In short, we went to America! And we’ve already returned. It was very short, and yet so good! Here’s to a  short list of highlights.

We are so thankful for just a little glimpse of time with family and friends. So much fun in so little time.

We were there for Stephen’s newest niece’s birth! That is pretty amazing coordination of time that we can only credit to God, and we’re thankful. It was a gift to be there. Stephen also drove her to the hospital, because apparently that is our side job no matter where we live. Really, we were so thankful to be there and so thankful to meet (and hold! Skype cannot offer this!) the beautiful Piper.
With the rejoicing comes mourning, and it was a hard season for their family. Stephen’s brother-in-law & father of the newest babe was in the hospital for ten days just after the baby was born. We tried to help while we were there, and we’re really thankful for the time with family, but it’s hard to see such hard seasons. And really hard to walk away from them.

We also got to see my family and enjoy Thanksgiving with them!

I feel like my sister & I’s smiles are looking quite similar in all of the photos here! Um, I mean this with my sister, Keri, although Hope & I share quite a bit of resemblance, too 🙂We went to a wedding which we were so excited to celebrate! It was just beautiful in every way, and we loved it. Thank you, Tim & Mal, for making it possible for us to be there. It was so fun to celebrate with you! It also included plenty of college reunion friendships, which is always a fun surprise!

There was also a sister date of shopping and sushi, which did not disappoint.

There were Christmas festivities already in full swing, including Christmas tree purchases…

…and a small-town parade! A personal favorite. It included one of the boys informing the others, “If you say ‘Merry Christmas’ they throw more candy!”

We saw Hunger Games. Win.

And that, in short, was America this time around!

On our way through Bangkok, we wanted to try to meet with a friend from the neighborhood. She’s been a difficult story. In short:

We met the family with a dad, two teenage daughters, and their three-year-old nephew. The two young girls held all the responsibility for the home & little boy.

The oldest teenager left for Bangkok at 15. We weren’t sure what her work was, but it seemed questionable.

The little three-year-old was reunited with his mom and dad, who had been in jail for three years for some sort of drug charges; we aren’t sure if it was use or trafficking.

The second teenager quit school to work at 13; we knew her really well and did our best to come up with solutions: job options after school, other forms of income for the family, supporting her schooling, etc. They were sometimes taken for a few weeks and the denied, or denied on the spot. Before long, she was off to Bangkok, too, and has been there over a year.

We’ve been trying to get in touch with her—to keep up the contact, to love on her, to see if she needed a way out. We know the home life wasn’t great for a myriad of reasons. But we also weren’t sure what sort of career she was open to, and we wanted to keep up the contact so she always felt she had a way out, a friend, or whatever else we could try to be.

Three trips to Bangkok later, and she’s a bit hard to reach!

Sometimes her phone is out of minutes, sometimes it’s been disconnected altogether. We finally acquired a current number for her and called this trip.

It was quite the conversation, a full twenty minutes of chaos in three languages.

Someone else answered, so I asked in Burmese if Chit Mhwe was there. We went back and forth, saying the name with different accents and emphases, until she replied, “Oh! Chit Mhwe!”

I then hear her shouting for Chit Mhwe to tell her a white person was on the phone. {So glad my Burmese is so convincing.}

Chit Mhwe was so excited—she immediately shouted our names and asked how we were. It was so lovely to hear her voice.

When I told her we were Bangkok, she asked, “In Bangkok? Now? You?”

I explained we hoped to see her, and she shouted, “Tomorrow! Yes, tomorrow!” in English.

At some point here she put us on speaker phone, so that all the girls around her could hear. She told them we were her teachers and we were here in Bangkok, and we attempted to decipher the Burmese of five or so girls talking all at once.

I asked where she lived, and got, “Tomorrow! Yes, tomorrow!”
“Yes, tomorrow. Where? What time?”
“Tomorrow! Where are you?”
“I’m in Bangkok, near Mo Chit BTS Station. Where are you?”
“—-no idea what she said—“
“Hmm…do you know the BTS? MRT?” (These are the two major transit lines, elevated and underground.)
“Yes, I know.”
“Do you live near there?” (I start listing off stations.)
“Kelli, one minute.”

There is much chattering. Suddenly the only male voice I’ve heard comes on the line. I ask if he speaks English, being my best guess of what they went after.

“Yes. English.”
“Where are you?”
“Yes, I am ok. Are you okay?”
“Yes, I am okay. Where are you?”
“I am okay. Tomorrow is okay.”
“Yes, tomorrow is good. Where do I go? Where are you?”
“I am okay. Are you okay?” (Repeat this interchange a few more times.)
“Where are you?”
“I am at ———.” (Repeat this interchange a few more times.)
“Do you speak Thai? One minute.”

We go down to the front desk and explain. They graciously take the phone and talk for a few minutes.

We learn they are in ———-. About two hours by taxi. We should go to this region of “Bangkok” (the wider definition of Bangkok, if you will) and then call her, and she’ll give the taxi directions.

Suddenly, our plan to go see her tomorrow gets slightly foiled. A wild goose chase of at best 4 hours driving, before a flight to the US?

We apologized we couldn’t see her tomorrow, but we’ll be back in three weeks and do our best to see her then.

_______________

Fast forward not so much time: maybe twelve hours. She has found us on Facebook!  This is our initial interchange:

It then balloons into a “conversation” of many emoticons and broken Burmese. She writes so many questions and was so patient while we attempted to type out Burmese on our phones, and ultimately resorted to writing it and sending her photos. In the end, our battery was dying, so we snapped a picture of us and sent it to her.

