Amer-Thai, Welcome!

Hello and welcome to Ameri-Thai, my new blog dedicated to my life abroad in Thailand!

So far life in Thailand has been so similar yet so different then my life in the U.S.. This trip, this move really, was my first experience outside of my protective bubble of home. When I was younger (gosh I hate saying that!) I was much more open to having new experiences. Now that I am older (30.5, yikes!) it seems that these new experiences, like living in Thailand for example, rattle me more then what they would have even five or six years ago. I guess that comes with being a mom of three little ones and liking my version of "normal".

Any who, we haven't really been "normal" by any standard this past week. After four flights with three young kids we finally arrived in Thailand at 11pm Thailand time. Since there is a 12 hour time difference between Thailand and Louisiana (where we stayed the month prior) we were wide awake and ready to go. Instead of sleeping we had dinner at 2am. This past week has been pretty similar as in we do things like eating and sleeping all at the wrong time.  Twice we have come back to our temp place wanting to take a short nap and instead sleep for 10-12 hours. I have never experienced jet lag before and everyone I have ever talked to about never dealt with the 12 hour time difference. Hopefully that gets better soon.

Not everything has been as difficult as I anticipated. There are plenty of "Western" things like McDonald's, KFC, Burger King, Star Bucks, Subway, etc, as well as plenty of places to grocery shop. They have stores that are comparable to Wal Mart and Target and a huge seven story shopping mall. We even had Baskin Robins ice cream yesterday! In the big areas like the ones previously mentioned, most people speak some English so there isn't a huge language barrier. The people are extremely friendly and will literally bend over backwards if they think that will help the situation. So.. those are the good things!

The not so good things are safety and what do I do with my time. Since we are living in a third world country just about every area looks as though it would be unsafe. In the U.S. if a place "looked" rough, it probably was. Here, it's harder to tell. We have been through some streets that in the U.S. I would have never ventured to. I think the real shocker for me came when we were looking at houses. Every house we looked at was in a gated community. Some had more gates then others. Our second choice house was almost in the heart of the city and it was in a gated community. The house itself also had a gate, a 10 foot high concrete wall surrounding the property, and then the house had an alarm. The house was gorgeous and they even had elephant statues in the pool spitting out water, but that much security was a little intimidating. I mean, where I come from, if that much security is needed you probably shouldn't be living there!

As for my time, I am not really sure what to do with myself all day. I don't really feel secure enough yet to venture out on my own with our driver, (yes we have a driver!) so that pretty much leaves me with three kids stuck in a hotel all day. The only outside space they have here seems to be the roof top pool which is a no go with four non swimmers (yes, I said four because I cant swim!). We were hoping to move to a hotel that was close to our new home but our driver doesn't drive that far out of the city so until we get the driver thing squared away we can't really go anywhere. Hopefully the hubby is working on all of that today as well as our move in date for our new place.

Well, I have a little girl crying at my feet for a nap, so I had better jet. I will be back soon as I have so much more that I need to get out. Hope all is well with everyone!
Kristen