ladies rolled into town and did their jet lag recovery while we went out shopping - got a bunch of wigs, a new speaker system, and goodies for all the kids. That evening we had our big night out on the town for P's birthday and went to a well-known pub called Admakers where they had a terrific live band playing classic rock and fun 70s and 80s hits. Good times were had by all, and at the end, one of the singers had us all go along to check out a Thai club. Fun!

The next morning I was a little...tired...but a few hours at the weekend market followed by some intense shopping at Emporium revived me. At dusk we took the ladies on a river boat cruise and then hosted dinner at the In Love restaurant on the river, where we ordered massive amounts of meat and seafood and many juices that we surreptitiously mixed with "water" under the table because it was a dry day due to local elections. On the Sunday we all headed out to the airport in the afternoon (after I'd done yet more shopping) and at the airport I made sure to get not only a double whopper with cheese for myself to eat on the airplane, but also one to take home to Ji. The flight home was great and I caught up on a couple of movies and made it home in time to say goodnight to the kids.

This past weekend was Seung Yi's birthday party, which was a doozy. We had a double party for her and Laree (since Laree's was in June while we were in Canada) and invited kids from their classes and other friends. We had a bouncy castle that entirely filled the front garden / lawn area, we had a mehndi guy, we had a face paint guy, we had a bracelet-making guy, and Phet finally let me order (click to see the evidence) AN ELEPHANT!!!

Smartly, I had the food catered, which is a little expensive, but made my life much easier, and which was fantastic because school was crazy that week. I started auditions for our fall play and we had 78 kids audition over the course of two days, then we also had call-backs on top of that, plus a three-hour casting meeting (which is actually always the funnest part), and on top of that we had our parents' night from 6-9:30 mid-week, and we had a guest dancer / visiting artist whose show I wanted to see on the Friday, so it was just bananas all together to try to figure out when the heck I would have the time to do anything like, say, sleep, let alone prepare food for 40 people.

This week was a little more relaxed because we had a PD day on Thursday and then a holiday for Eid on Friday. It's still raining daily here, but everything looks green and brilliant when the sun pops out - as it is doing now. Seung Yi's napping, Laree and Iaimon are at church, Phet's cooking us Bangkok-style chicken rice for dinner, and Ji's playing Mechanix with a neighbourhood buddy who accidentally showed up today for Seung Yi's party (we had the date wrong on a few copies - oops!). Me, I'm trying to stay ahead on all my prep work for school, and to keep on top of all the upcoming play-related madness. And of course, keep up with watching the latest episodes of Mad Men. (And on that note, I think "The Suitcase" episode may be one of my all time favourites!!!)

[Delhi-11-September-2010]