December, Part I

December was jam packed with stuff from end to end! I tend to be quite a prolific writer, if you haven’t figured that out, so I will try to just hit the highlights so as not to put you all to sleep.

• I am going to cheat and start at the end of November, actually. We celebrated the one year anniversary of Sophie’s release from the TB hospital on November 21. The following Saturday, I took Sophie, Winnie and Ying to the Yee Pang lantern festival in Mae Jo, about a 30 minute drive from Chiang Mai. Last year, this festival happened earlier, so Sophie was in the hospital and couldn’t come. When I found out she had never been, I thought it was the perfect way to celebrate her one year TB free anniversary. Well, we met up with some of my other friends and all caravanned up to the Mae Jo University campus for the lighting. I was hoping to go early and have time to get a seat and lanterns, etc, but Ying had dance practice til 5pm, so we got there just in time for the lantern send off. By the time we got there, all of us were starving, so I sent the girls off to get some food for themselves and hoped that we would reconnect in time to see all the lanterns sent off. For those of you who have seen the movie Tangled, this festival is EXACTLY like that lantern festival, only insert a lot of monotone Buddhist chanting in Sanskrit. We didn’t buy any lanterns, but my friend Rae and I made our way into the mass of people setting them off, so we got some cool pictures. Sophie and her friends had come back from getting food in time to see the big sendoff, but it was not as exciting as last year. Last year, they did a great job of reminding people not to send their lanterns off til they told you to, so we saw about 3000 lanterns float away at once. This year, it was more like a few at a time for a longer period of time. It was still pretty though. After I found Sophie and her friends, we were pushing our way out through the crowd, and Sophie was like “P’Heather, this was cool, but can we NOT come next year? There are too many people and I can’t breathe.” Parenting fail. L On our way home, this crazy strong wind came up, and torrential rains started, which is highly unusual for this time of year, so we almost got knocked off our bikes and just as we entered the city, all the lights went out everywhere. It was really eerie driving home through knee deep water with all the lights out and very few cars. Thankfully, we all got home safely, but it was not how I planned for things to go.

 

• December 8, I got all dressed up and went with Ahna and Sacha to see Handel’s Messiah performed by the Payap University choirs and orchestra. We took Faith and her older sister with us and they had a good time, but were super tired, so I think they may have napped a bit. It was a good opportunity to dress fancy and get some culture in. :)

 

• Dec 12 was our court date. We had been waiting for this for over a year, and it finally arrived. We picked up Ning from her house and then went to the court to meet Sophie’s teacher. Our hearing was scheduled for 9am, but our lawyer didn’t show up until almost 10:30. If you took a drink for every time you read about our lawyer being late, everyone would have gone through a bottle of liquor by now. I am so over this guy. Thank goodness this is the last thing we need to do with him. He tried to “prep” me, but since he had written this history that had all kinds of inconsistencies, that I had tried several times to get him to correct, I was getting really frustrated. He was just telling me to say yes to everything, but I wasn’t understanding his questions because he was using high language, which I don’t know, and was refusing to translate into English, even though he speaks English perfectly. I had not been stressed out, but at this point, I was practically crying because he was like “Just say yes to everything or else you will lose the case.” Finally, the clerk was like “OK, the judges are literally going to leave if you do not go in there,” so we went in. Interesting fact, they have different oaths depending on your religion, so I read the one for Christians. As I was copying the clerk, I was thinking “will I be held legally responsible if I lie on the stand, since I don’t actually understand a word I am saying right now?” Anyway, I think I did ok, but I did correct the inconsistencies in the story as they arose, because there was documentation that things were wrong. I.E., “did you meet Sophie’s dad?” This is after they just read that he died in May 2010, and they had asked me when I arrived in Thailand, and I said November 2010. Had I just said “yes” they would have known I was lying and why do I need to lie about that? So, I corrected the record. Finally, after a nerve-wracking half hour, they were done and the judges all signed the final record, and then so did I. Then they brought in Sophie and asked her a bunch of questions, including whether I met her dad, and, good girl, she backed up my story, instead of listening to the lawyer. Then they talked to her teacher, but never actually called Ning to testify, don’t know why. Finally, they said, OK we are granting your a court order to be able to adopt her, but you are not eligible for guardianship, so we are not giving you that. (Yeah, makes no sense to me either). So, according to the judge, this court order will list me as her mother and allow me to get her a passport, a visa to the US, and citizenship. We shall see how true that turns out to be.  

Loy Kratong Parade

This is just photos of Sophie's band performing in the parade this year. They led off the entire thing from the very front. It was fun to walk along with them on the parade route, and then we set off fireworks from the bridge with Jasmine, Ahna and Sacha before heading home. 

These lite brite elephants are for you Rosa!

