Love & Serve: Dec 2010

Cambodia and Angkor What?

We are back from Cambodia and had a wonderful time while we were there. Going into the trip we did not know exactly what to expect, but we did our best to be tough, flexible and optimistic, thanks to Bob Davidson! After a long 8 hour bus ride we arrived in Bangkok in the middle of the night. We found a small coffee shop connected to a guest house that we waited in for a good 3 hours. We then took a van to the border and had to cross over by walking. It was amazing to immediately see the differences between Thailand and Cambodia. Cambodia is much poorer and the architecture and structural design of the buildings is years behind Thailand; which is not too surprising considering all the political unrest that the county has had in the last century. It was very eye opening to see that kind of poverty. There were many children without clothes, babies without any adults around them, just a cup for people to put money into. We also saw many land mine victims who had lost limbs in accidents. We saw all of this in the first few minutes of crossing the border. Once we arrived to our hotel we were pleasantly surprised by our accommodations. All three of us shared a room and had our own bed. We had a bathroom with an American style toilet and a TV with English channels. Here at the Zone we do not have a TV so we have not watch any in the last 4 and a half months so it was so much fun to watch CSI!

Napping at the bus station in Cambodia

While we were in Cambodia we had the awesome opportunity to teach at two local schools for two days. The groups that we were with from Japan and Singapore did an amazing job at preparing stations for the English days at the schools. Kara was at the spelling station, where the students had to learn to spell vocabulary words from the nativity story. Hilary was at a craft station and I was at the "days of the week" station. In all, there were five groups the students rotated to. The kids had a blast. After they had completed all five stations, we ate Japanese curry together that the group from Japan generously cooked. In the afternoon we put on a carnival for the kids. They had to go the the testing station and answer a question from what they had learned that day. If they answered correctly, they received a game coupon. There were games that ranged from throwing ping pong balls into a box, horseshoes, hit the coconut with a tennis ball to blowing a ping pong ball in a pool of water. The kids had a super fun time, and as they won the games they received prizes. All the prizes were used clothes that had been donated. As the children received their clothes, their eyes lit up wit joy. Many of them won clothes to bring home to their siblings and parents. It was very rewarding to give clothing to these children who either did not have a shirt on the back or desperately needed a new one.

Crafts station at a school

The ping pong station

We (the Thailand group) did a special intensive English class for the core group of students that we were working with. These students are being supported by the church in Singapore to go to English school. They traveled with us to the school and were our helpers and translators. We put on a class for them to teach about heath and good habits. We preformed skits about what happens when you make bad choices and what happens when you make good choices. We ended the class, by playing the board game that we have spent months preparing. The class was a success and the kids learned a lot and had fun.

Intensive English with our sponsored kids

Our favorite day was Friday when we went to the Temples and Angkor Wat. We met a lot of the street children who spend their days selling bracelets and post cards to tourist. After they realized that we we not like their average tourist they stopped trying to sell us their goods, but instead walked with us through the ruins and laughed and played with us. We had a blast with children and it was really hard saying good bye.

Some of our kids at Bayon 

Hanging out with our kids

One of the little girls that was selling at Angkor Wat

We ended the trip with a trip to 60 ROAD! We heard about 60 Road all week from our kids, and knew that they desperately wanted us to take them. So Friday night they each received three dollars and went crazy at 60 Road which is a local carnival. I have to admit it was fun! We road the Ferris wheel and the bumper cars with the kids and had just as much fun as they did. It was a great way to end a great trip.

Throughout our whole experience, our eyes have been opened to the life styles of others. We have seen poverty like we have never seen before, and yet we have seen the joy in a child's eyes from receiving something so small.  This trip has changed us and shaped us and really made us think about our own lives. We are so blessed to be born in America and have so many unbelievable opportunities. God is so good and faithful. Keep Cambodia and the children in your prayers, they are God's precious children.

