…and we’re not even to England yet! Oh, dear.

Mae Sot has been surprisingly cold the past few days, mostly at night.

The days warm up to the low 70s, but the nights are getting down into the low 50s. I’m sure plenty of you are saying that isn’t that cold, but keep in mind you have closed buildings and cars, heaters, & sinks that provide warm water! Riding a motorbike in 50 degree weather is chilly, and then you arrive to an outdoor restaurant where you eat in 50 degree weather. And when you get up in the morning, you take a shower in water that has been sitting outside in 50 degree temperatures and walk around a house that has absorbed most of that 50 degree air. It’s feeling quite cold for us, let alone our sweet neighbors in bamboo huts! The kids are bundled up by mid-afternoon to keep the chill away.

Tonight we snuggled under blankets together with our coats on.

A couple nights ago, we had carolers visit the neighborhood. It was pretty cold, so I was bundled up in a thick sweater. Stephen radiates heat himself and was out in shorts and a t-shirt, much to all the kids’ shock and awe.

The little ones would run up to give Stephen the usual hugs, but then discover that he was quite warm. For most of the carols, he had five or six kids crowded around wrapped onto his arms and legs. He was also handed Jor Lay, an eighteen month old that is still a little unsure of being held by Stephen on most days. But on this night, he felt the warmth and curled up into Stephen’s arms for half an hour.

I went to my Karen lesson today about noon, right as the warmth was seeping in from the sun. I started to slip off my shoes to walk into the room we usually study in, and my teacher told me, “Oh, no. Don’t take your shoes off. It’s cold today; we’ll wear our shoes.”  We then both wore our flip flops throughout the lesson to keep us warm.

And tomorrow, we’ll be boarding a plane bundled in all the sweaters, coats, and scarves we can manage! Baby, it’s only getting colder!

As with all good things, we at least started with a plan. We planned to host a community Christmas party on Monday night, hopefully giving us a few days to recover before we flew out to England. A couple weeks ago, I had some of the older kids help me create a map of the community so that I could count households, make sure we had the right number of gifts, and purchase gifts by age. Since we know the kids more and more each year, the gifts are getting more personalized and specific for what we know they’ll love.

These were our first chicken-scratch maps.

We also had the blessing of our church behind us this year, committing to cover the expenses of a dinner and presents for the community. We were excited! We decided we’d get an individual gift for each person, but also do household gifts–a blanket, toothpaste, toothbrushes, baby powder, notebooks, pens, pencils, and soap–for every four people in the home. This meant that most homes received a single set, but some extra-fertile homes received as many as three.

Since the community is always in our home and around, it is difficult to “secretly” purchase hundreds of gifts that obviously aren’t for us. We postponed it all as long as we could, but sent out our friend Pranee to make the first purchases last Friday. She is an incredible negotiator and gets the best deals in town; everyone in the office knows it. So we sent her out to purchase rainbow bags to put the gifts in, a blanket for each household, a sarong for each woman, and a longyi for each man. These are more expensive pieces that I thought she’d be able to get the best deal on without my white face there. And she did incredible! She got them all for almost half of what we had estimated, and then managed to get them all on her motorbike!  She is Mae Sot’s very own wonder woman.

Stephen and I planned to purchase all of the kids’ gifts on Saturday, plus the vegetables needed for the meal. We had so much fun deciding what to purchase. I mean, really–having enough money to purchase fun gifts for these kids that will love them anything so much? Knowing they’ll be excited for candy and a toothbrush, but being able to purchase a toy car or puzzle is really wonderful.

We got the first load purchased, which involved me carrying all of this on the way back on the motorbike. Whoa.

I will note that Stephen was skeptical of getting it all onto the motorbike, and so was the Thai man sitting outside who openly laughed when we set it down beside the motorbike. He then gave a nod of approval as I turned the rainbow bag into a backpack, and that made me pretty proud!

