We started English classes!

We are actually finishing our third week, since we started the day after we returned to Mae Sot. It has been so much fun! We have four levels and about forty kids & adults participating!  I teach Tuesday to Thursday in the afternoons and evenings.

The littlest ones just have lots of fun as we study the basic level of English. Here you can watch a video of us learning animals and sounds!

For the middles, it’s a great way to practice understanding me and starting to form sentences. The oldest kids are able to put what they know into practice, and they are picking things up quickly.  While we see the kids regularly anyway, this makes the time in our house more productive, and it makes it more manageable for us to welcome them in more often!

For the adults, we are focusing on conversation that they will encounter regularly. Some of them aren’t literate in Burmese, so we are focusing on the conversation that will be most helpful to them. Outside of meals, it has been the best way for us to connect with the adults! It is really wonderful to be able to talk and laugh with them in class.

We are really excited for this little addition to our community!

With all the changes in our country & neighborhood, many of the families have moved into concrete homes|rooms in the past few months. This has increased their monthly expenses, as rent is at least double and sometimes up to five times as much. As has been said, “Need is the mother of invention”–we suddenly have some little entrepreneurs on our hands.

One of the women has opened a little shop at the kids’ school. She is outside all day cooking and selling her items to the kids for lunch. Not only is it a great income, but it’s a fun place for us to go! So, here is a new favorite lunch stop:

We can’t eat there all the time as its all fried foods that will slowly (or quickly?) kill us, but it is fun to support her little business. It’s also on the campus of the kids’ school, so we get to sit at this little table–the only table–with a lot of our little friends on their lunch break. Talk about a place where everybody knows your name!

 Another woman has begun selling flowers, and she brings me by a selection to choose from. Nothing like having fresh flowers delivered to your door regularly!

It has been really fun to see their entrepreneurial sides come out, and we really love to support them. It’s even better when it’s things we can enjoy–flowers or lunch. This is considerably better than the unidentified-meat-kebabs that I wasn’t really sure what to do with once I bought them!

After sharing our neighbors’ love snack with our families, there were some ideas thrown around for what could be sent back as a “love snack, part 2” for our neighbors to enjoy! Gena had a great idea to make puppy chow, a Spurlock family favorite.

We delivered them throughout the neighborhood and explained how much our families were thankful for the gift and wanted to reciprocate.

The snacks just keep on giving.

I will admit we kept a small bowl back for us to enjoy!

The rest was happily consumed 🙂

Stephen and I had some great opportunities to enjoy a couple dates nights out while we were home. We also really enjoyed the Arkansas River Trail that runs through Little Rock and North Little Rock. Our tandem–my wedding present from Stephen that is still the best present ever!–was really fun to enjoy.

We did have one significant flat tire that shortened one of our trails, but we did love the other couple times we got to go!

We pass this along the trail, which is pretty fun since we have green tandem 🙂

We also took several hikes up and around Pinnacle Mountain.

And, to fulfill a dream I’ve had since we moved to Thailand, we went to a water park!  We were definitely the only ones in our age group–it was pretty much all teenagers or parents with kids–but we had so much fun.

Last, we took a trip to Oklahoma City, a place that somehow feels a lot like home, too.

We saw some our favorite people, including this lovely family!

We have pictures with them each year, and it is amazing to see them grow up! Thay is now graduated and off to start her freshman year of college, and Htoo is now starting her senior year. And please note that they are all smiling in this photo! Stephen & I take partial credit for that after years of convincing them to smile for photos 🙂

We were also able to see my sweet sister, Hope! She has recently taken a management position at Chuy’s and is working at the Norman store.  It was so fun to get to see her in her element and catch up after so much time away!

And then we went bowling!

The kids did so great and so much fun. Drew even gave us some jumps for joy 🙂

I won the prize for best form.

And Ker for best facial expressions!

Afterward we went to All Aboard restaurant, which has now made my favorites list. All of your food–good food, I thought–is delivered to your table by train! They run all around the restaurant and then land with oohs and ahhs at your table. Some of the oohs and ahhs were from the kids; some were very much from me!