Tiny Helper, a precious child of God

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

For the past two months we have been preparing to go to Cambodia with other groups from Japan and Singapore. While we are there we will work with kids who sell on the street in Angkor Wat and teach English in their schools. Our big project has been making lessons for the older kids about good health and habits. We have made up a game that has gone through many many revisions and now we think it is perfect, or at least close to perfect. This will be my second trip to Cambodia and I am excited to see some of the kids again and to get to have this experience with everyone else. The bus trip is about 15 hours so we will all be a little sore at the end but I know it will be amazing. What is better than a really long bus ride for bonding! We will be gone for about a week and probably won't have internet most of the time so don't expect too much from us in the way of communication.

Amanda and I officially graduated from Thai 2 this week and we are not starting again until January so it is a nice break for a while. Yay for Christmas break! For the last day of class we had a field trip to an elephant camp and hospital. It was fun to do something different with our classmates outside of class and once again the long bus ride was perfect for chatting and catching up. There was a tiny (sort of) baby elephant that was super super cute and I wanted to steal it and bring it home but I hear they are expensive to raise. I love elephants if you didn't know!

Eating worms at the market after the elephant camp

Baby Ellie!

On Wednesday Robert and his family invited us to dinner and to come help decorate their house for Christmas. It is great to feel part of a family here. They are always so welcoming and giving and so much fun! It is kind of weird to decorate someone else's tree because everyone definitely has a certain way you like to do it yourself. But with all of our forces combined it was beautiful in the end. There is Christmas in Thailand but it is mainly completely secular and not everyone celebrates. The malls and markets are all decorated and it is beautiful!

Stringing popcorn for the tree

Christmas decorating with the Reagans

This week I also cooked Thai food for cell group! Well really I payed for it and P Wah cooked and she taught me along the way. We made gang kiao wan gai, green curry chicken, and it was really good. I might be able to make it by myself one day, we'll see.

-Hilary

I'm Here!

Hello America! I am just settling in to my second week here in Thailand and it has been great so far. I have found several things I can eat here; unfortunately none of it is Thai food. Right now my diet mostly consists of tuna, bread, goldfish (the snack crackers, not the actual fish), and the occasional ice-cream cone. I also discovered that at Rimping, one of the grocery stores, they sell cans of refried beans and flour tortillas! This might sound strange to you, but it makes me very happy!


Amanda, Hilary, and Mark have been here for nearly 4 months and it seems like they are experts on Thailand. It is like I have my own personal tour guides. They have all been taking a Thai class at Payap University and I am amazed at how much Thai they have learned. The three of them have been very helpful to me over these past two weeks!

on Payap campus celebrating graduation

Looking over the city of Chiang Mai

 

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have started helping Robert teach an English class that consists of 4 girls from China. At first, the language barrier was a little intimidating for all of us, but we soon found some common ground. We discovered that all 5 of us enjoy the Twilight book/movie series and we share a love of Taylor Swift. I guess some things are just cross-cultural! I am really enjoying working with these girls and I am looking forward to getting to know them better.

Yesterday, two of our English students took Amanda, Hilary, and I to Doi Suthep, a Buddhist temple here in Chiang Mai. It is a big tourist attraction, because it is situated high on a mountain with a beautiful view of the city. It was very crowded when we went and it made me so sad to see hundreds of people bowing down in prayer and worship to a false God. Thailand is a country very devoted to Buddhism, so please join us in praying that we can reach as many people and plant as many seeds as possible in the time we have here.

At Doi Suthep with our student Neung

Right now, we are preparing for our upcoming trip to Cambodia. We leave this Saturday and will be gone for one week. While we are there we will be teaching English lessons during the day and healthy habits during the afternoon and evening. We are very excited about this opportunity and we can’t wait to see what God has in store for us! Please keep us in your prayers as we travel from Chiang Mai to Cambodia and back again.

Thanks for reading our blog!

Until next time,

Kara

Happy Loi Krathong!