Just as we were setting out for our second load of presents, our plans we interrupted. An older woman in the community was quite sick, and we were asked to come to her house. She was non-responsive and covered in her own urine and vomit. The details are probably too many, but it turned into a long night. We spent a couple hours at the hospital without dinner until 9:30pm; we crawled into bed exhausted by 11. We then woke up after five phone calls at 1am, quite confused at what was really wanted of us. We knew they were calls from the hospital, but not sure what was going on since the people on the phone only knew Burmese and the Karen translator outside kept telling us to just go back to bed and go to the hospital at 8am tomorrow. We were stumped by this: why would someone call five times at 1am if they wanted us to just come at 8am tomorrow?

So I trekked across town at 1am to learn that Pipi had passed away, and the girls staying with her came back with me. With just three hours of sleep, Sunday became a day of helping with funeral preparations and trekking people back and forth from the hospital.

In addition to participating in the process of mourning, it delayed our preparations. I ended up purchasing more gifts in the pouring rain on Sunday afternoon, wrapping until 3:30am, and purchasing the final items on Monday morning.

At one place, we learned you get free gifts with bigger purchases. We purchased about $36 worth of toothbrushes–which are in my left hand in the photo below–and all the free stuff we got is in my right hand! How are they making profit?

We were running on coffee most of the day Monday, but managed to put together gifts for 36 men, 39 women, and 57 children.

We waited and told the community on Monday morning that we’d be having Christmas at 4pm. We had the door closed most of the day since toys and gifts were filling our floor, but the kids would come up to the window throughout the day. We’d have this conversation,
“Kelli? Stephen?”
“Yes?”
“FOUR!”
“Yes, four o’clock!”
“FOUR!”

We also needed to prepare a meal for about 200 people. I went by a rotisserie chicken stand on Sunday to order 25 whole chickens. We did this last year, and it was a big hit. It is also much easier to purchase 25 already-cooked chickens than to fit them all in my toaster oven.

I tried to communicate with my very limited Thai that I wanted 25 chickens to be ready tomorrow at 4pm. She tried to understand in her very limited Thai. We were struggling, when her friend came over to help, and translated “25 chickens, 4pm” into Karen. Oh! Well, this could be a lot easier, I thought. I started using Karen and we sorted it out pretty quickly. We had a nice little chat as they asked if it was for a Christmas party and where I lived and how long we lived here. They asked if it was for 4am, I said no; it was after the kids got back from school, for dinner. We confirmed and confirmed and confirmed. I left my phone number and left on a cloud thinking how easy that was having a common language.

And then a man called me about an hour later, and four other times on Sunday night. I caught a few of them, and he would ask again if I wanted 25 chickens at 4pm? Yes, I do; we’d hang up. Then he called at 6am on Monday morning to tell me the chickens were ready. What? I restated that we’d come by at 4pm. He sounded confused, so I said we’d drive by the stand in just a little bit. We were out of bed and in town by 7am, where we found the little chicken stand overflowing with 25 chickens.

At this point, I didn’t particularly care that they were ready super early. It’d still work, as people aren’t too picky about their food around here. I just reiterated that it was great they had them, we’d be back at 4pm when we had a truck to get them.

After spending the day wrapping gifts and cooking, we were just barely finishing by 3:30pm. I jumped in the shower while Stephen went out to pick up the chickens.

She had one waiting for us. One measly little chicken.

I have no idea where we went wrong. I honestly am still so baffled by how the whole situation went down. But Stephen patiently went around town from chicken cart to chicken cart trying to gather the remaining 24 rotisserie chickens.

After four carts with a few chickens each, he arrived at one down by the border. He was now a good seven kilometers from our house and five kilometers from the chicken stand we started at. He pulled up and asked if they had chickens, to which the lady replied, “Oh! 25 chickens, 4 o’clock. Merry Christmas!”

What?!? How do you know what our order is, and the man I spoke to twelve times didn’t seem to understand?!?!

Either way, Stephen was a champ and was home by 5pm with 25 chickens in tow. We had four friends here to help us host and translate and take photos, and piles of kids waiting at the front door.

Motorbike accidents are no fun.

But glad it wasn’t worse! I forgot to put my kickstand up as I left the shop. I made it down the straightaway, but when I hit the turn, it spun the bike out from under me.