Akha Thanksgiving 2012

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November 27, 2012

For Thanksgiving this year, we celebrated at Ning’s village again. Last year, Sophie was in the hospital hooked up to an IV, so she didn’t get to come, but this year, it was Ahna, Jasmine me and Ahngun. We drove up in Jasmine’s new (to her) car and got to see the famous Bua Tong flowers that are everywhere at this time of year. I love the drive to Ning’s village because it’s so picturesque and just really peaceful and beautiful. Definitely a fan of the new road, too. Last year, the car almost got swallowed by potholes. We got to the village and headed up to meet everyone at the church. Somehow we ended up in the 2^nd row (why does that always happen to us? I always feel like the foreigners are being put on display and then because we are in the front of the room, it’s impossible to slip out without seeming rude, even though we don’t speak the language at all, so it’s hard to stay awake and pay attention.)

They had a variety of singers and dancers from all age groups, including the kids from the children’s home run by Ning and her sister Faa. They were so cute! After the performances, which took about an hour, there was a sermon in Akha, for about an hour and a half, during which most of the church emptied out to go cook food for Thanksgiving dinner. THEN, there was a big auction of the rice, fruits and veggies (and fowl) that had been grown that year. The money benefits the church, so it was fun to hear people wagering and the prices going up. We got a bag of rice for Taw Saeng and Jasmine bought a whole pack of stuff, including a live chicken! They killed and cooked it for her there, and turned it into soup. She also got rice, pumpkins, papayas, a variety of veggies we do not have the US and a nice bamboo basket to take it all home in. And it only cost $20 for the whole thing.

After the auction, it was time to eat! So much yummy food and so many people hanging out and celebrating together. It was a fun time, and I ate SO much food. It is so much fun taking Sophie to these things because she is like a totally different kid. She chatters away in Akha and is so sweet, no trace of the moody teenager she can easily be in the city.

Jasmine needed to get some interviews from some villagers for a research project she is doing, so Ahna, Sophie and I walked around the village and went down to the lake to work off some of the calories from dinner. On the way back up the hill, Sophie challenged us to a race up the hill. I won of course, because Ahna was in flip flops, so she fell out early, and Sophie is just weak and has no endurance, so I passed them both up pretty easily. I didn’t have to run fast, just outlast the two of them! We headed back to the car, packed up our spoils and said goodbye to the generous families. Jasmine stayed to continue her interviews and we took the car back to the city. Best way to spend Thanksgiving, in my opinion.  

Headed for Juvie

As you can see by the thermometer on the right, I am currently at 98% of my total budget raised (still need about $2500 for the next two years)
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Wow, I totally thought I had written about everything that happened in November and early December but clearly, that was all in my imagination. Sorry to keep you hanging! So, last I wrote, we were preparing to go to the Juvenile Department for interviews. That was on November 15, and they were supposed to interview me, Sophie, Ning and Sophie’s teacher from last year, who helped us get all her homework and keep the administration from making Sophie repeat 7^th grade. Unfortunately, Ning had to go to a seminar on that morning, so she asked me to tell them she would come the following afternoon.

The morning of the 15^th, it was pouring rain, which is unusual for November, but I was trying not to think of it as a bad sign. The interviews were at a juvenile correction facility (which I didn’t understand til the following day) on some beautiful grounds. We arrived there just on time, but the lawyer was late (shocking, I know). So, we signed in, and when the lawyer finally showed up, they called me in with him to give them some papers and ask a few questions. The interviews were in a tiny room with two social workers (I guess that is what they would be considered.) I was really nervous because I really had no idea what to expect, but the lady who interviewed all of us was really nice. So, the entire interview was conducted in Thai. And it took an hour and a half for me. Let me tell you, my brain was so tired after that interview. But, to my credit, I understood about 95% of the questions. The lady was really good at rephrasing to simpler questions if I didn’t understand, so that was really helpful. At the end of the interview, she told me she was really surprised that I had only been here for a year and a half, because my Thai was so good. I always love hearing that. :)

Basically, she asked me questions about everything in my life. Where I was born, what did I do before I came to Thailand, why did I come, how did I meet Sophie, did I know her parents, how did she come live with me, how do I take care of her when she is sick (that started the whole story of the TB, which she seemed really impressed by), how involved am I in school, how much money do we have, how much does our house cost, etc. One of the things she asked about was basically why did I think that I should be her mom. I didn’t really understand what she was asking, so she said, ‘OK, you are Christian, right? So, do you feel like God sent you here for her?” And I was like “Oh, yeah, actually I do. Here, let me tell you about the crazy story that brought me here at exactly the right time.” After I told her all this, about how I had been pursuing foster parenting in the States, but then God told me to come to Thailand instead, she was like, “so, it was, what is the word in English?.....DESTINY!” I had to laugh, cause that was pretty much it! While it was nervewracking and I kept feeling like there was more I should say, because all the questions felt so sterile, somehow, not really emotional, I still think it went well.

After they finished with me, they talked to Sophie for about 40 minutes, and asked her things like: why do you live with Heather, how does she treat you, do you have any problems, do you want to stay with Heather, what did she do when you were in the hospital, did she know your parents? One question that was funny to me was when they asked her why she liked to live with me, she said because I was a good person and took good care of her. So the lady asked “Ok, if someone else who was a good person and could take good care of you came along, would you want to go live with them instead?” Sophie answered “No, because I have lived with Heather for a long time and she is my mom now. We have a close relationship.” Later, my Thai teacher was asking about the interviews and I was telling her what Sophie said, my Thai teacher stopped me and asked what word Sophie used. I remembered that she had used a word I didn’t understand and when I asked her to explain what it meant, she said it meant a close relationship. My Thai teacher said, “Oh, was it this word?” I was like “Oh!  Yeah! That’s it.” She said, “OK, we use the translation for ‘close relationship’ when speaking about close friends or aunts, cousins, like that, people who it would be hard if we were separated, but we would survive. This word, we use for family. When we use this word, it means that our hearts are woven together, that if we were separated from one another, it would be so painful that we would die.” How sweet is that?

