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