We decided it was time to take Sora to get her hearing checked. Technically, we're supposed to get it done every 6 months or so to make sure her "good" ear is still hearing like it should and that it hasn't changed from when we last tested it. Unfortunately, we haven't gotten it checked since March 2010 - about 15 months ago. There are a few places in Chiang Mai where we could get it done, but we've heard they aren't incredibly thorough, and they are pretty bad for small kids. Basically, they test kids hearing by playing a sound of a different frequency on either the right or the left. When the kid turns an animal pops out or something fun for them to look at. It doesn't work that great with very small children and when we had it done with Sora last year (around 12 months old) she actually failed it. It's not a surprise she failed on her "deaf" side, but also on the good side. But we know her hearing is better than what the test showed...just hard to know how good it is. The way the tests are done in CM would not work well for a 2 year old. After some research, we realized that there is only 1 pediatric ENT in Thailand. The Doctors in CM are ENT's but it's important to find someone who specializes in children. Another reason we decided to bring her to this doctor is that we need to get her a hearing aid. When she first had her hearing tests we got such conflicting reports on whether or not to get a hearing aid for her. Basically, audiologists are split. Some say kids can do fine with speech development without one and the other half say that it's really important to have good hearing on both sides, not only for speech development but for other types of development too. We were in the throws of planning to move to Thailand so decided to put it off and sort of wait and see. But now we definitely think she needs one. We're really looking forward to seeing what the Doctor has to say, and we're hoping she can get us a hearing aid that will work!
So that was the long intro to my post! We decided to all come down because Damien and I both waned to meet the doctor. It's about half priced to ride the train than to fly so we decided to do the train down and fly back. It's an overnight train. We rode it once in October coming back from Bangkok and the kids really loved it. It's not the best night's sleep I've ever had, but we survived. Unfortunately, this time, we had little problem. We ride in the first class train, because you can get a room that converts into a bunk bed and has connecting door to the next room. The three boys each get a bed and Sora sleeps with me. But somehow we ended up getting a train that I didn't even know existed. The first class cars are single rooms...with just one bed. Ugh, so we get there, we have the two rooms with a nice connecting door, but instead of 4 beds we get 2. I have no idea how that happened. And I could have sworn I talked to the lady about the beds when I bought the ticket but, who knows, I still miss things some times when I'm speaking Thai. :- ) I just can't imagine that she would think 5 people with two beds would work. We had no time to fix the ticket because the train was leaving. Thankfully the guy in charge of our car felt bad for us and let us buy a ticket for half price for another room. I'm still not convinced that he just didn't keep the money and give us the room. :-) The boys slept together and Sora (who is like a sleeping jumping bean) slept with me. I slept bad and woke up a million times, but I still LOVE riding on it. I don't know why but it's just relaxing.
The boys also think it's pretty cool! We packed dinner instead of ordering the ridiculously overpriced Thai food ... and when we were able to get the kids settle down and contain their excitement we had a relaxing night.
Sora didn't want to be left out of the picture taking.
Damien bought some Thai children's books and he has been practicing reading.
So this was a first - EVERYTHING was in Japaneses. Nothing was in Thai. Not only that but the plugs didn't work. Well, they didn't work for some things but worked with our computers. Than we realized that they were working for things using 120V but not the 240V (which is standard in Thailand). They must have bought the train from Japan and not changed a thing. Not even the plugs. There was even a tiny TV/VCR in each room which didn't work. So funny.
The lights and A/C control. We never quite got this figured out. :-)
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