Whomp whomp.

Today I ran my first 5k in Thailand! And not only in Thailand, but right here in Mae Sot.

It was so much fun, and also very much what I expected 🙂

It was the first day we were awake before the community, as we rolled out of bed at 5:00am and were out the door by 5:20am. Kudos to Stephen for coming to cheer me on at such an unruly hour!

The run was about as organized as I would’ve guessed: somewhat marked & somewhat blocked roads with a few semis to avoid.  There was a large turnout, but most were students. Thai school students were given bonus points or a grade of some kind if they came to participate, so of the thousand or so participants, about a hundred were over 18.

I was nervous to be one of just a few white people; I saw four in total. I prefer to blend in, particularly in things I’m not great at! In a race, I am there to finish and not to truly compete for speed. But knowing everyone would be watching made me nervous.

This was well-founded. I had three video cameras on me while I registered.

It took over half a kilometer to just get running, so the start was a little rough. All of the students also ran very much like students in a school race: they would dart off running full speed, and then stop to rest, dart off, and stop. I can’t tell you how many times I was running and then nearly tripped over the person in front of me who decided they were ready to rest.

I was also stopped before I actually crossed the finish line: the volunteers came out to meet me and took my bib. There was some confusion as they asked me my age and which race I had run. I think they thought I had run the 11k and was just very fast–in 30 minutes! In reality I was just a mediocre 5k runner. But they stole my bib in the confusion; and when I asked for it back they gave me a different one. I have no idea what went down, and we decided it wasn’t worth seeking out the clarification.

But it was a race, and I do love races! It is so fun to have all the excitement. It feels very communal; as though we’re all in something together [beyond the next few minutes of running].

And I got a cool t-shirt with all the ASEAN flags on it! Not bad for a $6 registration fee.

The participation medal actually one of the best I’ve seen, maybe because it’s simply from another country! It had Thailand on the front, with the pattern of the national flag within the country outline. And the back was a design of all the ASEAN flags again and very international-looking for Mae Sot!

This was so much fun and one of those experiences I’m glad I took advantage of!

It really was better than I could imagine to come home to Mae Sot.

We arrived the evening before Thanksgiving, and spent most of Thanksgiving day cooking for a dinner with a group of American friends. We did take a break while the bread was rising; I went for a run and we swam some laps at the pool, to make it a very weird and tropical Thanksgiving.

And then we decorated for Christmas!

Every year since we’ve been married, we’ve had a small Christmas tree:

{2009}

{2010, just before moving to Thailand}

{2011, our first Christmas in Thailand}

{2012, when the no-extra-charge ruffle pajamas kind of overwhelmed the tree!}

But this year, our tree outgrew us!

Some friends of ours upgraded their tree, and that meant they were selling their old one!

We had some friends come to watch us decorate and enjoy the Christmas spirit! They have all been ooo-ing & ahh-ing over the lights and singing Christmas songs.

Since returning home, we’ve had six people taken to the hospital & three teeth extractions; one child who had three accidents on our floor and three vomiting escapades. I discovered one of them when I heard an, “Uhh, Kelli…” from the community space. I came around the corner to see a little eight-year-old running to the door with her hands cupped. I then saw that a little eighteen-month-old had been eating sprinkles while his sisters worked on a puzzle. I think he choked, and then just kept vomiting. The three girls were taking turns catching his vomit in their cupped hands, and then running across the room–dripping along the way–to then throw it over our porch. So gross. I wasn’t really sure where to start with the child still vomiting, eight kids in the room, toys strewn about, and vomit across the floor.  I appreciate their effort to help, but I might have preferred a contained hazardous waste area.

I did get to bake gingerbread cookies with one of my favorite little sweethearts!

She usually likes to come in and help when I cook, so she had been watching me chop pumpkin for soup. A neighbor came over, so I went out to say hello and came back to her holding our butcher knife and attempting to help cut the pumpkin! To make it worse, she was using it like you use a machete–holding it high and slamming it down to the counter. I was terrified! I did appreciate her effort to help, and she did! We made pumpkin soup for dinner, and gingerbread cookies & snicker doodles for a Christmas movie night.

