Bracing for the Coming Flood

Home-made lamp using used cooking oil, salt,
 and  cotton buds.

You may have heard by now that many of Thailand's provinces are now submerged in flood water and major roads are impassable. Our host country is in big trouble and needing your prayers.

We live in the capital city, Bangkok, and a flash flood is expected to hit our area on Oct.16-18, 28-30. In times like this you can expect people to go panic-buying, preparing for the worst. A sandbag could almost compete with the price of rice!
 
Today, we went to buy more groceries and the grocery shelves were dramatically empty! Basic commodities like bottled water, noodles, canned goods and eggs are all sold-out. No more candles for sale so we made our own lamp. It is more likely that we would not have electricity.

We pray that the flood will not be as bad as in other provinces. Although the government is doing its best to save the capital city but still we were warned to prepare for the worst. So we did!

We didn't have homeschooling yesterday and today because we wanted to focus on preparing for on  coming  flood. We made cement barriers on doors, sealed all drains and possible water entry points, and moved things to higher ground.







Naomi and Zoe were such a big help! They were eager to finish the little construction we did.



Please pray for us because, as I am writing this post, it is starting to rain again.

I'm Back From My Trip to Bangladesh

I love traveling and I always enjoy the thrill being in a new place and learning new things.

My recent trip to Bangladesh is, so far, the most enriching experience for me.  I visited old friends and met new ones. I also learned few Bangla words and phrases, and gained a bit understanding of the Bengali's rich culture which I will be sharing more in my next posts. But for now, I just would like to say that I'm glad to be back. I'm home and that's the best place for me in this world.

I'm grateful to my dearest husband for letting me go to this trip, and to my daughters who warmly welcomed me with their surprises.

Zoe made me a beautiful card and inserted cash from her allowance :-)

Naomi creatively put sticky welcome note on the wooden cat on my table.

Nothing is as exciting as coming home even when being away for only few days.

 I'm home and I love it!

Like Mother Like Daughter

Photography is one of my favorite hobbies, and now it's my girl's thing!

Zoe didn't know that while she enjoyed taking photos, I was enjoying myself taking photos of her taking photos! See more of Zoe's photos here.

Entering University Life

He's finally there! We've been looking forward to this time after years of homeschooling. Our son finally made it to the university. He said, "The 5-hour entrance exam was surprisingly easy." Hmmm...that's the confidence of a homeschooler when it comes to big exams like that. He was asked to write 2 essays and was commended for that and was encouraged to join the writers club. Homeschool works!
I've just chatted with my son online. School starts next week. We're all excited for him! I'm flying down to our home city to be with him for 3 days to help him set-up his new life there. Today, we worked together on his start-up budget. Aside from finding a room to rent, we need to buy him new shoes, school uniforms and supplies. We have been homeschooling him for many years so we never get to worry about these things before. Now, this is a new challenge for us, aside from the fact that the family will now be in 2 countries. We talked about his personal spending every month, which I believe will not be problem since he is a low-maintenance person who is always content with whatever there is for him. But this may be a big challenge for him because he needs to learn how to take care of himself. now he needs to know how to budget his monthly allowance. He may need help for that but I'm confident that this is the best time for him to learn to be more independent and I believe we've trained him for this day.