Here are ten of the things I’ve been up to this week:

1. We had our new friends Trevor and Jackie round for dinner on Monday, and got to know them a bit before we go away. That was good. Turns out they are old friends of Dave’s aunt and uncle, who also used to live round here. Small world.

2. We’re reading The Purpose Driven Life (which is crying out for a hyphen and doesn’t have one) with our cell group, and loving it. Challenging me – especially stuff about relinquishing control. Hard. Parting with belongings is fine with me, but parting with my plans is much harder. Painful. But I hope in a good way.

3. We’re doing visa applications. Photos. Forms. Documents in Thai that we don’t understand at all. Dave’s in charge of that one, so not too much for me to stress over (though I like to try).

4. We have signed our wills, so it is now safe for us to die, not that it is high on our agenda! It does seem to be a requirement for missionary types, though (the will-making, not the dying). Haven’t paid the solicitor yet, and we wondered what the legal status is if you die at this stage. Presume they still stand… anyone?

5. On Friday I ordered a new suitcase (we only owned one proper big one) and a cabin luggage type bag. Both blue. They arrived today. Lovely. My cabin bag was only £20, reduced from £99. Bargain. Debenhams, if you’re interested. They’re made by Tripp.

6. Using Twitter a bit more. Think I get it. Took a while, but I like it. You can follow me at http://twitter.com/SarahGiles, or just read the updates on the right. They’re also on our mission blog.

7. I have started organising the stuff we’re taking to Thailand on to four shelves of the cupboard in my study: two for taking with us, and two for shipping. The Marmite has been added to the shipping shelves. Think I’ll last the first six weeks without it.

8. Spent a little while by Alton pond on Tuesday, just sitting and taking everything in. Lovely. Very calming.

9. I’m just finishing off writing 30,000 words of project updates for World Vision – the reports that are sent to child sponsors so they can learn about how their sponsorship money has been spent and all the development work that’s going on in their sponsored child’s community. It’s hard work, taking the field reports, picking out stories and statistics and writing them for a completely different audience to that of the original. And then doing that again and again, about five times for each country, once for each area development project. But it’s definitely worthwhile. I like working for World Vision – they have a real integrity about what they do, and are accountable through the whole process. And some of the stories are amazing. Wells. Toilets. Education for those who couldn’t access it before. Tools and seeds and polytunnels, so parents can feed their children and earn a living. Caring for people with HIV. And loads more in the same vein. I think if I collected the stories myself I’d cry all over these people. They’re wonderful.

10. Very thankful for the help of lovely people. Lots of pledgers for the coming months. Jan, who had us round for a lovely lunch, told us all about our new job (which she did until recently) and gave us the key to her bike, which she left at CCD.  Really generous. Thank you, Jan! Our lovely cell group, who rallied round when our freezer misbehaved yesterday. Thanks, Jane and Helen and Lynn and Janet. And thanks too to Jane F, for providing helpful info on Thai embasses and where to get cheap scrapbooking supplies in Bangkok (Chinatown is apparently scrappers’ paradise – I can’t wait)!

So, all is well, despite a few dramas along the way.  Five weeks on Saturday is D-day. Eeek. Still Quite A Lot to do.

Inspiration, originally uploaded by anamama.

I’m working on country reports for World Vision at the moment. Busy busy busy. But good.

Am also finding myself thinking a lot about decorating-type ideas for our new place in Pakkred. This is ridiculous for at least four reasons.

One: We will be house-sitting when we arrive and aren’t likely to start house-hunting until mid-June at the earliest. Two: We have no idea yet where the house will be or what it will look like (though we do have a wish list). Three: We’ll be renting so will probably be unable to do anything major. Four: We’re going to be on a pretty tight budget.

Nevertheless, I am still daydreaming about cheap-and-fun-and-lovely ideas, a desk at a window, white walls, postcards and photos, a little box of stationery and lots of inspiration. Oh, and a fan. Definitely a fan…

Other pictures currently doing it for me include this one, this one and this one.

I haven’t forgotten this blog. It’s just that I’ve been spending a bit more time on this one.

Trying to decide how to divide my posts. Whether to put everything over there, or put the more creative stuff here, or make this blog more personal and that one more work/mission-related, or what. If you have any pearls of wisdom/preference/opinions, please do comment.

I’m not growing any vegetables this year – and feeling the loss of spring in the garden as a result – but hope to have a little growing space in our home in Thailand. I miss the little green shoots and the feel of compost. Watch this space. Or that one.

Likewise, have hardly scrapbooked at all for months, but have something out on the table downstairs at the moment, so might squeeze a page in later. It’s about chocolate scrumpets.

