We returned last week from a trek 8 hours north to visit two refugee camps, Mae Ra Ma & Mae La Oon, for nine days. It’s summer break here, so we visited six of the children’s homes Partners supports to have some fun with the kids, practice their English and our Karen, and sing songs.

It left us tired.

I’ve been trying to catch up ever since–on laundry, on cleaning the house, on winning the war against creatures in our home, on emails.

And on air con.

It was hot. Yes, we are in Thailand and it is in fact hot season; however, this was an entirely new level of heat.  Imagine the hottest you’ve ever been–I’m thinking of an August run in Arkansas or my half marathon–and then pour a bucket of hot water on your head. That was us all week long. I didn’t know that much sweat could pour out of me or that my shirt could stay that wet. I didn’t know you could pour a relatively cold bucket of water on your head to shower, and still five minutes later be sweating through yet another shirt.

But there were wonderful pieces of our journey, too.

We drove by an elephant. Twice.

We had a visitor one evening who had come from deep inside of Burma. He had never seen white people and wanted to take a photo with us; he’s on the left below.

Both of the camps we visited are built along beautiful rivers and gorgeous. They are harder to get to–think two or three hours of 4WD at about 20 kilometers an hour–and thus much less visited. The kids were so excited to see us, and our hosts are overly thankful and extremely hospitable.

We taught the kids a few English songs, and since they learn them through repetition, we sang the same three songs more times than I could count. We also had a bible story each day and the kids memorized three or four verses. We then split into groups for a few hours, where Stephen taught music theory, I taught “advanced” English, and two other staff members taught basic English and Thai.  We ended the days with more singing, snacks, some games, and a collective swim in the river.

We not only sang “This is the Day” more times than I could possibly count, but we took on many other roles. I was invited to teach the cook “how to make white person food” for future visitors. This resulted in three days in the kitchen to make tortillas with beans & salsa, pancakes, and french fries.  This was wonderfully fun, and I loved seeing their kitchens, working alongside them, and chopping vegetables while sitting on a bamboo floor. I learned how to cook over a charcoal fire, and survived stronger heat than I mentioned earlier. Imagine the same run, with three or four buckets of steaming water poured on you. In the photo below, please note the pig jaw hanging to the right of the pot and left of the post…

We were also the welcomed guests to a wedding, and were able to help with flower arrangements, provided special music, and walked to the church with the families. Stephen was also the photographer!

Take a few moments to consider the picture above. First, wedding or extravagant birthday party? That is a lot of balloons and streamers.

I’m sure you’ll also notice the four girls wearing veils. It’s obvious the flower girls aren’t getting married, but in case you are wondering, the two in the middle are the bride & groom. The others are the best man & maid of honor. Who’d have thought they’d all look the same?

Also please take note of the clock. That is 7:10AM, ladies and gentlemen, and we’re already seated in the church.

And we’re back.

Just cherishing a few tasty items we’ve been enjoying this week.

First, a package from Rex & Gena, duly packed with all sorts of goodies they know I’ll never purchase, even if we did have access to them!

Our fridge is now sufficiently stocked with chocolate, including Reese’s and Thin Mints!

And, we made sweet potato fries for dinner, but with purple sweet potatoes.

That’s all; I just thought they looked cool!

After one of my training classes last week, I came home to find the suctioned shelves removed from our bathroom wall.

Instead, they were at the office. I mean, where else would I look for them?

Partners’ iMac crashed last week, and Stephen was working to come up with a solution. He determined it was the hard drive and that he could purchase a new hard drive in town for just $90. He asked at the local computer shop if they had suctions to open a computer, to which they replied, “Oh, no. Not Mac. Bangkok, Bangkok.”

That’s when he had the idea to use our soap-dish suction cups to do it himself. He ended up saving Partners $1,000!

I would explain all of these steps to you if I was clever enough to know what he was in fact doing.

Genius. 🙂

Oh, yes. Our bedroom is now a beautiful shade of gold.

We’re still lacking a few pieces of furniture. We have some made from a local bamboo shop, and we’re slowly adding pieces as we return some to our landlord. We have a wardrobe ordered that will arrive in late April, and we have plans to order a bed frame in the next few months. We’re trying to spread out our expenses of painting and replacing our landlord’s furniture with our own over a few months.

The room is really beautiful, and the colors are so inviting. As much as I thought painting would help it feel like a home, it made more of a difference than I thought.

Either way, now we have this:

The main room will come soon, but it’s a little overwhelming. Perhaps we’ll tackle it in a few weeks!