After three months of waiting Kara finally arrived this week! It has been really fun to show her around and try to get her acquainted with everyone and everything. She has been amazed at how much we can function here and how many friends we have and looking back on it we have learned so much in the last three months. Our Thai is coming along nicely, we have lots of Thai friends from church and students at Payap that we are trying to connect, and we just feel very at home. God has really blessed us during our time here and I know that he will do amazing things through Kara as well. Amanda just got back from the States yesterday night and had an amazing time there at her sister's wedding and hanging out with her fiancee. We are all glad to have her back.

Kara arriving at the airport!

This weekend is Loi Krathong here in Thailand. Right now it sounds like a war outside because of all of the fireworks. My favorite part is the release of lanterns into the sky at night and you can just see hundreds of them all at one time floating away on the wind. Its so cool! They also float (or loi) krathongs down the river as a thank you to the river and it is very beautiful. The streets are crazy and there are people just everywhere. We had a girl's weekend last weekend when the boys were all gone on men's retreat and we took pictures on a famous bridge in the city. Already, the streets were extra crowded and there were fireworks zooming over our heads.

Kohm fai (lanterns) and Thai outifts

Girls night at the bridge

  

We were all invited to a special Loi Krathong party at the Chief Justice's house. We all bought traditional Thai skirts and shirts and tried our best not to stick out like crazy. There were 600 people there and we only saw 2 other farangs. There were crazy dancers and singers and everyone was really dressed up and there was amazing food everywhere. We got to hang out with P Rung who is a church member here and a judge at the courthouse and his nephew Onglee. All of us sat with the P Pat the Chief Justice's wife and our friend Ba Tick most of the time. It was so fun and really a once in a lifetime experience. We also invited all of them to our Christmas party and I hope they will come.

About to loi krathong with Onglee

Our hosts the Chief Justice and his wife P Pat

Open Eyes

Firstly, Kara is coming here in exactly one week from today! We are so excited and can't wait. Currently we are airing out her room (its smells really weird) and looking for ways to decorate for her. When she gets here she will jump right in with what we are doing and substitute for Amanda's English class while she is gone in America for her sister's wedding.

Secondly, we had a crazy awesome time this weekend getting our visas renewed in Laos. We went with our friend Steve from New Zealand who needed his visa renewed too and we met up with our friend Haley in Phayao. We made pizza, lit and sent off lanterns, ate crickets, ran into a cow, talked to some really funny ladies at a temple, waited in line forever in Laos immigration, had a prostitute in our guesthouse, befriended the Thai owner of a Mexican restaurant, and generally had an adventure.

Lanterns in Phayao

Crossing the Mekong River to Laos

On the bus home from Chiang Rai Amanda and I were talking about how we are becoming more aware of how lost the majority of Thai people really are. When we first arrived, it was easy to just see how new and exciting everything was but now we can look around more critically and see how much their society needs God. Please pray with us about these things and pray that we can continue to show God to the people here.

Idolatry is very rampant here. There are temples on every high place and in every city with several statues of Buddha in each. It is almost painful to watch the people bow down and offer sacrifices to these golden images. It is so easy to relate this to the people in the Bible always being tempted to bow down to a statue. Recently Amanda said she felt like Shadrach, Meschac and Abednego when we went to a temple and were the only ones not bowing down. One of our students said that Thai people ask for things from Buddha like we ask for things from our god. It is hard to explain the difference and so easy to just nod in agreeance. We strive daily to be lights in a lost world.

This weekend there were only 4 rooms at our guesthouse and we had two of them and one man was in the other. We realized that night that he had a Thai prostitute in his room and we struggled with what to do. Do we say something or simply try to ignore it? It is a common issue here where many farang (white) men come to Thailand for the express purpose to find prostitutes. There are so many young girls here who know nothing else and think that prostitution is the only way they can ever make money. We must help girls understand their value and worth to their heavenly father.

