We got to Skype with our lovely Karen friends in Oklahoma today! It was a wonderful way to start the morning, particularly since we hadn’t seen their faces in months. They are lovely, as always, and made us smile. We spoke a little Karen to them and did a lot of laughing. I miss them like crazy, but it was wonderful.
A couple things to celebrate today:
A package! We got a package from the Spurlocks in the mail today, filled with my favorite puzzle (of Cinderella’s castle), a few packs of Rook (Stephen’s favorite game), TWO boxes of Thin Mints (!), Ziploc bags, and an Arkansas magnet for our fridge!
Also, please note my sweater and jeans–in March! It was very chilly today, and we enjoyed it. Around lunch time we were joking about not having a fireplace and maybe I’d have to bake something so we could curl up by the oven. Granted, we’re kind of turning into pansies here, and it was probably around 70 degrees with a breezy wind. But considering its typically well above 100 every day in April, we’re loving this.
And last, we found a new market today! It’s really just an extension of the market we usually buy our veggies in, but it’s far enough back that it’s much cheaper. Look what we found:
That’s one pumpkin, one gourd, three ears of corn, six small tomatoes, one head of cabbage, and a whole lot of green beans. And can you guess how much all this was? 59 baht, or just $1.94! That’s about half price of the other market, and I loved it.
Other than these small joys, it’s been a rough day and very rough start to the week. We’d love your prayers this week 🙂
Just a few notes about this week. Maybe interesting, maybe not.
– We’re getting to know our neighbors! We spent about an hour outside with the kids on Thursday morning and I came in with about ten flowers stuck in my hair. We played a little soccer and they hung on our arms. And apparently, we’re now best friends. The kids are much more comfortable and feel free to play with our gate (they push it open and closed, repeatedly). They also came into our yard today to play on the hammock, play with our broom, and look in our door. We’ll call this progress!
– We read our first Karen book this week! It was called “The White Bird and Turtle” and was only eight pages that took an hour to read, but we got the point and learned new vocabulary, so we’ll call that success, too.
– Stephen found me a free game on the iPad called “Ant Smasher”–and that’s simply it: you smash ants. He thought I would like it since I hate ants so much, and he’s right.
– I got shocked earlier this week. I was simply unplugging our hot pot to plug in the oven, and it somehow shocked me. My arm got really tense and my neck hurt for the next three days or so, but I guess that’s what you get for a dodgy electrical system.
– We officially have our own internet hooked up with our very own wireless router inside! We hope this means our internet will be more reliable from here on out, but we’re also trying not to get our hopes up.
This week we headed out to Popphra one day, which is a small migrant community about forty-five minutes outside of Mae Sot. Partners supports the school at Popphra called Thoo Mweh Khee. Some of the students live in the community with their families, but others have family still in Burma, so they live at the school dormitory. Partners helps with buildings and expenses for those in the dormitory.
Popphra is also one of the locations we’ll be taking volunteer teams, so we went out to meet the school staff and leaders in the community to tell them who we were and that we’d be in touch with them for teams through Partners. We came this week for graduation, as the school year is ending here and summer will continue through March and April.
In 2009, we actually taught there for two weeks at Popphra, so it was fun to visit and see familiar faces. When we were there a few years back, they were just opening the post-10 classes. Previously the school had only offered classes through 10th grade, but they opened up the opportunity to go through 12th. This year was the first graduation from 12th grade, with two students graduating. Both of them had helped Stephen & I with translation when we were there, so it was fun to see them and see what they had accomplished.
The best part of the day was–by far– a song performance by the grade 10 students. They had written a song together titled “Dream” that they sang. You can also watch it on YouTube. The lyrics are not only impressive, but heart breaking.
[Verse 1]
We have a voice; we will be heard
We are the youth; we are the future
Taken from our land; taken from our family
We still stand; we still believe
[Chorus]
Dream
We want to be free
Dream
We want to be somebody
Dream
[Verse 2]
You took our home; you took our nation
You will never take our imagination
We have our goals; we’re gonna reach them
Our people call; we’re gonna lead them
[Bridge]
We’re sick of all the fighting
We’re sick of all the crying
We’re sick of all the lying
We’re sick of all the dying
We saw an article today on the Irrawaddy website that caught our attention. Apparently the information minister in Burma, Kyaw San, is claiming that Thailand is not “a friendly neighbor…promoting instability in Karen State.” This was published in the state-run [load of crap] newspaper of Burma, New Light of Myanmar.
And I quote: “If the neighbor [Thailand] would stand as a friendly nation, [the] problems of Kayin [Karen] State would be soon be solved. There are base camps which they call refugee camps in the territory of the neighbor near Myanmar [Burma] border. Those camps are founded with contributions of some certain super powers, INGOs, and the neighbor. Insurgents use those camps as their base and launch guerilla attacks on the army, which is the reason that [exchanges of fire] are still occurring in Kayin State.”
Really? Is that the problem?
Ridiculous.
