that time i went to thailand

THE END!!

2006-08-25T16:06:00.000-07:00

just a notice to all and sundry that i am home, safe and sound. i'm desperately trying to reacclimate myself to north america (the weather here is fabulous, though i'm not as sweat-proof as i hoped i'd be) and process my trip. how does one integrate the lessons of an adventure into the torpor of everyday life? on a related topic, does anyone know any good books along the lines of finding God in your achingly boring life?

i'm not sure how often i'll be blogging these days. i'd like to keep it up, but i'm frankly not planning on doing anything interesting. still, all my blogging friends manage to make their lives sound interesting, and my feelings won't really be hurt if everyone stops reading, because i won't know, right? so consider this the close to a chapter.

getting there...

2006-08-23T16:05:00.000-07:00

i said goodbye to the brians (falls and fotjasek) at 2:30, and in doing so, severed the last link to my thailand community. i was in bangkok with an entire afternoon ahead of myself, to do as i pleased, but i want nothing to do with a thailand that does not include my boys and p'ganniga. leaving was heart-wrenching, nearly to the point where i wish i hadn't come. homecoming will be sweet, but there have been too many hours in between.

aside from getting rip-roaringly drunk, i did the only other thing i knew would completely overwhelm my senses and help me pass the time: i went to mbk. the enormous mall did not disappoint, and for a few hours and a few hundred baht, i forgot how completely wretched i am. i was able to laugh at the 'berger king' and the 'grossery store.' now it is 2:30 in the am. i would dearly love to sleep on the plane, so i am awake now, trying to forget what i am leaving behind and focus on what i am coming home to. i am more than ready to come home, but nowhere near ready to leave.

my plane departs in less than six hours.

shadrach, meshach and...dao?

2006-08-20T16:02:00.000-07:00

every morning just before class starts, the students gather in front of the flag and line up in their classroom groups. they sing the national anthem together, and then recite prayers to buddha. those stalwart figures you see with their hands to their sides or behind their backs are our boys. they are exempt from praying to the buddha by virtue of their status as Christians, but i often wonder what their classmates think of this, and how they respond when questioned. this is yet another one of those things i'll never know, because i don't speak thai.

the national anthem, besides being sung before class, is also played over the loudspeaker at 8:00. this is not just a school function; everywhere in thailand, loudspeakers on trucks or posted on streets, radio stations and television, all play thailand's national anthem at precisely 8:00 am and 6:00 pm. wherever one happens to be at that moment, one is expected to drop everything and stand at attention. traffic will sometimes even come to a halt, as people pay homage to their country and king.

other things you might not know about thailand:

before a movie is played in the theaters, a special video honoring the king is run. once again, everyone stands at attention.

when you fold money, you fold it with the king's face on the outside. if you drop money, stepping on it is a jailable offence (you're putting your foot on the likeness of the king's head).

it is considered rude to pick your teeth in public. picking your nose is perfectly acceptable.

every road worth mentioning has a meridian, because there are no functioning crosswalks. one only has to dodge traffic coming from one direction at a time, resting on the meridian in the middle. you are permitted to cross if you probably won't get hit.

the reigning rule of the road is 'don't get hit.' slightly less prominant is 'try not to hit anyone else.

'people drive on the left-hand side.

many driver's licenses are purchased, not earned.

it shows.

people swim in the ocean fully-clothed, and usually only in the evening. when they sit on the beach, they do so under a host of umbrellas, and they sit facing inwards towards each other, not towards the sea.

you eat with a fork and spoon, using the fork to push the food onto your spoon. you can use your spoon to cut things, if strictly necessary. my house has one butterknife, which i use when no one is around. i call it 'going savage.'

eggs and milk can be left out on the counter, no problem. cereal, however...THAT goes in the fridge.

thai people were voted the 'best-smelling people group' in the world. they shower several times daily.

no one kisses in public. if you must show affection, you put your face close to someone else's face, and sniff them.

friends of the same gender group can and will walk down the street hand-in-hand.you never touch someone else's head.

that concludes our lesson in thai culture, 101. class dismissed.

5 days and counting

2006-08-20T16:01:00.000-07:00

don't have much to post these days...getting ready to leave.

yesterday, everyone took me to this waterpark on top of a massive mall in bang na...it was supposed to be a surprise until, i guess, the day before, but then no one ended up telling me, so when the fallses came to pick me up yesterday morning, there i was still in my jammies, drinking coffee.

today i ate a bowl of soup that tasted like human spit.

pony up!

2006-08-17T15:58:00.000-07:00

i'm coming home with a hundred bracelets. be prepared to buy them. all proceeds go to the orphanage.this is my taxi. there's no cushion on that bit that i sit on, and going over bumps at high speeds makes me want to cry. luckily, having so much weight on the back slows the driver down, so we rarely go anywhere at high speeds...

this is apilak in his happy place (note my severely mosquito-bitten legs...i look like i have the pox)...if i carry him around until he's fake-sleeping, and then sit down and put him in his leg-cradle, he'll open one eye and look around, decide this is an acceptable resting place and that he is still being a burden (he lives to encumber), and then go to sleep for real. this leaves my hands free to read a book or something.

yesterday, karen took me out for dinner-and-debrief to this little mexican food (mmmmmmmmMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmm) place in pattaya...pattaya is one of the prostitution capitals of thailand, and i had never been there, particularly not at night...i'm still trying to process it all, but it's one thing to read about it in books, and another thing entirely to see teenaged girls lingering, scantily clad, in front of bars, or walking through the streets hand-in-hand with a farang twice their age...

slasher!

2006-08-15T15:54:00.000-07:00

someone slashed the outer pocket of my rockawesome satchel (read: mom-bag) while i was at the market yesterday, in the hopes that my wallet would fall out. luckily, my wallet is man-sized, and stayed put. still, that would have been a rotten way to end my trip. at least this decides for me the question of whether or not the mom-bag makes the return trip to canada.

-------------

the woman who inexplicably shows up on sunday afternoons to iron the boys' school clothes has a little dog named ninja, who is pretty much the cutest thing since kirby (you all know who i'm talking about...that video game where the pillow would eat things and spit them out at other things)...only in thailand can you bring your dog (or infant child, or husband) to work with you.

--------------------

the older kids at wat samet, particularly the ones in my classes, are pretty used to having a farang on the premises now, although they all still stop whatever they're doing and stare when brian's big green truck drives into the school. the younger ones, however, just can't get over it. every so often, they'll congregate in little clumps outside my doorway, and dare each other to go in and say 'hello.' sometimes, one of them will come in willingly, bravely, hand held out to be shaken. other times, they'll spend ten minutes trying to shove each other inside...----------------------

the boys had made a batch of beaded bracelets to sell to the Full Sail team, and the team leader, geoff, has requisitioned a whole batch more, promising to sell them when he gets back to california. a sight more profitable and less wearying (which we all condone, since they're all still sickish) than selling popcorn in the market, the boys have taken to bracelet-making like they were born to it... i may be coming home with a batch myself, if bracelet fever holds. they make excellent gifts for your nieces!!!!

mother's day photos

2006-08-13T15:51:00.000-07:00

p'ganniga and her boys (i'm still gunning for that one perfect photo where all five of them look alive, alert, awake, and enthusiastic...this is not that photo)and then, because they're also kind of mine...it's getting close to the end, and i'm dying to be home. this has become my life. it seems like i've known the fallses forever; it's perfectly natural that tassanee sanchez would hug me every time she sees me; rice actually is a proper breakfast food. these are my comfortable, familiar surroundings. still, something is missing, and whether that's solitude, or it's rest, or it's joel or family or people who i've actually known forever, it's time for me to go home. i've said a million times and i'll say again that if i could take the boys, i'd come home in a second. that being said, thoughts of leaving are both pleasant and unsettling. could you leave this face...?

or this one...?
there is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace...
ecclesiastes 3:1-8

i feel that my time is coming to tear and to uproot, and i'm not entirely ready...

pizza babies!

2006-08-12T15:49:00.000-07:00

if i EVER have quintuplets (or, like, have twins and then triplets back to back) and then, twelve years later, i want to have another one, so that at some point in time i will have five children bordering on thirteen, and one tiny, fussy, infant child, just be like, hey, remember that time with the pizza? and i promise you i wont.

the long story short is that i had to order pizza over the phone, because the boys were hungry, and i am not cooking for five boys whilst holding a baby who won't sleep. so i'm ordering, half in thai, and i don't know my phone number off by heart, and the woman doesn't understand 'wait a second' and so she hangs up on me, so i have to phone her back and do the whole thing over with apilak screeching all the while (he promptly shut up as soon as i was off the phone), and then when i sent bun and dao with a thousand baht to pick up the 700B pizza, the guy at the place told them that it was 1700 baht, and bun came back to fetch me and my purse, and so i wrapped the baby (who was screeching again) and left golf and max and june to watch the house, and booked it the six or so blocks to the pizza place, hauling this baby who is suddenly quite heavy, only to find that it was, in fact, 700B, and the guy was retarded (not literally, but...well...you know), and that it wasn't even ready.

in other news, it was thai mother's day, and so the lot of us took ganniga out for lunch, only she thought we were going out for june's birthday (which kind of we were, but not really), and she was all pleased and cried a little bit and apparently, in her twenty-eight years (or so) of motherhood, no one has ever honored her on mother's day, which is kind of tragic.

so, for all you mothers out there who are still in yesterday (that is, everyone in north america), happy mother's day!!!!!!!!!

i got my latte

2006-08-11T15:47:00.000-07:00

it's friday, and my day off, so i took a bus into bangkok to do some shopping. the bus (read: eight passenger van) was packed with university students heading home for the weekend. those who had had classes this morning were still in their prim, short-sleeved white button-down shirt, neat black skirt and shoes uniformery, and the rest sported variations on the knee-length-shorts/t-shirt combination that is the thai woman's wardrobe. gung, our local shopping expert, directed me towards siam square, which includes the siam paragon, the siam center, and the siam discovery (all of these are shopping malls). i could not have been more delighted. everything was in english. i didn't have to ask people where everything was, because i could read the signs and figure it out myself, like a grown-up. the first thing i found on my own was a latte.

it was everything i dreamed it would be, and more. this is me in the siam paragon (rocking my own knee-length-shorts/t-shirt combo), a spacious, air-conditioned dream of a mall, five stories high. the siam center was similar, and i can only assume the same of the siam discovery, because after i'd hit up these two, i headed to the mbk (which MUST stand for Mall of Bangkok, or something)...the mbk is easily as big as metrotown (both parts) as far as square footage per floor, but it's eight stories high, and the stores are all packed cheek by jowl. it's like our own little bang saen market, only a brazillion times bigger, and with air con. i almost screamed a little bit when i walked in. each storey is designated to a particular form of merchandise, so finding roughly what you want is easy. finding exactly what you want is near impossible, since the stores are four across (picture an ordinary shopping mall, and you're walking down the center floor bit, which usually has gaps surrounded by glass walls that children press their faces against and sometimes there are escalators, and on either side of you there is a store...now take away that center floor bit with its gaps and its escalators, and put in two more rows of stores...now add a million thai people and a handful of overwhelmed farang. that's mbk). it's the only time in my life i haven't combed a strange mall from top to bottom, end to end. i'm just grateful to have gotten out of there alive.

in addition to my latte, i had a double-cheese and jalepeno bagel with cream cheese (making it, i suppose, triple-cheese), and then later i stumbled upon the cream and fudge factory, which is not quite what it sounds. it's an ice-cream joint, where you walk up to the nice girl with the pad of paper and say, for example, that you would like chocolate ice cream with tiny chocolate chips, banana bits, and roasted macadamia nuts in it (which is, in fact, what i wanted) and then you will watch while they throw a largish scoop of ice cream on a frozen counter and mix in your chosen goodies. then they call you madam, as though you were the duchess of york, or something. do we have cream and fudge factories in north america? i know we have cold stone (in the states), which i think amounts to much the same thing...

and also, i saw a lady in a burkha.which i think amounts to much the same thing...and also, i saw a lady in a burkha.

pictures!! PICTURES!! I'm drunk on my own power.

