Sometimes I overestimate the capacity we have, and it leads to a few busy, chaotic days as Stephen graciously helps us pull it off and make ends meet.

Other times, I truly and completely overestimate our capacity, and it leads to a few weeks of exhaustion and a night or two of not going to bed until 2 or 3 in the morning. Because Stephen is one of the most patient people I know, he is still gracious and helps pull it all together. This includes going to sleep on the futon at 2:30am because I’m still packing and have clothes strewn across our bed. That was this past two weeks for us.

But amidst the over-zealous to-do list, there were some great notables. The first being the kids’ first day of school!

(Are you hearing “First day of school! First day of school!” in Nemo’s voice? Me, too.)

The kids are divided between three schools around us, mostly depending on the parent’s value of education and willingness to pay between $3 and $20 per term.

It’s so fun to have school start back. Since our house is the house to be in the neighborhood, we are a bit relieved when the school bus starts pulling around. Kids can get pretty destructive and crazy in the hours of summer, and this summer’s heat wave didn’t help the insanity.

(On the note of the heat wave, I know we keep mentioning this. The rain has now started, and we officially survived. But I want to note that there usually about five consecutive days over 105 degrees Fahrenheit. This year, there were fifty. FIFTY CONSECUTIVE DAYS of what I can only fathom to be hell-like heat. We were not being overly dramatic. It was horrible. Take a minute and say a prayer of thanks that we survived and that you don’t live here.)

Now, the rains have started, and the kids pile off to school with their lunch pails and umbrellas. For those at Hsa Thoo Lei migrant & the Hua Fai Thai school, they walk to class and often just stop in to tell us hello in the morning as they pass the house, which is adorable.

For those going to Ko Pi Ban migrant school, our house is the unofficial bus stop for the surrounding kilometer or so. It’s so fun to have the kids gathered around in the mornings–both kids we know and kids we are only now meeting–and then hear, “The car is here! The car is here!” and watch everyone pile into the back of a pick-up. It’s a magic show, really: I have no idea how they pile some fifty kids into the car. They just keep coming and squeezing.

On one of the first days of school, there was a kid outside of our gate early in the morning, before any of the other kids had arrived. Stephen welcomed him in and told him he could sit down. The poor little boy looked dumb-founded. Stephen could tell he was scared, so just smiled and came back inside, saying, “Well, there is a new kid outside, and I don’t think he expected me to speak Burmese. I’m also not sure how he knew to come here. Do they just tell the new kids to go to the white people’s house? The poor kid is scared to death.”

One last note: we are really excited to say that the two girls who were unable to go to school last year have started back to school this year! (In the photos above, they are the two girls on the far right.) We are so excited for this opportunity for them, and also really thankful we were able to help them in the gap of this last year. We really hope that giving them English and math practice over the last year and through the summer program will help them to adjust back, despite the absence of a year.

But it’s hard when this little guy loves us so much.

He is a talker now, which has brought so much fun. He’s always here, always smiling, always ready to play, always ready for a hug, always ready to do a load of laundry.

 

We did it: a five-week summer program for 25-30 kids in the community. We felt pretty good completing it, I must say.

To finish strong, our last day was focused on learning currency. We reviewed Thai currency values and added up amounts in worksheets. We did math problems about spending and saving and earning. And then, each student received pretend money for their age: 10 baht for every year they were, giving them 40-140 baht to “spend” in our “market.”

Yep, we created a little market in our house.

We have had some friends move recently and give us a few items for the community: clothing, a rice cooker, a light. We also always have a few items we can give away, and we bought some things in the market they can always use: notebooks and pens for school starting next week, new clothing, a few Burmese books, laundry detergent. All the things kids like, right?

Well, they did. They loved it! Each child went home with a little set of treasures while they learned to count and spend their money. It was a pretty fun way to finish!

We then had a little ceremony, giving participation certificates to all & awards for perfect attendance.

We gave out special certificates for best English, best math, beautiful handwriting, and best singing. The kids love certificates; the whole country of Burma does, really. They were so proud to see their names written out, and we were so proud to hand out homemade certificates entirely in Burmese 🙂

As we finished everything yesterday, I took out a bag of extra printouts and notebooks we had left over and left them by the trash. We came out today to find eight kids circled around our table & porch practicing English & math, so apparently they didn’t have their fill yet.