Our landlord thinks we understand Thai. Alot of it.
That said, we think he’s the landlord. We deal mostly with who we think is his daughter, and he simply comes for fixing things. He lives down the street and says hello occasionally.
Yesterday he brought us a big trash can for the outside (perhaps he noticed us putting ours in the neighbors’?), so we let him know that our sink was leaking.
He came by today at 9am, as we were leaving for work, to fix the sink. “Only five minutes,” we think he said. Before he started, Stephen asked him if he wanted to turn the water off. Unfortunately this was in English. A few minutes later, water is coming out from under the sink in gushes and he’s suddenly asking something in Thai and struggling to get out, “Off, off” in English. Oh, my.
He really tries to be nice, to explain things and even talk about interesting things with us. Unfortunately, we don’t understand Thai. He had a Karen bag with him today, so I asked, in Karen, if he spoke Karen language. He simply looked at me, noticing the sounds changed but not sure at all why.
Thus far I know we’ve had a conversation about Libya and Australia, but that’s all I understood in the four days he’s been at our house to fix and install things.
Hmm.
We bought a watermelon at the market today, and it’s in fact sparking a post. Call us easily amused, perhaps, but we’re studying another language for quite a few hours each day, so it’s inevitable.
First off, watermelons are fairly small here, more like cantaloupe-sized. This worries me for what they put in those ginormous watermelons in the states that are more the size of a small child.
When we purchased the melon, the guy picked it up, took his little spoon, and used the end of it to cut out a piece of the watermelon–like this:
He popped out the piece, showed it to us (assumably to impress us at the lovely color and delicious-looking quality). He then put it back in the melon and handed it to us in a bag.
And we thought it was cool. That was about it.
Two other side notes equally as irrelevant to the world:
– This country is obsessed with plastic bags. They could very easily be using the same amount in Mae Sot as the whole of America, and it’s ridiculous. And they tend to get offended if you say you don’t need one and you’ll just stick whatever-it-is in your own bag. Today I bought some corn from a vendor that already had all the vegetables bagged–they were in tied plastic bags, divided in the amounts she wanted to sell them in. And even then, when I implied I didn’t need to put my already-bagged corn in another bag to go along with my six others I was already carrying, she looked shocked… ?
– Hula hoops are making a comeback in this country. They are in every store and market, with kids and adults alike bringing them back for both exercise and fun. It’s bizarre, like we time-warped into the 80s.
In an effort to lighten the recent mood of this blog, I thought I’d share a little about the Partners’ Staff Retreat that we were at this weekend. Here are my thoughts and comments:
– The hotel is very nice. It’s more of a resort, really, with multiple swimming pools; sprawling gardens with ornate bushes, flowers, and sculptures; a lake with paddle boating; bicycles for rent; etc. We enjoyed an afternoon of paddle boating on Saturday and thought that was pretty lovely.
– It reminded me a lot of family camp at Miracle Camp. I’ll just leave it at that and let you read into the positives and negatives 🙂
– Friday night we did a “culinary endeavor” (not a craft, because this has been highly criticized in the past…). The theme this year was Partners’ Garden, so we had to use vegetables to make a model of ourselves. I’ll leave out comments and simply show our final products:
The worst part was really that all of the statues were placed on a table for the weekend, and I was stupid enough to sit near it during the last session. It was not a pretty smell.
– We really loved getting to meet all of the Partners’ staff. All of the national directors from Australia, New Zealand, America, England, and Norway flew in; the directors, Steve & Oddny (who started Partners and are now working from Norway and on global speaking tours), were there and it was nice to meet them! Even just to have all the international staff and national staff all together was fun. We have quite a few local staff hired for sewing, cleaning, finances, translation, visas, gardening, farming, etc. Some are Thai, but all are ethnic–so perhaps they are Thai-Karen, or Thai-Shan, etc. Others are completely ethnic and legal; and still others are ethnic and illegal. The entire conference was translated into Thai or Burmese, which is fun. The little table in the back with each of them having headphones is just fun to see–it feels like a minuscule UN conference! This is actually one of my favorite things about our Mae Sot office staff meeting every Monday–to have the entire thing translated. It excites me, for some reason!
– We got to do a little shopping in Chiang Mai (the big city for us, with all the amenities!). We managed to find both and oven and some speakers for Stephen to enjoy music and record with. The oven isn’t really a full size oven, which is pretty expensive here. We opted for a HUGE toaster oven that will hopefully work alright. The advantage is it being electric (better here) and still being big enough to fit in a pizza pan or casserole dish. Stephen’s very excited for homemade bread and fresh cinnamon rolls!
We also stopped by a pseudo-garage sale. One of the Partners’ staff members lived in Chiang Mai for quite a few years before moving back to Canada with his wife about three years ago. They had planned on returning when she finished school, so they stored some things here. It’s now looking like they’ll remain in Canada and he’ll continue as the national director there, so they cleared out their storage and sold some things while they were in town.