2006-08-10T15:40:00.000-07:00

this was a rockawesome game we played with our youth, where they had to put a basketball between their knees, a book on their head, and a baht on their eye, and then walk...

and here's dao, 'cause i just love him....
and as a side note, our youth group has been running for maybe a month and a half now, and we've had 19 kids come to Christ, which i think is kinda alright ;)
and then here are two of my star pupils
and here is the calender which used to say when i was leaving...one night max sat down beside me, cut out a square of paper, slathered it in glue (all the while, replying 'i don't know' to my 'what are you doing?'s), and then pranced over to cover the 'rachel leaves.' then he turned and asked impishly, 'you go when?'. the boys proceeded to point out, with ineffable thai logic, that the bird in the picture above the month is not flying, neither therefore can my airplane fly, so i can't go...
and then here's dao again, fast asleep on the floor...
which leads me to today's adventures. it was universally decided that the boys, in their debilatated state, should stay home from school today (let me side note: brian's car is again in the crapper [aka 'the shop'], which meant that we would be songthaewing to school this morning, and if there's one thing that my pleasant little boys positively balk at, it's songthaewing to school, so they were DOUBLY pumped to have a holiday). yesterday, they all looked like death warmed over (until it was time for bed, at which point they roused themselves enough to play a round of 'stick canada stickers on rachel without her noticing,' which is a really difficult game, because i'm a ninja at noticing stuff) but today, after sleeping in til 6:55 and laying around for a while, they'd perked up a bit.

dr. aree, the boys' fabulous, benevolent (free) doctor phoned to say that she could see them today, so karen and i hauled the lot of them in (apilak included, if only to get him out of p'ganniga's hands so she'd HAVE to rest). they seemed fine, and most of them deny illness of any sort, so we felt a little foolish, but now they're all on antibiotics, and dr. aree is concerned about max, so we were justified (though we'd rather look foolish). she says max has fluid in his lungs, and that it may develop into pneumonia (most dreaded of words) and so to keep an eye on him. what does that mean? i keep an eye on all of them, all the time! they cough!!! are they coughing more than usual? i don't know, they mostly cough at night when i can't tell who it is. my poor little fellows, i just want them well. i want them well, and i want my ganniga well, because she keeps trying to pretend that she IS well, and i want apilak (who was given a clean bill of health, thank God) to remain well, and i want a latte. hopefully i get all the other things before i get my latte. so, the boys are all on antibiotics (or they will be, once karen visits dr. aree at her clinic tonight and picks up their [free sample] meds) and they should be fine. it really just blows my mind to see how people open up their hearts to these boys. dr. aree roped a couple of the specialists into checking things out like june's ears, and they all agreed willingly, and for free. these two salesmen who didn't have any 'samples' of the meds dr. aree needed just up and gave her a thousand baht to buy them outright from someone else. so many people have been willing to help these boys, from the zillions of teams that have come through to the girl who runs the stall next to their popcorn stand, and who lends them a hand setting it up. it kind of renews your faith in humanity.

ONE picture uploaded

2006-08-10T15:38:00.000-07:00

finalement!!! success!!! alright, folks, here's the pic you've all been waiting for...well worth the wait, i think. for heaven's sake, people, DON'T feed the coconut. the illustration denotes what will happen if you do. based upon the success of this photo upload, i think i'll start a new blog and post some more (i don't DARE try and put more on this post, in case i lose this one precious photo).

indestructable?

2006-08-08T15:35:00.000-07:00

uploading photos is still beyond blogger's ability just now, you'll all have to make due with a boring post-of-text. there's a 'scheduled outage' advertised for later today, i hope they'll make use of that outage and fix some stuff.

in orphanage news, p'ganniga's been sick. i think i mentioned this a few posts ago, but i'm not sure i communicated how completely earth-shattering that is. it'd be like if he-man came down with the flu, or something. thai people are invincible. i saw three motercycles crash into each other at top speed two nights ago, each carrying at least two people. no one was wearing a helmet, everyone went flying, and no one was hurt. you could shoot a thai at close range with a longbow, and he'd, like, maybe stagger back a bit.

so p'ganniga's got a cough and a sore throat, and she sounds like death, but she's still going a million miles a minute, even though i tell her at every turn to take a nap, or eat something. apilak's been shifted from home to home in an effort to keep him healthy, and he's found semi-permanent residence with the fallses (who also have supakit, and who run the risk of going stir-baby-crazy, because i've had both babies for a few HOURS, and nearly lost my mind. they're going on a couple of DAYS now, bless their hearts).

the boys, while still durable, are a little more 'vincible' than their countrymen, and one by one, they have caught 'the cough.' max went down first, and so we quarantined him to my old room, but yesterday dao came home from school, curled up on the floor, and promptly went to sleep (which i'd post a picture of, but for aforementioned difficulties). he slept for three hours, despite noise and clamour and being tripped over several times. last night, june was hacking pretty severely, and it was a lacklustre bunch that picked over their chicken and rice this morning. apilak can't come home until all are well (relatively). the boys have some sort of exams this month (i think), but they're all so bleary and unenthusiastic that i can't see them studying hard just now.

also, martin and hannah, our charming english duo, are leaving us today. they have been a joy and a delight to my life, and have taught me all sorts of useful things about england (like how the queen owns all the swans, and england owns the northern bit of scotland, and some shopping malls are banning hoodies because there's a certain brand of person who wears hoodies, and no one likes them, and also that a 'sidewalk' is actually called a 'pavement' and that your 'pants' are what you wear under your trousers, and that we pronounce 'buddha' and 'muslim' wrong) and i will miss them and our impromptu 'english lessons,' and their general willingness to help out anywhere at any time. and have i mentioned that hannah loves pirates as much as i do? she had a pirate-themed stagette (except they call it a 'hen party') and she bought a shirt the other day that says 'pirates are way cooler than ninjas' and has a picture of a pirate giving a ninja the finger, except that she scraped off the finger, so now he's just shaking his fist.

that's really all for now. life has hit something of a rut. one time, my paramedic friend robyn (who's out there SAVING LIVES!!!) posted about her 'mundane life,' and i was like, ROBYN, YOU'RE OUT THERE SAVING LIVES!!! plus i believe the post contained something about stripping firemen down...but now i'm IN THAILAND working at an orphanage, and my life has become comfortable and boring. i guess you get used to anything in time. even firemen.

enter the gong show

2006-08-06T15:33:00.000-07:00

so, generally speaking, the internet's been down...and then when it's not down, i've got the baby, and now it's up, and blogger won't let me upload any photos. so you'll all have to make due without the really funny sign i saw at monkey mountain until another date.

we have a team here from the states (several of them [states, not team members]), called 'full sail.' they're a singing group...mostly they tour around our area and sing worship songs...anyway, they let me come to monkey mountain with them on friday for dinner. monkey mountain is so called because of its profusion of monkeys. for reals, there's zillions of'em. we rented a songthaew to take us up there, and the whole road up was strewn with monkeys...couldn't take photos because we were on a moving songthaew, and then when we got to the 'top,' the world was suddenly void of monkeys. i induced two of the full sailers to walk back down with me a ways to get some sweet monkey shots, but our venture was cut short. an attempt to snap a pic of the grandaddy monkey led to a savage attack by aforementioned grandaddy, and the three of us fled in terror. monkeys is unreasonable beasts.

then it rained. then we had dinner under a tarp, and we all got wet anyways. then the profusion of small children combined with the excitement of the rain and the general messyness of small children in rain made me profoundly aware that i do not want children for some time yet (late nights with babies may have contributed to this effect). then we took a songthaew home in the wet.

my day off (friday) consisted of an early morning full sail concert at the boys' school (which i couldn't NOT attend), and then a trip to sri richa to buy myself 30 more fine-free days, and then another full sail concert at yet another school, and then a trip to monkey mountain in the evening, so i was not so much rested as mildly worn down that night when karen emailed to ask if i could take supakit the following day, it being sheri and brian's 16th anniversary and all. so i showed up saturday morning to find a sheri and brian all set to go in their workout gear, cradling a sweating, feverish supakit. after much deliberation, they reluctantly set off to work out while i took the cranky, sick baby for a few hours. when they returned, they took him to the hospital, 'just in case.' suddenly they're phoning, and supakit is getting his lungs suctioned, and now he's on five different medications, three times a day (not as in 'five throughout the day,' but as in 'five in the morning, three at lunch, and five in the evening), and p'ganniga's sick, and max is sick, and apilak is staying with brian and tiffany (did i mention that tiff's pregnant, and has 4 of her own under the age of eight?) so that he doesn't get sick, and the full sail team left one of their girls behind to teach some classes or something, and i'm supposed to hang out with her, because how lonely is it to be stuck in thailand!! but i have to go pick up joy in ten minutes, and i only have sixteen days left here, and i do and don't want to come home!!!!!

and that's all. there's your teeny update, mum. love you.

no-ambodia

2006-08-04T15:32:00.000-07:00

i would like to announce that i am the proud owner of a new 30-day visa...ergo...i don't have to go to cambodia. huzzah!

and also, THESE pretz are LARB flavor.

bebes

2006-08-03T15:31:00.000-07:00

walking a baby to sleep is stupendously boring.

cambodia or bust

2006-08-02T15:30:00.000-07:00

i may or may not have to go to cambodia.

i may be able to buy a 30 day visa extension from sri richa for 1800 baht. we'll find out tomorrow.

also, this may be outside of anyone's interest range, but here in thailand (and most particularly in my house) it's not so much a matter of the boys not putting the toilet seat back down, it's a matter of them not putting it up in the first place.

i want a bagel.

huzzah! generic blog titles are so difficult to come by these days!

2006-08-01T15:25:00.000-07:00

tuesdays are usually a long day (teach at wat samet in the morning, have joy in the afternoon, teach an adult english class at tlc in the evening) and so when i returned home late last night, i was unceremoniously ordered to sleep in this morning, and not accompany the boys on their drive to school, but ordered in such a way that i felt like i had made the decision. thai people do this to you.

in other news, it appears that apilak has moved into our home (quasi)permanently. this being everyone's first orphanage, we are unsure as to how to proceed. do we set up a separate townhouse and nanny for the two babies? do we keep one of them with the boys (who, quite frankly, did not sign up to be parents, and who i feel should have no obligation to tend to the overgrown foetusi) and keep the other one with one of the families? what is to be done? be in prayer.

a new team has arrived from california, they're supposed to be a 'band' of some sort, but there's at least fifteen of them, plus several small children, so we have taken to calling them 'the orchestra.' one of the women from the previous california team back in june sent me the biggest box of 'now and laters' via this team (to the canadian amongst you, 'now and laters' are a candy akin to a starburst, only tangier, and they are hard 'now' when you start chewing them, and soft 'later') and so i am currently consuming far more sugar than is good for me. rudy, you are a peach.

title of a blog entry!!

2006-07-30T15:24:00.000-07:00

ganniga and i have been taking turns with apilak today (please note: his name mysteriously acquired a 'k'). i'm new to babies, so am i right in assuming that new motherhood is invariably accompanied by sweat and dishevellment? apilak will be held, unless in the deepest of sleeps, and he prefers that you hold him while standing (HOW do they know that you've changed elevation?) and it would behoove you to walk around the room if you presume to pick him up, but look at what a tiny helpless orphan parcel he is...

and so it's really quite alright.

vacation pictures

2006-07-29T15:20:00.000-07:00

ok, here's my deserted beach (that's my house up in that tree)here's my house (that's my balcony you can't quite see through the trees)
here's the view from my balcony (or maybe from my window...that may be a curtain on the left-hand side...it's the same view, either way)
and here's foxy sleeping under my breakfast table (note her undisgustability)

i need a vacation!!!