Later, Sophie told me, “um, P’Heather, I kind of lied a little bit to the lady.” I was like “WHAT? WHY?!” She said, “Well, she asked me if my mom knew you, right, and I said that after she died Kru Ning told me that my mom had said she wanted me to go live with you. I don’t know if that’s true or not.” It cracked me up, but I told her she didn’t need to lie about anything, and she should always tell the truth when people ask this stuff.

After Sophie’s interview was done, they called in her teacher. Her interview lasted about 30 minutes, and they just asked her about school stuff, like if I was involved with her schoolwork, and came to PTA meetings and stuff, and the teacher told her about me getting Sophie a tutor to keep up with her studies while she was in the hospital.

After we were all done, the social worker came out to talk to us and said, “OK, all three of you talked about Ning, so I definitely need to talk to her tomorrow to corroborate all your stories.” (OK, obviously I am paraphrasing. I can’t really translate corroborate).

Friday, I picked up Ning and we drove back out to Juvie again. I guess Ning didn’t really understand why we were going there because she knew it was Juvie, but after her interview, she understood why they had to do the interviews there. That was the first time I understood that we had been at the Juvie hall all day the day before! The social worker talked to Ning for about an hour and a half also, just like me, and asked her all the same questions she had asked me and Sophie, but Ning had even more insight, because she is the one who really talked to Sophie’s mom about this, and she is the one who is responsible for giving me Sophie in the first place. She had to explain her actions to them and really vouch for me as a good person, so I think that without her testimony, we would not have had a good outcome. They asked her if I was “tjing tjai,” which means having a true or pure heart, and of course she assured them that I was. I think it’s good that they do such thorough interviews because I know there is a probably a lot of people who have dishonorable intentions in adopting kids, so it’s good that they try to be really sure before just handing over kids to foreigners.  

Guardianship progress

As you can see by the thermometer on the right, I am currently at 96% of my total budget raised (still need about $3000 for the next two years)
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October 31, 2012

So, while everyone in America was doing last minute fixes on their kids’ costumes to prep them for trick-or-treating, I was stressing out about going up to Mae Fah Luang yet again. This time, we were going to finally move Sophie officially to Chiang Mai for study. I thought that we were also going to inquire again about getting her birth certificate, but that didn’t end up happening, as I later found out.

Anyway, in preparation for this, we met with our lawyer, with whom I was becoming more and more disillusioned, the more I talked to people he had basically screwed over. But, at this point, we were days away from filing our case, so it was a bit late to fire him and find someone new. He said he would drive his car and we could just pay him for the cost of the car maintenance and gas, about 5000 baht ($175). Two weeks ago, we rented a car for two days, drove all over the country and paid for a hotel room and travel costs for 3 additional people and it only cost 6000 baht, so I was a bit skeptical about the high price. However, I didn’t have much room to argue, since he said he would normally charge 7500 baht just for a fee to travel that far. Frustrating, but I felt like I was boxed into a corner. After all, we NEEDED him to come with us and speak to the family who now lives on Sophie’s land, and speak to the poo yai baan (village chief) from Mae Fah Luang.

Despite having this case for a year, our lawyer still does not believe that Sophie’s entire family is dead. I thought he may finally believe us if someone ELSE tells him that they are all dead. All of a sudden at this meeting, he started saying that if we couldn’t find a living relative to sign for us, then I couldn’t get legal guardianship, but I could get cleared to adopt her. ????? How is guardianship harder than adoption? She can’t be the first kid in the history of the country to have no living relatives and need to be adopted by someone. Not to mention the fact that for the past year, he has been saying she can’t be adopted since she is not a citizen and that she is too old to be adopted in Thailand. This is why I have lost all faith in this lawyer because every day, his story changes to be a complete contradiction from the previous day.

The plan was to meet at the office at 5 am and head up to MFL and back in the same day. We had arranged with the family and the chief to meet us at the government office, so they were planning to be there too. We got up to the office about 9am, and there were only 3 people ahead of us in line to finish Sophie’s address change. I thought that while we did that, the lawyer was speaking to the other office about her birth certificate, but I guess I should have been more specific and told him to go ask, instead of just asking what he found out. He just told me the same thing they said the last time we went up, which I found out later was totally a lie. (More on that to come).

OK, so we went to the first desk, he looked over the papers, and sent us to take yet more pictures because the last batch did not have Sophie in her school uniform. After that was done, we waited for him to type up the papers. The guy called us in when the papers were printed, but not yet officially signed, and I saw that my name was spelled incorrectly.

