Burmese Refugees: Family 2.

Hello! How are you? We are fine here and our Refugee Family who arrived from Burma yesterday evening are doing amazingly well! I keep expecting them to crash but they haven't done so so far! They are chatty and cooking right now!!

This family consists of a Dad (24), Mum (20), their son (2) and the Mother's Mother (58, but looks about 80, not kidding)!They arrived from LA yesterday into Seattle about 5pm which meant that they arrived here about 7 ish. This worked better for us all and especially for Naomi who hates waking up to them in the morning; this way the children got to see the family before they went to bed which took away the scariness very well!

The family are very sweet and are settling in nicely. They have already worked out the kettle and the hob and Tim has been showing them the money this evening. Mum and Dad have some English and have been prepared well for their life here somewhere along the line. The Grandma is not really engaging much with it all but will probably not have to much. If Mum and Dad have worked it all out then they will be fine!

We asked after our previous Burmese family last night and were pleased to hear that they are also doing very well; unfortunately, the Burundian family we had last summer continue to struggle which does not surprise us, but we had hoped that they would be OK by now!

To my great surprise, the family have arrived with a Myanmar / English phrase book, which I really shouldn't mock as it is more than anyone else has come with but the translations are awful and very funny! The one that made me laugh out loud was the sentence "Don't scream. If you scream, we will kill you". How is that going to be needed in a phrase book? Are you supposed to stop the person who is attacking you and look it up in the phrase book? The other one that I can remember is under the weather section. Apparently the weather can be hot, cold or "daup" which I guess must mean damp! I am hoping to have another look at it because it was very funny but I think the Mother understandably was a bit frustrated at me laughing at her book and has put it upstairs!! I couldn't help it!! I am sorry!

The family are currently eating their 3rd meal of rice - they must be sick of it!! I am going to try and introduce potatoes tomorrow!

We have had a quiet day today as a result but we did go to Fred Meyer's this morning. This afternoon my children played in a slip and slide thing that I bought this morning. Basically it is a very slippery piece of plastic that has a tube with sprinklers on one side so it gets very wet and they slide down on their tummies! They enjoyed themselves!

Yesterday we went to the KidsQuest Children's museum in Factoria which was good and then did some shopping. We arrived home in good time and the children ate their tea before the family arrived. We then did the tour of the house and the basic introductions then too. I am determined to get the interpreter back again at some point in the next couple of days as it is not enough just to have one here for the first couple of hours and then for them to disappear again!

On Monday we went to Rosie's house, which was great! We haven't seen them for ages and so had a great time with them!

Silas was funny yesterday, he was standing at the top of the stairs and I wanted to give him a snack and put him to bed before we went out. I asked him if he wanted snack and he nodded his head and said "nack". I asked him what he wanted and he made his funny noise for chocolate! I laughed and said no chocolate but said that he could have a few little chocolate cookies which also resulted in a nod of the head!! Bless him, he is funny!

Anyway, I am going to end it here as I need to go to bed!

Lots of love to you all!