2006-07-29T15:17:00.000-07:00

it all started a few weeks ago, when i was trying to decide what to do with my break, and karen says to me...oh, there's this one place with treehouse bungalows! problem was, we didn't know what the name of the beach was, or of the resort (resort is a very loose term here in thailand), or whereabouts on the island it was...we knew which island it was on, and who might know the other info, but that was the full extent.

so wednesday morning, after many fruitless attempts to pin down this information, i set off with instructions to get myself to ko samet (the island), and high hopes of achieving my treehouse dream. i got to the 'bus station,' and a woman motioned for me to get on the bus currently in residence. 'going to rayong?' i asked? she nodded, yes, without appearing to listen, and i got on with no small bit of apprehension.

after a half hour or so, she called out 'rayong' and motioned me up to the front of the bus. 'that was quick,' i thought. turns out that we were nowhere near rayong. rather, we were on the highway, and the actual bus to rayong was three vehicles in front of us. our driver was attempting to hail their driver so that they would pull over and let me on. i've been victim of this passenger-swap before, albiet on a lower, more songthaeowian level, but in the middle of morning traffic, on the highway...?

at any rate, after several failed attempts, the other bus was signalled, and i changed hands like some sort of contreband. the money-collector on the second bus asked, in the usual, friendly thai manner, where i was going. he then (also in the usual, friendly thai manner) assumed the role of 'helpless-farang protector.' he not only carried my bag for me off the bus, but took it (and me) to the songthaeow that would then take me to the ferry, informing everyone along the way that i was going to ko samet (in case i should get lost after i left his care. this turned out to be fortunate). he put me on a blue songthaeow, which then swapped me for another blue songthaeow (mercifully before either of them had set out on the road). once the vehicle was filled to a profitable capacity, we left for the ferry. since my bus-friend had alerted all and sundry to my destination, at least three people turned to me and said 'ko samet!' when we arrived at the ferry, which was indistinguishable from the rest of rayong since the water was completely hidden from view.

using the information i had, i'd surmised which beach i figured the treehouses to be on. to get there from the mainland, i had the option of either a speedboat (which would take me directly to the beach of my choice for $60) or a ferry (which would take me one beach over from where i figured i'd start my search, for $6). since i'm fabulously wealthy, i chose the ferry, and sat down to wait. before long, i was placed on a little motercycle sidecart to be taken down to the docks, only to be swapped en route for another motercycle sidecart, this one already containing two people. i sat sidesaddle with my rear on the motercycle and my feet in the cart.

the other farang in the cart and i were commanded by the third occupant, a stern thai woman, to get on the big boat. we clambered aboard, he with a touch of protest since he had paid the 2000 baht for the speedboat. not to worry, she said. the ferry was merely a stepping stone to the speedboat, which soon pulled up along side it, and which, for some inexplicable reason, could not pull up to the dock and be boarded directly. being the only passenger on the ferry, i was soon upgraded and ordered into the speedboat along with my sidecart companion, as well as a german fellow, his thai wife, and their beautiful thai-german daughter.

rather than drop us off at the main beach (which my dignified farang friend had paid for), the boat driver dropped us off at some unidentified locale, claiming that he had someone to pick up from there. this beach being rather closer to my intended destination than the main beach, i could do no more than murmur insincere sympathies to my disgruntled friend before taking my leave. since there was no dock, we were all forced to take our chances with the surf. thus ended my guided transportation, and i set out on foot.

a man at a booth marked 'information' gave me directions (read: pointed in a direction) to ao thien, my beach of choice. i clambered over rocks for a space of probably twenty minutes, but did so around a bend in the island, and ended up at the self-same beach where i had started. not willing to ask the same man for different directions, i did an about-face and headed the opposite way. another twenty minutes of clambering brought me to a sign that said 'songtien beach --->' and since thai things written in english that sound the same usually are the same (frinstance, chonburi is correct, as is chon buri, chonbury, chon buli, and i've even seen tonburi), i figured this might be it. i straggled through a forest path and down a narrow flight of stairs before arriving on songtien beach.

the woman in the information booth of the first clump of bungalows knew enough english to ask me (repeatedly) if i wanted a room, and my attempts to act out 'treehouse' brought only stares, and a gesture for her friends to come check out the crazy farang. i carried on down the beach, asking after treehouses, until someone replied with an 'ah! apache!' and pointed still further down. still further i went, this time asking after the 'apache.' each clump of bungalows had its own distinct style, and they were, for the most part, slap bang up against each other. not so the apache. every bungalow was different, and placed erratically around the site. every table could seat more or fewer amounts of people, in greater or lesser degrees of ease. and there she stood: my little treehouse. i had planned to play it cool, but when one of the three perpetually-on-duty-never-actually-present staff opened the door to my balcony, i cried 'i'll take it!!'

it was the only one of its kind: the interior was nearly all bed, the mosquito netting was pink and filmy and made me feel as though i slept in a cotton candy tent, and from the balcony i could spit into the ocean. two shabby but servicable lounge chairs and one dirty plastic table furnished my little balcony, and there i would sit for hours, hidden from the world by the trees but visible to the ocean and the sun. the entire area below my house i claimed as MY beach, not that any of the resorts other five or so inhabitants ever challenged my claim. i could see the sunrise from my window, and awoke early, but rested, every moning. i walked out to the edge of the rocks and sat and stared in the water. i tried to catch crabs (the sideways-walking kind, not the other kind). i read four books, two of which were excellent, one was alright, and one was altogether crap, and then the propriotess gave me a battered copy of jane eyre to take home. the last quarter of the pages have come detatched, so i'm reading it to make sure it's all there before i pass it along to kyla, who is my bang saen library. in the evenings i would play cards with two girls from the uk. on friday i took a boat tour around the island, where i met four other farang. we stopped and snorkled twice, had a picnic on the boat, visited a fish farm, and generally lounged and sunburnt ourselves to a crispy glory. i met a dog who lacked the usual mange and dangly teets, and named her foxy. she followed me everywhere, and i suspect her of having slept on the landing to my house.

it was fabulously good to come home. i feel quite relaxed and bored with myself, ready to take on my handful of responsibilities again. i missed the boys terribly. it's good to be home.

i'm coming home canada-wise in twenty-six days.

funskies

2006-07-22T15:15:00.000-07:00

friday night the boys go to someone else's house because it's p'ganniga's night off (and mine too, i guess), but it's been a busy week and i missed them, so i went with, and the family we were staying with has four young children of the rowdy (read: pinchy stompy bitey screamy runny-away) variety, and bless the boys, they're all like tiny dads, and you know when an old mama dog has pups bouncing all over her and nipping at her tail and whatall and she just carries on with what she's doing and occasionally picks one up and deposits it out of her way...that's what this reminded me of. add to that the fact that we had the baby, and we went bowling on friday and swimming on saturday...it was a valiant but weary bunch that i brought home saturday night.

apila eats and sleeps all the time. we're feeding him twice as much as they said to (shhhhh), and he scarfs it down...we're hoping he'll put on some flesh. pray that both the babies (apila and supakit) work the HIV out of their system, and that either their moms claim them again, or relinquish their rights so that they can be adopted out (if the moms don't relinquish their rights, but don't want them themselves, then they just languish in government orphanages until their bitter and resigned coming-of-age, and this happens WAY more often than it should). and keep praying for our five boys to be healed. and that i finish strong...a month from now i'll be heading into bangkok, and flying out the next day...i don't want to spend my last month here with my soul in canada.

it's real! dried ginger!

2006-07-20T15:13:00.000-07:00

...is what a packet at the supermarker assures me. contrary to all reports, dried ginger is, in fact, real. also real are our two babies! remember how i mentioned a few weeks ago that we might be getting babies, and then never touched the subject again because i feared that doing so would lessen the likelihood of the arrival of said babies? well, they came in last night...this happy fatso is four-month-old supakit (a.k.a. 'superkid)...

and this spindly character is apila, nearly a month old...
and this is the gecko that got into the pastries...
doesn't HE look territorial! anyway, we have babies now, and sheri and nat and i had a rousing sleep over with them last night...supakit only takes meds once a day, and they're fairly hopeful that he'll work the HIV out of his system (which, apparently, babies can do), but apila is a fitful, mewly thing, and he requires meds at six and noon and six and midnight...so i'm tired and i'm going to sleep, if that's ok.

literary thievery

2006-07-19T15:12:00.000-07:00

i wish i could take credit for this paragraph but i can't. i stole it out of a book on thai culture...but it's just so APT. read, and know that it's all true.

'Powered by technology, the habits of slower times turned lethal...in the past, the limits of human strength prevented a boat or rickshaw from speeding, and the watery highway meant collisions harmlessly clanced, with no lanes determining their course. Taxis behave as if nothing's changed. They tailgate and overtake at high speed with inches to spare; they blitely straddle white lines without indicating, or cut across three lanes and screech to a halt at the merest hint of a hand politely beckoning palm down. With driving lessons an affront to face and licenses easily bought, many Thais intuitively steer their cars as if on water.'

thanks, philip cornwel-smith.

drink your pasturized, fortefied, nutrient-rich milk, kiddies

2006-07-19T15:08:00.000-07:00

it was noted by my younger, taller, infinitely wiser than i was at twenty-one-year-old sister that ‘we’ have so much, and ‘they’ have so little, and how on earth (she queried) are we to go about solving this problem without thoroughly westernizing the world? i concur, having fallen completely and hopelessly in love with thai culture just the way it is (without losing my fondness for home and hearth, God and country, and the like. i mean, i love chocolate ice cream and i love rainbow sherbet, and i would never want my rainbow sherbet to become a little more chocolatey, just because i love chocolate more).

one of my endeavors (fully supported by my fellow health-conscious farang) has been to increase the numbers of fruits and veggies entering ALH from ‘zero’ to ‘some.’ is the never-ending quest to get a carrot into these boys just an example of western hubris? after all, the thai have been defying the Canada Food Guide for centuries (their food pyramid doesn’t even have a section for dairy), and they seem to be doing fine. sure, they’re a tiny people, but do we all need to be tall and fleshy? i really should research general thai health a bit more, because i’m sure that things like rickets abound, but based on casual observation, they really seem to be doing fine. my ancient friend who lives down the street is proof positive that some of them, at least, do grow old. is a good FoodSafe course what thailand really needs? i mean, i eat from street vendors, i eat food that i know has spent hours in the ‘danger zone,’ and my fragile farang system is fine. how much of what we think we need back home is just propaganda? sure, every one of the children at wat samet is in the lower growth percentile, but that’s because they’re poor, not because they’re thai. how do we help them in a way that’s thai? is it the best we can to do contribute money and Operation Christmas Child boxes? it just might be. i mean, we’re not all called to overseas compassion work, and helping the foreign poor doesn’t have the same soup-kitchen convenience as helping our local down-and-outers (i don’t say this to slam soup kitchens and the like at ALL, because i think these things are intensely necessary and that those who help out are examples of the good and shining in our country. i’m just pointing out that we can’t concretely, hands-on-ly help overseas in the same way of a saturday night).

sometimes i wonder what i’m doing here, because i’m just one person and not a very good one at that (and i’m not saying this so that the ‘every little bit helps’ and ‘i can’t do great things but i can do little things with great love’ comments will pour in, because i know all that…i really do feel useless much of the time). but then, a handful of the kids that i teach at wat samet have been coming to our wednesday kids club, and then to the youth group, and last sunday we had seven kids accept Christ, and whatever my cynical belief may be about the beliefs of children, these kids are all twelvish, and whatever my cynical beliefs may be about my presence here, they were all kids that i teach at the boys’ school. karen said to me ‘you’re only here [at wat samet] for two hours a week, and yet you’re such an incarnational presence…’ does that mean that i’m being Christ to these kids? that God is rewarding my faithfulness even if that faithfulness is liberally seasoned with envy and greed and sloth and…what were the other four? those too. does this mean that He really does use imperfect vessels to do His work, and that all my flaws actually can’t throw Him off? that His power really is made perfect in my weakness? is that why i feel so unworthy all the time, so completely and utterly failed as a Christian, just so that i will note the power of God held in this jar of clay? if i had been praying and reading my Bible faithfully and all the other good Christian disciplines since i’d decided i was coming to thailand, and then all these kids came to Christ, wouldn’t i pat myself on the back? wouldn’t i just think that i was the awesomest Christian alive, and thank goodness that God has a one such as me to bring light and salvation to the gentiles? but i didn’t, and i haven’t been, and i’m not likely to start now to any account. and yet…i have been used. i have been an instrument of God, not by might, nor by power, but by the Spirit. thank God.

raych's quadratic formula for classroom hilarity

2006-07-16T18:27:00.000-07:00

1 faulty whiteboard eraser + 1 hand used in lieu of whiteboard eraser + 1 classroom with zero ventilation = 1 sweaty blue palm + 1 itchy, sweaty face = a classroom full of students who aren't sure if they should laugh (this is my monday morning, well-behaved class, remember. tuesday would have been in stitches without permission).