And now, we have plans to make. We have a friend to visit next time we’re here, a trek to determine where she lives, and three weeks to determine more specific directions.

But I suppose, it was just really beautiful.

Sometimes it feels like we are doing nothing; that we see no results and we just see one broken story after another. And though the broken stories are numerous and sometimes pushing to the forefront, there are little glimpses into the joy. There are broken emoticon-conversations, where we love this culture we live in. There are broken Burmese conversations, where we give thanks for what we have learned to communicate. And there are these people, these friends, that we realize we love. We will make phone call after phone call and trek around a city of millions to find, because she is loved and needs to see that.

It’s been awhile since we’ve had familial visitors, so we were pretty excited to have my parents come for a visit last month!

We spent a couple days in Chiang Mai at the beginning, which included visiting the 3D Art Museum–the most cultural  experience we could give them! It’s an entire museum of art painted to look 3D, and generally designed to be turned into one selfie after another.

We then headed to Mae Sot for a week, so my parents could have a glimpse into our chaos. They were able to be there for our September OneHouse worship night, as well as trip to the tea shop on the house, baking bread and making Flour & Flower deliveries, and our weekly house church. And per usual, we had some house calls mixed in there, too.

We snapped a few photos of the beautiful flowers we delivered, including two beautiful pregnant mothers! This is Pyo Pyo & Nyein Nyein, who bake & sale bread each week.

And Daw Ma Oo, who sells flowers. This is my favorite picture of her to date.

We also baked a cake to celebrate Yedi’s tenth birthday! It was a sweet little party, which included Yedi feeding each of us the first bites of cake. {Welcome to the community, Mom & Dad! Let’s all share a spoon.}
We climbed (and fell down) the waterfalls around Mae Sot one day. It was both beautiful and hilarious!

And toward the end, we headed off to Bangkok for a couple days. We mostly wandered through busy streets and malls finding delicious food, drinking well-roasted coffee, and playing Euchre. And as the author of this blog, I think it’s safe to say there is no need to record who won the tournament. 😉

We also made an epic trip to Ikea, which none of us had ever visited before. It is truly nothing short of epic.

Thanks for making the trek, Mom & Dad! That flight isn’t for the faint of heart, and neither is our squatty potty 🙂

We are Chiang Mai for a language intensive, and that means our lives are consumed in Burmese.

We attend class for just two to three hours a day, but we then study an additional four to eight more hours, depending on what we can muster up. We are reviewing vocabulary and flashcards, writing sentences, listening to audio, writing transcripts, reading documents, writing responses.

Does that sound as tiring as it is?

Other than thousands of vocabulary words and grammar rules, I wouldn’t mind forgetting most of the experience.

And the other things that I want to remember involve Stephen, because he makes everything in my life much, much better. And funnier.

We found CAMP: a study center just down the road from our class and a large university in Chiang Mai. You can get coffee or snacks, or just sit, for as many hours as you’d like. I absolutely love it and we have spent many-an-hour (and day) studying there. The first day, I told Stephen it felt like we were back at university. He replied, “We are. It’s just much, much HARDER.” That is very, very true.

Our teacher is an elderly British man than has studied and taught Burmese language for nearly fifty years. He’s great, except for one phrase: nasal seepage.  He uses this to describe when the Burmese pronunciation changes because syllables run together. Nothing can make me sicker faster than someone talking about nasal seepage. Or any kind of seepage, most likely.

We did take one day last week to celebrate Stephen’s birthday over a trip to few local music shops, a movie, and dinner out. He’s the best.

And last–he’s hilarious in language. He is by the far the most dedicated and organized language learner. He has system upon system and will study for hours upon hours.

But he absolutely hates being called on in class; he sort of panics and struggles to respond to things he knows so well.

And yet, the other evening, we’d been giving homework to transcribe a short recording. We had listened through it and were trying to pick it apart word-for-word and type in out correctly. At one point, he was adamant about a phrase. Our conversation went like this:

S: There is a ye in there. I can hear it!
K: But which one? Which ye makes sense in that sentence? It’s not possessive or “water” or “write.”
{These are all different tones of ye.}
S: But it’s there.
K: How do we spell it for the transcription? Why is it there? Could it be another word? Why say, “Ne gaun ye la?”
S: I don’t know. But I know it’s there. And I know I say that to the neighbors. Ne gaun ye la; ne gaun ye la. We say that! I know it’s there.

After searching through notes and dictionaries, we put in the ye with a guessed spelling.  We decided to we’d ask the next day for an explanation {even though sometimes he deems certain questions ridiculous and this might be in this category, welcoming ridicule}.

So we are sitting in class and following along, and I whisper to Stephen that I’m going to ask about the ye so we can figure it out. I raise my hand and ask. The teacher repeats the question and asks if anyone knows why this is there?

At this point, Stephen raises his hand, nearly jumping out of his chair. I am now looking at him with absolute absurdity, as he tells the teacher the specific grammar of why ye is in there. If you’re curious, it’s to ask a question expecting a negative answer, or to push for a genuine response. The teacher was duly impressed at him knowing so specifically. I was super confused.

Our teacher was confused, too, since we do our homework together and somehow I was asking a question he was answering. After class, we had this conversation:

K: “What happened? We looked up spellings and definitions and talked through every version of the word ye last night, and you said absolutely none of this!”
S: “Yeah, I didn’t know it then. But as soon as you asked the question it all came back really quick.”

So random. I don’t understand him at all, but I’m glad we can laugh together in the {dare I say, miserable} adventure of language learning!