We took a pre-vacation this weekend!

Stephen was pretty stressed this last week at work. To be honest, Stephen in a state of stress worries me. It just takes quite a lot to reach that point.  I naturally tend to think that if we’ve reached a point that he feels requires stress, I should have been stressed already. Thus, I might be close to crossing over to join him, and that can’t be good.  So when I see him stressed, I work pretty hard to help him feel like he can catch up and rest.

We spent most of the week attempting that.

And on Thursday he mentioned working through the weekend, which was very near pushing me over the edge.

So I proposed a deal: he could work Friday night and Saturday morning, but I called Saturday at noon to Sunday evening. And then I called a local guesthouse to reserve us a room for Saturday night.

A non-profit in town recently opened a guesthouse called Picturebook. It is beautifully designed, including handmade furniture repurposed from abandoned buildings around Mae Sot. Each room is themed and includes hand-batiked curtains, local art on the walls, and handmade 3D tiles to decorate. It is all work of local migrant workers as part of a skills training program. The guesthouse is also run by migrant workers, providing training in housekeeping and hotel management.

We had been wanting to visit, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity, particularly when it’s just $20 a night.  We also started the TV series Once Upon a Time earlier this week. We got hooked, so we finished the whole series. I also got to wear a new dress a sweet friend sent me last week; we enjoyed dinner out and took our traditional jumping on the bed photo.

Oh, and we got really excited for our real vacation that begins next Wednesday!

And then we enjoyed home church and came home to make homemade peanut butter, which turned out deliciously 🙂

We celebrated 4 July this year; after a day of work, that is.

First, there were Americans involved: 8 of us actually, and one Canadian in the mix.

Second, there was Western food involved: we went for sandwiches for lunch, and had burgers for dinner. Well, chicken burgers & rice burgers; Thai beef makes me nervous. I will have you know that we had chicken burgers left at the end, and no rice burgers left, so you should be jealous and ask me to make them for you in America!

We also had a pretty stellar cake, if I may say so myself.

And in true form, we watched Independence Day.

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But the real treat?

I snuck outside after Independence Day had started. It was just after eight, and there were still a few kids on our porch. I felt a pull to go sit with them, so I walked out to visit. Three of them left with in a few minutes of smiles and high fives, but Yuh Meh Oo stayed. She jumped up into my arms, wrapped her legs and arms around me, and laid her head on my shoulder.

She just laid there for so long. I rocked back and forth standing there, and occasionally she’d squeeze me with a tight hug. She pointed out the moon, which was absolutely stunning–full and bright amidst a dark, rainy sky; framed between two banana trees in our yard. It was gorgeous.

So I watched the moon, and I held her.

And then I got tired, so I sat down on the bench outside. She curled up next to me, and sat there, scratching mosquito bites. We didn’t even attempt to say anything. If I moved in the slightest, she curled up closer to me. And I stayed.

I began to pray for her. She seemed to just ache for something. And so did I.  She means so much to me; more than I could say and definitely enough to surprise me. She represents something as well; she represents the ache I have for the community–an ache to know them, to share with them, to encourage them, and to love them. And she represents all I can do at this point, show love and pray. And then show love again and pray some more.

The whole situation hurts me. That we can have friends over for a delicious meal, enjoy a movie on a laptop and speakers, and celebrate the freedom that we’ve known our whole lives. Meanwhile, she sits across the street, in a completely different scenario.

I’ve been preparing statistics for my curriculum this week. I have a selection of sixty countries, and I’m gathering statistics to help my classes compare development around the world: gross national income per capita, adult literacy rating, life expectancy, mean years of schooling, internet users per 100 people. And this week, when I’ve been watching the kids–they make up these statistics. If I have kids, they’ll make up the American statistics of high literacy, high access to phones and internet, low infant mortality rates. But here, statistics haunt them. And somehow we live within inches of each other. We give each other hugs and probably lice and worms, too. But our life expectancies gap by 13 years; our annual incomes gap by an amazing $41,482.