Meanwhile, I’m a bit behind with my work (deadlines Tuesday and Thuesday next week, which means I’ll be working over the weekend). I’m a bit behind with packing and planning and sorting everything else out too, which is Not Good. I am living on mini eggs – the permanent sugar rush prevents me falling asleep when I have all this stuff to do.

Blogging also helps to keep me sane, if only for the length of time it takes to write a post. So. Back to the sorting out. And the mini eggs. Any other sanity-saving tips appreciated.

I tried to be healthy yesterday. I didn’t like it.

The weather was lovely all weekend, and we had decided to drive to West Wittering – which is about an hour away, on the coast just south of Chichester – for a Sunday afternoon walk on the beach. All healthy and pleasing.

That was the plan. But the reality conspired to make it rather less appealing. We set off from home straight after church with not a cloud in the sky. A bit of a breeze, but still very acceptable walking weather. But by the time we reached the coast, however, it was completely overcast, and as we arrived in West Wittering, it started to rain. And hail. Deliberately.

During a lull in the torrent, we ventured forth from the car. Having refused to pay to park in the car park, it was about a mile’s walk to the beach. During this fifteen-minute trek we were roundly assaulted by hail-in-the-face, a particularly pungent aroma of cow, and the distinct feeling that this was a Bad Idea. But still we persevered.

When we arrived on the beach, the wind was even stronger. It was helpfully whipping up the sand and using it to exfoliate my face. I discovered what it is like to be a house with unwanted pebbledash as the sand/wind combo stripped off a layer of skin. We tolerated this for about ten minutes before retreating. We got back in the car, and as we drove home, the sun came out again. It did appear to have rained at home too, but by the time we got back the sky was cloudless once again. Bah. I hid under a blanket with a hot chocolate and a hot water bottle for the rest of the day, rueing the waste of petrol, time, and effort. And that was Sunday gone. Hmph. I have decided that healthy behaviour is overrated. If that is how I am rewarded for my efforts, I will stick to cake.

After this TV highlight from last week:

…came this week’s work of genius:

I’m afraid I have no idea who Paddy and Keith are, but they were Very Funny. Why is it the cross-dressing acts are the funniest? I don’t know. (Perhaps it’s that some of the acts, for reasons I fail to understand, didn’t really try to be funny, which limited the competitive element somewhat.)

But anyway, now we have to choose between them. Oh dear. The final is going to be excellent.

P.S. Isn’t iplayer a wonderful thing? It allows you to host a meal for 88 people and watch the comedy shows you missed the next day. Marvellous.

I am now at liberty to explain the reason for my prolonged absence: we are moving to Thailand! How on earth was I supposed to blog regularly while we we went through the application process without talking about it? Impossible. It has been all-consuming for us and we are so relieved to have made the announcement last night at our Chillies for Charity fundraising bash and again at church this morning. Yippee!

Our flights are booked for 30 May. We’ll be living in Pakkred, which is on the northern edge of suburban Bangkok, doing voluntary work for CCD, the charity we bang on about all the time that cares for abandoned disabled children. We’ll be taking care of their English language publicity, fundraising, report-writing, that kind of thing: anything that needs native English speakers.

So. Expect tales of packing, form-filling, list-making and manic house-beautifying (we’ll be renting it out) for the next 13 weeks. Then things are going to be Quite Different. We are going on an adventure.

I haven’t blogged here for ages. AGAIN. Sorry. Dave and I have been working on this blog about our ethical shopping experiment for 2009, and I’m also working on Something Else Fun which I will share with you shortly.

Has it been another 10 days since I last posted? Where did they go?

Dave has been ill with a horrible fluey thing – sore throat, fever, the works. Dave almost never has time off sick so three days at home was a big deal. He even stopped eating. When a member of our household stops eating it is serious.

Happier news. Hampshire library catalogue is back online, so I have been making loads of reservations. On Saturday the first one arrived, so I’m now reading Planetwise by Dave Bookless. It’s excellent and certainly making me think. For example, hands up if you read John 3:16 ‘For God so loved the world…’ as ‘For God so loved all the people in the world’. I think I usually have. But the Greek is ‘kosmos’: not just the people, but the whole of creation. Jesus came to restore the full works. I love that. The book has lots of these insights and has questions at the end of each chapter which would work well for a small group reading it together (I’d love to do that).

Hazel and I had the great hamper swap. I managed to wait outside the wrong hotel for about 20 minutes, and then took half an hour to work out where I was supposed to be, fail to find a bus, and eventually get a taxi to take me to the right place. Muppet. But hurrah for hampers, because for all the planning and hassle that goes into creating them and transporting them, the joy of opening the one you’ve received and finding that Bob has made about 700 chocolate truffles is fantastic. (Slight numerical exaggeration – but I’m sure there were at least 150.) Bob’s truffles are amazing. Sigh. I cannot adequately describe them. Hamper photos will follow.

