Mini-update

Wow, so much has happened lately. This has been a month of exciting ups and heartwrenching downs. I wish I had more time to update today, but this is a reminder to myself to fill you in on my trip to Bangkok, our move to the new building and all the plans we have for the new year IN the new building.
You may notice that my fundraising chart is at a lower percentage than last month. No, people did not ask for a refund. :) However, after Sophie was lashed at school for the third time this year (10 lashes with a wooden stick given to all in her class for 3 kids being late, none of which was Sophie), and with the abysmal way the Thai school system grades (they purposely fail 98% of the students at mid-terms and then pass everyone with a B or higher for finals so it looks like the kids all improved massively), I decided she needs to be in a private school. It will still be on the Thai school calendar and with a Thai student majority, but they have an English track so she can be improving her language acquisition, and they have much higher standards for all their subjects and teachers. It's not international school, so it's not crazy expensive in the grand scheme of things, but more than we could afford on our limited budget, so from January on, I will be getting the "teenager stipend" as they call it. That requires a bit more fundraising, so if you would like to contribute to help Sophie achieve academic success and have a brighter future, you can donate here:
http://www.covchurchgiving.com/p-446-missionary-heather-askew.aspx

Loneliness

I am discovering loneliness. I think loneliness feels different in a foreign country. The loneliness of a parent is not the same loneliness of a single person. If I am honest, I think when I was single and kid-less, I only ever experienced loneliness when surrounded by people, never when alone. I have always been content to be on my own, glad for the chance to read uninterrupted for hours or watch movies or swim or do any number of things I cannot do with a person or groups of people. My mother says that when I was an infant, she could strap me in the bouncy seat in front of the picture window and clean the entire house without hearing a peep from me. I wasn’t asleep, just endlessly fasinted by the goings on outside our house, or amusing myself with my own made up stories, I guess. What stories a 6-month-old tells herself while waiting for the vacuuming to cease I will leave to conjecture. Also, cleaning the whole house while the baby is strapped in a bouncy seat in another room: neglect, or efficient parenting providing the opportunity to develop a sense of imagination? Discuss.

I think loneliness for single parents the world over must be hard, but for single adoptive parents even more so. At least if you are a single parent due to divorce, if you have a serious problem with your kid, you can generally call up the ex and discuss how you should handle it: discipline, a good talking to, whatever. As a single adoptive parent in a foreign country, I find myself lonely for the companionship of having someone to be a sounding board for these things. Maybe that isn’t loneliness; maybe it’s missing something that never existed. But, I think, if I were in the US, there are many people I could call up at a moment’s notice to get sound advice about these things. Here, I have skype and acquaintances to ask, but it’s not the same. Maybe that’s not loneliness either, maybe it’s missing something I once had.

Sophie goes to camp tomorrow for 3 days, and I find myself feeling her absence already. Three days of alone time could be a gift, but I am not sure if I should feel obligated to fill up the empty time by being social and spending time with people I rarely see, now that I’m a parent and working full-time, or if I am allowed to just sit home and chill out without feeling guilty about NOT feeling guilty. The times in which I have long stretches of alone time, I find are the loneliest of all, recently.  My days here are so full of Taw Saeng, Sophie and the million things to do around the house, I don’t have time to miss anything, only time to enjoy my life here. But when I take the time and let myself think, I find I miss people profoundly.

There are not many things I can say I miss about the US: the smell of the magnolias in the summer evenings driving over the Sepulveda Pass, the scent of the woods in Washington State, the sight of Los Angeles and all its neighborhoods decorated for Christmas, the view of the city at night from the top of Mulholland. But I CAN say that I miss people. It’s painful to be away from people and not have the freedom to just hang out or call them up to check in anytime I feel like it, so I just avoid thinking about them, or emailing them or checking their Facebook status updates because it reminds me of the vast distance between us. I know, we live in a world of skype, Gmail chat, etc, but that is not the same as sitting in a room and having a conversation that can last hours and range from talking about Castle (that’s a TV show, btw) to where we want to be in 10 years. It’s that empty space where a tangible relationship once was that creates the loneliness I feel now. Because when I allow myself to think about the lives that people are living that I am now not a part of, the missing slams into me with a force like a cement fist to my chest. The intensity blindsides me with its unexpectedness and leaves me gasping.

