Family Lessons

Today was my first official Thai lesson! I’ve been having informal ones all over the place, but today we actually sat down in a classroom with a book and did a proper lesson. Turns out I already know almost everything in the first lesson! So, I’m a step ahead of the game already.

I had Lucy teach me the months and a few other phrases I wanted to learn, such as “if you speak only English for 10 minutes, you get 50 points!” hahaha. I haven’t actually used that one yet. She had me repeat all the months of the year back to her and we were both very excited when I got almost all of them right on the first try!

Writing and learning all this stuff is all well and good, but I actually need to start studying it at night, so I at least have some rote memorization going on. One thing new I learned from the book today is that when you ask someone how old they are, there is one word for “years old” for ages 1-10 and a different word for over age 10. It took a while for Lucy to explain that one to me in a mix of really slow English and really rapid Thai, but I finally got it. I was so excited; I was like “Oh! I get it, I get it!” I repeated what I thought back to her in English and she was super excited too. It’s amazing how such a simple thing can really boost your spirits!

When we were done with the book lesson, I told her a story about seeing the cleaning lady this morning using as much Thai as I could remember and Lucy would tell me the words as I said the English words. It was kind of cool. I’m picking it up pretty fast! The hardest thing for me is the word endings. I sometimes can’t figure out where to put my tongue to do the different stops. Like, is it just behind the teeth, or at the back of the throat or the roof of the mouth? It makes different sounds depending, you know? Also, knowing where the tones fall is hard. Like compared to a piano, is the low tone at a C, an E or an A? And is mid-tone at E, G or B? I can’t explain it very well in writing, but it’s hard.

After my Thai lesson I printed out some stuff for my English class, then I was supposed to hang out with some of the kids as they studied Thai language. Judy was like “Uh, how are you going to know if they are saying it right?” I just had some papers that the kids were supposed to do in groups and then I had some worksheets they were supposed to fill in. Judy and Lucy ended up coming into class and reading it with the kids. We had Willow, Amelie, Sunny and Molly. They had each kid read the paragraphs out loud around the table. I was sitting next to Sunny, so after she finished, she shared her paper with me and ran her finger along the Thai words, saying it two or three syllables at a time and having me repeat it. It was so cute! She obviously picked up that from people teaching English by pointing to the individual words. But, to me all the Thai just looks like squiggles on the paper, so I am following along, but having NO IDEA what I am saying or what the letters actually mean on the page. The best part was the end, when Judy and Lucy had the kids all read the paragraphs together. Sunny still ran her finger under the lines so I could follow along, but she kept looking up at me like “Why are you not reading?” not understanding that I have not learned any Thai alphabet yet. It was still really sweet though.

Then we had English class. I started out with the kids reviewing what we learned. This is a good chance for me to practice my Thai also. I say the word in Thai and have them tell me what the English word is. We did that for a few minutes, then played the memory game again with them. Today we had Gabby and Willow as well. They were absent yesterday, so they had to catch up a little with the new words. They seem to be getting better with the recognition of what the words actually mean in relation to Thai.

I printed out two types of family word finds, so that kept them occupied for a while. I was impressed that they really didn’t start cheating off each other til they only had one or two words left. Plus, they were SILENT while doing this, which is amazing considering the usual volume in that room! When they had all finished finding the words, I had them write the words in Thai underneath and had Judy check those.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I basically ran class by myself for the first 20 minutes before Judy was able to come in and I was able to make myself understood and to understand them! It was pretty great.

The word find took most of class, but they did such a good job with finding almost all the words with no help! After they finished and all got stars and points on the board for their work, we did a few rounds of hangman. They are so funny when they figure out a word, they all want to be the first one to shout it out. Then, they want to be the first to tell you what the Thai translation is, so it gets pretty cacophonous! Most of the time I can’t even tell if they are saying the right word or not. I feel bad getting mad at them for being loud because they are just SO EXCITED and proud of their knowledge. I’d rather have them exuberant and excited to learn than quiet and not wanting to learn.

After class and dinner was over, Inna and I walked down to the Night market and walked around a bit. On our way back, I stopped for some ROTI!! Alloy, Alloy! (Yummy yummy).

Right now the cat is sleeping so sweetly stretched out on my lap. She is much nicer when she is asleep and not gouging my arms with her sharp teeth!

Last minute thoughts: I forgot to say that I saw Aung, our tailor from back in November when the guys in our group got suits made. He is leaving for seminary in Burma in April, but I thought he would be gone by March, so I was excited to see him. He remembered me, and showed me a big posterboard they have on display with people who had suits made. There are 3 pictures of our group! One of them is the silly one of the guys in Oceans 13 pose. :) hahaha One of them is of our entire group, so I’m on the board too, even though I didn’t get anything made. Aung says hello to our gang though.

