Sometimes I am certain this blog is more for me than for you. It is a treasure to be able to look back on the faces, stories, and questions that really make all of this worth it.

And this update is just for the simple things that made me smile this week, and I don’t want to forget.

The kids discovered patterned bandages. 
There is a little two-year-old boy who is cared for by his two teenage sisters. As much as they love and care for him, working so hard to support him, he is often carried around haphazardly or left crying on our porch while they play cards with their friends. They brought him to me early one morning; he had fallen and had a few cuts on his knee. Knowing that he might just need a little extra compassion, I grabbed some antibiotic cream and an animal print bandage.
It was when I opened the bandage to a collection of oohs and ahhs that I knew I was in trouble. As could be guessed, this week has suddenly seen an influx of minor cuts and scrapes show up to our door for assistance.

The girls experienced mechanical pencils.
While coloring one afternoon, a couple older girls requested pencils. I gave them a few mechanical pencils to share between them. Within an hour, one had run out of lead and came to let me know it wasn’t working properly. I took the empty pencil and one from another girl, which received a little hesitation. I proceeded to take the eraser off one and tip out an extra piece of lead. Again, huge revelations complete with oohs and ahhs. The two girls who witnessed such an event ran outside to retell it to everyone and trade lead between them for the next few minutes.

Two little girls discovered that we do, in fact, live across the street!
To the left of our house is a two-story house shared by quite a few families. This week, two of the younger girls realized they could look out the top story windows, see over our wall, and then wave and blow kisses to us. We did that for nearly half an hour.

I really do love Mae Sot as a town. I love the diversity, the small town feel, the markets, the motorbikes and bicycles. And I have a love-hate relationship with the countless languages used in such a small space.

It’s changing quickly, actually. We can see it in all the little nuances that others likely wouldn’t notice.

Before we left town, we had a day off work. It was the perfect gloomy gray that I love and don’t see as often here.  Stephen went out to take some photos of some of our favorite details of Mae Sot.

Every town needs a little bit of graffiti, right? I just appreciate when it is in English and constructive.

…Love is a commonly used English word. I receive “I love you!” from strangers more often than I’m comfortable with.

This truck was parked down the road from Tescos about eighteen months ago. And it is now a part of the landscaping.

And these are my favorite buildings. A few years ago, they decided to expand this intersection and put a traffic light in. The buildings were simply cut off, leaving doors that open to a drastic fall and re-bar poking out over the street.  Oh, and they are still occupied.

And last, my absolute favorite:

First, for context, keep in mind that English is not the first language here. Or second or third, really. And “modify” isn’t commonly learned anyway.  And thus, it is an interesting graffiti choice.

But I love it.

It’s challenging, but subtly. It doesn’t ask you change the world, to revolt, or anything else that graffiti typically yells at you. That is exactly it: graffiti yells. But this simply states. Modify something.

In a very odd way, this sign is a comfort to me. It keeps me thinking. What can I modify? How can I better serve someone else or help our neighbors or be more like Christ?  But just through modification, not drastic changes or turn-around sacrifices. Just a simple change to make the world a better place.

I love it. And this town.

At risk of being self-absorbed, I have one more picture post.

We took the tourist route one day and organized to go on a boating adventure to some remote islands. We took a speedboat out and passed more islands than we could count. It was absolutely beautiful.

Stephen loved the opportunity to use a GPS and somehow plans to link our photos to the GPS point, but I’m not sure how that works.

We stopped and explored James Bond Island, where a scene from The Man with the Golden Gun was shot in 1974.

We took the speedboat out to some cove areas, where we went sea canoeing! This was absolutely amazing. We had a guide to row for us, so we felt a little lazy, but it was beautiful.

The guide took us into some amazing caves, caverns, and particularly tight places. He would instruct us to lay flat in the canoe and take us through places that barely cleared our knees and foreheads.

He also took this photo of us through a leaf with a heart cut-out 🙂

And then we spent the rest of the afternoon on a private island beach before taking the speedboat back to Phuket. Due to the high tides of monsoon season, the boat could also jump waves on the way back, which was incredibly fun.

It was spectacular.

Too spectacular to take the time to post about it along the way, but now worth noting as we head back to normal life.

We spent most of our time at the beach: swimming, walking, running, watching, reading. We visited during low tourist season, which is monsoon season, so the waves were really strong and signs sometimes advised us not to swim. We–and most others–took this as “don’t go deeper than you can touch” advice. In all, it rained one morning and one evening, otherwise providing absolutely beautiful weather.

One day we drove out to the pier, simply because we thought it sounded interesting. I won’t say it was uninteresting, but I don’t think they get a lot of tourists. The guards let us through but looked at us oddly enough. I think the area primarily sees buses bringing in people to load up cruise ships rather than two random people on a motorbike.

So we took a photo in front of the current cruise ship!

Stephen loved the photography opportunities and took advantage at every turn.

I suppose there is an obvious difference between Stephen and I’s photography skills, and clearly this is mine. But one of the things we really loved about Phuket was that it was a little more Westernized than Mae Sot, and we recognized a few logos of some favorite restaurants.  Au Bon Pain is quickly becoming a favorite, but we tried quite a few local places that were pretty amazing, too. It was great to have the variety of Indian, fresh seafood, Italian, Greek, Mexican, and such.

We went for fresh seafood one night, and I went for the crab. I’ve never had it before, and I’m not much of a meat person; but I loved the whole experience of crushing the shells and picking all the meat out. We forgot to bring the camera with us that night, but I wanted a photo of the crab; the waiter did give me a great look when I asked to keep it off my plate.

And there was a Starbucks! We did love this.

Oh, and some fire baton swinging on a beach walk.

We visited Old Phuket Town one day, which had some lovely architecture and colors.

We passed this mirror every time we left our guesthouse. No idea why it was sitting outside of this person’s house.

For our last night, we watched the sunset on the beach and went out for a nice dinner.

And our idea of a nice meal out?  Fancy cheese, fresh bread, and a Caesar salad.

At risk of being self-absorbed, one more picture post to come.