The second room has been dominated.

And let me tell you, it took true domination.

We made the mistake of switching paint brands, which ended in painting four coats of milk-like liquid onto our wall and cleaning up the hundreds of drops that ensued.

Either way, it’s bold and reminds us of the Razorbacks, even if this picture doesn’t quite capture it:

Can you see that the floor is slightly pink? Yeah, we’re choosing to ignore that, too.

Over the next few weeks, amidst continued painting, we’ll be turning this into a studio! This is Stephen’s first official studio, and he’s excited.

We have been wanting to paint the inside of our house since day one.

We initially thought the white was simply boring. It was when we noticed that our walls were a slight shade of pink, complete with white ceilings and assorted colors of tile: cream, blue fake stones, blue flower power, and still more light pink, that the painting seemed more imperative.

Unfortunately, we have been told that when landlords see that you have “settled” into the home, they are more keen to raise rent, because they believe you’ll just pay it rather than move. Painting is one of the key factors we’ve heard mentioned.

We were quite worried our landlord would raise rent on us as we approached the end of our one-year contract. That is, until I asked our office manager, who talks with our landlord and helps us with such business.

She laughed, and said, “I think your landlord will do anything for you to stay. I think they are afraid no one else will rent a house there.”

So perhaps the fact that we chose to live in a poorer part of town, namely where many Burmese migrants are, is to our advantage. Apparently Thais don’t particularly like living nearing the migrant communities, and the foreigners are afraid of being robbed.

We love it.

We love our neighbors, and we pretty much love our house with all its quirks.

So we thought we might negotiate down a little on price. It seemed bold; not many foreigners hope for a lower price, some even have a yearly percentage increase in the contract. We thought we’d start low so we had room to bargain. We asked for 1,500 baht less per month, and told them we’d give back all the furniture that came with the house.

They took the price, and said we could keep the furniture.

That’s 25% less per month for two more years!  We were pretty excited. It’s about $50 per month, but that’s huge to our budget.

Really, much bigger than I could express. Our lives are quite cheap here.

Anyway, all this to say: we felt the freedom to paint now!  And we figured, if we’re going for it, go bold or go home.

We started with orange in the kitchen.

How else do you compliment bright blue tile with a fake stone design? I suppose you can either fight it–gray or more blue, which heaven only knows our house does not need more shades of blue!–or embrace it.

We called it burnt orange initially, and I suppose that’s kind of how we talked ourselves into it.

But if we’re being real, it’s just orange.

Our fun time in Chiang Mai started at the zoo, and it thoroughly exceeded our expectations.

The animals were of course a little more exotic: zebras, rhinos, hippos, giraffes, elephants, lions, tigers, bears. We even saw the only three pandas in Thailand and visited the aquarium that houses the longest underwater tunnel in Asia.

The best part, though?

You can feed so many of the animals that you encounter. They have stations with fruit, vegetables, and meat–whatever diet is appropriate–and you can purchase a basket for somewhere between $.30 and $2.

It was more fun than I could say.

Seriously? He was cute enough to almost convince us to get a pet elephant.

I fed raw beef to a leopard!

The whole place was huge, and we spent seven hours perusing. It wasn’t designed very practically, which I might argue is somewhat common in Thailand, and we walked up some sharp hills and steep, uneven steps for many of these hours, sometimes just to find that there was nothing built at the end.

With such a day full of walking and exercise, we enjoyed a night out: dinner at one of our favorite restaurants in Chiang Mai, complete with a hamburger and fries for Stephen!  We had some Starbucks coffee while we waited for our late showing of Hugo, in theaters here in 3D. It was brilliant, by the way.

And it was a very fun, very deluxe sort of day.

The community garden is primarily overseen by an elderly Karen woman. She lives with her daughter, son-in-law, and grandson; and she’s affectionately called Pi Pi, or grandmother, in Karen.

She knows we have been learning Karen, and often tries to speak to us. Rather than using the basic sentences we may or may not know, she speaks in long monologues that often involve significant arm motions and occasionally even jumping and bouncing. We never understand, partially because of language, and partially because I believe she’s gone quite senile. Even with assistance from a translator, the point is often lost.

For the past week or so, she has been approaching us more regularly. Nearly every day she would track us down and speak to us.

And every time we were very confused and left with smiles, repeating, “I don’t understand.”

On Monday afternoon we were outside the house loading up the truck to go to Chiang Mai. We were about three hours behind schedule and scrambling to get things into place.  I was taking the trash out as one of the last things, while Stephen was coming in from turning off our water.