The other thing is I was telling Judy that I want to do piano lessons for kids who are interested. Ning was very excited by this and was telling me today that it’s been a dream of hers to learn piano for years but she couldn’t afford lessons! So, perfect. I told her there are 2 ways to learn: by hearing and by reading music. I am going to teach her to read music so that after I leave, she can still play any music she ever finds. Our lessons start next Wednesday after I get back from Singapore.

Also forgot to mention that I got my ticket to Singapore this morning. I’ll be there over the weekend and hopefully get the visa Monday no problem! Prayers still please!

Visa Disasters, Part 2 and Teaching, Day 1

  March 29, 2011

Today was supposed to be a good day. I was supposed to meet with the visa coordinator and she was supposed to tell me that I was good to go in Bangkok. I called her up, and asked when I should come. She said now was fine and gave me directions for the song thaew driver. I remembered pretty well where the building was, and found it ok. I sat down and she said “I have the bad news for you.” I was like, “No. Way.”

So, apparently, the airport gave me a transit visa, rather than a normal 30 day tourist visa. I have no idea why, and nobody has ever seen this stamp before or heard of anyone having this problem. Yesterday she talked to the embassy and they said if I had a tourist visa, it could get changed to a Type O in Bangkok no problem, but with a transit visa, I have to leave the country by April 21 and reenter. This puts a crimp in the whole teaching thing! Also, incredibly stressful. I barely feel comfortable making my way around in Thailand, and now I have to go to an entire NEW country and find my way around? Great.

Plus, remember how I already bought my ticket for Bangkok? Yeah, that was awesome. It costs more to cancel than it did to buy the ticket in the first place. So, the new plan is to go to Singapore or Kuala Lumpur. Both of these sound so foreign to me and the concept is kind of terrifying. I need to know where to go, who to see, what to do, and what paperwork to take. I don’t even know what language they speak in these places! (before you post comments all over the place, yes I know now that Singapore is a British protectorate and they speak English.)

OK, here is what I finally decided to do: Keep the flight to Bangkok on Thursday night and hang out with Stephen and Allison on Friday. Fly Saturday morning to Singapore (about $55) which is way cheaper Sat than Sunday night (about $200). Stay the weekend in Singapore and be at the embassy an hour before opening Monday morning so I can get my visa request in first. Hopefully pick up the visa at the end of the day and fly back to Chiang Mai Tuesday morning. Of course, I can’t buy my ticket til I find out whether the visa will actually get processed in one day, so that will be more expensive still!

Oh, and she still doesn’t have internet or a working printer, so I still don’t have the paperwork to take to the embassy.

I decided to walk back to Taw Saeng and think. I should have had my ipod with me cause my thoughts just freaked me out even more! When I got back to the center, I immediately jumped online to update people. I was really happy to see my sister and Ahna online and I talked to them for a bit and they tried to calm me down. At this point, I was so stressed and feeling so not in control of the situation that I just felt like I’d burst into tears at any second.

Finally, the group gathered for songs and prayer. I was really fighting back tears for most of it and then when they prayed for me, I did cry a little bit. The kids started coming, so I had to pull it together! One of the women from church had given me a kids book about Psalm 91 and God’s protection over us, so I thought it would be a good one to use for library time. When school is not in session, they have listening comprehension for library time. So, they read a story in English and have to answer questions about it so they understand what it is that they are hearing in English. I thought I’d have a whole big age range in my class, so I came up with some harder questions, but I ended up having middle school age kids.

It actually worked out really well, though, because Judy was with me and translating and then Lucy, my teacher came in too, so I was trying to use some of the words she had taught me yesterday. Even as the teacher, I still want to get an A from my teacher. Hahaha Well, basically, we’d read each page, then the kids would have to figure out what it meant in Thai using the English words they knew already. Then, we’d read the question on the board and they’d have to translate that into English. Then, they would actually answer the question. It was quite the process, but they all did such a great job! Every kid was participating and answering with good responses. They definitely earned their prizes at the end of class!

After library was art class. I was in charge of today’s origami project. Field showed it to me on Sunday, and today we were supposed to do a crane. I was like “Oh, yeah, we made cranes in 4^th grade. I can totally do a crane!”  So. I cannot do a crane. At all.

