Sawaddi

Sawaddi - probably the closest translation would be the well-known italian word ciao. Okay, my Thai is not really good for anything but basic survival, yet, but I can follow most organizational conversations around me by knowing the right words and good intuition. And I know more words every day. Still, my pronounciation keeps me from being understood, yet. I'll be working on that.

This post is merely about language. As I am starting to pick up some Thai I have now official proof, that my English is more than sufficient. I have just received my test results from the IETLS English test I had taken in August in order to get my visa points for Australia. I've not only passed and gotten the band scores I needed for some extra points, I have acutally gotten a really good result. Passing the extra points test marks has made me quite glad and reliefed while scoring so high has acutally made me proud. It's not every day you get internationally recognized proof for that you're good at something. To me it now seems English and a country to go with the language could suit me quite well. So Australia here I come, one step closer.

Besides the thoughts above I've not much to share. We're still building walls and that additional room where Buddha will reside. All the gypsum plasterboards are put up on the new wall and the frame for the room is set. We're experiencing some troube with the door frame which has been designed to be let into the floor. Tomorrow we'll try to shorten it. That'll be easier said than done, even if some may wonder what should be the problem about cutting a bit from a wooden doorframe. It is if you're dealing with tropical woods. Teak or some sort of so-called iron wood is some tough stuff. And all the good tools to ease the work are still in a container on a boat somewhere in high seas. We got a taste of that wood today, when we tried to put some screws in. The cordless drill wouldn't do, we had to drill holes first using the drill hammer and then drive the screws in using a cord drill. And tomorrow it's us and a manual iron saw against that doorframe again. We've won the first round with the screws, we'll survive the next one, too. We have to!