Thai family structure is also changing where parents will leave their children with the rest of the family and move to a bigger city to find work. This puts so much pressure on the rest of the family and is not generally a healthy life for the child, never knowing their parents. And it is very normal in Thai families to have infidelity when they are in these different cities but to simply ignore it to save face. I know it happens in America too but it definitely feels more real to me here. One friend told us a story of a Thai man who had two wives, not legally, and brought them both to his father's funeral and everyone joked about it.

Ladyboys are men that act and dress like women. They are literally everywhere. Buddhism is very accepting and open to new things and this has allowed ladyboys to really be accepted into everyday Thai culture. There is no sense of this being wrong and it is so clear in the Bible that homosexuality is wrong and that God made us the way that he wants us to be. It is important for us to love the person and know that God loves them and wants them to know him.

Thinking of all of these things about the lack of God's will in Thailand makes us more ready and willing than ever to try to share Him with the people around us. We want to be light and hope to the people here and we are excited and encouraged by what we see happening around us.

A little R&R Time- Relaxing and Rocking

This week was the only time for a while that both Amanda and I and Mark didn't have school, since we are doing different programs on different schedules. We knew we wanted to travel somewhere and when we heard our friend Berm was going to Pai we jumped on the chance to go with him. Six of us, including his student Billy and our friend Lisa, squeezed into Berm's little car and took the crazy mountain road to Pai. It was so beautiful! I really love the mountains here, they are so green and misty and ... beautiful! Anyways, we jammed out the whole way and had to take a few stretch breaks and we were all very glad that no one got car sick. Apparently the motto there is "Do nothing in Pai" which means its a great place to relax, hangout,and eat lots of food. There is a cool market every night and lots of farang food and we all bought tshirts. Amanda wanted me to get one with people throwing up on it, there were many of these, but I refused. We stayed at an Israeli guesthouse that had awesome shwarmas and hummus. We drank a lot of coffee and ate too much. Billy's 12th birthday was the second day we were there and we let him pick where to eat and generally bugged him all day with our celebrations. I really thought he was like 15 so I was surprised to know he was just turning 12. We went to a Chinese village and did this crazy ferris wheel type thing. It was hilarious and Lisa and Amanda were screaming the whole time! Later we visited a waterfall and I got a sunburn being there for about 20 minutes. Everyone here thinks white skin is so cool but it really is dumb when I burn all the time. Anyways, the whole trip was really relaxing and fun and a great way for all of us to bond even more. Lisa is going to be taking Thai classes with Mark starting tomorrow so we are loving getting to know her better. One night the router was out at the guesthouse and we even got Billy to play Phase 10 with us instead of playing on his computer. He is hilarious and I'm glad that we got to spend his birthday with him. Here is a link to a video Mark made of our trip...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwb6pawh4iY&feature=share 
-Hilary

Ferris Wheel

Our group in our new Pai shirts

Happy Halloween, by the way! On Saturday night we attended an awesome rockstar party thrown by the Cheung Doi Church of Christ. It was so much fun. There were members from about 3-4 churches that all came together to have a great time of fun and fellowship. There was a buffet of awesome Thai food, a live band, amazing rockstar decorations, and everyone dressed up like a rockstar. The band was great. They sang mostly Thai song, but much to our surprise we were able to sing along to some of the songs! There was even guest appearances by Elvis, Linkin Park, and The Beatles. I was chosen to participate in an air guitar game. I rocked out so much that the plastic cup that was holding my hair up fell out. It was hilarious. Hilary was chosen to play a "raise your hand" game. We both lost, but had a good time doing it. We were able to hang out with one of our students and good friends, Nit. She really got out of her comfort zone and even danced with us. After the party, we went to a friends house to watch a scary movie and eat some imported candy corn in the spirit of Halloween. We didn't last the whole movie because we had to take our friend home, but we did not complain because we were terrified. We finished the movie on Sunday, and it really was not scary at all during the day. All in all we had a great Halloween and hope you did too!
-Amanda

Hil and Nit

Amanda in the air guitar contest

Mark's October Newsletter

Open publication - Free publishing - More thailand

Welcome Back!