I didn’t realize until that moment that they were actually not only giving her permission to study in Chiang Mai, but specifically naming me and our house as her legal guardian and residence. However, I thought my name should be spelled correctly. So, we went back to wait again.

While we were waiting, the family and the chief showed up and the lawyer talked to them. On the drive up, he had asked Sophie over and over and over and over again “are you sure these people are not your family?” and she kept telling him “no, they are my mom’s friends.” Finally, after the 10^th time, she just gave up and said, “OK, yeah, they are family.” So, when they show up, and he says, “how are you related?” they are like “Uh, we’re not. We’re just friends who live on her parents’ land.” Then the lawyer is all shocked and dismayed and like “Why did Sophie say they were relatives? They aren’t relatives. They say all the relatives are dead!” To which I respond with a combination of disbelief and derision and say: “I know. This is what we have been telling you for a year. You wouldn’t believe Sophie when she told you over and over that they were not family, so she finally told you what you wanted to hear. I have been telling you the same thing for a year. Do you finally believe us now?”

After this, Sophie comes running out and grabs me to go inside, where I am plopped in front of a guy who starts asking me questions about Sophie. Like, do I yell at her (kind of lied on that one), do I hit her (I was pretty appalled by that question and responded by telling the story of how I wanted to go beat her teacher up after he beat all the kids in class until they had bruises and couldn’t sit down for 3 days), where do we live, that kind of thing. I couldn’t follow 100% of what he was saying, but the gist of it was that they sometimes have problems with foreigners wanting to take in teenagers. They will say that they want to help or adopt them, but really, they beat them, or make them house slaves, or force them to work in brothels, so he wanted to be really sure that I was treating her well. I said that was very good, and that is why I wanted to take care of her, to keep those awful things from happening. He seemed satisfied with that, and stamped our papers and sent us on our way back to desk 1. So, we waited another 20 minutes to get the final copy. Then we made a few copies and had them officially stamped as well.

Basically, this paper gives me full authority to travel with Sophie, get her out of trouble with the police (as if that would ever happen), and lets her stay with me until she finishes 9^th grade. Technically, she is still registered in Mae Fah Luang, so we need to take this paper and the accompanying check-in sheet to the Chiang Mai government office every 6 months until she is done with 9^th grade. At that point, we need to go back to mae Fah Luang to get another paper extending her stay in Chiang Mai until she finishes high school. Ideally by that point, all this will be moot because I will have adopted her and gotten her US citizenship by that point, but I am still not sure exactly how long that will all take.

At this point, it’s 11am. I think, ok, we will be back in Chiang Mai by 4pm and I can actually go to work and teach tonight. Great! However, this is the best part of the story. We head down the mountain and pull off into this random village. The lawyer tells us that he is going to leave us here to have lunch at the market and then come back and pick us up in two hours while he goes to meet with someone else. I was so confused because on the drive up, he had said we would go with him to meet these other people and it would just be a second while he gave them some documents, and then we would get back on the road. So, he leaves us in the middle of nowhere, basically, and says he will come back in 2 hours, to give us time to shop and eat. So, two hours comes and goes. Long story short, he comes back at 4:15. 4:15!!!! We got there at 11:20. I was speechless with anger at the fact that I had paid him 5000 baht for this day and he was making me miss work and just dumping us in this little town with NOTHING to do for hours. He refused to tell us where he was or how long he would be, every time I called him, he would just say “oh, just a second, we’re coming” and then hang up on me. It was infuriating!

When they finally came back to pick us up, he was all apologetic, but I was not having it. I was basically done with him at that point. I was just like “don’t talk, let’s just go.” We finally got back to Chiang Mai at 8:30pm. After that, I have been very short with him, and just not wanted to talk to him at all, because I just don’t trust him or believe a word her says anymore, which is not a good feeling to have, when we still need to go to juvenile court and then the head court of Chiang Mai and he needs to testify for us.

Thursday morning, I had a Thai lesson. I asked my teacher to help me read the paper for Sophie, so I knew what it said. She read it and said “Heather, this is wrong!” Apparently, when they typed in how long Sophie is allowed to stay with me before the paper expires does not match up. It says “this child is allowed to stay with Heather Askew for the next year and 5 months, until March 31, 2015.” Yeah, do the math. That is 2 years and 5 months, not one year. So, if anyone at the Chiang Mai government office or the court sees this, it could put the entire guardianship on hold until we can go BACK to MFL and get it fixed! Six people read this paper, and not a single one of them caught that mistake. So, not only did we waste 4 hours of time in a nameless town, we didn’t even get a correct document for our case! However, I am not freaking out too much yet, because three different offices in Chiang Mai had to approve her check-in, and not one of them commented on the inaccuracy, so hopefully nobody will notice at court either. I didn’t even tell the lawyer, for fear he would hold off on filing the case yet again.

The other incredibly frustrating thing is that, when we were in MFL with Ning on October 8, they told us we need to go pick up Sophie’s ID card (not citizenship, just a resident alien card) in Doi Saket, just outside Chiang Mai. However, after the debacle with the moving form, I asked my Thai teacher to help me find the phone number for this office so I would have everything 150% prepared before I pulled Sophie out of school yet again to go get this card.