And they give out these adorable little hats.

We went out another night to YaYas, which is most definitely on my favorites list in America! Delicious food and lovely company.

For a weekend while we were home, Stephen’s sister Kat & her husband came to Little Rock to visit–with their sweet Finley! As we all sat around the dinner table together, it was encouraging to see how {relatively} easy it was to have Stephen’s entire family all together. For my family, three of the five kids are on different continents, so it’s a little harder for us to pull off dinner around the same table. It was really nice to see all of the nieces and nephews splashing together in the pool while we sit around together to play a game.

We also spent one evening cooking out at a nearby lake. It is times like this that I am so thankful for Stephen’s amazing photography skills: he did a great job capturing his family & the summer sun.

Stephen’s family also gave him a fun one-month-early birthday surprise since we aren’t usually around for a celebration. So much fun!

My sweet niece, Emma Kate, took the plunge and stopped sucking her thumb while we were there. As a reward, she got to go to the ice skating rink for the first time. It was originally a trip planned with her mom, but we were all a little uneasy about her being six months pregnant. Instead, Emma was able to choose who would go with her.

And I won.

This is a pretty big achievement for the far away aunt! Emma really was so sweet to enjoy time with us and tell us how thankful she was for us to be there and for any time she had with us. Basically, she knew how to make me cry.

But the trip to the ice skating rink was such fun!

And then we got snocones. I’m telling you: we soaked up our American summer! 🙂

With my family, we went away for couple of days to a friend’s cabin to spend some time together and celebrate my sister’s 30th birthday.

And birthdays, of course, start with making cinnamon rolls. Drew & I were put on the task.

He did convince me to put green frosting on at least some of them!

I love Coke’s new marketing strategy! I totally fell for it, but despite my attempts, I was unable to find a “Stephen” or “Kelli” bottle or can. If you find one, keep it for me until we get back–empty or full!  I don’t even really drink Coke!

We’re back in this lovely place we call home, and we’ve hit the ground running with English classes and hospital visits and confusing conversations. But before I blog on life here again, I really want to take a minute to relish the month we just had in the States.

It was wonderful.

There were parts that were challenging, yes; we had many hard conversations and asked difficult questions. But really, the entire trip was an unexpected gift: we didn’t know we’d be going back for a visit, we didn’t know we’d get to meet a new niece and new nephew so soon after their births. We didn’t know we’d attend a friends wedding and see Stephen’s sister & family before she moves a few hours away.  We didn’t know we’d get to meet the new organizations we are partnering with! We didn’t know we’d get to enjoy an American summer. We didn’t know we’d get to enjoy an Arkansas summer with the best weather ever.

But we got to enjoy all of these things!

So sit back to enjoy a small mini-series of photos, named in honor of The Lego Movie that Stephen quoted regularly while we were there.

First, our arrival into the loveliest and most horrible place on earth: the airport.

Seeing this photo makes me re-live every emotion of this experience: so much joy, so much embarrassment, so much exhaustion.  Who do you hug first when you love them all?

Then we decided to overwhelm the local Chickfila. And we enjoyed the neighbors’ love snack for dessert!

Thank you, Leslie, for your positive attitude in trying unidentified food products from around the world!

We made it back just in time to attend two friends’ wedding! We watched them fall for each other on a short-term trip to Mae Sot two years ago, so it was pretty wonderful to get to be a small part of their wedding!

And we met little Silas Calk just six days after he was born!

We also got to meet little Finley!

We often try to visit the States during winter months–or really anything but summer–since we live in what feels like an endless summer here. I didn’t realize how much I miss American summer and some of the classic family activities!

The kids have learned, but are still perfecting, the art of photo bombing. It does make for some great faces.

We played a lot of this game and even received it as a gift to bring back with us over the ocean!

This is year-round, I suppose, but I still love it.

That’s all for now, but more to come!