'do i have blue on my face?' a few of them nodded.

i laughed.

tension broken, they all giggled like schoolchildren.

------------

so, since the fallses missed bun's birthday celebration, and the boyses missed abraham's birthday celebration, we had a teeny little shindig for the two of them on friday...bun manfully pretended to eat his cake (he doesn't like sweets) until i came and sat by him. i may or may not have eaten his piece on the sly...
and then max gave me sass about something and so i tickled him until he nearly peed (disclaimer: WAY too much guy-thigh below).
and now i have to tell you this story, which would be WAY funnier if you knew the kid, but max is the neatly-tucked, clean-fingernails, bed made so tight you could bounce a quarter off the sheets, tidy handwriting (in english AND thai), homework done by friday evening kid. and then sometimes he goes crazy.

so wednesday night, p'ganniga is at her cell group and i have the boys, and it's going on nine and everyone is showered and in their jammies except max. 'max, buddy, you gotta go shower,' i say. casting an impish glance my way, max states, 'i no shower.' 'max, go shower.' giggling now, 'i no shower!' 'that's it'. i get up and snag him, sticking my fingers into his all-too-prominent ribs until he's laughing so hard he can barely breathe.

'there,' i say, 'now go shower.' he darts halfway up the stairs before squatting down and peering at me through the slats...'i no shower!!!' i hear more giggles and the door to the boys' room slam. i haul myself upstairs and crouch outside. hearing no noise, and being unable to endure the uncertainty, max cracks the door, at which point he is set upon by his hefty farang, who is intent on tickling him until she renders him to that state where you're laughing but no noise is coming out. 'ok, ok, i shower, i shower!!!' 'no way, man. you had your chance.' 'i shower! i shower!!!!' 'no dice. you tickle now.' finally, i let him go, and he trails giggles like drops of water all the way to the bathroom.

this is the closest thing i have to a discipline problem.

the farang is useful after all!!

2006-07-15T18:25:00.000-07:00

p'ganniga and the boys have been looking after me for just over a month now, and i must admit that i'm pretty much useless. i can't cook anything that they'd like to eat, i don't know how the washing machine works, i only do a semi-adequate job of washing dishes, and when i've got the boys to myself on saturday nights, i kind of don't get them to bed on time.

today, though, i proved my worth. we've never really had a bug problem (there was a cockroach one time, and i made golf kill it for me, but he was even more afraid of it than i was, and so i think the thing's still alive somewhere), but today we had a mini-swarm (probably 30 or so) ants engulfing a mislaid drop of food. i scooped up the food with a tissue, and then ganniga and i sat on the floor and squished the ants with our fingers, chanting 'die, die' (words cannot express how funny this was. just know that the thai are a tidy, reserved, mostly buddhist-and-so-do-not-kill-living-things people, and they certainly never sit on the floor, delightedly killing ants). 'all die,' says ganniga. 'all dead,' say i.

but no! not all dead, nor all die neither!! coming out of the wall and scampering across the floor to who knows where (probably the now-false rumor of food) was a mega-swarm (something in the hundreds) of ants!!! 'ah, so much!' says ganniga! 'ah, so many,' say i!

i make a squirt-gunning motion and the accompanying sound effect towards the ants. 'kchss kchss, spray?' 'yes, kchss kchss...die...no have' says ganniga. so we don't have any raid or whatall, but i've cleaned the windows many a time back home, and i know from experience that windex (being pure chemicals) kills bugs...DEAD! just as well as any spray designated for that purpose. besides, i've seen 'my big fat greek wedding.' 'do you have any spray *kchss kchss* to clean *makes wiping motions* windows *points to windows*?' 'ah, chai, chai (yes, yes).' pulls out generic thai window cleaner. a couple of sprays later, the ants were writhing in their own chemically froth, and little max charged through with a mop. 'all die!! clean clean!!!' he cried, and the farang felt that she had earned her keep for the day.

i don't even know

2006-07-14T18:22:00.000-07:00

so, it came to me all in a rush the other night, as very obvious things usually do, that i can't go back in time and change everything that has happened to these boys (i was thinking of bun in particular at the time). i can love them and care for them and take some of the load of responsibility off of their (once again, bun's) shoulders, but i can't go back and change the things that have made them (him) so responsible, that have forced them (him) to grow up so fast. i can't give them back their childhoods. at the most, all i can give them is my companionship for a summer, and my love forever after.

martin and hannah went to the hospital yesterday to hold a baby...i don't really know the whole deal but this baby's been sick, and there's no one to care for him, so they were there from 10:00 to 4:00 just holding him and loving him...they said they felt so powerless. he's been ill, so he doesn't respond like most babies to human affection. he never really sleeps, so he's never really awake (quote paraphrase, source: fight club). they said he was lethargic and cried weakly the whole time, and they didn't feel like anything they did was helping. that's how i feel with the boys. sometimes i think the thai feel as though farang were omnipotent, and other times i think farang feel that way. we want to be able to step in and fix everything, and then go home having left a tidy legacy.

but these are not new bathrooms to be painted, nor playgrounds to be built, nor houses of the old and infirm to be set in order. these are people, and people are not a one-time project no matter what you do with them. games and face-painting and trips to the zoo will not cure what ails them. ultimately, only God's love can do that, and my only real option is to be an instrument of that love. how utterly deflating, and surpassingly empowering.

baby tigers!!

2006-07-14T18:15:00.000-07:00

here in thailand, they don't have cubs, or boyscouts, they have baby tigers. there goes one now!mornings start early at the abundant life home, especially on baby tiger day...p'ganniga has to tuck and fold and belt and wrap her entire squadron into crisp, sharply-creased respectability...since we were at church camp for monday and tuesday, i switched my teaching days to thursday and friday. the english teacher's english ability is (as previously discussed) haphazard at best, and so i didn't know who i'd be teaching until i showed up thursday morning, but there they were, bright and shining in their baby tiger best, my patom 6:1 class (i teach them on monday mornings).there's twins, and for the longest time i thought there was only one of them and i just saw her a lot(see if you can spot them, it'll be like a where's waldo: crazy thailand escapades! also look for: three hall monitors; the one kid who actually remembered his baby tiger hat; and evidence that they don't wear shoes in the class so the room always smells like feet). that was yesterday.

today is friday, and technically it's my day off, and i didn't want to get out of bed and i didn't want to teach and i didn't want sticky rice and deep fried chicken drumsticks for breakfast, because (although it's better than nasty fishes) the boys always pick the bones clean and then crack them and suck out the marrow, and i feel badly that i just can't manage to eat my well-seasoned gristle, and i didn't want to teach patom 6:2 because they're rowdier (although admittedly more fun sometimes...here they are...)

and not as bright, and we can spend a whole class going over how to tell time and i pull every ounce of resource i have into an hour-long blast of educational entertainment, and they still don't get it, and then the whiteboard marker didn't work (and i have to tell you, i live and die by that marker) and my favorite billowy skirt turned out to be a bad schoolroom idea, because the breeze from the ceiling fans hits the floor and rebounds up my skirt, and i had a few marilyn monroe moments before i gathered the excess material into one fist, and used the other fist to try and hammer some use out of the whiteboard marker. so, poop.

on a lighter note, we have two new farang from england. martin and hannah are a newly-married couple looking forward to a possible future of long-term missions, and so they are spending their summer break (they're at Bible college in england) in thailand helping out various endeavors. they'll be with us a few weeks...and they're funny. OH man, they're funny.

they being funny and all, and me enjoying a good funny person from time to time (particularly ones that speak english, even if they do say 'trousers' and 'crisps'), we were hanging out in the church chatting after our english class last night, and i knew it was getting on in hours, but all of a sudden my phone rings, and it's ganniga wondering where i am. talking to her over the phone is nearly useless, so i go home to find out that max and bun had come down (we go to bed at 9:00, and it was now 10:30) saying 'ma, rachel's not home yet. you gotta phone her and find out where she is.' my little people were worried about me.

i got home and went straight into their room to let them know i was there, and bun immediately asks 'you hungry?' as if he was going to hop out of bed in his pajamas and fix me up something if i said yes. don't mean to ruin this touching little story with a bitter pill, but they all have these horrible juicy coughs, and i was up a good hour more listening to them...bun's is one of those full-body coughs, to the point where i got out of bed and came down to see how he was...thank God he was fast asleep despite his angry lungs. they haven't been to see a docter yet, but they probably will be if this keeps up.

and as a quick flash-back story, carmen and karen (our last two new farang) and i spent most of the worship time at the church camp playing 'name that tune,' since it appears that all of thai worship is really old english worship reheated and served with rice (hey, is that 'I Will Celebrate?' yeah, and i'm glad someone else here is old enough to know that...)

also, i've realized how much I love a blog with pictures, and how much i love MY blog when there are pictures in it, and so i've decided that it's well worth waiting while blogger uploads my photos. even if sometimes they never materialize.

my shins are sweating

2006-07-13T18:14:00.000-07:00

ok, the internet at both colette's cafe and the church is down, and since i'm currently paying a whopping 20 baht/hour (which is all of 60 cents) and sweating out my impurities in an un-air-conditioned attic in order to write this blog, i will keep it short. i can't post any pictures since i'm not on my computer, but i will try to lure you to my photo blog with the assurance that it contains TWO pictures of the stalky-eyed bug.

anyway, i just wanted to say thanks to anyone and everyone who reads and comments, and makes me feel a teeny bit linked to home. robyn, dearest, i'll be home soon. forty-something days, not that i'm counting. joel, babe, if you read these things, you should post the odd comment now and then in order to get credit for your endeavors. mum, everyone thinks your piratey costume is ship shape (hee hee) and that you are a hilarious mum.

speaking of pirates, does anyone know where fort york is? because they have a pirate festival from august 19 to sept 4...and that just might be my dream come true.

church camp

2006-07-11T18:30:00.000-07:00

well, faithful readers, i know no one else checks their friends' blogs daily like i do, but if any of you have been paying attention, i have been offline for a few days. i have been revelling in the glories of...church camp!!

