Thailand Highlights #1: Bangkok

Finally, here it is! Installment number one of our photos from our three weeks in Thailand this year!

Our first week was spent in Bangkok where we attended a conference. We have spent a little time in Bangkok over the last several years, and as crazy as it sounds, the more time we spent there, the more we like it. I remember at first we thought it was just a dirty, crowded, kind of sketchy (Okay, very sketchy) big city, and the truth is that it IS all those things, but its more than just that. It also has GREAT food, both Thai and Western, good public transportation, convenient shopping, good parks . . . In other words, a pretty good place to spend a week!

Here is the hotel where our conference took place--it was HUGE! We heard it was like the second largest hotel in Southeast Asia, or something like that. It had two high rise towers with more than forty stories each, two pools, like 6 or 7 restaurants. The hotel was a little older, but the rooms were still very nice and one of the things we liked best was the food! Breakfast was really good, and every day there was a lunch buffet provided for our conference and the food was the best, by far, we'd ever had at one of those things. Yum!
Right next to the hotel was a great little park. We enjoyed taking Sarah out there to play, and the whole time we were in Bangkok the temperature was in the low 80's--perfect for enjoying being outside!



Right on the other side of the park was a mall (the bottom several stories of this high rise building) which had a full size grocery store, tons of restaurants, tons of stores (most of which were too expensive, but fun to browse), a good bookstore with English books--basically everything you could want, right there!
During that week, we did a really fun double-date with our good friends Daniel and Kayla Rupp.
We got in a taxi, trying to find a restaurant David had read about on the web. The driver, however, did not seem too interested in helping us find this restaurant as he wanted to take us to some seafood place HE knew about (and inevitably would get a kick-back from taking us to). So eventually we got out of the cab on this random side street which happened to have a small open-air Italian restaurant.
The food turned out to be great!!! I got this spinach gnocci which was to die for, David got some sort of seafood pasta--we all loved our food and enjoyed trying everyone else's.

Later that week, we ate at this great Thai restaurant right by our hotel. This is what a really good restaurant in Asia looks like, in my experience--the more hole-in-the-wall-ish it is, the better the food is going to taste.

Anyone who has spent a week in a hotel room with a toddler will tell you, it can be challenging to keep them out of trouble (and out of the minibar!). But Sarah did a pretty good job of entertaining herself without breaking anything. Here she is, pretending to take an important phone call!
Another challenging aspect is what to do when you are trying to get your child to fall asleep, which they absolutely won't do if any lights are on or if they know you are still in the room with them. So, we spent a good chunk of time every day hanging out in the bathroom. Thankfully we both had good things to read. I sat on the bath mat, and leaned against the wall. David found the tub to be the most comfortable place.
Anyway, after that week, we headed to off for a little vacation time at the beach. Thailand installments 2 and 3 coming soon!

Sarah is TWO!!!

Happy birthday to my wonderful daughter! I can't believe its been two years that I've been the mom of such a fun, happy, smart, silly little girl.

We had a great birthday party for her, full of many of the things she likes best these days. We invited a few other families with kids, and started the celebrated at E-Kids Island, the Asian Discovery Zone.
Sarah's two favorite desserts are chocolate and strawberries, so I made sure there were plenty of both at her party.
Unfortunately, a last minute trip to the grocery store proved fruitless in purchasing frosting for the cupcakes or ice cream, as they had neither in stock. So the cupcakes had no icing, and there was no ice cream for the party, but that's just how things go here from time to time!

A special high chair for the birthday girl!
We dined on another of Sarah's favorite foods--pizza!!!
She made herself comfortable in the high chair, as you can see!
The best part about the party was all the wonderful friends who joined us. Above are the Golacksons,
here are the Millers,
half of the Chiang family, as their two year old was home sick with his dad.
our great friends the Shelleys and the Jungs,
and the Rupps and their awesome three boys!

Sarah enjoyed her cupcake, all her friends, and her birthday presents!
She had more presents waiting at home--this really fun play cookware my thoughtful sister sent from the U.S.

This whole week, Sarah has been singing, "Happy Birthday Me!" and answering, "Two Years!" when asked how old she is. Still not sure she totally gets the whole birthday thing, but she's definitely had a fun week and we are thrilled to see the little person she's becoming!!

The Newest Dean

. . . is Eli Efrem Dean! My brother-in-law Robbie and sister-in-law Kelly brought him home from Ethiopia on January 15. He is the answer to many of our family's prayers, and we are so thrilled for Robbie and Kelly as they begin the amazing journey of parenthood! Oh, and he's adorable--check him out!

The Big Three-Oh!

All these photos are from my birthday back in January. I had a really fun and memorable thirtieth birthday, and I am so thankful for the friends and family who made it so!

My birthday celebrations started a couple of days before my actual birthday when some girlfriends and I all went out to dinner to eat my current favorite cuisine---Korean! It was really fun, and while some of my friends were already familiar with yummy Korean food, it was also really cool to be able to introduce some others to it for the first time. I love sharing the things I love with friends!
We got our own private room at the restaurant, which made it easier to talk and enjoy one another!
The girls also surprised me by going in together to get me some really nice silver earrings and a bracelet, and making a word collage of adjectives they felt described me. I genuinely felt known, honored and loved--and at the age of 30 I know enough about life to realize that having a community of people who truly know and love you is something rare and to be cherished! My birthday dinner was a moment that truly represented that, and I think it will always be one of my most memorable birthday parties for that reason!

