OceanicThai

Ginger was a Surprise Christmas Present Originally uploaded by oceanicthai Our merry little Christmas

Happy Me & The Puppies Originally uploaded by oceanicthai I just got up, so no makeup and this picture makes my knees look enormous, but this was a happy Christmas morning watching the kids open their presents and drinking coffee with the puppies in my lap.

Bang Sak and other 017 Originally uploaded by oceanicthai Christmas here is really balmy, so we did our cookies on tables outside on our porch. It never gets cold here, only a little cool!

Froot Loop & Ginger Originally uploaded by oceanicthai Here they are.

Ginger Cinnamon Originally uploaded by oceanicthai Our latest family edition...a beautiful toy poodle, just 4 1/2 months old. A friend bought her for himself but found his allergies and lifestyle just didn't make it possible to keep her. Of course we are thrilled, since we wanted a female anyway. We aren't sure she and Froot Loop will be able to have babies, though, she is a toy and he is a miniature.

Bang Sak and other 008 Originally uploaded by oceanicthai Three of them were at our house, and this was for our 26 English-language students. Here are some of the fruits of the month's efforts, 5 different kinds of cookies. We also ate some delicious Pat Thai, or Fried Thai (what a weird name, never translated it before) before we ate cookies. Then we watched a movie about the birth of Jesus. (Not Santa.)

Wednesday was the cookie marathon, and thankfully I had some help. Ning , Khrua , Kory & Trevor came to help; so we all donned aprons & baked, mixed, spooned, iced & sampled. We made 2 double batches of Sour-Cream Lemon Zest cookies & gingerbread cut them into Christmas trees, angels, gingerbread men, reindeer, stars, and then decorated them with 5 different colors of frosting Kory mixed up & colored. We made 2 big pans of Rice Krispy Scotcharoos with P.B., and drizzled melted chocolate on top. Total, we baked around, I don't know, 300 cookies & bars. My arms ached, so did my legs, and when I stuck my tongue out, I happened to taste my face and it tasted like sugar, powdered sugar. I found cookie dough in my hair. Khrua fell asleep on the floor after lunch. Ning was my tireless cookie warrior, (and my tireless cookie taster.) I didn't begrudge her a single bite, she worked really hard. Tomorrow starts the party marathon. Our 1st one is at 5...

Ever wonder what kinds of things Southeastern Asians wonder about us? Here's a collection of questions we've heard often in the past years and today: "Why do you strap your baby in that torturous constricting seat when you drive?" "Why do you use dead, dry herbs to cook with?" "Why do you put your baby in a different room to sleep in?" "Why do you only take 1 shower a day?" "Why do you get up so late in the morning?" (i.e. 6:30 a.m.) "You foreigners keep food in your refrigerators for a long, long time, then you actually eat it!" "Why do you foreigners wear such embarassingly tiny swimsuits and clothes?" "Why do you think this food is spicy? My baby even eats it." "What do you do with all that milk you buy?" "Why do you worry about time so much?" "Why do you have to live by a schedule?" "What lotion do you use to get your skin so white?" "Why do you fo...

Not a pleasant subject, & not a pleasant experience. Last week Kennedy was changing the truck tire and was bit by what he thinks was a spider. The bite site looked worse and worse as the days went by...and he finally went into a clinic, and the next day to the hospital, to get the dead flesh cut out and get antibiotic shots & pills. He was pretty distressed to see how much had to be cut out. He will have to go back to the clinic every evening to get the wound checked, cleaned, scraped and re-bandaged.

Giant batch of cinnamon rolls with icing. 4 loaves of Poppyseed bread with Almond-Orange icing.

9 cups of flour, 8 eggs, 2 bags of chocolate chips, 2 Tablespoons of vanilla, 3 cups of butter, unmentionable amounts of sugar, among other ingredients, made up my first giant batch of cookies yesterday. Totalling 200 chocolate chip cookies when baked, I bagged my dough and slid it into the freezer. Today I made a double recipe of chewy molasses cookies; more butter, flour, eggs, freshly ground cinnamon & cloves, ginger, soda, and of course molasses. That was a 72 cookie batch. 272 minus a few (I had to bake some for my family or I'd be charged with cruel & unusual punishment.) 250 down, around 300 to go...