we in north america might consider loading our congretation into a bus (more likely several buses) and taking the lot of them to a church camp rather than having everyone find their own way there...here in thailand, where few people own a method of transportation, they think nothing of tossing two congregations into one bus, of cramming three and four people into every set of two seats, and of having at least ten people sitting or walking in the aisles at any one time. have i mentioned that the ride was a good five hours long? i count myself among the lucky ones, i shared my seat with bun, sweet bun who insisted i have the window seat even as he fell asleep with nowhere to rest his head, and this guy...who, as you can imagine, was no trouble at all. the air con barely worked, the music was blaring and in thai, and the crepe window shade did little to keep out the blazing sun. five hours later, sticky and cramped, we arrived at church camp.

i have never, EVER been useless at a kid's camp, but i was useless here. while the adults (including p'ganniga's non-christian husband, and her non-christian son-in-law) sat in workshops and whatnot, louise, carmen and karen (not team 2000's carmen and karen, but two OTHER girls from abbotsford named carmen and karen), myself, and two thai women took the kids on a rousing adventure. well, louise and the two thai women did. carmen, karen and i mostly hung around, trying to pick up on visual clues (oh, it seems the children are getting into a circle...let's help them get into a circle) but pretty much twiddling our thumbs. karen and i talked about some of the kids that she had taught (she teaches high school) who i had worked with at red robin...small world and all...and we participated in the games if they didn't involve a lot of talking.

louise had set up a little orienteering thingie where the kids were given a map of the camp and had to go look for little flags and string together the letters on the flags to make a word...i went along with the first team, but while i was busy killing a snake (i killed a snake. he was just a little guy about the size of my own nebuchadnezzar, rest his sneaky snakey soul, and i didn't think he was poisonous, but what do i know about snakes? he was on a bush right next to one of the bungalows that the families were staying in, and with bun there wringing his hands, pointing at the bungalow and saying 'my friend...sleep...' and then hissing viciously at the snake, i knew that i had to kill it, or he would try. so i hit it with a stick...karen has a picture of my prize, so i'll post it one of these days)...while i was busy killing a snake, the world's biggest twelve-year-old and his friend were off cheating like fiends. the orienteering was a flop.

it was very humbling to be in a place where i would normally be in my element, and not be able to do a single thing. i wonder if there isn't some sort of lesson in this.

sure am glad i'm not buddhist, though. i can kill snakes with impunity.

happy birthday, bun

2006-07-11T18:08:00.000-07:00

i know you'll never read this post, my little bun, but happy birthday. i'm sorry your birthday started at 6:55 so you could take your meds, i'm sorry most of it was spent on a stinking bus, i'm sorry it ended in such chaos with p'ganniga rushing off to pattaya because we left your meds on aforementioned bus. i'm sorry that you didn't get to go swimming and that your real mom doesn't give a rip and that sheri and brian and abraham couldn't be there to celebrate with you because abraham has accute tonsilitis, and andy and carmen and connor and isaac couldn't be there because they're in kansas. i would have liked to have thrown you a party at the pool with plenty of chips because you don't like sweets, to have had all your friends there, and to have told you somehow that i value you immensely. thanks for always taking care of your four 'brothers' and your clueless farang, and for being the man of the house. you are finally thirteen, like you have been saying you are for the past month. now you can start telling people that you're fourteen.

tales from a temporary sleephole

2006-07-07T08:12:00.000-07:00

am on a mission to get a map of the world for the boys' school. brian knows where i can find one in english AND thai. a conversation with the school's official english teacher (and the reason for the map) follows (i will spare you the severe awkward english, and paraphrase):

english teacher: so...canada is close to america?

raych: well...they're right next door, actually.

et: oh, so canada is protected by america?

r: well, actually, (attempts to explain how canada is recognizes the queen of england, but is independant, yada yada)

et: oh, so canada is close to england.

r: (awkward pause), well, no, actually. it's across the ocean.

et: oh. i thought that canada must be protected by america, since you both speak english.

r: (awkward pause), well, actually, (attempts to explain how english comes from england, even though we seem to speak it more clearly because the north american accent has become more prominent).

more conversation ensues, in which the subject of the french girls comes up.

et: but they speak french?

r: yes (attempts to explain how canada has two official languages, has to draw rough and woefully incorrect map of canada to explain how one province speaks french, while the others speak english and bitterly resent learning french in high school)

et: oh, so canda is close to france?

r: well...actually...

------------ (story divider)

so kyla (one of the missionary kids) and i have been talking about going to this market in ang sila, because even though there are markets freaking everywhere, this market has the best this and that market has the cheapest that, and so on. our market in bang saen has the best rot dii (deep fried dough around a banana drizzled with sweetened condensed milk and sprinkled with sugar). ANYway, we had the afternoon free yesterday, so we took joy (kyla is her foster sister), and headed out. we songthaewed a ways and then got off and walked...we'd probably been walking for half an hour when kayla says 'you know, i think i always just got dropped off there, and then songthaewed home. so i don't actually know how long this road is.'

10 k. that's how long the road is. we found that out 8 k down the road, when p'ganniga passed by us on her new scooter, did a double take, and pulled around. she made us stop where we were and wait for a songthaew, which apparently come down that road every...indeterminate long period of time or so. none had passed us to that point, at we'd been walking for...oh, i don't know. how long does it take to walk 8 k in flip flops, pushing a stroller?

the market was awesome. we took a songthaew home.

---------------

it was my day off, and the boys had a half-day at school, so we sat around and played chinese checkers and chess all afternoon. i was (until today) undefeated at both. i played dao a game of chess, and won, and then bun played dao a game of chess and won, and then golf played dao a game of chess and won. i figure this was all part of his elaborate plan to set me up, because when he and i played again, he skillfully manoevered me into a trap. there's always that long moment where you sit and try to figure a way out...who can i kill this guy with...who can i throw in the path of destruction...who will take a bullet for their king? you know you're doomed, but you still search for a loophole, while your opponent softly chants 'bye bye, see you laytah, bye bye, see you laytah' and smirks at you.

--------------

kyla and i went in to sri richa today to see pirates of the caribbean. it was fabulous. anything else i could say would be a plot spoiler, except how much do i love johnny depp? so much.

-------------

dave (kyla's dad) is spending the night at alh with the boys, since it's my night off, which means i'm kicked out of the house...so i'm sleeping at the church. i'm glad i don't live here all the time, because there are a good five other people living in this building right now, and NONE of them are in bed, and there's some AWful thai movie playing in the other room...but i got changed and let my clothes lie where they fell, and i have the air con dropped to 18 (my sweetie boys keep it at 27), and i'm blogging in my bed. this is alright by me.

arabic dance

2006-07-05T18:54:00.000-07:00

'do you enjoy arabic dance?' says my new thai friend, who's english is quite flawless. arabic dance. quick mental flashback to lindsay graham doing her 'brown dance' all around the drama 11 classroom (oh jacki, only you will think that is funny)...quick brain scan for all possible phrases she could actually mean...'ah yes, i enjoy aerobics.' i've been invited to go to a thai aerobics class tonight. i may end up seeing pirates of the carribean, but if i don't, i'll let you know how my 'arabic dance' went.

i have three new thai friends: amp, eng, and...i forget the third girl's name but amp and eng introduced me to her yesterday at their dorm, and she's the one i may go 'dancing' with. anyway, they are english majors at buraphra university, which is maybe six blocks from the church. their english is flawless. they want to hang out with me because they want to practice their listening skills, and brush up on their idioms and slang. amp hardly has a thai accent at all when she speaks english, but eng's is a little more pronounced. and their funny! oh man, are they funny. i always figured thai people would be hilarious if i could understand them, because the boys seriously have me rolling on the floor sometimes, and these girls prove it.

i kind of got distracted by msn, and can't keep a thought going long enough to finish this post. these three girls aren't Christian, but they love having farang friends...and i love having them!!!

so...

2006-07-05T04:15:00.000-07:00

funny story:so, p'ganniga's daughter, ping, accidentally stole my running shoes...that's about the whole story. i got them back.

funnier story:we were leaving this big 3rd of july bash at the fotjasek's on monday, and i saw a pair of brown, old navy flip flops, circa 2004. that's funny, i thought. who would have the same flip flops as the ones i happened to bring to thailand? thinking nothing of it, i slipped into my flip flops of the revolution, and headed home. there, i noted (to my undying amusement) that my brown, old navy flip flops (circa 2004) were missing. i also noted that both jun and p'ganniga went home barefoot, and that i could not get a straight tale out of either of them. all i can derive from this is that one of them wore my flip flops to the party, and was too ashamed to admit it and to wear them home. my flip flops (circa 2004) are still at the fotjaseks.

funniest story of all:to start our adults' english class last night (tuesday), dave had us go around the circle and say our names and our favorite type of cookie. says the one fellow, i enjoy all kinds of penis cookies. i needn't tell you i'm the only one who laughed, and i did it quietly (up my sleeve, you might say). i feel vindicated by the fact that at least half of you will laugh at this blog, and the other half won't get the fact that he meant 'peanut.'

who's doing what now?

2006-07-03T22:40:00.000-07:00

you may or may not have noticed by now, but here in thailand, things can change in the blink of an eye. the sun is shining brightly, but if you go outside, you could very well be soaked in thirty seconds. the fickle weather is an apt reflection of thai life. just before i came, the orphanage was supposed to get a baby girl...that didn't happen. a week or so ago, the plan was to get a different baby girl near the end of july (no one was getting their hopes up this time). now it seems as though we may actually GET our baby girl, PLUS a baby boy, unless they are both baby boys, but they might both be girls...anyway, we think we're getting two babies on the 21st of the month. we're not sure what gender they are (reports keep changing), but they are both HIV positive, one is four months old, and one is currently seventeen days (or twenty-one). the plan (as of now) is that the fallses will foster one of the babies, and the orphanage (me, ganniga, and the boys) will get the other one. WE'RE HAVING A BABY!!! pray for both of these babies, and for our reception...none of us have done this before, so no one can tell how things will look once we add an infant to our twelve-year-olds. if we do.

on a quick, much more tragic note, the brother of one of the team members has been missing for a few weeks, and they've found a body they think may be his. andy and carmen were headed home on furlough anyway, but they've had to pull things together very quickly and they fly out this afternoon. pray for them, and their two young children.

unpredictable indeed.

desperate times

2006-07-02T20:46:00.000-07:00

so...i was on a direct route to malaria-ville, no brakes because, although i own a big old can of deep woods off, extra deet, owning a can and bathing in chemicals daily are two different things. i don't use the spray, and it gets me this...

this isn't the best picture, because you can't see the nine on the other side, but until they develop a 3D camera, this is what you get. the scab on top of my foot is evidence that i have no resistance against the itch. that's right, i scratched that hole in my foot. anyway, desperate times call for desperate measures, and thai mosquitoes call for thai repellant...

i haven't had a new bite in three days. i pretend that the lotion is moisturizer, and i use it after i shower. i'm malaria-proof now, but i'll probably end up infertile from all the chemicals (sorry joel, i guess we're adopting. can we have those twins i saw at the pool the other day?)

also, did i mention that we have two beautiful french girls (as in, french canadian) staying with us (at the church, not the orphanage) for an indeterminate amount of time? i was setting up their room, and was thinking how nice it would be to stay in the church (which was the original plan)...i'd have wireless internet, my own room, peace and quiet. but my main role here is to love these boys, and how much of that would i do if i lived at the church? i LOVE my privacy, and given the option between hanging out in my room (on the sweet sweet wireless internet) and walking over to the orphanage to loiter around and always be an awkward guest, i'd most certainly be in my room most of the time. i'd be a friend instead of family, and these boys have plenty of friends (although, for that matter, they've plenty of family now too...at the game on saturday these five boys had more soccer moms than the kids with real parents). so it all worked out for the best...but i'm getting my own room when i move back home, right mom??? right???? *phew*

i'm a youth pastor now???