Looking forward to 3 days with no parenting duties, I think about what I would do if I were faced with three days of free time in LA. I would call Wednesday to go see a movie at the AMC Burbank 16 and go movie hopping….I mean buy tickets to three movies in a day; then, go window shopping or ice skating. I would call up Rosa and geek out about Harry Potter and Les Mis and what books we are currently reading and how they are changing our worldviews. I would go over to Helen and Todd’s place and have dinner with their family, and braid Maya’s hair and talk about Ethan’s sports stats this season. I would go with Trina and Brady and Oliver to the beach and play in the sand. But, I can’t do any of that here because I am here and they are there and that is what it is. And so, I feel lonely. I have been reading Lauren Winner’s book Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis and she talks about loneliness as if it were a person. She says that loneliness “takes a letter opener from her bag and tells me she can kill me if she wants to.”  I don’t think my loneliness is quite that dramatic or direct, but it’s an interesting visual, no?

So, I will sit with my loneliness, and as Lauren Winner suggests, “see what it has for me.” Who knows what new insights may appear?

Taw Saeng News!!

Group photo: Orawun, P'Bua, Ahna, Ning, Matt, Angkhana, Seal, Larry, me, Chelsey

Infamous jumping picture

At the beginning of December, we went as a staff up to the Mae Saa waterfall and then to the very tip top of the mountain, where there is a Royal project of flowers and veggies growing. You can even camp up there. We tried to do a bunch of jumping pics as a group, and some were more successful jumpers than others. J It was a nice time to get to spend the day together and say goodbye to Matt and Chelsey before they headed back to the US. We ate a ton of food, and then hiked all the way to the very top of the waterfall before we went to the top of the mountain. This waterfall has 10 levels. Matt was adventurous enough to even go swimming. It was too cold for me this year, but last year on New Year’s Eve, we went swimming and jumped through a waterfall with my friend Jenny. At the top of the mountain, they have wooden go carts you can rent and drive down the hill at a terrifying speed. I did not try that, as I was so carsick by the time we hit the top of the mountain, that I could barely stand up. The fresh mountain air was invigorating though, and soon made me feel better, so I got to take a bunch of pictures and enjoy the beautiful surroundings. Next time, I would like to camp up there, I think it would be a lot of fun.

Me and my Thai teacher, Ning (not to be confused with Ning who has been helping with Sophie's citizenship)

Matt, Chelsey, me and Ahna

P'Bua and me

with Ahna

Beautiful day!

On December 15, a group of 10 of us went to see The Hobbit in 3-D. Fun bonding over Middle Earth. We all decided that the taxi service would be much improved in this city if they started using giant eagles that could be summoned by speaking with butterflies. Also, Ning wants to move to Rivendale.

We had a staff Christmas party on Dec 17 and ate some delicious Thai food and had a lottery for Christmas presents. I won a barbecue, which I was very excited about. I look forward to using it!

me with Nuey at our Christmas party

Dec 21, Ahna and I went with our friend Keith and Lauren to be Santa and his angels (?) to give out Christmas gifts to kids at the Starfish foundation where our friend Field works now. She was on staff at Taw Saeng for a long time, and now is a teacher at the country home for tribal kids. They have 5 homes around northern Thailand, so all the kids came to celebrate Christmas together. Here is a shot of us dressed up. Lauren had the idea to do the Charlie's Angels pose (I know, shocking, right? Usually, *I* am the one who thinks of it.)

Our big news for the new year is: WE ARE MOVING! I am so excited about this new development in our ministry and look forward to seeing what doors God opens for us in 2013 to help even more children. In our building now, we have one townhouse that is connected on both sides to other businesses. To put it mildly, they are less than happy with the level of noise the kids make on a daily basis. We currently are packed to the max with 32 kids, but in the new location, we will have enough space for 50 kids. Now we just need to get increased funding to hire the staff to go with that increase and some long term volunteers to commit to being with us for English teaching. We are very short staffed with only me and Ahna entering the new year.

This is totally a God thing. When we went to speak to the owner, she said that they built this building two years ago but have been unable to rent it. She normally tells people that the rent is 20,000 baht per side, but she told Orawun it was only 15,000 a side when she called, and didn’t know why she instinctively lowered the price. When she found out what we do, she was so excited. Her son works in San Diego, and has been telling her for over a year to rent to someone doing good in the community and not to worry about the profit. She is into horoscopes and the day we called to come see it, she had just read her horoscope and it was an auspicious day to rent their building. She and her husband have been very helpful and accommodating and are allowing us to start remodeling before we have even given them the full deposit!

Exciting benefits of the new location:

Two townhouses not connected to any other building. We are knocking out the wall in between the two sides to create one large room on the first floor and a large kitchen for P’Bua to work in.

There is much more storage space than in our current location

It is closer to all the kids’ houses but one

There are EIGHT bathrooms! (we currently have only 2)

It is naturally cooler so we can use the air conditioners at a lower setting and save a bit on electricity (we hope)

There is a huge parking lot across the street where kids can play soccer and run around after school. It is owned by the bank, which closes at 3:30, so when the kids come at 4, there will be no cars there.