I had two girls today, Sunny and Molly. Here’s the deal. There’s an origami book and paper. The book shows one fold and has like a paragraph in Thai of instructions. I cannot read Thai, and the pictures leave a lot to be desired. Sunny is a genius at origami. She read the instructions and was showing me how to do the folds. I just kept saying “I’m glad you know what you’re doing, cause I have NO idea.” She would just chatter away in Thai and do a bunch of folds. Molly and I kept looking at each other and shrugging out shoulders, like “I don’t know how she does that!”

We got to a point where we were supposed to fold the crane’s wings down, only to realize that we had folded wrong and the wings were attached, not foldable! We backed up one step at a time, til we decided we just needed to start over. I decided to just let Sunny figure it out and then I’d try to emulate her. She actually did it! It took some refolding and repositioning but she did it. Then she finished mine, and then Molly’s too. At this point Molly was like “OK, easier one.” She picked a boat and we started on that. Again, I only got to about step 10 til I was like “WHAAAAT???!!!” and Sunny had to finish it for me. Hahaha

The last part of the day was English class. My class learned some words about family last week: mom, dad, grandpa, grandma, brother and sister. However, I was not confident in their comprehension of this when they did presentations on Friday, so I asked Field if I could do another week on family while she was gone and teach them some new words. I taught them aunt, uncle, cousin, son and daughter.

Yesterday when I was doing my lesson with Lucy, I had her teach me all these words in Thai, so I could tell the kids the correlation. Judy was with me in class to give instruction, but she was shocked that I knew those words and could pronounce them. She was like “Heather! You haven’t even been here a week and your tones are amazing!” I don’t know if I mentioned this, but Thai has 5 tones: low, mid, high, falling and rising. It’s hard. So that was encouraging. She was saying that she’s been here for 5 years, and my tones are already almost as good as hers!

Anyway, so the kids practiced saying the new words and the Thai meaning, and then we played a game of memory using cards with family words on them. We are implementing the use of points in a big way this week. If the kids got a match and could say the English word: 5 points. If they could then say remember the Thai equivalent, 10 points! We took off points for cheating and added them for sitting quietly when it was someone else’s turn. After we played a few rounds, I decided to switch gears and do a game of hangman to try to teach them the spellings of words. They LOVE hangman, so that was fun. That took us to dinnertime and I told them that if they walked quietly all the way down the stairs, they’d get 20 points each! Normally, those kids tear out of there like their hair is on fire and sound like a herd of elephants on the stairs. Today, it was so quiet, I had to check behind me to make sure the kids were still with me! I tell ya, points work!

Next step is to add rewards for point levels. The plan is that when I get back from Singapore, Field, Inna, Judy and I will sit down and construct a point system and come up with a quarterly reward system. I’m thinking something like a movie one quarter, the zoo one quarter and maybe a pizza party one quarter. I think we could do something smaller monthly as well, like an ice cream or pizza party, or face painting using the paints we brought back in November. That was a HUGE hit.

After dinner, Ryan helped me with some blog stuff. He’s going to show me how to password protect some posts so I can put up some pictures of the kids and post some of the more sensitive stories.

When I got home, there was Bible study at my house! I was excited because I haven’t been to Bible study in a while, so it was nice to have it. I guess it rotates, but today it was here. We had 7 people including me and discussed Hebrews 11. It was an interesting discussion. The end of the chapter talks about people who were martyred for the cause and we talked about why you don’t hear a lot of stories about getting sawn in half for your faith. I suppose it’s not a big selling point for Christianity. “Hey, follow Jesus! You might get sawed in two, but at least you’ll go to heaven!” haha. Anyway, it was nice to have a good theological discussion. Our group consisted of two Aussies, a Brit, a Philipino, a Russian, and three Americans. Good mix of cultures and people!  Love the multi-cultural aspect of being in a foreign country.

Staff Meetings and Coconut Juice

This morning, I thought I was getting to work really early, but when I showed up everyone was there already! I was like “uhh, did daylight saving time happen when I wasn’t looking?” but they just forgot to tell me that they meet at 10am on Mondays when there is no class. Since I came at the tail end, we were just wrapping up, and prayed for a bit. Then we headed out to lunch.

We ate at a Shan place (that means Burmese, I think) and it was really good, except when we were just about done, I started having a little stomachache. Oh, no! Flashbacks of when I got MSG poisoning! Did I remember to ask for it with no MSG? Of course not! I was too excited eating new food! Thankfully we figured out what would have msg in it and I just didn’t eat any more of that. Then I drank a lot of water the rest of the day, but my stomache was still pretty achy for the rest of the day.

After lunch, I went to the big warehouse, Macro, with Judy, P’Bua and Lucy, my Thai tutor! This place is like Costco. It has two huge floors and everything you could possibly need in bulk. They also have a bakery, a deli and lots of imported foods like ketchup and Kettle Chips.