But that’s a wrap: our first summer program successfully in the books!

Spoiler: There weren’t really any white dresses or blue sashes. But there were beautiful dresses all the same, and even more beautiful girls. And these are a few of our favorite people wearing their favorite things!

Some friends of ours in town wrote us last week to ask if we’d be interested in having 20 dresses donated to girls in our community. They had a friend of theirs–a 9-year-old Iraqi–who wanted to give other girls her age the opportunity to wear beautiful dresses like she can. She raised funds to pay for a local Burmese seamstress, who works with our friends at Global Alms, to make all twenty dresses and give them out in a local community.

And we are that community! We were so honored to have them ask.

We always love a chance to bless these friends. This in particular was just such a great opportunity. We live in a neighborhood where things are seemingly always breaking: families, houses, clothes, opportunities. It feels like everything is coming apart at the seams.

To bring in bright colors, beautiful ribbons, gathered fabric, and flowing skirts full of innocence and beauty; handmade with love–this is an opportunity not to be missed!

Excuse my arm in this shot, but I love her face!
It is so fun to see their confidence soar as they try to minimize their visible excitement!

We are so thankful for friends around us in Mae Sot partnering with us in the community. We have a family that comes to our house weekly to play with the kids; another family blessed our community with their tithe this month. We had computers donated last month, and now dresses!

This has been one of our busiest seasons in awhile, in the midst of the hottest summer we’ve had here, so there is much that has gone unsaid. I’m working on it, though, because amidst the chaos, there are some great things blooming.

You see, the summer program has worked! And that is worth noting.

The kids are coming and they are anxious to learn. The students helping are amazing and completely making it possible. We’ve practiced English and we’ve practiced math; we had a geography day and learned about continents, oceans, and countries. We have a money day coming this week to learn about counting and spending and saving.

I taught this little guy to add using Legos. It was amazing.

He made two little piles of 4 and 5, then added them up to 9. And then we did it over and over again with each problem.

I taught another young girl and little boy how to carry when they add. We learned about the different value places and added three digits with three digits.

We learned about families and who lives in their families. We learned how to describe people {and encouraged words other than “big” and “fat”}.

We sang songs and danced together.

They listened to stories with such intensity and learned about being nice to people that are different than us, picking up trash that can hurt the earth and animals, and how we all have something to offer.

We successfully wore the kids out for two hours, making them more sane the other hours of the day!

And summer just flew by us. We finish the summer program this week!

We are in the midst of a busy, challenging, hard season. The weather doesn’t help–it’s the middle of hot season and well over 100 every day. The evenings cool down to the 90s, but that is little respite. It is also summer, so the kids are out of school and, well, like every kid you know on summer break! They get a little stir crazy. They tend to be more destructive, more demanding, and more overwhelming for us.

To help curb this, we thought it would be helpful to have something for them to do–to keep them busy and to wear them out. I talked with the sweet woman I used to take Karen lessons from, who lives near our house and has a small children’s home. They have about seven teenagers in their home and love Jesus, so we thought they’d be great help to love on our community of kids. Actually, they are far more than a great help! They are spectacular teachers.

Every Tuesday & Wednesday from 10-12am, we have about 25 kids in the house. We try to keep the doors open and fans going: 110 degrees with thirty people in a small space is beyond hot.

We take attendance–as there is a prize promised to anyone who attends all 10 classes over five weeks–and then start with English.

Each student has their own work folder, with an English packet and math packet for their level. They work through it on their own or in groups and ask for help when they need it. Its very counter-cultural, since we don’t have a teacher in the front and it isn’t rote learning.

We usually do about 40 minutes of English and then switch to math for about 20 minutes, simply because I have to grade it all and they are much faster at math! Over the weekends I look over all of them and circle what is incorrect, which they then re-do. This is also very counter-cultural, so we’re stretching them in every direction!

A little after 11, we sing songs. I picked out eight songs for us to learn over the five weeks. One is a version of “If You’re Happy & You Know It,” but goes through happy, angry, scared, and sleepy. We also sing a song for the days of the week, one for colors about God coloring the world, and “The Lord is Good to Me.” The last four are from The Verses Project, so they are directly from the ESV Bible. It seemed a great way for them to learn Bible verses in English, so we are memorizing Galatians 5:22-23, John 14:6, Proverbs 15:1, and 1 Corinthians 13:4-7.