Tomorrow we'll go shopping at the island of Phuket, that's where the supermarkets are. We try to take the 1 1/2 hour trip to Phuket only twice a month or so. We need to stock up on ingredients to make piles of cookies and desserts. Most Thais don't have ovens or the money to buy expensive cookie ingredients, like butter and chocolate chips...so you can imagine what a treat it is to bite into a homemade cookie. We will be making cookies and desserts for a total of 4 parties, so my guess is we are going to have to be prepared to make several hundred cookies, along with some pies and other desserts. I say "we" but of course it will mostly be "me" unless I can sweet-talk some others into helping! Since I'll be making cookies it shouldn't be that hard...

Click on the title above to go to the ICR site. Article from one of my favorite sites: http://www.icr.org/article/760/115/ Why Can't Geneticists See the Obvious Evidence for Creation in the Genetic Code? by John D. Morris, Ph.D. "Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble." (James 2:19) Recently geneticists announced that they had successfully read the human DNA code. This truly marvelous achievement ranks as one of the most remarkable in history. Creationists rejoice over the news, confident that the more we learn, the more we'll recognize the signature of God in what He has done, and give Him glory. Scientists haven't actually deciphered the code, but they have, as it were, identified the "letters" in the code. They only know a few "words" as of yet, and really don't know the "language," or where the punctuation goes. There are about three billion letters in the human DNA, and the...

Santa's birthday, right? I remember one year, decades ago when I was about 13, we went to Hawaii to celebrate Christmas with our Japanese relatives. It felt so odd to be celebrating Christmas in the tropics. I remember learning to sing, "Melekelikemaka is the thing to say saying Merry Christmas the Hawaiian way" or something like that...don't quote me. Santa on surfboards, palm trees, pineapples and plastic Christmas trees. It all felt very odd. Fun, but odd. It is also odd to think that this kind of tropical Christmas, without the song, English as the spoken language or big region-wide celebrations among the populace, is what will be most familiar to my children. What is their visual world? Theravada Buddhism, with its thousands of temples, thousands of Buddha and Hindu statues, tiny spirit houses for the land spirits, and the house spirits, and spirit shelves and small shrines in nearly every home, every business. Here Christmas is celebrated by very few and is a We...

I was eating my bread with nutella this morning and crunched on something that kind of reminded me of a dried up bug. I crunched again. Then, when I spread some more of the yummy European chocolate spread on my piece of bread, I saw a big clump of something. I picked it up, and it looked like the exoskeleton of some kind of bug. I heaved a deep sigh and looked at the label to see where it was manufactured. I saw Thai, Malaysian , Indonesian...and thought to myself, "I bet they've just opened a new manufacturing plant for Nutella in Southeast Asia and their product has some quality control problems." Then I saw it was manufactured in Australia and imported into Thailand. "Wow, they've got some serious quality control issues in Australia, maybe I should write them to let them know." I picked up the long- ish chocolate covered bug-thing and decided to rinse it off to see what it was. I really didn't want to, thinking about all the other crunchy ...

His Majesty the King has called for national unity in a speech on the eve of his 80th birthday. "It is widely known the current situation is unpredictable," His Majesty said at the annual trooping the colour. "We can say that if Thais have a lack of awareness for the country, unity, we all may face calamity." To see the rest of the article, click on the title above.

Before church started today Tanom our beloved Thai partner brought in a treat...a big lizard, probably about 6-7 pounds worth, very pretty. It both amuses and upsets us when they kill these animals to eat. It upsets us because we don't understand it, these wild creatures look beautiful to us, we'd rather raise them. Yet, this is a way of life for people here, and all over Southeast Asia, they eat stuff we don't, period. It also amuses us because we still can hardly believe all the different things they eat. It would be exceedingly rude to try to "lecture" them about it, so we gently show our feelings by smiling and saying how we feel sorry for the animal and wish we could raise it instead. Tanom's daughter said to me today in the kitchen, "It's not an animal to raise, it's an animal to eat!" Someone else said, "It bites!." We wish we could just buy them a chicken instead, but they would rather eat lizard. If we were raised ...