We call them, and they are totally confused. They are like “what are you talking about? You can’t pick up a card here. We manufacture the cards in batches and send them back to the county. You have to pick it up at the county office in Mae Fah Luang.” I was so furious and confused. That lady gave us a number for her supervisor, who said the same thing. They get batches of ID info from the counties and then make the cards and send them back. They don’t have the ability to distribute them.

Next, we called the county office, where we JUST WERE YESTERDAY!! I explained to the woman who answered that we were just in MFL, they told us to go to Doi Saket, but now Doi Saket is saying to go to MFL, so I was completely at a loss as to what we were supposed to do. She asked me a bunch of questions about where Sophie was born, what village number and if she had citizenship. Then, she gave me another number to call. My Thai teacher called for me and talked to that person.

Let me back up a bit to explain. We have a copy (not an original, Sophie has no clue where that might be) of an application for her to get an ID card. It was filed in November of 2007, 5 years ago, and says that the card should be picked up at the end of January, 2008. They never went to pick up this card, so we have been carting this paper all over the place for the last year and a half trying to get info as to how to get this card that was applied for.

So, the new person says, OK, what is the application date? We tell her and she’s like “oh, no! That expired. They did a census in 2007, but those cards expired last year. They did a new census last year, but if she never picked up her card, her number may have been cancelled when they did the new survey. You need to come to the government office in MFL and ask them to create a new application and put her number back in the system if it was deleted. Then, they will send the info to Doi Saket, and send the card back to MFL and you can come pick it up.” I about fell over when I heard this. We had the opportunity to do this TWICE in the last month. So, for those of you keeping track, I have spent nearly $400 USD in a month to basically get lied to multiple times, spend hours traveling and waiting at a government office, and get nothing accomplished in the process to get Sophie an identification card.

After this phone call, I called the village chief we had met with several times over the past year, who had helped us both times at the government office. I asked him if he remembered the census last year and if he had put Sophie’s name on the list, or if her number was gone. He said he was sure her name was on the list, because he checked last year, when we went to visit him in the village in December. (See “Chiang Rai, Poo Chi Fah, and Other Funny Names for that story). FINALLY, some good news.

The day after I found all this out, our lawyer finally filed the case with the court, and we got a court date. Well, two actually. Our first is November 15, when we will go to the juvenile court and testify to our relationship, how long Sophie has been with me and why I should be allowed to be her guardian. Then, they will write a recommendation to the high court, and we will go to see them on December 12. That is a panel of 4 judges who will ask us more questions and will render a final decision. So, if all goes well, it should all be official and legal by Christmas! Great Christmas present, huh?

The next step is where it gets a bit murky. Now, the lawyer says that we can take the judgement to Bangkok, and file it with the Department of Child Welfare to legally adopt Sophie. However, I still don’t know if that is really the case. I do know that once I get the judgement, I will go to the US Consulate and find out what is the next step I can take to get her US citizenship, since she may never be able to get Thai citizenship in her life.
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Pai and then some

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This is a long one, so be prepared! A lot happened during our week off for fall break...

The week of Oct 8-12 we closed Taw Saeng for our fall break, as all the kids’ school close as well. The beginning of the week, we were in Mae Fah Luang, Tuesday we cleaned the house from top to bottom and then vegged out. While we were watching TV, I found out my college roommate’s husband had just passed away from cancer. I knew he was sick and didn’t have long, but it was still a shock because I had recently spent time with their family while I was in the US. It was really hard thinking of how their kids will grow up without a daddy, and even though they are Christians, it’s still a hard situation. Just after that, I got a call that the dad of three brothers (Nat, Buddy and Aaron) in our program had also passed away from cancer. He had throat cancer and had been in the hospital since mid-August, so we also knew that was coming. Their family is very poor, and their mom is worried about raising three boys (2 of them teengares) on her own, with only her mother-in-law to help her.

So, Thursday, we all went to the funeral of this dad, and it turns out he was going to be buried in the same cemetery in Mae Taeng that Sophie’s parents are. We stopped at the market on the way to the church service to get some flowers for the family and for Sophie’s parents’ graves. The service was nice, but kept getting interrupted by people coming in and out and talking loudly and cell phones, which I thought was really disrespectful. After the church service, we all ate together, and a lot of the Taw Saeng kids had come too, to support their friends, which I thought was very sweet of them. Gabby, Yvonne and Willow came with us to the burial site as well. 

When we got up there, about an hour outside the city, we realized we had only ever been there during hot season, because suddenly the big open field was covered in corn! The entire cemetery area was covered in corn, so that we couldn’t even see the graves. We were in our nice clothes from church, so we took off our shoes and waded through the stalks in the general direction of the graves, praying the entire time that the myriad snake holes in the ground would not yield venomous snakes bent on making us their next meal. We made it to the graves, which were surrounded by knee high grass, and put some flowers on each of Sophie’s parents’ graves. The other kids hadn’t come to her mom’s funeral, so they came with us and we said a quick prayer. While we were waiting there, wondering where the boys’ dad would be buried we saw a procession of cars on a hill across the valley from where we were. Apparently there are multiple cemetery sections on this area of land. We all got back in the truck and went down to where the road split and tried to go up the other road to the hill we had seen the burial cars going, but they had parked all the way down to where the road splits, so we hiked up in our nice clothes. Upside: we got out first.