There was more prayer: giving thanks for freedom, and praying it upon these families; giving thanks to be here and celebrate this moment with Yuh Meh Oo, but praying for her future to be glorious. Praying that she might know the love of Christ, hope in someone greater than this world, and be an amazing piece in the coming Kingdom.

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Quite a lot of time went by, and I stood up, thinking she should probably head home as most the community was in their homes. She went over to her flip flops, but hesitated a little. She twirled one with her toe, and then turned around and ran back to give me a hug. When I reached to return the hug, she jumped into my arms and immediately laid her head on my shoulder again.

Another ten or twenty minutes went by when I saw her grandmother heading toward our house; so I pointed her out and Yuh Meh Oo jumped down to get her shoes and meet her in the street.

This morning was trip four of five to the hospital for the older woman’s rabies treatment. And this time, the community sent a little girl, Naw Eh, to accompany us. I can’t communicate with Naw Eh either, but we are at least quite familiar with our lack of communication since she plays are our house regularly.

And then when we returned at 9:30am, Naw Eh had the rest of the day off school. I offered to let her color, and she returned this:

That’s me, apparently; it’s at least my name in Karen written at the top.  It does confirm my princesses and castles theory a little. I was skeptical, though.

But then I saw the next picture.

And at least that’s not how she views me.

After painting a number of weeks ago, we finally borrowed a drill this weekend to hang some things on our walls. It took quite awhile, but 58 holes later our house has a little more character!

Drilling into concrete is no easy task, and Stephen did a stellar job with a great attitude. Love him.

We found these knobs at a Burmese antique shop and added them to our coffee tables. They don’t particularly match, but I love them. 

Most of what we hung up were hooks: we now have sixteen hooks in our room, eight in our kitchen, four in the studio, and ten in the living room. I really love hooks. These are by our front door and purchased from the same antique shop.

In the dark corner of our living room, Stephen would use the headlamp to see where he was drilling, then I would use it for marking the drill holes, hammering in anchors, and whatever else I was strong enough to do. Either way, he got it all sweaty and I didn’t want to put that on my forehead, so I used this little baggie from hardware shop.

He thought this was hilarious.

This is the curtain that separates our new guest room, allowing Stephen to have a studio.

We’ve been collecting frames and created this family collage. Well, it’s not family yet–it’s sideways photos, dated photos, and the King–because we haven’t printed the pictures. But soon I think this will be one of my favorite things.

How great is this handmade hook?!

Compliments of my sister, Jenn. This photo really doesn’t do justice to her amazing job on this, and how great it looks in the studio, but it’s one of my favorite things.

One of our door knobs broke, so Stephen replaced them both. They’re not genuine antiques, but still pretty great.

So this didn’t require any drilling, but most of the things we put on the walls are my favorite things in our house. So I decided to add these last two favorite things: first, these fun pillows in our living room.

And second, I found this purple paisley fabric in a local shop, and had another shop sew them into pillow cases. They look really wonderful in our room, and again, it’s one of the little things I really love.

I made my third and fourth trips to the hospital yesterday. And, jumping ahead a little in the stories, I woke up last night having nightmares about hospitals and medicine.

Yesterday was a long day.

About 7:45am I walked out to find the little boy with the burn. I piled into the car with him and his two older sisters, who both speak Burmese, and we headed off to the hospital to get his dressings changed.

They told us it opened at 8am, and I was trying to get an early start since I had somewhere to be at 8:45am.

But having lived in Thailand for a year and a half now, I should have known better.

It actually opened at 8:30am, at which point you have to get a plastic number, which are apparently worth running and scowling at the white person for. We ended up with Number 8.

(I would not have survived the Hunger Games.)

We then proceeded to sit for the next two hours waiting for our turn. I did get to see the Thai national anthem play: it plays every day at 8am and 6pm in more public areas of town that have televisions; mostly places I am not usually at these hours.

Stephen kindly came at 8:30am to take the truck to pick up volunteers and a Partners staff member to deliver them to our house. We had planned to do a health check with our neighborhood community.