It is so good to be home, and it is so good to be celebrating the holidays!

After our trip to the jungle, we stopped through Bangkok and Chiang Mai on our way home. These were really wonderful stops: we saw a couple in Bangkok that lived in Mae Sot with us last year; we had some wonderful meetings and spent time with friends in Chiang Mai. And we took some random photos to document it all!

We went to see Catching Fire on opening night in Bangkok, which was pretty amazing. And it was a little bit fun to know that us seeing it on Thursday night at 5:30pm in Thailand was way ahead of many of you. For once in a very long while, we felt trendy!

We also found this shirt in an Adidas store, and we’re just not sure their marketing team thought this through. With all the human trafficking that is happening around the world, it might not be a good idea to wear a shirt that declares you a predator.

There is another new mall in Chiang Mai, complete with an ice skating rink! It is quite small, but a hilarious experience to watch. In America, most of us have at least experienced ice, whether it is on roads or sidewalks or rinks. For Thais, there is very little ice experience in their lives, so you have a host of adults and kids alike that are horrible at ice skating. No one is going fast, and most are just barely scooting across the floor.

We stayed with our wonderful friend, Sacha, who also happens to have a piano in her house! A real piano! {I’m not sure if this is common knowledge, but the climate here isn’t ideal for keeping pianos in tune, so they are very rare, and keyboards are used. I can’t think of one in Mae Sot, and she is the only one I know of in Chiang Mai.} Stephen loved the chance to play, and I loved the chance to listen and sing along while I wrote out addresses to our Christmas cards!

And then we went to see Catching Fire again with Sacha! Feel free to judge us, I suppose. Movie tickets are pretty reasonably priced here, and in Chiang Mai they were playing Catching Fire in 4DX. What is 4DX, you say? Since you don’t live in Asia: it is a new technology developed in South Korea. It adds a “fourth dimension” to movie watching–your seat moves and there are external elements including smoke in the room, a variety of scents, water sprayed on you, and blasts of air. 

It is just as weird as it seems.

But Catching Fire was super fun to see with all the extra elements. And it was fun to see with friends and laugh at all the oddities of having blasts of wind come at you and splashes of water falling on your head. You can also opt out of the water if you choose…

Amidst all of this we had meeting after meeting in Chiang Mai. In some ways, this was so good–God is good! We have had so many questions over the past few months, and there have been so many struggles. We have been really unsure about the future.

At one point as we were headed up the stairs for yet another meeting, Stephen stopped me and turned me around to say, “We’re on the same team, okay? …We’re on the losing team, but we’re on the same team…” It made me burst into laughter, and it made me really, really thankful that Stephen is hilarious. Laughter has gotten us through countless difficult days.

And in many ways, we still are unsure. We still don’t know most things about the future. But God has been so present in all the questions. And we had some very hopeful conversations in Chiang Mai: not necessarily that we found answers, but that God provided direction. We know where we’re headed, even if we don’t know what awaits us.

I say all this to communicate that we are hopeful.

However, throughout this trip, I have never been more homesick for Mae Sot. I just ached for being in our own home and in this shady little town we call home now. I’m not really sure why, but I just ached for it. 

And it was really just as lovely as I thought it would be to come home.
More on that to come.

The town we were staying in along the border was an odd little place. It was a ghost town during the week, but then bustling over the weekend. It is primarily a tourist spot for Thais from Bangkok, so there was very, very little English and not one Western restaurant.

And there was one tourist attraction, which we of course stopped in to enjoy! Yim had been telling us about the candle factory for weeks. I think candle shop might be a better description, because they don’t make candles per say. They do allow you to, but it isn’t a factory like I’ve toured in the States or a factory like I’ve seen all over Mae Sot. It was a little old-style town focused on candles in a town where they are famous for their locally-raised bees.

To make it better, Yim kept accidentally calling it the candy factory, then correcting herself to candle factory. After a few conversations about it, Stephen finally asked, “So, is there candy here? I keep thinking you are saying candy, and then candles–I just want to know how excited I should be about this.”