Judy had decided that this would be the perfect opportunity for my first Thai lesson, so luckily I had made pages and pages of phrases and words I willowted to learn. We went through them all, with me saying things over and over until I got a thumbs up and “Good job!” from Lucy. Often, we would stand with our cart in one place practicing over and over, and then look up and realize Judy and P’Bua had taken off and left us, so we’d race around looking down all the aisles til we found them. Then, we’d get distracted with a new set of words and lose them all over again. We kept cracking up over this, even though typing it, it really doesn’t sound that funny. All in all it was a fun first lesson and I think I did start to learn a lot.

At first, I was thinking that I should refrain from asking other people at the center how to say things because it would take away from my time with Lucy, but then I realized, I should be practicing as much as possible, all the time if I really willowt to master the language.

After we got back from shopping, everyone was packing up to head out for the day, even though it was only 4pm! I decided to use this opportunity to go buy a big map of the city, so I could stop using Jaz’s old, fragile copy. ;) I also headed down the street to one of the big fancy hotels that has a gym. I have been willowting to find a place that has a fitness center or pool that is walkable from either home or work. Since I live on a busy highway, it’s not very conducive to running in the mornings. Well, this place was pretty fancy, they had a lot of high end equipment and a huge swimming pool that wraps around ¾ of the building, and it’s only $30 a month. Unfortunately, with the new visa and travel charges and needing a scooter, this doesn’t seem like a workable option.

After I went down to the used bookstore and resisted my impulses to buy a bunch of books, I caught a song thaew home. I was posting some of these blogs when Ruth came by to see if Jaz was around to go running. I was itching for some exercise, so I decided to come too. Jaz wasn’t home yet, so I made some dinner, did a bunch of internet things and finally, she arrived and we headed out in Ruth’s car. This time we went to the University. There is a footpath that runs in a circle around a big soccer field that is perfect for running. Sadly, there are no lights, so it takes a bit of getting used to running in the dark! Jaz used the podcast training program from the other day, and it was pretty good. Last time, I ran a lot slower to stay with the girls, but this time, since it was a circular track, I just took off when it was the running interval and then walked back to them for the walking portion.

After the run, Jaz and Ruth willowted to eat dinner. I had eaten earlier, so I just got some coconut juice in the coconut and some homemade ice cream! Not bad for $1.10. However, I have to stop eating out! I bought groceries for a reason, after all.

After I got back, I decided I  had better buy a plane ticket to Bangkok if I was going to go on Thursday night! I tried a couple times with my debit card, but no luck. Then Ruth said she would put it on her Thai credit card and I just gave her some cash. This would prove to be a big mistake…

Righteous Tightrope Walking

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Lazy Saturday

March 26, 2011

Ah, sleeping in was nice. I slept til about 8am, then thought I was supposed to skype my parents. So I got on and talked to my mom, but she said we were going to do it at 8pm their time! I could have kept sleeping. Grr. Of course, once I was up, there was no going back to sleep cause of all the thoughts racing through my head. I ended up just getting up and starting to type up the first few entries of the blog. Finally, called my parents for about an hour. Jaz poked her head in to say breakfast was ready! Nice!

I logged off and headed downstairs to discover a new person in our kitchen. It was Ruth, one of our neighbors, from Toronto, Canada. We all had a nice leisurely breakfast, they gave me advice on everything from scooters to getting to Bangkok and talked about the visa situation some more.

We decided we all needed some exercise, so we planned to meet back in an hour and head out for a run. I did the dishes up, Ruth went home to do some work and Jaz took a nap. At 10 am. Hahaha! I also used this time to officially set up my blog. I had been waiting because Ryan had pioneered some password protection software that allowed Elizabeth to post pictures of the kids and stuff, so I wanted to find out how to do that. I didn’t want to start a blog on blogspot and then find out that I needed to do it on a specific server, or upload the software before I started the blog. Ryan had assured me that I could just start it, and then he’d install it for me this week, so I could post some pics.

Jaz came down, Ruth came back and we piled into the borrowed truck, after a chat with the neighbors who were cutting down a fruit tree with a machete because the fruit was “not tasty.” I love that phrase. They use it a lot here. It makes me laugh.

We drove and drove, almost to where we had ridden elephants when I was here in November. There is a huge reservoir out in the midst of these woods, right at the foot of the mountains. There’s a running trail around it, and along the trail are these bamboo structures where you can sit and eat as part of a restaurant. We ran (yeah, right, mostly walked, haha) halfway around the reservoir and decided to sit for a bit and have some lunch. It was so nice to get some exercise! I feel like I have not properly worked out in months. Plus, I finally got some lime soda, yay! And we had some papya salad, some spicy meat dish and sticky rice. It was very yummy. I actually learned how to say that the other day, and then immediately forgot it.