2006-07-02T04:44:00.000-07:00

ok, i know that this is an exhorbitant number of posts while you all are asleep, and that i really have no call to be blabbing quite so much, but the past few hours have been an adventure.

i get a phone call from sheri early this afternoon (church starts at four). 'hey babe, has louise talked to you about doing the youth group?' yes, she had. what she had said was 'could you plan a few games and drag together some snacks, because our handful of teenagers are sick of 'helping out' with the sunday school, and we'd really love for them to have their own little group.' 'ok,' says sheri, 'so karen says to just do it at ALH (the orphanage), and i think you're on your own. it should only be the five boys and four farang.'

sweet.

then dave phones. 'yeah, you'll have one of the thai interns to help you.'

double sweet.

so i drag some games together, rush off to get some snacks, sketch out a rough outline of what i'm going to talk to our four farang about, and book it to the church. 'i think ricky's involved in this too, somehow.' 'hey ricky, you a part of this whole crapshoot?' 'yeah, i think i'm doing the teaching.'

this is shaping up to be awesome.

twenty-nine kids, two rowdy games, three big bags of chips and a box of cookies later, we have ourselves a youth group. we played games in ALH's tiny downstairs (it has an even tinier upstairs, and no yard, so it was the best of options), ricky took the farang upstairs for a Bible study in english, and the thai intern (i still don't know his name...i'm sorry, thai intern) held the twenty-three 10-12 year old thai in rapt attention. i wish i knew what he was saying, because they all sat and listened, and laughed in the right parts and answered his questions in unison, for a good half hour...ON THE FLOOR!!!! north american kids don't sit that long in comfortable chairs!

i don't know how many of these thai kids are Christians, but you can bet that even the ones that are live in buddhist homes. they need something fun, something age appropriate, something that will speak to them. please, oh please, thai intern, i know that youth pastoring is absolutely beneath you, NO one in thailand wants to be a youth pastor, not even as a stepping stone towards pastorship, but these kids need someone to speak into their lives.

there are three mosquitos circling the office right now. they can smell farang blood a mile away, but they can't come near me because of my superfantastic thai mosquito repellant, the details of which are to be discussed in a later blog. stay tuned...

pre-script

2006-07-01T21:23:00.000-07:00

let me add (in advance, since many of you will read this first) that the boys had a fabulous time playing soccer, win, lose, or draw, and they're already making plans for a game of thai vs. farang.

not quite the mighty ducks

2006-07-01T20:46:00.000-07:00

happy canada day, eh? we're having a canada day/fourth of july party on monday, with tiffany's english class. should be a riot.

i think my computer is electrocuting me.

you know those movies where one scrawny and hopelessly underweighted soccer team (with the obligatory fat kid) will take on one soccer team full of man-children (that kid's got an earring! and a moustache!!!) and will manifest exemplary teamwork and march on to jubilant victory? that was our boys' soccer match yesterday (sans fat kid, teamwork, and jubilant victory). please note max, and the fact that his sleeves come nearly to his wrists...

please note that the rest of our team was similarly sized...

please note the david-and-goliath effect...

we were tromped, 4-0, despite the fact that we threw our tall, blond, farang soccer star into the game about a quarter of the way in, and then didn’t let him sub off. ever.

how do you tell a flock of thai twelve-year-olds that it’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game? you don’t. you just take them home to watch cartoons and let them eat the rest of your pizza.

warning: black blog

2006-06-30T02:34:00.000-07:00

need a camera in my glasses. i want visible record of everything i see, from the hilarious (middle-aged man wearing a 'parental advisory explicit lyrics' t-shirt) to the dangerous (four children under the age of twelve all on one scooter) to the downright sombre (tin shacks, blind beggars, dead dogs). there are some things i seriously wouldn't have believed before i came here. i want to tell you about how funny it is that cars will park perpendicular to a row in a parking lot, but leave the car in neutral so that if someone needs to get out, the parking lot attendant will just push the car out of the way, like those puzzles where you slide around the pieces to make the picture. i want to tell you that the boys and i ate choco coco crazy puffs this morning for breakfast (bless you, california team, wherever you are). i want to tell you that i beat a 12-year-old at chess twice, and at chinese checkers four times, and didn't feel a whit bad. i want to tell you about how the boys sell popcorn at the night market, and how scholarly max looks when he tries to teach me thai, and all these pleasant things, because it's been a rough day.

i don't want to think about horrible things, about the toughest twelve-year-old i've ever met whimpering because his disease causes boils that have to be lanced and drained, about house help being roughed up by thai mafia loan sharks, about the tsunami scrapbook that i found this morning - article clippings, newspaper photos of parents and their dead children, pictures of the team of high schoolers that went down to help sort bodies - that could have been full of faces i know.

so many things are fabulous here, but so many things are hard. i just accidentally cried on the shoulder of one of my thai friends; it's tough to keep emotions in check here. thanks for everyone who's praying.

a time to blog

2006-06-28T05:23:00.000-07:00

man, i did it ALL today! (except go to monkey mountain, which was actually a good call, it being a long day as it is. i swear to you, though. i will make it to this mountain) we went to the tiger zoo (we again being me and the california team, and laura peters), and i held a baby tiger, and fed it a bottle of warm milk, and they had a cage where tigers and pigs live in harmony, and then laura and i each hatched a crocodile (they hand you an egg with a baby crocodile in it, one that's already started pecking his way out, and then you help pick him out, and he chirps at you the whole time, and then you cut the umbilical cord, and that's gross) and then i fed some green beans to a camel, and had iguanas piled on my head, and held a wallabe (A WALLABE!!!), and saw a lady covered in scorpions, and rode an elephant, and fed a chicken on a string to a bunch of crocodiles (ain't no thang like a chicken on a strang), and i ate a coconut!!! out of the coconut!!! so check out my photo blog. it's gotten WAY more exciting in the past 24 hours.

and THEN we got home and i had about 2 hours to shower and plan our kids program (i hadn't had a chance to pull anything together last night because i was helping the boys sell popcorn at the market so that they have some spending money, and then i helped the california team teach the first of the adult english classes that dave and i will be taking over for the rest of the summer), and then i thought i'd lost all my photos (see previous blog), and then i came to the church to throw something together, a program of my choice for an unknown number of children of an indeterminate age with varying english ability...those 4 years of school and $50 000 have just paid for themselves. the program was awesome, we had like 20 thai kids show up (plus tiffany's 4 wee farang, plus our boys were in and out), we played a rousing game of david, david, goliath (VERY similar to duck, duck, goose) and acted out the david and goliath story, and taught them 'my God is so BIG' and 'only a boy named david,' and we had 20 little buddhist kids singing about how our God is so big, so strong and so mighty, and i almost cried. now if we can only get them to believe it.

spoiler warning: this blog gets rambly in the next paragraph, and there aren't any scorpions or baby crocodiles in it.

i do a LOT of english teaching over here. it's totally not my favorite thing, and honestly, i'm not sure how much english anyone's going to learn from me. but every time we build a program to teach the thai english, we're meeting what is for them a felt need, which gives the team credability, and enables them to build relationships, and also brings thai people into the church. to be thai is to be buddhist...i think i've talked about this before, but if our boys didn't have HIV and weren't orphans, they'd be buddhist, and there'd be almost no chance of them ever coming to church. it is the hardest thing in the world for the thai people to become Christians...anyway, it just kind of puts the whole english teaching thing into perspective. and places something of a heavy responsibility on me to be a credit to the reputation of this church, this team that has spent years building credability in this community. as sheri says, they have eyes everywhere. bang saen isn't a real touristy area, so most of the farang are associated with the church, and any white person causes a stir. i'm starting to recognize faces in the community, and i KNOW they recognize me (hey, it's the new farang!). this isn't really going anywhere, except maybe towards a request for prayer that i uphold the values of this team and help bring them honor in the eyes of the thai people. thanks.

no time to blog

2006-06-27T21:50:00.000-07:00

but check out my photo album. quick story...thought i'd deleted all my photos from the zoo, because they weren't in my thailand photos folder...had a little panic attack, almost cried a little, almost phoned you, dad, even though it's like 4:00 a.m. over there, but i didn't because i knew there was nothing you could do, because i deleted them off of my camera, not my computer...then i checked all my other folders just in case, and there they were, safely hidden away in summer 2003. whew. check them out, they cost me three minutes of grief.

breakfast box mark II

2006-06-27T21:47:00.000-07:00

ok, so today's blog is kind of a repeat of yesterday's blog, but it happened again!! except this time they were catfish, and pi ganniga didn't make me eat any, and max started tickling one and then bun made it laugh (working the little whiskered lips and everthing), and i thought it worth posting. i wish i had a picture for you all.

i'm going to the tiger zoo today. expect wikked pictures.

what's in my lunchbox, mum?

2006-06-26T21:44:00.000-07:00

nothing quite as interesting as what's in my breakfast box!!! i believe that i've mentioned how thai breakfasts are like thai lunches and thai suppers (in that they include both rice and meat, but lack fruit and milk). and i, like the dutiful quasi-missionary that i am, have politely eaten everything that has been set in front of me, including the flabby cabbage (did i TELL you that story? so one time, we were having this soup that had cabbage in it, and pieces of slightly darker something else that i ate, telling myself all the while that they were flabby pieces of reddish cabbage, and not mushrooms at all. through one of those happy twists of fate, pi ganniga decided on then and there for a language lesson, listing all of the ingredients of the soup. i forget what it was in thai, but in english it was most certainly 'mushroom').

ANYway, the other day i came down to find rice, this delicious sweet-potato thing, and four ocean-pot-table fish (as in, from the ocean into the pot and onto the table, sans beheading). 'you eat?' asks max? 'hey, no way, man. those fish are looking at me!' everyone laughs. later, pi ganniga (who's secret thai thoughts run thusly: please oh please let me feed you, let me iron you, let me teach you to speak thai! i love you, but you are altogether too thin and wrinkled and foreign) spoons two bites of fish onto my plate, which i wash down with heaps of rice. everyone laughs. they have infinite mercy for my non-thai-ness.

mild moment of panic. we run a kids english-teaching program on wednesdays, starting tomorrow, and headed up by me. well, headed up by carmen usually, but she's leaving, so this is for me to take and run with. eep. i am not a good runner. i am an excellent follower, but heading up projects (especially at such short notice) makes me a leetle nervous. of course i can, carmen. it'll be awesome. meep. it'll be awesome. awk! i guess i should go prep for that???

some clever blog title

2006-06-26T21:41:00.000-07:00

my english classes laugh at my attempts to speak thai. 'cut it out,' i say. 'i don't laugh when you speak english, cut me some slack.'

there's something freeing about being in a country where no one understands you.

this guy on the beach tried to talk to me, but he spoke no english (this is not an example of how freeing being in this country is. let me preface this by saying that i was wearing a to-the-waist bathing suit top and board shorts, but i felt more nekkid than i have since i got here, and he probably thought i was some sort of american tramp, because later he touched my thigh, and then i got the heck outta there), and usually when people speak no english, i say 'no speak thai,' and they get the hint. if they persist, then i throw long, rambly sentences at them, like 'i'm sorry, i haven't a clue what you're talking about because i do not speak any thai, and since you speak no english, we are at something of an impasse.' if 'no speak thai' doesn't discourage them, 'blabiddy blah something in english' usually does. my most run-on of sentences didn't deter this guy, and he followed me around the beach until the thigh-touching incident, at which point i fled the scene. in a stately, unconcerned manner.

all the thai-speaking farang were gone this weekend. at a conference. sheri and i were terrified, lest something horrible happen, and we need a thai-english speaker. as laura pointed out, the boys speak thai. as i quickly rebutted, they speak no useful english. nothing of note happened, except that sheri and i had our first official mentorship date (she's my sanity check while i'm here) at this beautiful little barista, which makes the greatest fruit smoothies.

oh, and laura and i got foot massages for, like, five bucks. FOR AN HOUR!!! i figure that i'll budget at least one in a week for myself, preferably after a rough english class, or after i babysit joy. who still hates me (i'm not sure if i've mentioned her. she's one and a half, and hates EVERYONE except for her foster family, who she hates slightly less). i think i saw her smile today. not at me.

all's well in rachelsville.

which one of the powerfull...