I arrived around 10:30am, just as hand washing was in practice.

The next six hours were spent checking kids and families for ear infections, skin infections, scabies, school sores, lice, chest infections, and malnourishment. It was a great experience to reconnect with the families and bring some basic help. A visiting nurse from New Zealand, Ruth, worked with our medical staff coordinator, Hsar Paw, to take time with each child or mother. They had brought medicine with them, which we handed out with instructions in Burmese.

We found an upsetting amount of lice, but that doesn’t take much and didn’t surprise me. There were two ear infections, including one little sweetheart who cried when Ruth went to check his ears. She eventually had a look, determined it was an infection, and he promptly fell asleep exhausted in my lap. Probably one of the highlights of my day.

I’m not sure I’d call this a highlight, but another anecdote about the day: some of the antibiotics we were giving the families needed to be refrigerated. I was willing to have them come to our house to take them, but it seemed wise to ask if they had access to a fridge first. I asked Hsar Paw to ask them if they had a fridge. After asking, they responded very enthusiastically. Hsar Paw replied, “Yes, they would love to have a fridge!”  I quickly explained that we weren’t actually giving away refrigerators today, but just wanted to see if they had access to one. They said yes, they had two, but another was welcomed. 🙂

By the end of the day Ruth & Hsar Paw had checked most of the children and many adults, maybe about forty? As we walked around the community to see if there was anyone else, someone mentioned a woman down the road that was having some issues. They went to get her, and she came up to the house obviously in pain. Her leg had been bitten by a dog yesterday, and it was quite clearly infected. Not only did it need to be cleaned, but she probably needed tetanus and rabies shots, too.

Thus, hospital trip number four arrived at my door.  After coordinating to drop off Ruth and the volunteers from Arkansas, I headed off to the hospital with Hsar Paw and this elderly woman. And this is where the real adventure began.

The woman spoke Poh Karen, which is another dialect of Karen. Thus, although a few words are similar, we couldn’t really communicate. Thankfully, Hsar Paw knows five languages–yes, five–and Poh Karen is one of them.

I won’t go through all of the details of the hospital except this: I did get to see the Thai national anthem play again, which to me was simply a clear sign I should spend less time at the hospital. Oh, and rabies treatment is expensive, requires another four visits to the hospital, and appears very uncomfortable. Oh, my.

Around 7pm, Hsar Paw had to go pick up another woman and her baby who had just arrived from Chiang Mai after the baby went up for surgery. In the end, we had this younger mother with her two-month-old baby, this elderly woman, and I in the car. Hsar Paw left on her motorbike to go home. The plan was this: I drop off the mother & her baby at one home, stop by Hsar Paw’s house for medicine for the older woman, and then drop the older woman off at her house, which is very near to mine.

When we arrived at our first stop, I told the mother in Karen than she & her baby could get out to stay here. She said thank you and climbed out of the car. It was at this point that the older woman in the front seat began to stand up on the seat. I try to tell her to sit down, stay, wait, etc., but none of these seem to be the words that are the same between Sgaw Karen & Poh Karen. Or she was ignoring me.

Either way, I now have a very elderly woman standing the seat next to me.

She then starts climbing to the back seat, and eventually out of the car. I had no idea what she was doing, but I began to get out. She ran to the front of the car and looked around the corner of the road. She then ran to the back of the car and looked around that corner.

At this point I was thinking maybe she had to go to the bathroom or vomit. I decided to see what she was going to do, until she started to walk away, pointing, and said, “Hsa Thoo Lei?”

And it clicked. Hsa Thoo Lei is a migrant school right near our house; I realized she thinks I’ve taken her home but doesn’t know which way it is. In reality, we’re a good 5 kilometers from her house, and she won’t make it there in the dark and with the sense of direction I’m observing.

As she started to walk away, I tried to convince her to get back in the car. Fail.

I tred to call Hsar Paw and explain. This took a little while anyway, because Hsar Paw was trying to convince me it was okay for the mother and baby to get out of the car. It took a minute to explain it was the old woman I couldn’t get back in the truck.

