There are a lot of things about living in Thailand that remind us of our days in Nicaragua. The brightly coloured coragated tin houses, the lush greenery, the obstinate rejection of driving rules and the small translucent geckos on the walls. Of course, that might just be the way it is living in a tropical developing country. There are certainly a lot of things not like Nicaragua.... Where you would be getting rice, beans and plantain, you are getting a lot of fish, shrimp, noodles and soups. Take away the music blasting on every street corner and substitute it with little shrines covered with ceramic zebras. We are working on understanding this zebra obsession. 

The brothers and sisters here have been very helpful in finding us a place to live, as well as making us feel at home. After our second meeting here some Korean sisters invited all the girls over for supper at their place. The food was delicious, and we read encouraging life experiences, which were translated by filipino sisters.

 Earlier some of the brothers showed us how to look up apartments online for our area and even took us to check out a few.  But by then we had fallen in love with the condos where we were temporarily staying, and since nothing could hold a candle to it, we worked really hard bartering with two condo owners to get an affordable price!  We needed to be out of where we were staying by Sunday evening, and by Sunday morning we finally had papers signed for a one year lease.  So we now live in an apartment that a few in the congregation call "Little Bethel" since there are 3 other couples in our building. It's a great location as it is a 5-10 min walk to mall and shopping centre which we frequent on a daily basis as they have a really cheap Asian style cafeteria that we go to with the service group and because there is always something that we managed to forget to buy. At least we get our exercise! Setting up home has been fun and it's so nice to finally unpack our suitcases.

Our first morning in service we each got paired with someone fluent in Thai, and we practiced our presentations repeatedly for 2 hours solid. The percentage of those who understand a word of what we said was a little lower than we would have liked, but we are confident that with practice, that the number will slowly rise! Getting the tones right is the biggest challenge, and we are looking forward to receiving thai language lessons from a sister in the hall starting in 2 weeks. One thing we noticed in service is that the bathrooms here are really nice. This is a picture of a gas station bathroom in our territory!

On Monday there are no service groups or meetings so we decided to check out this shopping centre that everyone refers to as "The Mall". There are lots of malls here so we assumed that this one must be an overwhelmingly impressive mall to receive such a title. Much to our disappointment all we found was an overpriced department store and a ton of little shops of nothingness. One thing Thailand will never disappointment us with is the overwhelming options of food and one place we decided to try out was an all you can eat Japanese restaurant. We didn't know what to expect but we followed the waiter to a long table where we each had our own cooking pot and you choose which kind of broth you want to cook all your food in...spicy, chicken or creamy. After they bring you each your own pot of broth and turn the burner on you begin to select from the the little plates of food whizzing past you on the conveyor belt...meat, dumplings, vegetables...pick what you want and cook it in your pot. There was also a buffet table of all kinds of sushi, dumplings, tempura etc. We were almost done lunch when we smelled something burning, we looked around to see what it was and soon realized that Carmen's pot had boiled down to nothing and was black on the bottom. The waiter rushed over to rescue us and took Carmen's pot away. We literally could hear him scrubbing the pot from the kitchen. We felt bad but now we know. 

So we are walking back from the grocery store one evening when low and behold here is a baby elephant walking towards us on the sidewalk!! As amazing of an experience as it would seem to be, it was actually quite traumatic. It's a cute little thing, but it looks strange, like something is wrong with it's eyes.  It is being lead by two men that offer you the chance to feed it a small bag of sugar cane for $.70. With the touch of their cane the elephant crosses its knees and curtsies, and toots it's little trumpet. Bethany feels instant sadness and Carmen and Marie do not feel inspired to participate, as it feels like some kind of dirty back alley transaction to give this man money. Bethany reluctantly gives the man 20 baht and feeds the starving elephant. How was this life changing experience for Bethany? To quote her, "Today I saw a baby elephant. It was very depressing because I like elephants and this one seemed sad, and underfed, also blind, and sad." Well, there you have it folks. Also, does anyone have any contact info for PETA? Bethany wants to give them a call..