2006-06-21T21:36:00.001-07:00

ok, so the thai people have trouble saying ‘twenty,’ because they can’t get the ‘t’ and the ‘w’ together, so it usually comes out ‘tewenty’ and sounds like ‘seventy.’ ‘t’ and ‘w’ they can’t do, but throwing the ‘mng’ consonant trio at the beginning of a word is no problem. mngung.

and then there’s this sound…you know how on those phonetics charts, it’ll have the symbol (‘o’ with a little hat, or something) and then the sound it makes in english, and then some english words that have that sound in them. well, next to this little symbol (it’s sort of an ‘i’ with a dash through the middle, like it’s wearing a belt that’s too big for it), there is no english equivalent. there are no english words that contain this sound! this sound is not found in the english language? ergo, i am having a devil of a time trying to reproduce this sound.

in other (more exciting news), we went to the zoo last night (we being the california team and i) and went on the night safari. the california team have been kind enough to include me on any exciting things they may or may not be doing (going to the boys’ old orphanage, taking a night safari) and i, in turn, have included them on some of my exciting adventures (painting the new bathrooms at the boys’ school). ANYway, check out my photo album for a couple of pictures...it was night, so i couldn't get anything really good off of the safari, but please oh please let these photos load....wahoo! ok, any of you too lazy to check out my photo blog at least have to see these signs...they were almost the highlight of my trip. do you not get an english-speaking person to edit these things? this one's awesome...

but this...
Which' one of the Powerfull and use be for Hunt? extraneous floating apostrophe after 'which'? OH man. i gotta go, they're gonna lock me in the church again if i dont git outta here.

now that my compter's plugged in...

2006-06-20T21:34:00.000-07:00

ok, so laura peters showed up (weird) and this team from california also showed up, and these three guys from abbotsford also showed up, and they know a bunch of cbc people, like adam nash (also weird). they all showed up on the same day, and so everyone assumed that everyone else was a permanent part of the team. it was mental mayhem for a lot of people.

it was fun to have laura here, we went on an adventure to this market…it’s always a party when you don’t know where you’re going and it’s dark and you finally get off the songthaew so you can ask someone where you are, and then you ask this guy which way the market is and he points, and then you ask him if it’s faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar (holding your hands far apart) or close (bringing them close together). can you walk (mime walking) or should you take a motorcycle taxi (point to his motorcycle)? he stares at you blankly for a minute, and then says ‘no thai?’ of course no thai. it turns out that the market was less than a block away.

dao got sick the other day, and was running a fever, which is always scary, but he’s ok now. he went to vbs tonight (the california team is running it) so i’d say he’s fine.

we (the california team and i) went to lorenso house on monday, where the boys used to live before they came here. it’s a tidy little orphanage with about twenty children, and four full-time nuns. we did a mini-vbs for them, and they had a riot. it shocked me when i first met our boys, and again yesterday, to see how healthy these kids are. i mean, externally speaking. the sisters said that when they first come to lorenso, they are usually sickly and frail, but that with proper care and God’s grace, most of them plump out. the others die. she said that if they are faithful with their medicines, they can live to be twenty or thirty years old. this is a long life with HIV by thailand standards, but so short…i want my boys to have girlfriends and go to college and get married and have children and grandchildren…i wasn’t really prepared for it to be this hard. at their last check-up, the boys were all pronounced healthy as horses, and they certainly eat like baby wolverines. the team is all fairly optimistic about their chances. when gunniga disciplines them, i know that she does so believing that they will live forever, and wanting them to grow up to be men of God. still, we have no idea what His plan is, and it’s not always the one we would have chosen.

frice

2006-06-19T21:31:00.000-07:00

i fed an elephant the other day. refer to photo blog for photo of me feeding the elephant. sheri and gunniga and i went to this night market by gunniga's house (turns out that she DOES have a house, even though she lives at the orphanage six days a week, and has two children named ping and pong [no joke, and none of the thai think this is funny] but they're not young children...ping has a 12 year old son). ANYway, i just happened to have my camera because we had gone swimming earlier, and i wanted pictures of the boys swimming (refer to picture blog for lack of these photos), and we saw this elephant, and i wanted a picture of it, and then the guy pegged me out for a tourist, and 'YOU! feed elephant, twenty baht!' and i was sold!!

that was my happy ending to my first kind of difficult day...the boys accidentally locked me in the house this morning, and i had to phone gunniga to send one of them back to let me out.

then we went to the church, dropped the boys off, got breakfast on the run, checked out a few pieces of land that TLC is thinking of buying for the new orphanage and church, went to the un-air-conditioned paint store and spent probably an hour trying to figure out how much paint we would need to paint these bathrooms at the boys' school, and what colors, and how many paint brushes, and how many paint pans, and whatall, all the while breathing in paint fumes. needless to say, we got home hot and cranky. and our door wouldn't open. the lock has always been finicky, and now it was stuck. we alternately cranked and cajoled it for probably 15 minutes before it popped open.

then i went to the church to check my email. i was upstairs for maybe half an hour, and the woman downstairs forgot i was there, locked the doors, and left. i had to phone dave and get him to come let me out of the church.

i went home and took a nap in the boys' room, and then took them swimming at brian and sheri's mooban (townhouse complex). afterwards, sheri and i were like, ok, we'll run home and shower, and you guys gather the toys and meet us there (because we were going shopping). when we got back to their house, sheri started laughing, because *drum roll* she had forgotten her keys and we were locked out until brian and the kids showed up.

so, not once, not twice, not thrice, but frice in one day, i was locked in or out of something. so i bought myself a skirt at the night market to make up for it.

oh yeah, and while we were at the market, a gust of wind started up, and apparently wind means imminent rain. it was like turning the lights on in a room full of cockroaches (not that i am in any way comparing the thai people to cockroaches, please don't come kung-fu me in my sleep). in a flash, they were gathering up their stalls and fleeing the scene.

my battery is dying. i will blog again soon, but in short...laura peters showed up out of the blue, and stayed for a few days...i went to the boys' old orphanage yesterday and met all of their friends and the beautiful nuns who look after them...i taught english this morning for the first time, and they brought me an apple (how oldskool)...meep! big red x on battery sign, very bad.

so busy...

2006-06-15T21:27:00.000-07:00

Oh, so much has happened, I don’t even know how to tell you. I went from being in a constant state of pleasant boredom to constant activity in a very short time. Let’s see. This week, I’ve mostly been meeting with people and discussing my part in their ministry. As Karen put it, I’m here for the boys and then I’m being sub-let into every other ministry they have. Next Monday I start teaching English at the boys’ school (eep). It’s the poorest of poor schools, but they were the only ones who would take our boys, and have kept their HIV status a secret thus far. Since they have blessed the boys, we are blessing them by lending them a part time English teacher (me). I’ll be there Monday and Tuesday mornings, and then Monday afternoon and probably some other afternoon, I’ll be taking care of Joy, who’s a year and a half old and a bit of a handful, so that her foster parents can get some rest. I met with Joy’s foster mom today to discuss that, and also the Sunday school ministry (which she runs), and how I can help out there. They have so little help, and so it’s just one big class with toddlers and teenagers and everyone in between, plus it’s about half Thai and half farang, which complicates things still more. ANYway, I also met with her husband today to help him teach an English class, and to discuss the English course that we want to set up while I’m here (which we never actually got around to discussing). It was nice, though, to see an English class in action, just so that I’m not flying blind on Monday (although these 20 kids are way older and way more proficient than my 45 tiny, poverty-stricken ones will be). That’s the thing I’m most nervous about right now, actually. But I’m kind of getting used to being in a bubble of uncertainty, and to just go with it. For example, I just (as in, 20 minutes ago) got keys to the ALH (Abundant Life Home, our orphanage), and so previous to now, someone had to be home if I was to get in. I was locked out of my house for about four hours this morning, so I went on an adventure. I hadn’t taken a songthaew (a sort of taxi-bus-pickup truck hybrid) yet, so I flagged one down and went to the beach. Songthaew are hilarious, because there’s a million of them going all the time, and you just flag one down wherever, and it’ll stop and pick you up, and then when you want to get off you press a little button inside, and they’ll screech to a halt and drop you off right there. No stops, no waiting (they come about every 30 seconds), they put north American buses to shame. Plus they usually cost six baht (about 25 cents).

What else have I done…I bought a cell phone. I was feeling so disconnected and vulnerable and never had any idea what time it was. They recommend short-termers get cell phones anyways, for safety reasons (if I get lost here, I’m REALLY lost), plus it’s nice to be able to get a hold of people.

As for my boys, well, they’re my darlings. Usually, when they go somewhere, they’ll only take three bikes, and the other two will ride on the backs. This leaves one back-of-a-bike free, which is now mine. My legs are way too long for this (I’ve never felt so tall as I have the past week), and so I have to hold them up (it’s better than Pilates), plus, anyone who knows me knows that I can’t actually ride a bike myself (I may tell the boys this sometime soon, and I know they’ll want to teach me. It could be fun…), so I’m quite a wobbly passenger, plus I weigh at least twice as much as any of them, so whoever has me on the back is pulling three times his own weight now. Max (it’s pronounced ‘mac,’ but he spells it with an ‘x’) will never try, since he’s easily the smallest and a perma-passenger himself. Dao manfully hauled me to the church once, and may never do it again. Bun is my most reliable ‘taxi,’ and I always promise him a thousand baht fare, but then find some reason not to give it to him (he almost hit a car, went too fast, went too slow).

The ALH is looking to buy some land to make a permanent orphanage (as of now, we can only have seven kids max). Please pray for this, because money is always tight, and land is always hard to find, and we want a plot large enough that we can have the church and the orphanage on the same lot, but preferably somewhere in central Bang Saen for easy access. The church right now is in a prime location, but it is tiny. The man across the street has made an offer, but he knows the value of his property, and so it won't be cheap. Other plots are being looked at, but they are further on the edges of town, which would make many people less inclined to come.

I miss you all!!! Thanks for praying!!

moving in...

2006-06-14T21:25:00.000-07:00

i moved in with the boys last night. It was an eventful evening. We had a party for Dao, complete with cake and candles and Spongebob piñata created by yours truly (I knew E.C.E. would be useful for something). We’d come back from the pool to do the piñata, and just after we’d finished, the Falls’ neighbor got bit in the face by his dog (a dubiously friendly beast at best), and had to be rushed to the hospital. The boys were all riled up, and I was concerned that there would be trouble getting them to bed. In North America, sugar and excitement and danger late in the evening are a recipe for disaster. In Thailand…by the time I’d packed up my stuff and Brian had driven me over, the boys were all calmly getting into their pyjamas and brushing their teeth. While we hauled my goods upstairs, two of them quietly trotted down to the kitchen and brought Brian and I each a glass of water, and then took our glasses from us when we were done. Mac brought an extra fan in from the boys room (they have AC), and they all told me that if I got too hot, they have an extra bunk. Their room is gloriously cool.