We continued our walk, got back to the truck, and went to pick up Ruth’s bike from the shop. That turned into an hour long conversation with the owner and her daughter who is studying communications. She was very excited to learn that I was from Hollywood. It’s pretty funny how I can always tell when people are talking about me. I can pick up a few words here and there, like Hollywood, and the number of days I’ve been here. It was actually kind of cool, because Jaz would talk and then the daughter would ask me a question in Thai, but looking right at me. You know how normally, if you don’t speak the same language, you’ll ask the interpreter to ask, but you don’t really ask the person directly? She didn’t do that. She’d just ask me, as if assuming I really did understand her, and then I would look at Jaz blankly and she’d fill in the question. Eventually, the five of us, Ruth, Jaz, the owner, the daughter and me, were all in a circle talking and at first, I really tried to pick up on words and accents and try to just absorb it, but my brain got tired, so my mind started to wander and my eyes followed, and the owner lady started laughing at me, saying I must be so bored! “But still cute,” she said in Thai. Hahaha

We decided to head out, to have second lunch (this second meal phenomenon really applies to everyone across the board here) at an Islam place. I’m not really sure what that meant, since there’s not really standard Muslim food to my knowledge, but apparently I was wrong. Anyway, we got to the place and it was closed, so Ruth jumped on her bike to head to her pedicure appointment, and Jaz and I headed to get food at a Burmese restaurant. It was very yummy. Pink sticky rice with friend garlic and a bunch of different meats and salads that you eat all together.

We got back to the house, I practiced guitar for a while, then Jaz came downstairs and blew me out of the water with her abilities. The thing I’m discovering about guitar is that everyone tries to just nonchalantly say “oh, you can do harmonix like this, or play all these chords here. Or here. Or here. And you can play F six different ways.” Then I start trying to read tabs and figure out the six ways to play A all over the frets, and my brain just overloads and melts down. This is why I cannot teach myself. I look at the huuuuuge chords chart or watch other people play and I just want to know how to do all of it RIGHT NOW! This is why I need lessons. I need structure and someone to tell me “This week, practice this.” Otherwise, I just get incredibly frustrated and give up. 

Jaz did teach me a new chord though: F#Major. Yay! Progress! She also taught me Hotel California cause there’s lots of chords and now I know them all.

Ruth called while we were rocking out, and came over. We decided to watch a movie, so we went through my movie collection that I brought and decided on Children of Men. That movie is so cinematographically awesome. About a half hour into it, some friends texted Jaz and she invited them over. (Funny side note: Microsoft Word has highlighted “texted” and “Jaz” as spelled wrong, but has no problem with “cinematographically”. haha) We paused and waited for them to arrive. They were Dane from DC and Keith from Michigan. We all caught up for a bit and then decided to restart the movie. After Dane accidentally knocked the power for everything off, we had to start from the verrry beginning of the previews, since we have no remote for the dvd player, but it gave us time to make popcorn and drink some more wine!

Post-movie, more jabbering, and I had to go to bed before everyone left because I had to get up at 8am for church with the kids!

Bangkok and Visas and Borders, oh my!

March 25, 2011

Today was one of the most stressful days of my life. Under normal, American circumstances, it would probably have been fine, but I’m in a foreign country and now I understand what immigrants to America must feel like when they go to get their visas renewed or go to interviews for citizenship and whatnot.

So, the day started out like yesterday, except today I decided to try to take a Song Thaew to work instead of the Tuk-Tuk, to try to save some money. Jaz drew a little map for me as to how to get to the Song Thaew station and told me “it should be 20 baht. Don’t ask, just give it to them.” So, that’s what I did. I was pretty proud of myself, first getting to the station (though, if I’m honest, it’s a straight shot down the road to the first light on the corner, so it wasn’t exactly rocket science) and then telling the driver where I needed to go, and actually getting there! There was one other lady who got on with me. She asked me something in Thai, but I was like “?” and shrugged my shoulders. Haha. I sort of guessed that she asked where I was going, so I said “Loi Kroh” and she nodded as if she understood. 

Got to Taw Saeng, paid the driver 20 baht with no problem, and headed in for worship. Here’s the first stressful part of the day. Yesterday, Dtom was like, “you play guitar! You can lead worship tomorrow!’ I was like “uhhhh…..” So, worship! I looked through the book and finally found 3 songs I knew all the chords for. One of them was actually a song I knew from my guitar lessons (The Wonderful Cross), so I was a little more confident about that one. I had to have Dtom help me with the strumming patterns on the other two, but they were both songs I knew really well, so that helped for the chord changes at least.