My actual birthday was equally fun and special, which I owe almost entirely to my wonderful husband. Check out the breakfast he got up super-early to make for me and bring to me in bed:

Eggs benedict, asparagus, fresh fruit, bacon and homemade cinnamon rolls!!!

In the afternoon, David watched Sarah so I could go and get a pedicure with my good friend Karis. Ironically, my birthday turned out to be the coldest day of the year!! It even started snowing, just a tiny bit, after we were leaving the salon! But the salon didn't have any heat (hardly any buildings do here, which is usually fine since the weather is generally pretty mild), but our naked feet froze while they were being beautified!


In the evening, we got a babysitter and David and I went out for dinner at this restaurant called Sandra's. Sandra is a slightly-eccentric German lady who lives in our city, and runs a tiny restaurant where she does all the cooking and waiting tables herself with just one assistant. Other than pizzas, her menu is different every night, but she is so gifted that it doesn't matter what you order, it will be good!
I got homemade German sausages with, again homemade, mango-green onion mustard. Both were AMAZING. I seriously need to learn how to make my own gourmet mustard--it could be life-changing!!
So very thankful for all the friends and family who made my birthday so special!

We're Back!

Hi Everyone! The Deans are back from the lovely, lovely country of Thailand, and I am slowly sorting through all 300 of our vacation photos to figure out the best ones to put up here for you all to see. In addition, I have photos from my birthday back in January (30!!!) that I want to post, and I can't wait to put up some pictures of my new little nephew Eli who David's brother Robbie and his wife Kelly just adopted from Ethiopia. So, yeah, exciting things coming soon on the blog. :) For now, I leave you with a couple of random photos from back in January that are too cute not to share!
Sarah has loved this coat this winter! She has a little red one with toggles too which is my personal favorite, and then this blue one is more of a dress coat she'd been wearing mostly to church. But in January she started refusing to wear the other one because she loved this one so much--she even wanted to wear it in the house!

My good friend Lindsey and I took our kids randomly out to lunch at one of our favorite coffee places in our city, Chicago Coffee. The cutest thing was Sarah, Hadassah and Lily sharing this comfy chair and reading together. Sooo cute!!!

My Market

This is where I have bought the vast majority of the food my family has consumed over the last 4 and a half years. Its the vegetable market, just a five minute walk from my apartment, and I have grown to love it. But, it is now gone. The last day of the year was the last day of the market, as its being demolished to build yet another high rise apartment complex. I will admit, I am a little bitter about this. It is undoubtedly going to make my daily life more complicated and much less convenient, though that's nothing compared to all the sellers who owned vegetable or meat or noodle stalls who now have no livelihood, all so they can build more apartments for more people who will, also, have no place nearby where they can buy food. But that is all the complaining I'll do for now. Instead, I just want to post this to record this place that's been part of my daily life for so long.

So, things I loved about this place: it was BIG. It was built in this old 1950's era factory building, which I just found fascinating for the history of it.
The factory's remaining smokestack, construction in the background.


The entrance to the market, covered in banners protesting the demolition of the market, though to no avail.

The vegetables--farm fresh, literally. They bring these in from the farms on trucks every morning around 5 a.m. The freshness of vegetables sold at supermarkets here cannot compare, at all. Sunday I went to a little supermarket nearby (the market was already closed) to see what they had in the way of vegetables to make a salad. They had tomatoes, but they were ALL rotted, every single one. The onions were squishy. I was not impressed.

Here is a little stall selling spices and seasonings.

The meat section. All pork here. Chicken was also available, both "fresh" (i.e. you pick out a live chicken and they kill it for you right there) or frozen. I know I'm a wimp, but I buy the frozen. This is a good photo for pointing out the down side to the market, it is no where near what any Western person would consider "clean." Amazingly, I don't know that we've ever gotten sick from food bought here, even this open-air non-refrigerated meat (we do occasionally get sick here, but almost always from eating out, not food I've fixed at home). To be honest, the dirty factor made me hesitant the first couple years about shopping here, but once I got the hang of it, and especially since Sarah's been born and we eat at home most days, I've grown to love the convenience of having so much fresh food with amazing variety so close by.
There's also plenty of stuff I don't, personally buy. A full variety of dried hot peppers, for example.
Fresh squid, another example.
These, however, I buy a TON of! Farm-fresh eggs! Delicious!
One more look at those gorgeous, gorgeous fresh vegetables. Oh how I will miss you!!!
Here is what is being built in its place. Its not hard at all to imagine why the land, with its proximity to the center of the city, would be too valuable to be used as a market for humble vegetable sellers when each of the apartments in one of these new high rise buildings will sell for around $100,000 a piece. I understand that this is simply the way things work, economically, and that eventually as all the markets get demolished in favor of high-priced residential real estate, the demand for groceries will cause more supermarkets to be built (the nearest one currently is a 10-minute taxi ride or 20 minute bus-ride away) nearby, but it doesn't mean I won't still miss my old market.