Worked out well for us! We got some lovely pans for our new oven and even a few Pyrex dishes (real treasures in this country, particularly to be second hand and thus affordable). Stephen bought his already-stocked toolbox so we now have a few basics in the house. The best part, of course, was the free box, where we found this cell phone!
Now we don’t have to purchase another one here, but we can each have one when we’re in different directions. It comes complete with the theme from “Outnumbered” as a ring tone. (Did anyone else play that math computer game as a kid, or was that just my family?) It also has this in “Messages”:
And then you pick your smiley face. Pretty great.
– We had a talent show on Friday night that was hilarious for many reasons. Some of the staff kids did a few Justin Bieber performances, yet we also got a crowd-involving performance of “I’ve got a river of life flowing out of me” with motions. Oh my. And, my personal favorite, Sweet Home Alabama performed by an English guy (?), which Stephen loved whether he’ll admit it or not. It was also quite great that one of the Karen guys thought it was “Sweet Home, Come on Obama”…
It was really pretty wonderful, mostly to see what we’ve joined! We are encouraged to continue to learn more about what Partners is doing and see the incredible impact they have on the Karen and Shan people. It’s amazing to hear of the work that is being done through Partners all along the Thai-Burma border and well into the Karen & Shan states of Burma. I was again reminded of what a small cog in the wheel we are of something making such an impact, but thankful to play even a role at all.
…excited to be a part of bringing hope
There’s really not another word for the past few days, so here goes.
The past week has been very busy. We have the Partners’ Staff Retreat in Chiang Mai this weekend, which just meant we had to get our to-do list done for the week by Wednesday, amidst meetings and figuring out rides and such for the retreat. I was also very nervous all week to be meeting so many new people from Partners, and just to be setting a first impression for quite a big group. The whole idea seemed really intimidating for my introverted self.
It has also been very rainy and cold this week, which is completely abnormal during the hot, dry season we are currently in. And, it’s been very cold—so much so that I wore two sweaters and jeans to dinner last night and blow-dried my feet to get them warm after a cold shower this morning.
Thursday morning the plan was for us to be up at 4:30am so we get things together and be at the office by 6am to leave for Chiang Mai. Instead, we got a call at 6:15am that woke us up. We scrambled out the door and left town by 7am. Oops.
It was five of us in the truck: Stephen & I, the other new couple to Partners, and Chris, who was nice enough to offer to take us to Chiang Mai early so we could shop a little before the retreat. Chiang Mai has so much more to offer than Mae Sot; it’s practically the West wrapped up Thai-style. We were hoping to get a few things for the kitchen you can’t find in Mae Sot—an oven/large toaster oven, speakers, applesauce, certain spices, wheat flour, baking soda, yeast, etc.
It was quite a long five-hour drive with five of us packed in a truck, driving through the curves and mountains in the rain. There was also a brief hydroplaning spin that terrified us all, but thankfully we managed to avoid the ditch and it happened precisely when no cars were around us. Either way, it was a long journey and we were glad to arrive in Chiang Mai.
So, we had about three hours to pull off quite a bit of shopping as a group. And on the way to our first stop, I got a call in the poorly connected call in the car announcing that my dear friend and college roommate, Laurel, was engaged! And with great excitement, I hit a brick wall.
The next hours were just awful. We had about six stores to walk between and make countless decisions of how much to spend and what brand to get on both an oven and speakers. All the while I’m wishing I could have a longer conversation with Laurel or at least get to an internet connection to Skype her; to see her exuberant smile and new sparkling ring. And I’m thinking through how much I want even more to just be there; to drive across town and celebrate with her. And further, how much I want to be there in a few months when they actually do get married and she looks even more gorgeous than she does always.
And still more, I know that Keri is having her baby in just hours. And suddenly—in an overcrowded Chiang Mai shopping center, I’m feeling the weight of missing out. I’m feeling the weight of knowing this is where we’re supposed to be, yet really wanting to be somewhere else for at least a few moments.
And the rest of the day was quite rough. To continuously be with people from six in the morning to about nine at night was exhausting, particularly when I just wanted to take a minute to myself and think through the weight of it all; the weight that has been overwhelming me recently.
With so much excitement, we paid the ridiculous 500B (about $15) for wireless internet over the whole weekend. Unfortunately, it turned out to be not-so-reliable, so we paid a visit to the front desk and called twice before midnight getting the internet working for Skype. And thankfully, it did work for us to receive a call around 1am that Steven and Keri had a beautiful baby boy, Andrew James! And we celebrated. (You can visit their blog for photos!)
It was a day of such celebration, and from here, a good deal of mourning for me. Perhaps because this is all hitting me at the exact same time, but the weight of it all seems tangible right now. Particularly as we’re only doing language training, and we haven’t even begun the hands-on ministry we’ll be involved in. And it’s been making me ache for home, particularly to be a part of the lives of those I love most.
For now, I’m Skyping my sister and brother-in-law, with another Skype party set up with Laurel tomorrow. I suppose that will do for now?