This weekend we had a welcome back party for the beginning of the new semester at Payap. We invited all of the students we have been studying with and the church members and we were so excited to have around 20 people there. We had snacks and played English games and carved pumpkins. Most of them had never carved a pumpkin before and it was amazing to see the creative ways that they went about it. We had "Halloween in Love" and the old city skyline of Chiang Mai, just to show the diversity. We also announced our new way that we want to teach classes. It was becoming too difficult to keep up with 4 or 5 individual lessons a day all on different levels, so we are going to each offer a class twice a week and teach in a group setting. We are pumped about having more time to hang out with people and to have a more structured lesson each time.

Halloween in Love Team

amazing pumpkins!

Friday was the last day of Thai 1 for me and Amanda. We have learned A LOT and can understand more of what is going on around us now. Definitely not everything still. We're working on it. On the last day we had to give a presentation using everything we have learned so far including : introduction, family, time, daily activities, food, hobbies, and all using proper grammar. We both were amazed at how much we could actually say. Amanda wrote a skit that was hilarious and I helped her perform it in front of the class. It was a hit! Lately Mark and I have been learning to read and write with the help of some of our friends. We don't actually learn that until Thai 3 so I will just be ahead!

Our classmate Meri giving her presentation

Friday was also my birthday! In class one of the men brought me a bouquet of roses and the class sang to me. It was so sweet. I had one student that day, Wan, and she surprised me with a cake during our lesson! She has been coming faithfully 3 times a week and is improving in her English and now likes to hang out afterwards and meet new people. She is bringing her cousin to the new English class next week too! Amanda, Aun Aun, and I went to get massages after that and we got to practice our Thai with the massage ladies. It is really hard to think in Thai when you are being massaged to sleep. It was Aun Aun's first time and she loved it! That night we went to eat Mexican food at The Salsa Kitchen and it was so so amazing, the best I've had in Chiang Mai so far. It was good to celebrate with my friends and I was able to skype with my family in the morning to open presents they sent so it was an all around great birthday. Thanks to everyone!

Mexican food for my birthday

On Sunday all of the five churches in the area met again and we had a wonderful experience. The man who preached was from Alabama originally and talked very very fast so it was fun to watch P Glome from Bangkok try to translate while he was still talking. And it was fun to see my southern American life and my Thai life in such contrast and working together. After the church service we ate and then went to the Walking Water. It is so cool because you can walk on it because it has some mineral that makes it kind of like sandpaper so you don't slip at all. It was a great time of fellowship and we were excited that my student Aon came with us to church and the waterfall. It was her first time at church and I think she found it very interesting. She also helped decorate for the party and we played badminton this weekend. We are really enjoying getting to spend time we her and to connect her with our Thai friends here.

At the waterfall with Aon and Berm

~Ya that's right we went into a tiger cage~

      A lot has happened since our last posting. We have been very busy. Our good friends Annie and Tom got married and the wedding was beautiful. Hil and I worked very hard helping to prepare for it. We are now experts at bow tying, arch decorating, flower ball making and bead and straw stringing.

Interns at the wedding

     We have completed three full weeks of Thai class and are amazed with how much we have learned. Our speaking is greatly improving and we are often shocked about what we can understand when others are speaking. We have one one week and then we move on to Thai two. Yesterday in class the students from Thai three came into our class and we had to interview them in Thai and report back what we learned about them. It was amazing that we were able to find out so much about a person using only Thai. We are much more confident speaking Thai in our safe classroom environment than in "the real world," but we are trying to use it more often.

      On Friday, we went to the Tiger Kingdom with our new friends Lisa, Angie and Nit. We actually went in a cage with two large tigers and sat with them and were able to touch and pet them. I will be honest... it was terrifying, but such a cool experience. Soot Yawt! (means "so cool" in Thai)  The tigers have been raised in captivity and have plenty to eat so they do not have any need to hunt. It was a once in a life time experience and we are glad we did it, but I don't see us doing it again. :) That evening we went out to dinner for Mark and Oan's birthday with a big group of church members and even some of our students joined us. it was a great time of food, fun and fellowship. Following dinner we went to karaoke and has a blast singing our hearts out.

