Welcome to Nan!

I’ve arrived and settled into a new home with one of my three fellow fellows, Katie. She is returning to Nan after living here last year, so she’s an old pro and has been showing me all the hot spots that Nan has to offer.   We are living in a spacious apartment with a big open room and bathroom in the downstairs and two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, plus two balconies! Luxury status.

Some highlights so far:

1.     Buying 6 mangoes for 20 Baht, roughly 70 cents. And they’re delicious!

2.     Planning a PiA band with Katie: with any luck she’ll be on Melodica and I’ll be on banjolele.

3.     Turning the carport into badminton central (soon to come, but I did buy two rackets and birdies today).

4.     Riding two-to-a-bike almost as well as the ten year old Thai kids.

5.     A series of interactions with our landlords:

Kun Yai and Kun Dtah (the landpeople), have visited us no less than 5 times in the two days that we’ve been here.  The visits have been a mix of cordial and helpful to confusing and parent-ish.  Yesterday, Kun Yai, who is probably around 70, came over 3 times before 10 am. Whoa. Mostly she came to tell me to turn off the balcony lights at certain times of the day, and she walked me through the house to each lightswitch and to the front windows describing when they should be on and off.  Unfortunately, I always confuse the words for open and closed/on and off (they sound so similar!), so I didn’t quite catch on for a while.  Then she came back with a set of drinking glasses for us to use, and she was very adamant that we drink only water from them, as “beer is bad, not good” (keep in mind that all of this is in her fluent Thai and my very broken attempts…). Basically, she wants to mother us.  And we sure are being watched—yesterday Kun Yai said, “You go running today, yes?” And it was true, but I never saw her while I ran.  Close circles with eyes everywhere… And Today Katie and I were setting up a hammock on the front balcony and we saw the landlords and this other guy who works for them (maybe? not really sure…) down on the road. They flagged us down, and within a few seconds, Kun Yai was back with a man to measure our doors to get screens.  Then we tromped through the house/storage area, and after seeing my pile of notebooks and school things on the floor of my room, they brought up two bookcases for Katie and me.  They are very generous and kind and are definitely taking care of us, hopefully not too much. But in the meantime, I think Kun Yai and I are on our way to being friends. She smiles at me a lot.