this weekend: highs & lows.

High: Stephen is teaching photography to one of staff’s daughters who is homeschooled here. We took her out for a lesson on Friday afternoon. Stephen enjoyed the teaching, and I enjoyed reading one of my good books on the breezy and beautiful afternoon.

High: We live here. This is just behind our house and absolutely stunning.

High: Kids that are oh-so-cute and everywhere.

Low: Kids that push the limits, and broke our door this weekend…

High: An impromptu date-night on Friday night, enjoying dinner together and ice cream.  We saw another staff couple as we walked in for ice cream, and were asked, “What are you doing out so late?” We said we were getting ice cream and then heading home–then looked at our watches to see it was 8:20pm. We are crazy party animals, I tell you.

High: I went to the market on Saturday morning. This is always a good thing, because it is my favorite place in town.

High: I bought a pumpkin at the market. I love having a pumpkin sitting on my counter, just begging of all the possibilities it can create: pumpkin curry, pumpkin pie, pumpkin fritters, pumpkin salsa! And meanwhile it isn’t pressuring you at all: it won’t go bad for weeks!  It seems to just be telling me to take my time and enjoy the deliciousness whenever I am ready.

High: Aung Moo is still improving! He has a few more days of antibiotics and then some tests to evaluate his condition. He is doing so much better than the doctors ever thought.

Low: Aung Moo is still in the hospital and is slightly belligerent. He is quite frustrated at the situation, and perhaps a little confused. Either way, his friends are kind of tired of dealing with him–trying to force feed him, etc.  Unable to convince them to help, we are trying to decide if we should go up there to help feed him and empty his catheter bag, or if this will just cause more problems. For one, we can’t reason or argue with him without a translator, so it makes force feeding even more difficult. Also, being white, we create quite a show and sort of a problem, perhaps not really helping the situation but potentially making it worse. But we do want to care for him and show our concern. Hmm. This has been a daily debate and we generally just don’t know the best way to handle the situation for all parties involved.

High: We went a bike ride on Saturday afternoon. We left about 2:30pm, intending to go for an hour or so and then catch up with a friend at the pool.

Low: We texted said friend about 4:30pm, saying that we weren’t sure of our exact location, and she probably shouldn’t wait for us. We were using Google maps to get us home, and when we searched for the pool in town, it said we were fifty minutes away by car.  As we tried to map our way back, we discovered that some of the lines demarcating roads were actually just dirt or rock paths, as seen below:

High: We laughed in our adventure. We learned to tell how close we were to Mae Sot by the way looks we received by locals we passed by: if they gave you a look of confusion, you were well off the beaten path and far from where white people generally travel. As we started to receive smiles and nods, we knew we were at least headed home!

High: Our adventure calculated us at 20 miles biked, so we at least got some exercise in!

Low: Our butts definitely felt every one of those twenty miles, and they are still reminding us of that each and every time we get on the motorbike.

High: Reading ingenious books. I am currently reading Generous Justice by Timothy Keller and loving it—probably more blogs to come on that later. I am also reading The Great Divorce by CS Lewis. I started that today and will probably finish it by bedtime, and maybe start again tomorrow for a second and slower read through. I am also planning to read Guns, Germs, & Steel by Jared Diamond for a third time, and it’s already sitting out on the table to inspire me.

High & Low: We are making decisions, we growing as people, and God is challenging us. This is an oh-so-good high, but an oh-so-exhausing low.

High: Cooking! I made ricotta cheese yesterday and made calzones for dinner which were absolutely delicious.  I also put the rest of the ricotta into tonight’s lasagna, something we haven’t had in so very long. It turned out really well and actually tasted like lasagna! I really enjoyed all the cooking the weekend held.

High: We have been listening to The Verses Project all weekend long, and it is so good!

High: The kids were drawing and declared this a photo of Stephen. It came along with a Superman stance and a loud “Superman!” declaration. He’s feeling pretty heroic about that one!