TIGER!

        After a fun, but long and exhausting week we decided that today would be a relaxing day of reflection and study. Hil, Mark and I drove out to a lake and spent about four hours sitting in a bamboo hut reading, studying and writing. We had a great time with each other and had some well needed r&r time.

lake time

        Mark is preaching for the first time at church in the morning. We are looking forward to see how God speaks through him to present the topic of love. Keep him in your prayers tonight, I am sure he will do great.

       Love you all and thank you for your continued prayers and support.

-Amanda

Guests, Guests, and More Guests

The Zone is FULL of people right now. This has been an exciting week with people coming in from several different countries and cities. First the New Zealand group arrived and they have been here for a week. Annie, the bride on Sunday, went to Bible College in New Zealand and has good friends there. Four of them came and have been doing different projects and seeing new things. They have been really fun and we have enjoyed working and hanging out with them. Amanda and I have Thai class every morning and English students every afternoon so we haven't been able to participate in everything but we have loved the time we've had. Andrew's mom also flew in from China to see him for a few days and she was so sweet. On Thursday we had visitors fly in from Indonesia who are wanting to start a college ministry there and so wanted to learn about ours. All of us went to the fish spa on Thursday and it was the funniest thing I have seen in a long time. Amanda, V, and Andrew's mom couldn't put their feet and and kept screaming and laughing. Gill and I really enjoyed it and kept our feet very still so the fish could nibble away all of our dead skin. It was fun to sit in the back of the car on the way there and just compare what is going on in all of our ministries and in our different countries. Mark starts school in November and a girl from Malaysia, who is friends with many people here at PCZ, is going to take the class with him. So Lisa came as well and we have gotten to meet here and she helped out with decorations for the wedding. So at Cell group on Thursday we had visitors from New Zealand, Indonesia, China, Japan (Meri came), and Malaysia. It was crazy! But so much fun. And now Annie and Tom's wedding is on Sunday and people are coming in from Bangkok and Phayao and we will have a very busy weekend. Mike from New Zealand said at our equipping on Thursday, "It is amazing how we are all brought together by Christ. There is no other way all of us from so many different places would ever come together." We have been very blessed this week to learn from and be encouraged by our brothers and sisters from all over the world. 

Cell group with friends from all over the world!

Amanda freaking out at the fish spa

Thai Class, Teaching English, and a Funeral

     Amanda and I have been learning Thai for four days now at Payap University. Ajaan Noi, our teacher, is so cute and funny. She is really good at making us practice our tones and pronouncing everything correctly. We have learned so much already I can't imagine what we will know after four months. Right now it is just speaking but in Thai 3 we will start reading and writing. We practice a lot with our Thai friends and they are very nice to go over and over how to say our birthday or what city they are from. Its funny how in English you can pretty much understand what someone is trying to say even if their grammar isn't too good. But in Thai if you say a wrong tone they just stare at you and can't understand at all. Tones are hard and you feel silly, like you are singing all the time.
    English classes are going well. This is our first week teaching everyday and I have had six students. They are all at very different levels so it has been a challenge to know where to start and what they need to learn. I am really enjoying it. You get to know a lot about a person when it is just the two of you and you have an hour to talk. One of my students is a Christian and wants to study "the history Bible" which I think means she just wants to read the Bible in English with me. This is finals week at Payap so most of the students are studying and can't come to English lessons and then they have a two week break so we won't see many of our students for a while.
     Yesterday we had the opportunity to go to a Thai Buddhist funeral. Our friend Un's grandmother passed away and we went as a church to support her and show our respect. Please pray for her and her family. The funeral was in a Buddhist temple and is several days long but we only went one night. It is so interesting to see how it is a struggle to know the difference between culture and religion for Thai Christians. Traditionally there is a time monks chant and the mourners wai the whole time. But all of us Christians did not wai and you could tell that the rest of the people there were wondering why. It was an interesting cultural experience and it made me more aware of how it can be hard to be a Christian here and how we as Christians are called to be different from the world around us. Many of our Thai friends struggle with this in their own families.