Dave and I discovered a comedian called Tim Hawkins yesterday. Here are some highlights.

The homeschool family (I am pro-homeschooling and trying, somewhat prematurely perhaps, to win Dave round to the idea):

 

Tim Hawkins on church:

 

On the commercial takeover of worship songs:

 

I have been doing some secret sewing. I can say no more at present. But there will be photos in due course.

Meanwhile, I have house-beautifying and bun-tray purchasing to take care of (to facilitate the making of more than 12 mince pies at once), and I am waiting for about 4 parcels to be delivered. More anon. : )

I confess – I have been a bad, blog-neglecting person. But conveniently, while I have been awol from my blog, I have been producing a scrapbook about what I’ve been up to, so you haven’t missed anything.

Here’s the summary of the last 10 days chez Giles.

OK, album cover not tremendously inspiring so far. But wait? What’s this?

It’s the Mr Greedy advent calendar I have had since I was a Very Small Person. It comes out every year and I love it. There’s a different Mr Man behind each door and on Christmas Eve there’s a big picture of Mr Greedy eating his Christmas pudding. Excellent.

This you have seen before, but not actually in the album:

 And these are some of the pages that follow:

I love this picture. Poor Dave, all conked out after getting the tree down from the loft.

These are from last Sunday afternoon. We hat a silly hat photo session by the village pond. I am forbidden from posting pictures of Dave in silly hats, for the moment. I will work on him, because the pictures are FUNNY and I am very keen to share them. A couple are in the album.

 

So. The album is progressing, though you’ll have noticed that things aren’t all stuck in yet, and there are some more photos to be printed. I like all the jaunty angles, so I may decide to leave everything just slid in and floating about. We shall see.

Hoping to get some nice frosty pictures over the weekend. Last Sunday morning walking to church there were lots of lovely frosty leaves but alas, I didn’t have my camera with me.  This happens to me A Lot, so I have set about solving the problem and purchased a lovely little mini-camera which is to live in my handbag/coat pocket so I need never miss a photographic opportunity again. This is the little beauty in question. Look. You can almost stroke it, can’t you?

A Canon IXUS 90 IS. 10 megapixels of loveliness, yet weighing only 155 grams and measuring a trifling 91.6 x 56.8 x 20.9 mm.  So it is Small – about the size of one of those big cook’s boxes of matches. The ‘official’ case (leather and whatnot) costs a bonkers £30 or some such nonsense, so I will see about sewing or knitting something delightful and unique to keep it warm and scratch-free. Naturally, dear readers, you will be the first to see such a creation.

An now I must leave you: Have I Got News For You is on and then I have a banana cake to make.

I love taking Myers-Briggs tests. I find them fun and fascinating. I have always come out as an INFJ (Introverted, iNtuitive, Feeling, Judging) before, though the F (feeling) was quite borderline T (thinking). I have often thought that I am actually more T (logic-driven) than F (concerned about feelings). And today, I took a short test on Facebook and came out as an INTJ. I tried a longer test and got the same result. I am jubilant. I love this description of how INTJs see the world. It all makes sense. I like things that make sense. I identify with all of it. I love that my personality is described as inherently unconventional.

My favourite bits of the INTJ description (italics mine):

INTJs are perfectionists, with a seemingly endless capacity for improving upon anything that takes their interest. What prevents them from becoming chronically bogged down in this pursuit of perfection is the pragmatism so characteristic of the type: INTJs apply (often ruthlessly) the criterion “Does it work?” to everything from their own research efforts to the prevailing social norms. This in turn produces an unusual independence of mind, freeing the INTJ from the constraints of authority, convention, or sentiment for its own sake.

 …many also find it useful to learn to simulate some degree of surface conformism in order to mask their inherent unconventionality.

To complicate matters, INTJs are usually extremely private people, and can often be naturally impassive as well, which makes them easy to misread and misunderstand. Perhaps the most fundamental problem, however, is that INTJs really want people to make sense.

A typical INTJ scrapbooker's layout?

INTJs are idea people. Anything is possible; everything is negotiable. Whatever the outer circumstances, INTJs are ever perceiving inner pattern-forms and using real-world materials to operationalize them. Others may see what is and wonder why; INTJs see what might be and say “Why not?!”

Famous INTJs apparently include Jane Austen, Mr Darcy (oh, hurrah!), and CS Lewis. Interestingly, Barack Obama is an ENTJ, the extrovert version of my personality type. That makes so much sense (that word again) to me. He’s all about change and making things happen. It’s just he’s a lot more of a people person than I will ever be, which is why he will be president and I will not. I think that’s for the best. ; )

Chums, I’d love to know your Myers-Briggs types. It makes communication and understanding so much easier, because you can get your head round how others see the world and how your words will be interpreted. You can take a test here. Please post your type in a comment below.