Oh, my.

There was a Karen man nearby, so I went for it. I tried to tell him in Karen that she speaks Poh Karen, and I don’t. I told him she thinks this is her house, and it’s not. And I really just need her to get back in the car and I’ll take her home!

And then he and I chased her around the car a few times trying to convince her to get in.

Eventually, she did, and I thanked him heartily.

When we got back to our house, she hopped out pretty quickly. She did thank us as she walked away, but I kind of wonder if she’ll come to the hospital with me next Monday for her next rabies treatment. I can’t say it seemed like a good experience for her.

Funnily enough, Stephen, having not been there for all of this, says to me, “Is she okay? She looks terrified.”

This weekend I also went back to finish up my batik course, now that the dyes had completely dried. I went back to the studio on Sunday morning to paint silicon on top of the dyes. This locks in the color, so any part I didn’t completely coat in silicon would lose most of its color.

We then left to let this dry for most of the day. I went for a run & swim, made tortillas for dinner, and went to home church. We went back around 4pm to find the silicon dried and the fabric dark and stiff. Our teacher showed us how to wash out the silicon with cold water.

For the final step, we boiled each piece in water with laundry detergent and some sort of acid mixed in.  There are a few photos of my pieces wet below, and then at home after they had dried.

I can’t say either of my pieces turned out exactly as I envisioned. Nor am I sure what to do with them: a large “napkin” of a tree and a scarf in Thailand? But, I loved the process. It was such an experience to learn the age-old techniques, enjoy the teaching of local Burmese artists, and simply use my right brain for awhile!

On a side note, more pictures of Stephen to come. He tends to be behind the camera more than in front of it, at least in the good photos, but I’ll work on changing that.

This weekend, I had a wonderful opportunity to take a batik course in Mae Sot. That’s right, our odd little collection of a border town offered this treasure!

A local nonprofit, Youth Connect, works with Burmese youth that have graduated from migrant high schools. The youth can apply to be a part of an apprenticeship program where they learn life skills and specific studies. Their program covers a variety of areas, including a guesthouse that trains housekeeping, restaurant service, front desk help, and the like; a repair shop that works on motorbikes and bicycles; and the Puzzlebox Art Studio, where they have taught pottery, painting, sewing, batik, and more. The art studio was responsible for designing and decorating the guesthouse over the past couple years, and now they are in the process of becoming self-sustainable through art sales, classes, and an open coffee shop on Saturday mornings.

This weekend I took the first part of a batik course, which is a traditional form of dying material that is quite common among Burmese communities. For my course, there were four of us taking it–myself, another Partners staff member, an eight-year-old and her grandmother visiting from the States. We had one Burmese woman teaching us with the help of a couple students in the apprenticeship program. And for just $33 to a good cause, we worked from 9am to 5pm on Sunday!  I’ll go back to finish next week for 3 to 4 hours.

I was able to make two pieces. I initially signed up to make a scarf: it seemed small enough to tackle, and I figured any areas I messed up on I could crinkle up around my neck. However, I discovered when we got there that if you sign up to do a scarf, you get to do a napkin, too, which was one of the other options.

Not sure really how that all went down, but I was given the long scarf shape and this square one, which is about 30″ x 30″. This seems pretty big for a napkin, let alone the fact that we’re in Mae Sot and cloth napkins seem a little fancy for us. I just decided to go with my trusty drawing of a tree that I sketch out somewhere on a regular basis. Here it is drawn on with colored pencils, which will come out when we boil it next week. It was stretched onto the frame after I drew it.

This is my scarf with a leaf pattern drawn onto it.

We then had to follow the drawing with wax, using these pipe-looking tools that you see around here. I don’t know the technicalities, but I learned this:

Sometimes the wax comes out smoothly, and when it does you better move fast.

Sometimes it doesn’t really come out at all, and I’m not really sure why or what I did differently.

Drips won’t look pretty in the end, but they are inevitable for some of us.

The wax is really hot if you drop it on your fingers or toes. Really hot.

My tree, post-wax.