I did give a disclaimer at the beginning that I’d only had 8 lessons, so please give me some grace.  Inna was very impressed with my limited amount of schooling so far, so even though I felt like I screwed up the rhythm a few times with my less than stellar chord changes, I still felt ok about it. :)

After devotionals, Judy, Ning and I went to Starfish School, where the little girl I sponsor had spent the past week. A bit of backstory here: about a week after we left in November, this little girl had been sexually assaulted. She’s only 5, so it was pretty traumatic, obviously. We knew this had happened to a kid, but didn’t find out which kid til about a week ago. It just broke my heart knowing that it was "my" kid who got hurt. Not that it would have been any better if it were anyone else, but it felt really personal being the little girl I support, and whom I had spent so much time with.

Well, after the assault, she was still going to TS and doing really well, recovering and seemed to be back to her old self. Her dad was really really upset by the whole situation, and had decided that she just was not safe in their home anymore, despite the fact that they moved to get away from the person who hurt her. So, he sent her to this boarding school in town that is for really poor kids whose parents can’t take care of them. The family has two other younger kids too, so it must be really hard for them to make ends meet. When I heard about this, I really wanted to go see her, to see how she was doing and give her a hug.

Ning and her sister run an orphanage for 6 kids, so they wanted to take her in to their house, but the parents are not Christians, so they didn’t want her to go there initially. This last week was a trial week for her to see how she was adjusting to the school. I have to say, I had pretty strong reservations about it, but when we got there, it actually seemed really nice. It kind of had an Annie feel about it though, with all these girls of various ages running around. Part of me expected them to break out into “Hard Knock Life” at any moment. But, the lady who manages the place is American and has lived in Thailand for 18 years. She’s also a Christian, though the school itself doesn’t do religious education at all.

There are about 3 kids to a room, they help do laundry and clean up, the classrooms are really cute and clean, they also have a dance room, and a huge swimming pool and playground area, so it’s much better than I feared. We got to see the cute little girl, and she did remember me and gave me a big hug, so that was really great to get to give her some love. Ning and I went out and sat on the steps with her and she said she was really sad and missed her mom a lot. She looked so tired; she said she hadn’t slept all week because she missed her family and was crying at night. She also said she wanted to go live with P’Ning. I had told Judy yesterday at lunch that if the reason the dad didn’t want her in the house was because he didn’t want her that I was fully prepared to adopt her. She laughed and said that was the first thing she told NIng when she found out what was going on.

Ning told the social worker at the school that she really wanted the girl to go live with her but she didn’t want to control the situation and it needed to be the parents’ decision. One of the downsides of this place is that the parents only get to come visit twice a month at a designated time. But, since this was the end of the trial week, they came while we were there. I realized that the parents really do love her and just want the best for her. They just want to protect her, and the dad thinks this is the best way to do it. They looked so sad; I could tell they really missed her. She was really excited to see her brother and sister and was sitting on her mom and dad’s laps and telling them about her week. So, that was how we left them. I just hope they decide to let her live with Ning, because otherwise I’m not sure if I’ll get to see her at all anymore. If she lives with Ning, I’ll see her every week at church.

So, that was the second stressful, yet happy, part of the day. Happy because I got to see my sweet little sponsor child and got to see her reunited with her family, however briefly.

Next up was seeing the Kijigandee Foundation lady about the visa. So, initially, way back in December, I was told that the foundation would “take care of my visa.” I thought this meant that they’d get it for me, and sponsor my visa, basically, like in the US if you come to work for a company, they pay for your visa. I was wrong. I found out that I actually need to pay for the visa and a service charge for the paperwork processing. This comes out to about $700 altogether. This floored me and nearly made me start crying because I had totally not figured this into my budget or fundraising. Luckily, I think I have some time to pay the processing fee, and just have to front the visa charge, which is about $130.

Here comes the next snag. While I was making plans to come, Ahna, whose room I am staying in at the moment, was also planning to return this summer. Well, Rob mixed up which one of us he had given the visa coordinator’s info to, and realized that I had only had a cut and paste version of the email he had sent to Ahna that was lacking the visa coordinators info. So, I didn’t know that I should have asked for a 90 day visa when I came into the country, and only had gotten a 30 day visa.

This is a problem because in order to change my visa into a one-year multiple entry visa, it takes 2 months, and I only have 30 days! Normally, the solution is to leave the country to Singapore or Kuala Lumpur and get a visa at the embassy there. As I’m hearing this, dollar signs are ringing in my ears and I’m seeing my limited bank account drain before my eyes.