After we sing through some of the songs, we have “story time.” I found a set of Burmese children’s books in town, and Stephen & I have been reading them in our Burmese classes. They each teach a lesson about caring for others, taking care of the environment, having confidence, etc. I gave them to the older students who are helping us teach, thinking they could read them aloud to the younger students. I’m not sure where the miscommunications occurred or what “story time” generally looks like locally, but it usually means they re-tell the story book in their own way and words. Or sometimes they just tell their own stories–perhaps with a moral, perhaps funny; it’s hard to say because I can only understand bits of it!

Either way, we have stories of some kind.

Once the kids in the community head home, we walk to one of the family’s shops to have lunch with the student helpers.

So far, we’re two weeks in and the kids love it. It is amazing to see them so excited to come and learn, even just to do worksheets on their own. It has also made summer much more bearable for Stephen & I, despite the stacks of papers to check over the weekend. I love the opportunity to encourage the kids and tell them how great they’re doing. Two weeks in, I’m both thankful we decided to do it and that we decided on only five weeks 🙂

We know our lives are far from normal when we spend our Saturday night hosting a community meeting and then laugh for hours with other people’s kids. But, this was our Saturday night.

Part 1: The community meeting went better than we could have expected! We had over thirty adults show and everyone was very responsive. We told them about the summer program for the kids we are starting this week–every Tuesday & Wednesday for six weeks we are going to have what we’re calling a “summer program” from 10am-12pm. We’ll have English practice, math practice, English songs, and Burmese story books. We’re trying to reach four to sixteen year olds, in our house, in the hottest part of the year–so we’ll see how that goes!

We also had to have some difficult conversations about immigration and police changes in Mae Sot, and some ways we can no longer help due to the risk. We also had to address some “abuse” of the system. It gave us a chance to share our heart to help, our heart to be here and to love, but also that we are humans and we have limits. And since thirty of them showed up, they all have huge families, and we are two people–the math is simple enough. With time, we’re working on developing mutual respect.

As everyone left about 8pm, we were hoping to sit down to dinner.

Part 2: John called on FaceTime. We’ve been trying to cross paths with John where he could talk to some of the kids after visiting a few weeks ago. Since everyone had just left from the meeting, Stephen went over to Musana & Zen Yaw’s house to see if they could come talk to him. Musana was eating and said she’d come when she finished, but within a few seconds was running after Stephen. “Did you finish eating already?” we asked.  “No. I’ll eat later!”

She was really excited.

With limited communication, we thought it’d be a shorter call, but the kids were all hooked. Right away they could see that it was day behind him, so we had a little lesson on what side of the Earth we’re each on and how the Earth moves around the sun. With each new kid that joined, the first thing they’d say is, “We’re calling America! It’s morning! It’s 9 o’clock! The SUN is out!”

There were seven us there by the end, and we’d toured John’s entire house. We explained how a house can have three floors, and how a basement can be in the ground. We saw the front of his house and the back, and tried to explain–extensively–why our house in America isn’t on his street. We saw his oven and dishwasher (a very good machine, they declared) and saw his fireplace light with a button. We saw what was in his fridge and identified different foods in English. We saw what his bathroom looks like and looked at American money.

To John’s credit, he was spectacular at making things interesting that, well, aren’t. The kids were amazed at the whole thing–every turn and discovery. Minds were blown, repeatedly!

They played Rock, Paper, Scissors and gave high-fives over the screen. There is also this game the kids taught us while he was here–they say different words in English and you have to do them, so it’s quite simple. But so is their vocabulary, so it’s mostly:

Walking. Walking. Walking, Sitting. Walking. Walking. RUNNING! Sitting. Standing. Walking. Jumping! Jumping!

Also, they like to combine them, like Sitting-Walking and Sitting-Jumping, which is just as hilarious as it sounds. So John did a few examples of those for us.

Part 3: When John had to go it was already nearing ten, but Stephen had the great idea of pulling out Photo Booth. Excuse how small these photos are and cherish the hilarious faces and egregious laughter!

I haven’t heard the kids laugh this hard. Ever.

