The weather, starting to settle

office view during rain pour

Sampling new fruits like custard apple,
green guava, mangosteen

The weather here is moody, almost never gentle. A sunny day is beautiful, but harsh...you find yourself jumping from shadow to shadow to avoid the blistering tropical sun. Most days we find large heavy clouds rolling through, offering filtered sporadic sun and comfortingly humid warm days. But once every day or two comes thunder, lightening and torrential downpours that would cause American forecasters to attached "-agedon" two whatever prefix they choose. 

These storms never last more than 20 minutes or so and leave behind a cooler and wonderfully lush palm-filled landscape dripping with water. Every house and sidewalk is bordered with one to two foot drainage ditches to direct the water away. 

Lev has started school now and loves it. He's only gone two days now, but was pretty pissed off when we told him that school wasn't open on the weekend. 

Among other things, don't be kissing in the park!

That's a good sign, of course and we're looking forward to connecting with the parents and building a bit of a social life. Most of the parents live in condos nearby, and so will we. Anya will invariably walk Lev to school, while other families do so and we'll start to get to know people in short order, I'm sure. 

We've been exploring the city and really enjoying sampling new and strange foods. 

Yesterday we hit up the aquarium at the base of the twin towers. Next week we plan to buy a car and will venture out of the city more.

Korean bbq