Either way, it was a quaint little village of shops built on a mountainside–almost like a Thai version of The Village in Gatlinburg. Even though they didn’t specialize in candy, it turned out to be quite a fun visit, and we managed to enjoy some coffee & homemade ice cream at a lovely little shop at the top!

The best part–and probably the “factory” part–was that you could create your own candle. I was a little shy to try it since no one else in the group wanted to, but Stephen thought I’d really like it. He was totally right. You could choose what you wanted to create: they had the local favorites of Angry Birds, Furby, and sheep, or you could create your own design. I opted for making my own and picked a tree.

After you choose a color of wax, they melt it over the fire and pour the boiling hot wax into lukewarm water. It makes a mushy, pliable wax that you can create into whatever you want.

Every few minutes, when you like the work you’ve done, you put it into ice cold water to make it more solid. You can continue to add more, and then the final product is held in ice cold water, then packaged up for you!

I had a little trouble getting it to stand on the little trunk since it was pretty top heavy, and I got a significant amount of laughs and stares. But, how often do you get to create your own tree candle while a large crowd of staff watch you and comment in a language you don’t understand? Not everyday!

Photos were really slow to upload from where we were, and they are now just slightly faster, so here’s an attempt at capturing the wrap-up of the recent training!

As we were studying statistics for democracy and development around the world, we discovered that the students weren’t very familiar with geography. We had trouble knowing what countries were in what continents, including their nearly-a-neighbor Cambodia and perhaps-it-should-be-obvious South Africa. This led to a few days of games and competitions identifying countries and some basic geography facts.

This is what it looks like to feed fifty students three times a day! There were two tables like this, with bowls of rice lined up Madeline-style.

We were talking about freedoms in class, one of them being the freedom of expression. We discussed speech, writing, art, and symbolism. I explained symbolism by drawing a cross, a swastika, and a peace sign on the board, and then I asked them what they mean and how they know this. We also discussed the peace sign with two fingers. Yim held up her hands with a peace sign to her cheek, just like all the students do in all their photos, and asked what it means. They guessed “handsome” or “style.”

What?! Every Asian I know gives the peace sign in every photo! And these students didn’t even know it meant peace?!

I could hardly believe it. Not one student knew that this meant peace. What is this continent coming to?

We taught them, and by the end of our course they were all walking around, giving peace signs accompanied with “peace” in Karen!

Another snake. This was during a break from class, when I heard a scream and saw the snake crawling at the back of our classroom. Some of the boys quickly killed it, and of course had to pick it up for a few poses. It was pretty good size and poisonous. It could kill you if left untreated, but they assured there is an herbal remedy that can fix you up pretty quickly.

Oh, wonderful.

I also learned that the one Stephen had spotted the day before was over three times as thick as this one. So thankful I didn’t have to see that one!

And did you know that after a snake is dead, it still moves? It wrapped its tail around the student’s arm, and he seemed surprised, too!

I don’t know what to comment on this, but it seemed photo worthy.

The area we were in is very near to Yim’s fiancé, so they were able to see each other for a few days! They asked Stephen to take a few engagement photos, and he did a great job. They were pretty adorable.

And then we headed back to a small town. We had to hike about two hours after days of rain, supposedly as a result of the cyclones in the region. Most of the hike was through rivers, now swollen from all the rain fall, and the rest was down very, very slippery mountainside. We arrived late in the evening on a holiday weekend, and after a dinner of snacks from 7/11, we couldn’t find a guesthouse. Despite the “over 200 hotels” that Yim kept telling us about, we ended up spending another night in the same mistake of a guesthouse.  I tried to argue that it could be worse, to which Stephen replied, “Yeah, it could be. The last time we stayed here.”

This was the cleaning of our shoes after trekking through the mud.

We relocated the next night, and found a little gem of a place situated on a little lake. It was clean and had a soft bed. As a bonus, it had cheetah print sheets. It’s not every day you get to sleep on cheetah print.

More photos of our adventures around this little town to come 🙂