The ceremony was brief but it is such a beautiful resting place for their dad to be buried. If they come visit, it should bring them a modicum of comfort to know their dad has such a beautiful view. 

This is a field on the way to the burial site. We all took some pics here.

View from the burial site of the valley below.

After the funeral, we rushed back to town, and raced over to Ahna and Jasmine’s house. Jas had wanted to take some pictures of Sophie at this abandoned building near her house, so we came up with some clothes for both of us to wear to do some together too. That week, my friend Bethsaida’s cousin was visiting and he is a professional photographer in NYC and brought a light kit with him, so he took some amazing shots of us and of Sophie by herself, as you can see below. It’s crazy, when I met her two years ago, she still was such a little kid, and in these pictures she looks like she is 25. Kinda freaks me out a little, even though they are awesome. 

Inside the building, there was a bunch of standing water all over the floor, and I thought it would be such a cool shot of the two of us jumping in the water. Jay thought the same thing, so he took a bunch of pictures of us in the water, but Sophie is not the best at tandem jumping. Still turned out cool, though. 

After we were completely drenched, we headed to the market to get some food for dinner and Sophie wanted to find some shoes for the weekend. She finally did and it’s a good thing they only cost $3.50 because they completely fell apart by the end of the day Sunday. We went to pick up Winnie, who was coming with us to Pai, and I was totally surprised because P’Beauw had gotten me a birthday present and Winnie made me one at school! P’Beauw got me this little adjustable nightlight that you put aromatherapy oil in to make your room smell nice. Winnie made me a scarf on a loom. Who even knows how to do that anymore? How cool is that? And it’s SOOO soft and is blue and white, so cute! Great kickoff to the weekend.

That night, at midnight, I was awakened by a frantic banging on my door. At least it seemed frantic when I was startled awake. Nobody responded when I said to come in, so I raced to open the door and found Sophie and Winnie standing in the dark with a tiny cake and 3 candles, singing Happy Birthday! It was kind of adorable. I wasn’t in the mood to eat cake at midnight, though, so we ended up bringing it to Pai with us.

At 6am, we were up and loading onto the motorbike to head over to the bus station to meet everyone else and get tickets to Pai! We got there with enough time to grab breakfast and take some Dramamine before we loaded up. There are over 700 hairpin curves on the road from Chiang Mai to Pai, so the motion sickness meds were a necessity for all involved. We got to Pai around noon, wandered down the street and found a cute little hotel with bungalows for rent. Because we had 7 people (me, Sophie, Winnie, Jasmine, Ahna, Ning and Jasmine’s friend Nudee) we got three bungalows right on the river and they gave us a deal, so it ended up being just over $20 for lodgings for two nights (that is for 2 people, keep in mind!)

Our heavy bags dropped off, we then rented motobikes so we could explore the valley and village of Pai. We stopped at a place famous for their cooking school and got a delicious Thai lunch before heading out to a waterfall that Ning, Ahna and I had visited last year. This year it was packed with people, so it wasn’t quite as secluded as we thought it might be. This waterfall has several levels, so at the middle section, there was a deep pool of water that a bunch of people were sliding or jumping into. Of course, we had to as well, and let me tell you, that water was COLD! Hypothermia cold. But, we braved it and took a bunch of pictures in it.

Ahna, Jasmine and I sat at the base of where the waterfall came down from the level above and Sophie was going to take a picture.  She had her back to the two boulders that were creating this pool, but also letting the water through to create the waterfall below. She kept scooting closer and closer to where the boulders met, and we jokingly said, “be careful you don’t slip through and fall over the waterfall!” Right after that, POP! She went through the rocks and was hanging on by one hand, with the other hand holding the camera. She didn’t look too scared, so it took us a second to react, but I knew something was wrong, so I took off swimming to her, and got to her just as she yelled my name and started to lose her grip on the rock. I grabbed her hand, but the pressure of the water from behind was so strong, I couldn’t pull her over the rocks and she couldn’t get a grip on the rocks under her feet because they were so slippery. Out of nowhere, this German guy was next to me grabbing her other hand, and together we pulled her over from certain doom, or intense pain anyway. It was pretty scary actually, but she was fine, no bruises or anything, just really cold. We were all effusive in our thanks to the tourist for helping literally save Sophie’s life, but she seemed relatively oblivious to the danger she had just been in. She did say thank you, but it was more because I told her to than because she really thought she should. Are all teenagers this convinced of their immortality? 

After we had our fill of waterfalls, we jumped back on the bikes and drove all over the valley, looking at the beautiful scenery and stopping occasionally to take pictures. We also stopped at a famous coffee shop called Coffee in Love that was featured in a Thai movie called “Pai in Love.” We decided to use this as our location for “fancy” family portraits the next day.