He warned me, “She’s coming; try not to run into her because we’ve got to go!”

And then after I didn’t come in for ten minutes, he knew I’d been caught and came out to observe.

Our conversation went like this: She gave me a very long spiel–the same from the past few days. The only word I understood was “go”, which is discouraging. I asked her to speak slowly; she repeated the same thing at the same speed. I asked her where she was going, and who, and why; all to which she repeated the same thing in the same manner. I asked to speak to her daughter, who I typically understand better. She repeated the spiel. I asked where her daughter was and explained that might help me understand. She repeated.

I called a friend from work, who happened to be sick that day and still sweetly and graciously offered to help translate over the phone. I handed over the phone, which Pi Pi wasn’t sure how to use, and the speech was repeated yet again.

And when I received the phone back, our friend understood just barely more than I did. It seemed scattered, she said, but something about someone going somewhere.

About this time–when we were three and a half hours behind schedule–the daughter, Mong Ey, showed up. She is more familiar with our Karen level, and she knows to use basic words and speak slowly.

This is more helpful than I could say.

She explained that her mother was leaving tomorrow. She was crossing the border to go back to Burma, eventually traveling to Rangoon. She wouldn’t be back to Mae Sot and wanted to tell us goodbye.

And even better, they saw that we had a truck today, and when we have a truck they know we are leaving for a longer period of time, so she was trying to tell us urgently.

…Lovely.

We said our goodbyes and left, quite late now. And then as we drove away, we had the idea of coming back to take a photo.

We also took a few shots of their family together and said our goodbyes again before heading out, very aware that we wouldn’t be arriving to our destination until around midnight.

Even so, it was really wonderful. For a split second, we could communicate a few small things. And for a split second, we got another glimpse into the community we’re creating here.  We received another reminder to love well and pray more for what God is doing to advance his Kingdom.

We still love our neighbors.

We still go out to play with the kids and love how popular we feel when we drive down the street between two rows of hellos and goodbyes.

But here are a few new developments:

+ While we were out playing Memory yesterday, one of the girls accidentally called Stephen by my name, which suddenly ensued huge bouts of laughter all around. Hilarious–Stephen being Kelli. Nevermind the fact that for the first six months we were here, and last week for that matter, they have called both of us Kelli. Suddenly, they understand our names?!

+ A three year old was eating a cookie with one hand and picking at bird poop with another. He didn’t seem to know what it was and was just pointing at it for Stephen. With utmost maturity, Stephen then proceeded to let him know it was bird poop by: motioning for a bird (hands as wings, saying “tweet tweet”) and then motioning for poop, including a hand motion in the vicinity of his rear and a fart sound. The little boy got it, and among the older boys around, he quickly became a hero.

And to make it better, when another little boy walked up later, the story was repeated. We could of  course tell this by the similar, oh-so-classy hand motions and sound effects.

+ On a better note–our garden is working! There are a couple women who come regularly in the mornings to work in the garden; they are watering constantly in this dry season. And things are growing!  Just before we left for the last team, an older woman came over to pick up five snake gourds and two pumpkins. As she was leaving, she handed us two of the gourds and took the rest back for dinner!  We tried to actually give her these back, too, but she insisted. Either way, there were vegetables and we were sharing them communally. Sounds like success to me.

Yesterday, too, another woman came over before dinner and grabbed a few pieces of lemongrass for her dish. We love it.

+ They’re still adorable, too, and obviously learning good things from us!

Stephen took so many photos while we were home for Christmas, and they’ve been our screen saver since we returned home. They fall across the screen, distracting me from the conversation I’m in the middle of.

My favorites often surprise me. They aren’t the posed ones, perfect for frames, where we all look oh-so-good. Instead, I like the blurry ones where someone was moving too quickly to capture them. I like the ones where the focus is on the “wrong” thing, forcing you see things from a different perspective.  I like the ones where one person is the center of the photo, but the person in the background has the hilarious facial expression.

This is probably my favorite of them all.

It captures the conversation, the warm clothes, the family being together; it captures her amazing facial expressions. This one photo takes me back to her house and our chatting while she puts up laundry; to these same facial expressions being made over loading the dishwasher or making muffins.

I was so excited to see this girl; I was so excited for these conversations. I actually–and quite foolishly–thought that having the time with her over Christmas would fill that void. We had many conversations, shared quite a few laughs, and even squeezed in a few runs.

But instead of being filled up, I want so many more.