They’re all super-excited that I’m moving in (in their quiet, Thai excited fashion). Mac must have told me at least four times yesterday that ‘you come I home today.’ For my part, I’m delighted to be surrounded by them all the time. They’re tiny and respectful and SO funny. I’m consistently blown away, knowing what I do of their histories, by seeing them laugh and play with each other and me. They sass Pi Ganniga all the time, which I can only tell because she smacks them.

It’s weird to be surrounded by Thai-speaking people all the time. The boys speak very little English, and Pi Ganniga speaks just a little more. I’m trying to learn Thai from her, but often she can’t explain to me what a word means, and I have no idea what I’m saying. So they all chatter away in Thai, and when they laugh, I laugh, because they’re all so delightful.

Pi Ganniga and I share a tiny room, barely large enough for our two beds (with three inches between them), two fans, and the wee wardrobe (and now all my beastly luggage). One night down, so far so good. I don’t have any internet here, so I’ll post this when I get the chance.

pictures!!!

2006-06-12T21:23:00.000-07:00

figure it's about time i post some pictures, and this is my last day with sweet sweet wireless internet. nothing SUPER interesting, i'm afraid. i haven't been bringing my camera with me everywhere, but once i get into the swing of things, i'll try and take some awesome shots of people and stuff. so here are the hairy eyeballs (they're delicious, but every fruit in thailand seems to resent being eaten, and to present the greatest challenge to consumption that it is able)
and here is the little friend that hung out with me while i brushed my teeth
and here's me after my first thailand shower
herbal essences commercials have nothing on showering in thailand. ditto swimming. you're all hot and sticky, and then you're glorious and clean. i take cold showers (cold being a relative term. there is no 'hot' dial, but the water coming out is more tepid than cold) before bed.

in other news, we dropped the boys off at school again today, and i met with the head english teacher (since i'm teaching english there twice a week). while we were waiting for her, we were surrounded by tiny thai children, all peeping from around pillars and hanging off of rails and staring, with gap-toothed grins, at these two crazy farang (pronounced farong, means foreigners). whenever we met any of their eyes, they would mostly wai us (bow), but the cheekier ones would wave, and call out 'hello!!!' three girls about ten years old approached us, but two stopped at the edge of the invisible space bubble the other kids had created around us. one, obviously dared by her friends, strode forward, hand held out, to shake both brian's and my hands, and wish us a good morning. then she ran back to her two girlfriends, and the three of them, giggling like mad, rushed off. it's like we're a freak show.

i don't know what my internet situation will be once i move in with the boys (when we picked them up, mac pointed at me and said 'you come us home today,' and they all nodded like little bobble-heads), so this may be my last post for a while. i've been spoiled rotten, living with the fallses, speaking english and trying to un-jet-lag myself. i'll try to keep in touch the best i can.

THAILAND IS SWEATING!!!

2006-06-11T18:34:00.000-07:00

swear it's the air. it's not me. i'm not sweating. i'm just damp.

breakfast at the omf consisted of cereal and toast (for the unadventurous) and some sort of rice-pudding-with-pork type thing, and a fruit they call 'hairy eyeballs.' i get an a+ for my adventurism so far, because i tried both.

i met a million people yesterday, so i'll just recount the important (thus far) ones. i met the falls family (betty and ben's daughter and her family, mum), sherri and brian, and their kids, addison and abraham. i never thought to pray to find people here that i would enjoy, deeply and truly on a gut level, but these are four of the funniest people i have met in a long time, aside from being welcoming and kind. they're funny like my family is funny, and i feel right at home with them. the fact that i came bearing gifts from grandma didn't hurt, either.

i also met ricky and karen, and their four girls (sierra, tassanee, mckenna, and aree), but the younger two girls were sick, and so i didn't see much of them.

i met pi ganiga, the boys' nanny, who has promised to teach me thai. her and i share a room at the abundant life home. the boys share the other room. three sets of matching bunk beds.

i met the five boys (bun, gop, mak, joon, and dao), but only briefly. bun has a wicked sense of humor, language barrier aside, and seems intent on thwarting my efforts to learn a few thai words. dao frequently refers to himself as handsome (and sometimes 'pretty'). they're all indescribably ticklish. i learned a bit more about them this morning after we dropped them off at school. they are all HIV positive, but none of them have AIDS. four of them are on...i forget the name of the drug, but it's the last-ditch HIV drug. they're all thriving on it (they take it every day at exactly 7:00) but if, for some reason, their bodies reject it, there is nothing else they can try. i only just met them, and this thought is scary to me. the one boy, gop, is on the second-to-last drug, so he still has some margin for failure. the medicines run about $500/month/boy, which is easily the orphanage's biggest expense. somehow, the money's always been there, and somehow it always will be, because there's nowhere else for these boys to go.

i met dozens of pleasant thai who can't pronounce my name, but who tried very hard before taking to calling me 'lychee' (which we pronounce 'leechee' but they say as 'linchen,' which sounds very similar to the way they try to pronounce 'rachel.' i thought it was just more botched attempts, but then one slender thai girl handed me a lychee nut, pointing first to it and then to me, saying 'lychee is easier than 'wreachawl' ')

i stayed at the falls' last night, on a massive bed in an air-conditioned room. this will be my last night of luxury. i was certainly awake enough to enjoy it. i went to bed around eight, but didn't get to sleep until probably ten, and woke up at four. i lay in bed, willing myself back to sleep until around five-thirty, when i finally caved in and got up. a billion birds were already up and singing, and an hour or so later, the local dogs woke up and joined them. a lizard stared at me while i sat and journalled, and then ran away to eat mosquitoes (we love the lizards) when brian came downstairs. we drove the boys to school, and brian gave me what he knew of their history, as well as a bit of an orientation to the town. now i'm back in an air-conditioned room, recharging my computer and blogging away. i finally figured out that i could change the time zone on my desktop and know what time it really is. it's 8:35. you're probably all eating dinner.

i'm having a blast, but i haven't really started yet. this is still like vacation. pray for me, that i'm up to the task, and for the boys' health. they're all glowing, and not many people know that they have HIV. you'd never know it to look at them. i'll post some pictures as soon as i'm able.

miss you all!!!!!

on my way...

2006-06-10T02:55:00.000-07:00

I am ON THE PLANE!!! I am on my way to Tokyo.

We got to the airport a cheerful three hours early, and took our places in the already-long line. Twenty minutes later, the line up was several times as long. Bless my parents and their promptitude.

Only Canada would have a recycling fashion show at the airport. Only in Canada would the airport staff traipse around in skirts made from plastic bags and hats fashioned from used cd’s. Entertaining? But of course. Useful in any way? Nada.

I completed my ten-minute trek to the gate, only to discover the waiting lounge full of ‘transit passengers,’ people who were on their way from Mexico to Tokyo, and got first dibs. They weren’t allowed out, and we weren’t allowed in, so the hallway was crowded with ‘other’ passengers. I sat against the wall, alternately reading ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ and critiquing people’s travel outfits. Spike heels? Knee-high mukluks? Don’t they know their feet will swell? A pink velour track suit, deemed completely inappropriate in any other circumstance, looks, in this situation, better even than my comfy jeans. (Editors note: I bet that girl was regretting her selection for the last four, unseasonably warm hours of the flight. Remember how I packed socks on my carry-on, Mum, in case my feet got cold? They did no such thing).

The guy on the runway with the orange cones, you know the guy…he dropped one. I laughed, but he couldn’t see me laughing at him. He must have known, though.

The Japan Airlines stewardesses (flight attendants?) are beautiful, small and sleek with flawless skin, large dark eyes, hair pulled back into uniform tight buns with side-swept bangs, and all falling within that indeterminate Asian age range of 19 and 40. There is one older gal with short, feathered hair who looks tired. They are indescribably polite, and I find them hard to hear.

They need to add another distinction to airplane seat requests. Not just ‘window seat or aisle,’ but ‘male seatmates or female.’ I’d a million times rather sit next to women. They smell nicer, and take up less space. As is, I’m not so badly placed beside two men who speak little English (they’re not Asian, though. I think they’re Spanish, que?). Not tiny, or pleasantly fragranced, but friendly. They helped me get my carry-on (which must weigh as much as me) into the overhead compartment, and one of them traded his thawed bottle of water for my frozen one (for those who like their H2O in solid form), and then the three of us tried to figure out WHAT, exactly, we were being served for lunch.

And what does a Japanese airline serve for lunch? Some delicious beef slices over some noodly business, some other noodle jazz that reeked of wasabi, and which we opted not to try, a tasty salad made entirely of peppers (and I ate it, Joel), and some mango foam for dessert. And I had a green tea to cap off my meal, I am SO Asian! Now I’m totally going to watch Jaws! (They do have those awesome little TV’s, Joel, in the back of the seat in front of you, and I could also be watching Top Gun, or Match Point, or that movie about those sled dogs that were abandoned in Snowheresville and had to find their way home, or playing mahjong, or watching my plane creep increments along the wee map, which I do check periodically. We are currently very north and west of where you are).

They dimmed the lights and everyone was sleeping, but I was watching Jaws! and then the shark came out of nowhere and I jumped, and woke the guy next to me up. He just laughed and went back to sleep, but I was slightly embarrassed. It’s like when people sing along to the music in their headphones, that no one else can hear.

I finished ‘The Devil Wears Prada.’ It scores a seven-and-a-half out of ten.

I am IN JAPAN!!! I am IN TOMORROW!!! I have USED a squatty potty (not because they didn’t have toilets, but because I was being adventurous)! The first thing I did was seek out the ladies room, since I elected not to pee on the plane. I arrived here about an hour and ten minutes after I left Vancouver, but in the next day. I’ve seen the future, folks. It looks exactly the same. I’ve been typing this in Word, and I’ll post it as soon as I can. I have another six hours to fly, and then I’m in Bangkok. I’m still not sure who, if anyone, is going to be there to greet me, but here’s hoping…

It’s 1:43 in the a.m. for my body, 5:43 in the p.m. on the clock, and I still have a time zone or two to cross. It’s weird to think that you’re all sleeping, and it’s daylight out where I am.

Not all of my posts will be this long, I swear, but I did just sit on a plane for nine hours (not peeing), and now I’m in this waiting area…the next long post will likely come from my trip to Cambodia in two months (which we’re all going to pray that I don’t have to take…for the uninformed, I only have a 2 month visa, and may have to take a day trip to Cambodia and back if I can’t get it extended).

Happy sleeping, folks.

Ok, I’m in Bangkok, and this will hopefully be the last tag on this uber-long post. It’s 11:30 in the a.m., my time. I took a 3 hour nap on the plane, so now I’m good to go. Problem is, it’s like, 1:30 in the a.m. here, so everyone’s asleep. I’m not for certain, but based on my rough calculations, Thailand is ten hours earlier, but in the next day (so 14 hours later, really).

Karen and Sherri picked me up from the airport, thank goodness, and we wove our way through Bangkok. In the dark, and sans the tropical flowers and whatnot, it could be Vancouver. Except for the dogs.

There really are a million dogs.

I’m staying in the Overseas Missionary Fellowship (or something) guesthouse, and I have a room all to myself, a luxury I haven’t known in over a month. Everyone’s asleep and I can be awake, poking around the OMF house, checking things out. They have internet, but there’s a guy on it, so after I finish this I’m going to go down and see if he’s off just so I can send you all an ‘I’m alive’ message.

Oh, and it’s hot. Sherri and Karen laughed when I said that, because apparently this is one of the cooler days of the summer, but I’m hot. The air is damp, and I am not sweating, but condensating, rather. OH it’s hot. I’ll listen up the next time I hear a weather report, and let you know exactly HOW hot.

I’m going to try to sleep.

my boyzzz

2006-06-05T21:20:00.000-07:00

i'm going to thailand in four days. these are the wee orphan boys i'm going to be staying with. aren't they precious? don't you wish they were yours?