Luckily (I hope), the visa coordinator has learned that there is a new law that allows volunteer workers to change their visas from tourist to type O by going to Bangkok instead of leaving the country. Now, she has just heard this, and has never tried it, so it could all be for naught, but for now, we are operating on the assumption that this will work.

Really luckily for me, my friends Stephen and Allison are working on a movie in Bangkok right now, so hopefully they will have some contacts who can grease the wheels for me so I can get this changed quickly and painlessly. Also, luckily, I can stay with them when I go to Bangkok, so I won’t have to pay for room and board, just transport. Now I just have to figure out whether I fly, bus or train it down there.

After this meeting, I was trying to just keep breathing and not freak out, but I just kept thinking “Dude! I’m already here! I flew 20,000 miles around the world and NOW I find all this out?” It was really scary and just not fun.

By the time I got back to TS, the classes were in full swing and I wasn’t really sure how to help, so I ended up tuning all the guitars for the guitar lessons that Field was doing that day! Then, I wrote an update to church and the leadership team so they would know what was going on. After dinner, Inna suggested we hang out that night, and since I want to make some friends, I was all for it!

One of the teenagers from TS just got a job as a waitress, so I suggested to Elizabeth (the high school teacher from Seattle) that we go have dinner there this weekend. She said that she and Ryan (her husband) were planning to go that night, so Inna and I headed over there. We had a nice chat, and I was able to vent a bit about the day and get some much needed support and advice, so that was great.

After dinner, Inna and I decided to go see a movie. I was very excited to discover that Sucker Punch came out here the same day as in the States, and since I’d wanted to see that forever, we got tickets! I gotta say, kind of a letdown, Zack Snyder. I thought it was going to be like “300” for girls, but the ending was highly unsatisfying. It did LOOK amazing, though.

After threatening it all day, it had finally rained during the movie, so the bike was soaked, but luckily I had an extra shirt in my bag! It was a nice drive home through the cool air, wind in my hair on the back of a motorbike. I kept thinking, “My mother would kill me if she saw me riding a bike without a helmet” but there was no other way to get home. Song Thaews stop running at 9pm and Tuk Tuks double in price. Anyway, we were only going about 35 miles an hour….

Jumping in with Both Feet continued

She told me about one of the high school students who had just graduated and suggested I could take Thai lessons from her initially. She is a really good kid who used to take the family motorbike to school. Well, I guess one day it got stolen while she was at school, and her father was so furious he demanded she buy a new one soon, and even went so far as to suggest she go sell herself at one of the massage parlors! Poor thing. So, Judy was trying to come up with ways she could help this student earn money quickly, and thought she could start teaching Thai to the volunteers coming in. Well, now she has 3 students! She’ll earn that money back in no time.

That answered my first question of “how do I learn Thai?” and my next question was about my cell phone. I needed a SIM card! Basically, there are two major types of cell phone frequencies: the US and the rest of the world. Years ago, when I was in Belfast, I got a little Nokia, and every country I’ve been to since, I just go to a mobile phone shop and get a new SIM card for that country and then you just pay as you go for minutes and texts. It’s a great system. You only pay for minutes you use and it’s really cheap, usually (unless you’re in Lebanon, where the cell phone towers keep getting destroyed).  Judy suggested we pick up my new teacher and get her to help me navigate the SIM card transaction. I also wanted to set up a bank account so I can have my money in a bank rather than just carrying cash all the time. Judy drove us to the mall and we worked out which card I wanted and how much money to put on it (I put 500 baht on, so with the cost of the SIM card, it worked out to $18.30. Calls cost 1 baht per minute, so for under 20 bucks I got 500 minutes and a new SIM card. Pretty good deal, eh?)

While we were at the kiosk, I noticed that they had iPhone 4s! I asked how much they were, and the lady said “very expensive.” Of course, I was skeptical. I mean, this is the place that considers 70 degrees freezing cold and $5 a day for a scooter rental a lot of money. So, you can understand my cynicism. Well, she typed out how much in baht and when I divided by 30 to get the dollar amount I was shocked! $864 for the new iPhone!! Wow, that AT&T subsidizing does wonders for the cost of electronics.

Judy left us to try to open a bank account and me to learn some new Thai words. Unfortunately, I had the wrong type of visa, since I had gotten a tourist visa when I came in, and was expecting to get my year-long visa the following day (stay tuned for that hair-raising story). So, no bank account for me. Well, I figured, why not make the best of the location we were in and get some ice cream!? So, my teacher (ok, I’m just gonna give her a name so I can refer to her in the future too. Let’s call her Lucy.) So, Lucy and I headed away from the Dairy Queen, (I was like “WAIT! Where are we going?!” but apparently DQ is “too expensive”. Ha!) and down the stairs to the KFC for some chocolate dipped soft-serve. Pure deliciousness for only 50 cents!

