Learning Thai, the real adventure

A couple of my favorite pastimes are learning new things and travelling. A month ago my family combined the two: we came to Chiang mai, Thailand to finish a Thai language course. And it's awesome! Extremely difficult, but very exciting at the same time.

The Thai language is a tonal and analytic language, which makes it both easier and harder to pick up. Easier, because analytic means the grammar is much less complicated than your average Indo-European language. Harder, because tonal languages use pitch to distinguish words. There are five different tones in Thai, five different ways to say the same thing equaling five different meanings. European ears have a difficult time recognizing them, and don't even get me started on pronouncing. And the orthography? Now, that's crazy. But don't take my word for it, here's an example:

ฉันชือเฮอมินา

That beauty right there says that my name is Hermina. The literal translations is something like this: I name Hermina. That's some pretty basic grammar. The tiny things on top of the main letters are SOME of the vowels, the rest is mingled with the consonants. I don't want to bore you with tone markers, that's why I used this particular example, because it doesn't have any. They are as tiny as the vowels and are written on top of them.

At first glance you get the impression there's no way you can do this. But, just like with all languages, patience and practice brings results. Just after three weeks of learning I recognize the letters, usually can read the words (except for the ones with hidden vowels, yeah, you read it right, HIDDEN vowels) and have the basic vocabulary I need in restaurants. I can say a couple of things about myself, too. But boy, do I have troubles understanding the locals. Anyway, I'm getting there.

The Thai language school we are attending is Effective Thai. If you ever decide to follow our lead and learn the language, this school is the best way to go. Not only they are very helpful and attentive, they let you design the schedule of your course. Once you pay the 50% deposit, they provide you the necessary documents to get your one year Education visa. When we arrived we needed to find a good nursery for our son, Alex. They helped with that too, which was a really nice gesture in a city we have no friends, not even acquaintances. Well now, we do.

We do quite a bit of sightseeing as well, but that's another story.

Heartilicious!

My little precious' first birthday is around the corner and I've been crafting for two weeks now. Said HUGE event takes place this coming Sunday. So needless to say that my mind is constantly at work and I'm loosing sleep. Last night, while I was up, mentally going over the menu again I came up with an idea I had to test today.

The birthday menu is colorful, to say the least. One of the many pretty treats will be these Frog shaped buns, which I found on my absolute fav DIY site Handimania. They are cute, but I felt they needed something. And that something is COLOR!

I've got some food coloring laying around since Christmas (my gingerbread men are to die for). The question was how to test them on baked stuff. Since I already promised pancakes for the hubby, I thought they might as well be pink. And voilá! Lunch on Mondays rarely looks this pretty:

I cut the holes with a heart-shaped cookie cutter and used delicious sour cherry jam to make the hearts bleed. And now may come what will, I'm making green buns this Sunday. I'll let you know how it went.

Till then, bon appetite!

Wordplay

Today I found this cool site: wordle.net. What I love about their tool is that you can play around with it and gather some information about your blog at the same time. The word clouds it generates are from the text you provide. It goes without saying that the more frequently you use a certain word the bigger it will appear in the cloud.

My favorite part is that after you had your fun, the picture is all yours and can do with it whatever you like. I, for one, set it as my cover image on my Facebook page. Now, isn't this neat?

Go and have some fun! Then, if you please, come back and tell me all about it!

Baby shower

So, last Saturday my mom and Laura, my sister threw me the single most awesome baby shower. I've never actually been on one before, since me and my hubby are the first ones among our friends to have a baby. Add to this that I'm your typical cutesy-loving gal, and you can imagine my excitement and how much I was looking forward to the whole thing.

In the end, the baby shoes on top of the yummy-est strawberry cake really ate themselves into my soul. I felt touched by both the dinosaurs on the balloons (see the picture below) and my friends, who came to celebrate with us. And I was so happy I smiled like a Cheshire cat all afternoon.

Since last May my hubby and I have been living a little farther away from town, so staying in touch with the girls was a little harder than before. Well, there's not a single difficulty the word wide web cannot fix, but it's just not the same. So, at the shower even though we didn't play any particular games, we had so much fun just catching up. The hours flew by and the afternoon party ended around 10 PM. The cake wasn't only gorgeous, but my mom literally had to take away my little spoon from me. Fruit cakes are my absolute weak points.

So, how is it with you guys? Have you ever been on a baby shower? Or did you have one of your own? Tell me all about it.

Comment issue fixed

I dedicate this post to two lovely girls, who were so kind to warn me about the little technical glitch my blog had. It is all fixed now, so comment away, people!

Both Alicia and Shay have wonderful blogs that I can only recommend for every book-lover around the globe. Attention all authors out there, Alicia writes fabulous reviews on Book A World, her blog's design is very unique, and not too stuffed. The simple elegance it radiates amazes me. Shay is on blogger, just like moi, and you can find anything book-related on 365 Books A Year from the hottest upcoming releases to the "Meh" Books section, which is definitely a must-follow.

Thank you girls for helping me out! To show you my appreciation I'll put here a picture of Raspberry, the cutest and loudest Yorkie that ever lived on the face of Earth.