Buddha's Birthday and Floating Lanterns

Hello again from Thailand! This week has been a great one, filled with a lot of meetings with partners. We were supposed to go work on the house we are building but the guy, names A-mao, who we are working with, got appendicitis and had to get his appendix out! We’ll be finishing the house within the next couple weeks though, after he is all healed.

Floating lanterns!

On Saturday, we went to a nearby town called Fang to meet with a partner called Fortune. This organization visits about ten small villages twice a year and educates them about HIV and AIDS. But twice a year isn’t enough to keep the villages informed so we are making a video that will address what HIV and AIDS is, how to prevent it, how to take care of it, and a free clinic that they can go to for help. In the meeting we talked about effective ways to do this while it being culturally acceptable. We learned that a lot of people have no idea what HIV or AIDS is. When they were asked what they thought it was, a common response was a type of food. So educating them is so important because it is a problem here.

After that meeting we drove to an orphanage that we are partnering with called the Good News Church. About 100 kids live there ranging from ages 3 to 18 or 19. It is a Christian orphanage which is really cool because there aren’t very many Christians here. We are working on getting them a new water filter because the one that they have is really small and doesn’t work very well. When it breaks, they kids can’t go to school because they have to travel far to find water, so we’re really hoping to be able to do that for them. We are spending this upcoming weekend there to hang out with the kids. And on Saturday we are putting on an exercise activity for them. We’re going to have different stations of aerobics and yoga to get the kids active. I’m really looking forward to this.

Last Sunday we drove to Chiang Rai for church. It was fast and testimony meeting and it was really awesome to hear the testimonies of the members here. After church we hiked to this beautiful waterfall. There were bamboo trees everywhere and it was a gorgeous hike. The waterfall was pretty big too. We swam underneath it and went up a little cave, it was so cool. That night there was a huge rain storm! Stephen and I were at a café eating when it began and we couldn’t leave because it was raining so hard! It flooded the whole street in our town. We just kept ordering food because we were stranded there…good thing the food is so good!  

On Monday we didn’t teach English because it was a holiday so there was no school. It was Buddha day! Stephen had an…interesting experience that morning that I’ll let him share:

If anyone is a serious runner, they will be able to empathize with this story. So to celebrate the holiday on Monday, I decided to do a long run to a city about five miles away. But about three miles down the road, I realized I wasn't going to make it. I started walking and panicking, trying to figure out what my next move would be. I found a little shop on the side and asked. There were three guys at this one. I said, "do you have a toilet?" They had no idea what I was saying, so they called two other guys over, who don't speak English either--not real helpful. But I tried again, "Toilet?". One of them started making drinking motions, thinking that I was asking for a drink. Frustrated, the only thing I could to do was to play charades, so I squatted as if on the toilet in front of these five guys. They all "oh-ed" in understanding, and then started laughing haha. I guess it's not every day that an American comes in asking for the toilet. One of the guys pointed to his next door neighbors house, gesturing to use to toilet there. I guess theirs was off limits haha. So I went to the next door neighbor, who had no idea what I was saying. I finally motioned for one of the guys to come over and explain to her my predicament. She then pointed to a little wooden stall on the side of her house. It was about six feet tall and had spider webs and spiders everywhere. Despite it being the first "squatter" I had ever used, I was very grateful.

 

We spent the rest of the day floating down the river to a nearby resort and played volleyball. That night there was a celebration at the temple. There were a lot of candles and lanterns everywhere, it was really pretty. The people would hold a lit candle and flowers and walk around the temple three times as part of the celebration.

Yesterday we taught English to the school teachers. But this week my teachers didn’t feed me any “special, crunchy mushrooms,” thank goodness. I feel like teaching them is really sustainable because we are able to show them ways to teach English to their students so that they keep progressing after we leave. They are all really shy at first and pretend to not know any English, but once they start feeling comfortable, they are really fun to teach and talk to. They are already getting better!

One of the girls here is leaving this afternoon so last night was her last night. We had a goodbye party and celebrated by doing floating lanterns!! They were so fun to light and send off. They are actually pretty big and really easy to do. We sent them off over the river and it was so pretty to see them in the sky. It was such a fun night.

Thanks again for all of your support! We are having an amazing experience and feel so blessed to be able to be here.

We found a place to watch the NBA playoff games when we're not working!