I can’t make these things up.
Sometimes I wish I could…so that I could also un-make them up. But I just can’t.
On Sunday morning, we headed out to the tea shop, per usual. There are five regulars that come along with us: we’ve chosen them in different ways and for different reasons; mostly that it works. They all are quite young, from 16 to our age. Three are mothers, so there is a three-year-old & four-year-old that come along. The third mother is pregnant and due in December. Two of the girls are students at local high schools. They are all becoming fast friends with us an help us practice and learn Burmese. One of them is a small-business owner and buys her ingredients and items for the week of sales while were in the market.
Anyway, that is the usual.
This was not a usual day, as we were to learn. A grandmother in the community asked to come along with her grandson who was sick. There’s a clinic with a Burmese-speaking doctor in the market area.
One of the 16-year-old girls’ mothers also asked to come along for some special purchases this week. Despite this now totaling nine adults and three children, it felt do-able. We went for it, dropping off the patients at the clinic first and heading out to the tea shop.
But everything was just off. Nothing went normally and we were all just out of sync.
In reality, Stephen and I’s lives hardly have a sync, so we weren’t phased. We just sorted enjoyed what we could and took what we got! And then we headed off to the hospital for one of the women to visit a friend that was having complications recovering from delivering twins just a couple days ago.
And that’s when we lost the window out of our car.
For most people, your car window is a little square of glass at elbow height. Our car is kind of one big window. So when we lost our window, we lost the side of our car. In the middle of the main road, no less.
When it fell, Stephen thought it was something off the roof of our car, where we put the excess market purchases that don’t fit in with all the people. Thus, he didn’t panic or anything–he just slowly pulled over to pick up the onions that had fallen. Or the ginormous piece of glass, which by sheer miracle didn’t break.
We were also thankful that it fell out right near Canadian Dave’s restaurant, where our good friend Dave let us store this ginormous piece of glass for an hour or so while we took everyone home. Since we already had loads of people and plenty of market goods, we were a little too full for a heavy piece of glass very nearly the length of the car.
Our priceless moment on the way home was passing our Burmese teacher–who already thinks our lives are little odd–sitting outside of his house, who gave us the BEST face of bewilderment. {Side note: Stephen left his phone at class the other day, so our teacher returned it by simply driving towards our house and asking where we lived to all the people he passed. And he found us!}
After dropping everyone off, we felt like we needed to try to get the window fixed as soon as possible. It is monsoon season after all, so it was only a matter of time before our car flooded. {Another side note: did I mention that our door took in water about a week ago? The seal on the window isn’t great, so after a few rainy days, we had a door full of water, like enough for fish to survive and enough to get sloshed on you when we turned corners. A hole in the bottom of the door now solves that problem. Sort of.}
We headed off to Car Shop #1, which was closed to eat and for a holiday. Hard to say which one. I will say that the phrase “It’s always a holiday in Thailand” is not unfounded; this is the country of holidays. But they directed us to Car Shop #2.
Car Shop #2 claims they don’t work on windows, despite the selection of windshields in the corner.
We visited Car Shop #3 today, which appeared to specialize in glass, but really might only make glass cabinets? We aren’t really sure. They might not even be a car shop, but directed us to Car Shop #4.
{Yet another side note: When I say “directed,” in all of these scenarios that involved a worker at one shop getting on a motorbike and leading us to the next one. It has a very small town feel, I must say.}
It was at Car Shop #4 that they agreed to fix the window. However, it was also here that we didn’t know where the car shop was. Stephen was in the car and followed the unknown-person-on-the-motorbike to the shop, but I was just planning to meet him there on our motorbike. When he’s not where I thought he’d be, I get this call:
“If I send you a map, do you think you could find me?”
Uhh…we clearly did this backwards, because there is very little of chance of that working. Apparently the motorbike had taken him down a number of little backroads in a neighborhood, and he wasn’t sure where he was.
Thus ensued me driving the motorbike up and down tiny little one-lane roads while shouting on speaker phone what I could see and what he could see. Thankful it is a small town after all, and I did find Stephen!
And now our car is mostly-sealed yet again, without a downpour in between!