By the time we got back to the bungalows it was after dark and I was freezing! I tried to take a hot shower, but it was lukewarm at best, so after I got out, I put on all my clothes and socks and a jacket and crawled under the covers to warm up. Ahna was like “you need to wear a dress! I brought a sundress so you should dress up too.” I was telling her all the reasons I didn’t really want to, but would anyway, once I warmed up. I wandered over to Sophie’s room and she was like “why are you not dressed up? We are all dressing up!” I explained to her again that I was going to change when I warmed up. Then Ning was like “oh, I thought we were all dressing up.” You think I would have been suspicious by this point, seeing as it was my birthday, but I clearly am not as observant of my own life as I am on a movie set.

I had Ahna braid my hair and changed into my sundress and we headed out to eat. I thought we were going to a Thai place where Ahna, Ning and I had gone last year, but we turned the wrong direction out of the hotel, and Jasmine stopped at a pizza/Italian place and was like “how about here?” I was so confused, I was like “What? I thought we were going to that Thai place? Didn’t we talk about this already?” Then Jas got this panicked look on her face and was like, “oh, uh, yeah, we can go there.” At the look on her face, I responded, “OK, CLEARLY we need to eat here.” So, we went in and they had a whole table reserved for us with candles and flowers all ready for my birthday dinner! I was really surprised, and even more so when Ning gave me a present and Jas and Ahna got me this book I have been coveting for a year, but unable to afford (ok, it’s Inheritance  for those of you who care or who also read books about dragons, or want to make fun of me for doing so.) 

Dinner was great and delicious, and it was so nice of Jasmine to treat us, but the mood was dampened a bit by the fact that Sophie was in a full blown teenage sulk and refused to talk to anyone or even say why she was in a bad mood when I tried to figure out what was going on with her. Then, she just took off with Winnie and didn’t even tell me where she was going. I was less than happy with her behavior, especially since she was being so rude to everyone else. The crazy thing is, usually in these situations, I try to remember when I was a teenager and how I would have let my mom or dad get me out of a bad mood, but I honestly came up blank. I definitely remember having those moods, but have no memory of what my mother did to force me to act civilly. I should probably have written these things down in preparation for the day when I had a teenager. Teenage self fail.

Eventually Sophie and Winnie came back when their food had arrived and was nearly cold, but they ate it all, at least without complaining. After dinner, I had a little talk with Sophie and the next day, Jasmine gave her a full blown lecture on the inappropriateness of her behavior and told her she owed everyone an apology, which she actually listened to. I think maybe it’s one of those things where if your parents tell you your behavior sucks, you can rationalize it, but when another adult whose opinion you care about also yells at you for the same thing, it hits that maybe your parents are right after all. Anyway, we had talked all day about going to float down the river on inner tubes the next day, but I told Sophie that if she didn’t snap out of her bad mood and behave for the rest of the trip that she could stay alone at the bungalows while the rest of us went. She gave me her word, so I went ahead and booked our trip for all 7 of us.

Saturday morning, we went to breakfast at a place called the Witching Well, which is famous for their pancakes. I had apple pancakes and Jaz had banana chocolate, which looked and tasted delicious as well. Full of syrup and sweetness, we wandered over to find the guys to take us to the river with innertubes. It turned out the river was really shallow, so shallow, in fact, that in several places, we had to pick up our tubes and walk for a ways til it was deep enough to float again. The rocks in those places were very sharp on the bare feet. That part was not fun. Most of the time, we stayed attached to each other, but then we would all freak out and split up into groups when we encountered an obstacle in the river, like an island or boulder. 

I was with Sophie and Winnie for a while, and we came to such an obstacle. I could see Ahna and Nudee to the right of the fork, so I was trying to propel us that direction, but the girls were doing nothing to help, so we ended up just running into the island. However, Sophie kept floating to the left, toward the rapids and around a bend. I kept yelling at her to stand up because the water was so shallow she could have just come back up the river and floated down the other side with us, but she wouldn’t listen. So, Winnie and I headed to the right with Ahna, figuring we would meet her on the other side. However, after a bit, it looked like the river curved, but the land kept going, like it wasn’t an island at all. Then I freaked out a bit, thinking that Sophie had gone down a totally different branch of the river, so I started swimming back upstream to go after her. Ahna reassured me that if there were somewhere we needed to keep to one side of a fork, they would have warned us, so I floated back downstream, and sure enough, it was an island. However, I waited and waited for Sophie to come, but all I saw were Jasmine and Ning who had been behind us when we split up. Now I was really worried, because if Sophie wasn’t on our side or the other side, where had she gone? After another few minutes, she finally appeared on the side I had just floated down. Apparently, she thought I was waiting for her at the top of the island, so she had finally stood up and walked back upstream to meet me only to find I wasn’t there, so she floated leisurely down the river to catch back up to us. Poor girl, I should have just sent Winnie with Ahna and chased her down myself in the first place. Anyway, we found her and all was well. Until she ran into a tree.

There were a lot of downed trees in the river, and we ended up floating right into the branches of one, so I jumped into the middle of my tube to pull her and Winnie out. At that point in the river, the water was about waist deep and instead of sharp stones under my feet, there was soft sand, so I floated like that for a while. Then, I saw up ahead some rapids, which I knew meant the water would get shallow and rocky pretty quickly. Before I could climb up on top of my inner tube, the speed picked up and the water got super shallow. The force of the momentum smashed my foot into a boulder, breaking my toe (no, not the big one, the one next to my pinky toe.) The rest of the trip was a bit less fun, due to the extreme pain I was in. However, I have broken several toes before, so I wasn’t freaking out, just elevating it and trying to avoid having to use my foot.