Then we headed out to catch a Song Thaew. The downside of these is that they don’t want to go anywhere until they have a few people, so we just were sitting in the back eating our ice cream for a while, til finally another person jumped in and the driver was satisfied. While we were driving, I learned colors. And by “learned” I mean that Lucy said a color and I repeated it tone for tone, until she said “Chai” which means “yes.” Of course upon getting this response, I would immediately forget what I had just learned. Purple starts with “muy.” That’s all I got. When I start proper lessons next week, I will be writing things down. Hopefully, I’ll be simultaneously learning how to read and write Thai as well, so it will be a fully immersive experience! I have to say I was pretty proud of myself, though, since Lucy kept telling Judy that my tones and accent were very clear and she was really impressed. J Guess I’m a natural!

We finally got back to TS and when I walked in, Willow, one of the girls in my class, came racing over and just jumped in my arms for a big hug. I know I’m not supposed to have favorites, but she’s definitely one of them. I also saw Phon, another of the girls in my class and she was almost as excited to see me as Willow. All this kid love really just reinforces how glad I am to have come back and how much I feel that I definitely made the right choice.

 I was supposed to be helping teach that day, so I jumped on the computer to find some ideas for games involving “family” which was our topic of the week. When I came back downstairs, yet another of the girls in my class, Faith, was there. She was watching a movie with the other kids, so she didn’t see me, but when I called to her, she was like “P’Heather!!” and practically knocked me over with a huge bear hug. Nice to know that I made an impact in the two weeks I was here. :) What makes me laugh is that all the girls are so excited to see me, but the boys could really care less. Haha, well, that’s gender differences for you. I think they remember me, and at least the boys in my class are happy to see me, but they are not overly affectionate in their recognition.

Class consisted of the kids doing presentations about their families, and it ended up taking so long that there was no time for my games. I think they need another week on family though, so I’ll just do the games next week when I teach.

After class was dinner, then more playtime when I got to hang out with the girls some more. I brought a couple new jump ropes from the states, so the kids were really stoked to try them out, all taking turns and jumping together sometimes too. J

After the kids left for the day, Rob and Judy gave me a ride home and pointed out some landmarks along the way. They dropped me at home and I walked in and Jaz said “Hey! I’m just going to meet some friends for dinner. Want to come?” Of course, I said yes, cause I need to meet some people here! We headed out and basically drove right back to the neighborhood where TS is. Haha. I could have just gone straight there from work. Oh, well. It was fun getting there. Jaz has a motorbike, and I have only been on one like once before, so it was scary but exhilarating.

We went to Miguel’s, a Mexican restaurant. It made me laugh because I had just eaten Mexican on Monday since I thought I wouldn’t be eating it for a year. A bunch of other Aussies and some Americans came too. I was having fun getting to know people and all of a sudden it hit me. Jet lag. I have to say, though, I made it to 8:30pm after a 21 hour flight and only 6 hours of sleep, and I had been awake for nearly 13 hours that day, so it’s still pretty good.

As I was starting to hit the wall, I felt like the ground was moving. At first, I thought it might just be the waitress walking past cause the floor was wooden and maybe it buckled a bit as she walked. Then I thought it might be a truck driving past. It couldn’t be what I really thought it was, right? I mean, nobody else was reacting at all. When I looked up at the lights and they were swaying pretty wildly, I finally asked, “Uh, do you get earthquakes here?” One of the guys responded, “Sometimes, yeah. Why?” Then they felt it. All of us did and we were laughing, trying to figure out what to do. Finally it stopped and we all started making guesses as to what it was. Someone said that since we felt it, it had to be over a 5. I said that wasn’t true cause I’ve felt a 3.2 earthquake in LA before, and just last year, we had that 4.4 that woke everybody up in the middle of the night.

There was another table of Americans there and they were also from CA but they just moved there, so they had never felt an earthquake. Everybody jumped on their iPhones and discovered that the epicenter was in Burma and it was 191 km away from Chiang Mai! It was a 6.8 earthquake, so I know there must have been some devastation.

Rob and Judy also run a Border Refugee Ministry, so I was worried about the kids who live there. Turns out they were all ok, but there was some pretty severe structural damage, and one of the kids’ fathers was hit on the head by some falling concrete, so he was in the hospital. I’m not sure of the death count, but I know there were some fatalities as well as lots of injuries. Some welcome to Thailand, huh?