Our first day of school in our uniforms!

Ajaan Noi

Off day - watching Wall Street at Airport Plaza

Our Thai class

F4, Mountain, Church meeting, Payap uniforms!

Hello cyber space!
          Hil and I have been busy bees the past few days. On Friday night we had an F4 meeting, which stands for, Fun Family Fellowship Fridays! (I think :) )We had a great time fellowshipping with our sister church, Cheung Doi. We had great food and a wonderful time of worship. We also had the opportunity to share our testimony with someone we did not know well. It was a fun and interesting way to meet someone. You can learn a lot about a person, by listening to their testimonies. (you should try it one day!)

          Saturday we climbed Doi Suthep. Doi in Thai means Mountain! We went with our friends P Ying, Steve and one of the other interns, James. Climbing the mountain was NOT easy. It was hard work. We made it pretty far, but then Hil started feeling sick and we started down the mountain. I was glad, not that she was feeling sick, but that we were heading down, because I knew I could not go on, but I had no excuse besides my "out of shapeness." We made it to the main road and caught a rot daeng (red truck) to an awesome restaurant and drank smoothies until our friends made it down and met us for lunch. 

            Today, Sunday, Hil and I were able to be part of the church planning meeting. These are meetings that the church has quarterly to discuss and plan what is going on in the Church body. Hil and I shared with the group what we are learning, contributing and taking from our internship. Besides our part, the rest of the meeting was in Thai, but we were pleasantly surprised about the amount that we were able to understand. We could not understand details, but we got the main ideas of the meeting. It was great to see how each member of the church had a voice in the meeting and they talked about everything you could think of!

           Our Thai is coming along, but we are ready to hit it running tomorrow! We start our intensive Thai class in the morning. We will be studying 15 hours a week, three hours a day, five days a week. We hope to learn a lot and are excited to be students at Payap University. Hil and I went out with P Ying and Dao and bought our uniforms today. We actually are not required to wear uniforms to our class, but we want to fit in and they are just so cute!

       
Love you all! -Amanda

A List of Good Things

Many important things have happened today.

1. Amanda and I drove Mark to the airport and all the way back by ourselves and didn't get lost. It was quite a success. My navigation and her driving are getting much better. The other way around not so much but its a good thing we have each other! He will be back on Monday and we will try not to miss him to much.

2. The LST group left today. They were so great and we will miss them a lot! They brought in several new people that have signed up to continue studying with us. We will start teaching English every afternoon next week and we are so thankful that LST has set the foundation with many of the students for us.

3.We officially signed up to take Intensive Thai I at Payap University today. We thought we were already registered but with the help of our friend P Wah we discovered we still had to go in and talk to them before class started. We will begin on Monday and we are so excited!

4. Because we are starting Thai class at Payap today was our last day of study with our friend Oi. She has taught us so much and we are hoping we will be a little ahead when we start. We at least know some basic things that have already helped us. Thanks Oi!

5. We went to a school in Sameong yesterday and taught English to 8th graders. They were really fun and hopefully learned a bit. We taught very basic English, like colors, days of the week, animals, and my group was greetings and conversation which proved to be a bit hard. We just tried to make English fun and continued a relationship with one of the teachers, Kru Boo Pa. We hope to go again before we leave.

Having fun with Dao and Onglee

Bible Study on Friday Night

LST Pizza and Domino Party - Oliver, Mark, and Berm

 

Dominoes!

On the way to Samoeng

LST ladies!

One of my classes in Samoeng

Kru Boo Pa