We weren’t too far from the spot we were supposed to get out of the river, so I let Jasmine and Ahna know I would need to go to a drugstore because I just broke an extremity. They were more concerned than I was and tried to convince me to go to the hospital. We got out of the river at the bottom of a hill covered with shale gravel. I was sitting on a boulder at the bottom, trying to keep my foot elevated and figure out how on Earth I was going to make it up the hill with no shoes while balancing on one foot, when one of the guys from the tubing shop showed up with a bag of ice and half carried me up the hill, both of us nearly falling several times. I was extremely grateful to him, because I really don’t know how else I could have done it. Jasmine had run home to get one of the motorbikes so I could drive back and ice my toe. She had also gotten cotton balls, medical tape and painkillers, as per my request.  Sophie took me back to the bungalows while the rest of the crew loaded up the tubes and paid for their share of the trip.

When I got back to the room, I was icing my toe and took one of the pills Jasmine had bought. But, I had never heard of it, and it was only 50 mg of medication. I was thinking, “last week, when I got my toenail pulled out (ok, that’s kind of a gross story that I won’t torture you with), I was taking 400mg of ibuprofen. 50mg is not very much. I should take two. And also some Advil.” So I did. About 5 minutes later, Jasmine came up and said “Oh! I forgot to tell you, this is basically over the counter morphine, so you are only supposed to take one.” WHAT?! My jaw dropped open and she was like, “Oh no, did you already take two?” and I said “…and two Advil.” To which Jasmine responded with laughter, “dude, I think you’re gonna die!” Ten minutes after that, I was feeling no pain anywhere! That stuff is great, man. I was all set to traipse all over the country taking pictures in a dress.

Before we left, we all enjoyed a nice lunch of burgers and fries by the river running past our bungalows. Then Sophie and I changed and did our hair and we were off to Coffee in Love again. We really did go all over the place there; it’s kind of a big property.  I felt great though, until I didn’t. Suddenly I felt pretty sick. I think it’s the downside of getting high.

So, while I took a break to prop my foot up, Jasmine took a bunch of pictures with Sophie and Winnie. I am really glad they did that because there are not many pictures of them together and since we moved, and they don’t go to the same school and neither goes to Taw Saeng anymore, I worry their friendship will fade. Winnie is basically the only Akha friend Sophie has, so I feel like it’s really important to try to encourage and preserve their friendship, especially since Winnie was the one who was there when Sophie’s mom died. Right now, Sophie feels like it doesn’t matter that aren’t good friends anymore, but I think that if she lets this friendship dissolve, she will really regret it in the future, because that kind of friendship is hard to come back and worth making an effort to keep. I hope she realizes that before too long and does make an effort to stay connected to her heritage and her friend. 

After we got back from picture taking, we changed and decided to wander up the walking street and end at the restaurant I thought we were going to the night before. I did a bunch of Christmas shopping, which was fun, despite the pain I was in at that point. I was hobbling pretty slowly, but still faster than the rest of the group! We met up with Jay and Bethsaida on the walking street and they came to dinner with us too. It was just as good as I remember and afterward, we headed back to the hotel so I could dive into my new book!

We had booked tickets for the noon bus back to Chiang Mai, so we got a bit of a sleep in, until the construction crew showed up, that is! Ning and Jasmine decided to go explore and find another of the waterfalls in the area, but the rest of us stayed at the hotel. I was in no shape to go traipsing about the country, my toe was black and purple by this point, and it was excruciating to put my crocs on, let alone hobble anywhere over rocks and through water to get to a waterfall! We had a leisurely morning reading and went out for breakfast at a cute little Thai restaurant not far from our hotel. We headed back to pack our stuff up and one of the motorbike keys was missing! We searched our hotel room, but the last person to drive it was Jasmine’s friend. It wasn’t in any of her stuff, and we kept telling Jas to check her pockets. When she finally did, there was the key! It was 11:30 by this point, and we still had to return 4 motorbikes, get our deposit back and walk to the bus station to catch the van! We made it at about 11:45am, and as soon as we were loaded up, we took off back to Chiang Mai.

Three hours later, we were home and unpacking. The next week, it was back to work as usual! Friday, the 19^th, Sophie got her second wisdom tooth out, and this one came out even quicker than the first. The dentist wants to wait a few months to get her last one, because he thinks it will probably continue to come in on its own and he can just do a basic extraction, rather than oral surgery to get it out, which will be a lot less painful, so I’m good with that.

Sophie is still in band, and in November, her marching band will be playing in the Loy Krathong parade! I’m so excited to see them play in public! So, even though she still had last week off from school, she was going to band for over 10 hours a day to practice. Seems a bit intense to me, but they really aren’t very good, so they can use the extra practice time. She won’t be able to play for a week due to the tooth extraction, so hopefully she will be ready for all 3 new songs they are learning by the time of the parade.