The House Collective

flower festival and parade

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Chiang Mai has turned out to be a wonderful experience!  After a few days of introductions to staff, learning about our role, and other training things, we likely would have headed down to Mae Sot.  Instead, we are here for nearly an extra week waiting for our work permit to clear.  We have a one year visa currently, but it requires you to cross a border every ninety days.  This is typically very easy in Mae Sot, where we’re just kilometers from the border, but that border crossing is currently closed (and has been since the elections in Burma).  So, we’ve gone ahead and applied for our work permit in Thailand, which should be able to be signed for and picked up next week.

Until then, we’ve had the weekend free! It’s been a great opportunity to rest, read, and spend some time together. We were also lucky enough to be here for the Flower Festival, which is held the first weekend in February each year.  Just a few yards outside of our hotel, we got to enjoy the parade, markets, and flower displays.

IMG_4289 img_4298It was a pretty big deal, I’d say. img_4301Here you can see a float in the big picture… img_4309.jpg…and a little closer, IMG_4311…then you can see how it’s all made up of little flowers!  It was beautiful.

All in all we had a really wonderful day and enjoyed seeing the Thai’s so proud of their country.  Glad we caught this Saturday in Chiang Mai!

shower curtain

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The shower curtain at our hotel is weird.

For starters, you don’t see shower curtains all that often in Thailand. Usually the shower just goes into the bathroom, and you simply try to not trip over the toilet as you shower. But this particular hotel has an actual shower area and thus a curtain.  But it looks like this:

Note the graphics that include a computer mouse, the @ symbol, and a sketched computer monitor. But then, please read the writing: it’s a collection of websites, most of which probably don’t exist or you just simply don’t want to visit. “Bathtime.com” for instance, or “Classicbath.com,”  Or “HappyHappyHappyHappyHappy.com.”  Or “Sexysexysexy.com”– that can’t be good.

Anyway, we think it’s weird, and that’s pretty much it.

i hate ants. part one.

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I think this will be recurring theme, so we’ll just go ahead and make this part one.

I really hate ants. I don’t like them in America, either, but they aren’t nearly as bad. There are two types of ants in Thailand, and I dislike both of them more than any American ant I’ve come in contact with.

The first is a small, reddish-brown ant. They come in swarms, and they like pretty much everything. Any food you eat, any sweet-smelling product you use, they’re there. For instance, being in our hotel room just a few days, ants have found: hair gel, toothpaste/toothbrush/toothpaste residue, soap, lotion, a small bit of peanut butter left on a knife (approximately .1 cm), a glass that had juice in it but was washed out, and hand sanitizer. I promise you, they are everywhere. And I hate them.

The only other type of ant I’ve seen in Thailand we haven’t encountered–yet. They are just huge. Huge, scary ants.

Anyway, I think they will always plague us here. Even more than mosquitoes, really, and the six bites I already have during cold season, when the “mosquitoes aren’t out” apparently.  Ants, though, will likely be the biggest enemy–of our kitchen, our bathroom, maybe even the whole house. I can’t believe how fast they find the smallest crumb or the tiniest drop of lotion. It’s scary, really.

here and there.

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We’re here! We made it to Chiang Mai, Thailand, late on Monday the 1st of February.  We’re now in a guest house in Chiang Mai for about ten days while we go through some training, sort out work permits, and adjust a little.  Next Thursday we’ll be heading down to Mae Sot to find a house, settle in, start working, etc. All the basics of creating a new life there, I suppose?

But before we move too far into Thailand, there are some wonderful times in England to be told. We had such a wonderful time with Chris and Jenn.

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This is Stephen and I in the beautiful park behind their house. It was wonderful for walks and a few runs in the morning.

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But, they won’t be there long–this is Chris & Jenn in front of their new house! We got to visit and look around; it’s a really lovely house and will be even better after all our dreaming of decorating ideas.