My tree with one coat of dye.

They are really into fading, and I can’t say I’m a big fan. But since I really didn’t want to use the fading technique on my scarf and it seemed to be heavily encouraged, I thought I’d try it here. I still can’t say it’s really my style, but we’ll see how it comes out in the end.

Throughout the process it’s hard to imagine what it will really look like in the end. After its very dry, we’ll cover it in silicon and then boil it until all the colored pencil and wax has left the fabric. Quite a bit of a color comes out, too. Thus, what you see now will be a little different, and while you’re painting, it’s difficult to envision it without the wax or with washed out colors.

Here I moved on to waxing my scarf design.

My scarf, post-wax. As you can see, I didn’t do as well with the wax on this one. There are tons more drops and uneven lines. But as you’ll see later, this actually wasn’t my biggest problem.

In an effort to not make this all about myself, I’ll show you a taste of what my fellow staff member was working on. She was working on a larger piece of fabric she’ll be turning into a dress.

She was a more ambitious newbie. And perhaps more successful!

My scarf with one coat of dye. I had three shades of green, with red and a melon color sprinkled throughout. Here you can see the beginnings of my errors: while some areas had very thick wax lines and drops everywhere, other areas I did the wax line too thin. Since the wax holds the dye in place, some of my dyes ran. Quite a lot of them, really.

While planning on quite a bit of color to come out, I tried to do two or three coats on everything in an attempt to avoid pastels. I don’t really care for pastels.

This is my final product of the napkin, about three coats in.

This is my final product of the scarf, complete with a gray-blue background and quite a bit of spreading color spots.

And that’s a wrap. It was a long day outside in the heat while bent over a table or stretched fabric. But, it was such a fun project! I learned so much, and I love taking advantage of unique opportunities we have here.

Stephen & I had our first visit to the Mae Sot airport this week to pick up a volunteer, and it was too wonderful not to mention. Please forgive the camera phone photos and cherish the fuzzy images they hold!

This is pretty much it. The arrival area is off to the left, and departures are to the right. There is one woman at the check-in/information counter.

There are no restaurants, but one little shop showcasing the treasures of Mae Sot, including some boxed food.

These are the departure & arrival boards, obviously permanent enough to be pasted together. We were there on a Thursday, so they had one flight come in at 10:35am, and it left again at 10:55am–a notably quick turnaround that included a pickup truck pulling up next to the plane to move luggage. And after that flight took off, their day was over.

And, last but not least, we thought the sign to enter security was worth capturing.

I’m sorry, I simply need to declare them, and then I can continue right through? I’m hoping this is a translation error.

Either way, we really loved the airport, and we’re dreaming of flying right out of Mae Sot for an adventure sometime soon!

Do I write about our neighborhood too much?

Perhaps.

I do love what I’m doing at work. But after I leave out the parts that can’t be discussed on the blog, I’m left with research and curriculum writing that will certainly lose readers.

And after reading a political book all day, this does bring smiles to my face.

This week they also started saying “Stephen, Kelli, I love you” with their hands in a heart shape.

And I blew one of the girls a kiss a few weeks ago as I said goodbye, and this spread like wildfire. They love it.

They also found a make-up kit this week and got all dolled up.

Stephen is outrageously popular for picking up the kids and throwing them up in the air. Since there are so many of them, he quickly made a rule for one each. And since he kept saying, “Just one,” they now come up to him, shouting, “One! One!” when they want him to throw them. It begins to sound a little bit like the pelicans on Finding Nemo.

My special friend, Yuh Meh Oo, doesn’t much like this game though. She tried it once and it terrified her; she’d rather just be cuddled. After Stephen would throw all the other kids, he’d reach out to her just to give her a hug. Out of fear of being thrown, she’d pull away; since the difference was rather hard to communicate. But yesterday, she got it–he threw all the kids up into the air, reached over for her, and she trustingly jumped into his arms for a hug.

I suppose the significance of that might not be glaring, but the look on her face was perfect. It’s these sort of looks that really make me thankful to be here.