As they went home and we went off to cook and eat dinner, Musana asked, “Can we do this again tomorrow!?”

When a couple of the kids asked about the washing machine last week, I didn’t think much of it when I let them climb on top and have a look.

I was surprised when they spent the next twenty minutes watching it do what it does best–wash clothes. It sounds similar to watching paint dry.

I was even more surprised when Zen Yaw came in days later and ran straight to the washer. “Kelli! Kelli! Come, come! Water! Water! Go!”

He started banging on the side of the washer. I told him I didn’t need to wash clothes–I’d just finished a load, and we’re still so-so on the water situation. I didn’t want to push it.

“We’re not washing clothes right now.”
“YES! WATER! GO!”
“No, we’ll wash tomorrow.”
“No. Now.”
“Tomorrow.”
“No.”
“…Tomorrow.”
“No.”

I let him turn it off and on a few times, “On, off, on off…”; open and close the lid, “Open, close, open, close.” We had a little language practice for both of us, but no clothes were washed.

Until this morning, when he arrived at the door to say hello and I asked if he wanted to wash clothes.

“WASH! WATER, WATER, WATER!”

His older cousin wasn’t quite as excited, but enough to join him and spend thirty minutes of summer watching the clothes spin. I talked them through how to start it, where I put the soap, and what buttons to push. We got out a snack of fish, a headlamp, and then we watched the clothes spin.

For thirty minutes.

It’s probably the cutest thing I’ve seen in a long time. Each time the cycle changed, it made a sing-song noise, or anything changed, he’d give a loud, “Oh?” with big eyes. He loved watching it spin and telling me when water was coming in.

Towards the end I had to go make Flour & Flower deliveries. He left begrudgingly, took of the headlamp begrudgingly, but accepted the fish as a peace offering. When I returned four hours later, he ran in the house and went straight to the washer.

“Water! Water!”
“It’s finished. The water is gone!”
“It’s not finished.”
“Yes, it is. Finished washing.”
“It’s not finished.”

So that’s the newest thing on the block! My neighbors are the cutest.

We had a friend in town visiting this week, which is always just a fresh perspective. While this is foreign to them and I watch them adjust and explore, I find myself thinking over and over again: I live here. This is home. Sometimes that is amazing: beautiful kids and laughter and Bingo games to win laundry detergent. Sometimes its exotic and we enjoy fresh pineapple and avocado smoothies before we visit a waterfall. And sometimes it is poverty, and the kids play in our trash and stay at our house to avoid drunken fathers and we hear fighting in the street.

All of these are true, for better or for worse. But it is still home! So here are some pictures of the beautiful parts of it.

John was a huge hit with the kids.

We bake bread on Thursdays with young moms. One of the little babes is 7 months, which is just enough to get around and out of reach. Yaminoo was recruited to babysit, which brings along her brother, Lay Tah Oo. And Pyo Pyo’s son, Pyint Soe, gets to play, too, since his mom bakes. My favorite is watching Yaminoo multitask as she reads an ABC book and keeps little Win Mo moving with her feet.

And then they decide they want to sing the baby to sleep–with blankets, in nearly 100 degree weather, with two ovens and stove top running. It’s official summertime, so many of our friends are heading back to Burma to visit family and friends! Here we were helping a family get to the border.

Bingo is a big thing. We recently expanded to “real” prizes, which include laundry detergent, toothpaste, toothbrushes, soap, sponges, and noodles. We hope to help meet more practical needs in a fun way, and it draws in more adults. We  are also finding that most kids over 6 will choose laundry detergent over candy, so it seems its meeting a known need.  We visited a few waterfalls while John was here. And even during the driest part of the year, there is fun to be had!

Isn’t she just beautiful? And its so fun to have the littles grow up with us and not be afraid of white skin and beards! She loves to have Stephen throw her up in the air.And some days, we sit on the washer and watch the clothes wash. For the older kids, we talked about what each button means and how it all works and watch the countdown until it finishes. For the littles, they exclaim over and over, “Water coming!” and “Whoa! Fast!” Instead of Saturday morning cartoons, we have thirty minutes of technology exposure!And this–this will be a photo I cherish forever. This house has so many stories in it. So many smiles, so many shaved heads, so much tanaka powder, and so many friends