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We went for a long hike one day–somewhere between eight and ten miles. It was beautiful, but freezing. I think the educated guess was about -10 degrees Celcius (14 degrees Fahrenheit).  Anyway, it started in this old people town, so it had these signs up to keep them safe.

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We tried to take a picture all together, but Stephen didn’t make it after he turned on the self-timer. Obviously Jenn and I were similarly annoyed with his pace 🙂

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He made it the next time.

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It got much colder as we moved further up into the mountains. We’re all pretty much freezing here.

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Then we made it to London!

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We visited the Churchill War Rooms, which Stephen’s Papa Doc highly recommended. It was a maze of underground rooms that Churchill ran the war from during Second World War.

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Let’s just say it was fun.

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And for all you folks in Conway: they can see your greatness from London!

sad day. good morning.

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This is our sad goodbye at the airport.

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We then had about 28 hours of lonely traveling.  We were so very thankful to be greeted in the airport with the wonderful faces of Chris & Jenn!  It made for a good morning.
IMG_3927Here the four of us are packed into their little car among our two years’ worth of luggage.

conversations.

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We have safely arrived in England! Our flights went well, despite a mere one hour of sleep the night before. We were able to get a little sleep on the plane-maybe four broken hours for me, but Stephen fell in and out of sleep on every flight and fit a little more in.

We arrived on Thursday morning and somehow managed to stay awake until about 11 that night. We enjoyed a wonderful day with Chris and Jenn, and it’s shaping up to be a lovely week of conversations. That’s likely my favorite part of the time I get with my sister: hours of really wonderful conversation that encourages, challenges, and entertains me!

We’re soaking up the chance to relax and slept in a little today; I enjoyed a beautiful run through the park, and we really couldn’t ask for much more. It was a much needed rest. I was also really thankful to have England as our first destination. It was wonderful to see them at the end of the journey and be welcomed into their arms after so many goodbyes. It proved to be a nice step in between here and Thailand: we’re still obviously the foreigners, but we fit a little bit closer; we still said many goodbyes, but there are still a couple familiar faces. Somehow it becomes a bridge between the chasm. And we are so very grateful for it!

two years.

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Currently: sitting in the Charlotte, North Carolina airport; taking off in about 3 hours for Manchester, England. Bursting with excitement to see my dear sister Jenn (and Chris, too!). Ignoring the morning we’ve been through.

We said our last goodbyes this morning at the airport.  I was overwhelmed at the feeling of loneliness as we walked into security.

I’ve had a really hard time grasping two years over the past few days.  How do you wrap your mind around that?  What does that look like in the lives of those around us?  The nieces and nephews pain me the most, to think of all the talking, crawling, walking, giggling, and learning that comes out of two years. I think of the huge chasm between an unborn baby and a two year old toddler I haven’t been privileged to meet; a new five year old that will be pushing seven before I know it; a silent 18 month old that will be speaking sentences as a 3 year old; an infant who won’t know us at all as a 2 year old.

Even two years for adults includes long-awaited graduations, the joy of engagement, the trial of new jobs, the search for a new house, the announcement of pregnancy. I just can’t fathom it. I can’t fathom what we’ve stepped into.

It’s all very surreal now. Not sure what’s around the corner, but moving forward.

(I’ll really try to get back to more exciting posts soon, by the way.)

But now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in you. Psalm 39:7

 

three days and counting.

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It’s upon us in every direction and the days are counting down. We’re packing bags and clearing out messes and checking off to-do lists.

There is so much around us I’m not even sure where to start–we’re just trying to stay above water as we take in everything around us, everything we’re leaving behind, and everything we’re headed into.  I’m sorry if we’re absent bloggers, or perhaps absent people?  Hopefully we’ll be back soon.

Until then, please pray! We’re leaving in about 81 hours, and we need all the prayers, encouragement, and energy we can muster.  Please pray for wisdom in packing and deciding what to bring and what not to bring; pray for safe travel; pray for energy to really celebrate these days with family.  Pray for courage, endurance, and grace.

God is so good!