We will have larger classrooms

The rent is lower for the larger space than our current rent

We will be able to continue operating and providing food, education and a safe place for kids to be through our child sponsorship program and individual donations. Sponsor a child for only $35 a month. Sign up online by clicking the link below, selecting monthly donor and picking "The Garden of Hope" in our drop down menu (that is still our legal operating name). Indicate in the notes that your support is for a child sponsorship and I will contact you with details about your sponsor child. You can also email me to tell me you have signed up to be a monthly donor and I will match you with a child.

Sponsor a child or donate to our building fund.

December, Part II

• -       Dec 13 we had a send off for our fantastic volunteers Chelsey and Matt who have been with us for nearly a year. It was pretty emotional and the kids all made cards for them and each one said goodbye individually.

• -       Dec 14 was our Taw Saeng Christmas party! It had been a long, stressful week of preparation because Ahna and I were the only ones who had motorbikes to do the endless number of running around errands. However, it was fun nonetheless, despite all the things that went wrong and the miscommunications we had. Amelie and Molly played their piano solos beautifully, the Dolphins actually remembered the dance and song, the Tigers performed skits showing the life of Jesus from birth to crucifixion, the Eagles performed three songs as a band, and the Penguins did a cute dance to Silent Night segueing into Jingle Bell Rock. Then, we gave out presents to families and kids and they all had a great time opening them. However, despite our best efforts of getting right sizes and measurements ahead of time, we still had to return 3 sets of clothes and 4 pairs of shoes. Still, a relative success overall. I slept like a baby that night to make up for the two weeks of sleeplessness and dreams of everything going horribly wrong. Methinks I may invest too much in these little pageants of ours.

For presents this year, we let the kids pick whether they wanted clothes, shoes or school supplies, and we gave the families large ice chests filled with household supplies like dish soap, rice and cooking oil. 

Molly playing Ode to Joy

Tigers performing scenes from life of Jesus

Wise me on the way to see Jesus

Penguins dancing

Dolphins dancing

The Eagles band: please no requests for Hotel California. They prefer worship songs. ;)

• Dec 17 was Sophie’s 6 month checkup xray for TB. We went in to get the xray done early in the morning, then went up to wait for the doctors to come. They showed us the newest xray and then the original one. I still thought the new xray did not look completely healthy, but they said there are no traces of TB. One of her lungs is 100% healed, but the other is about half filled with scar tissue. The doctor said that she was sick for so long before they started treatment that the scar tissue could take up to 5 years to heal completely. As long as there are no indications of TB recurrence, I am happy. The scar tissue being there still makes it hard for her to do extended exercise and strengthen her lungs, but I guess she will slowly get better and they will keep an eye on it over the next couple years. She has completed a year of outpatient treatment now, so we will shift from checkups every 2 months to every 3 months. My friend Jane is a doctor here and said that we need to get copies of the xrays to show the US when we are trying to get her visa, so we got a note from the doctor to get the xrays from radiology, and they ended up giving us the huge original in an envelope. I was like “uh…..can we just get a copy?” They said, “Oh, would you rather have a cd?” So, we ended up getting all the xrays on a cd to show the visa consular people when we get to that point.

Sophie and Winnie playing musical chairs for prizes

•         Dec 21, I left Taw Saeng early and went with Sophie and Winnie out to their house in SanSai. It is part of a housing development created by the Jimmy and Rosalind Carter foundation, so a few of the Taw Saeng kids’ families got houses a few years ago. They are pretty well built and nice with indoor plumbing and everything, but they are about 30 minutes outside the city, so it’s not very easy for people to live out there and drive their kids into school every day. That is why they live in the slums in the city so their kids can go to school, but sometimes spend their weekends out at the houses. Anyway, there was a big celebration there for Christmas and we slept at the house, which was fun. 

 

•       Dec 24 we had a party at our house. Winnie’s family came (her mom, brother and cousin included), the people who bought Sophie’s house, Billy and his mom, and Lucy came with Fiona, Annie and Lucy’s boyfriend. Plus, Ying and Nuey (one of our interns at Taw Saeng), so in all it was 18 people! Nuey came over in the afternoon to help me make Christmas sugar cookies, so that was a ton of fun. She had never made cookies before in her life! We spent hours making and decorating and then she stayed for the party too. We had pizza because Sophie requested it and we got it from a place that has 26” pizzas! Luckily, they deliver. J We had a great time and opened presents together and just laughed. I have been wanting to have our Thai friends over to the house for so long, but it never works out that everyone is free on the same day, so I was really excited to get this opportunity to host them. 

•        Christmas Day was less than exciting because Sophie had school all week, preparing for finals on the 26-28. So, it was getting up at 6am, opening stockings, sending her to school, watching tv and resting all day because I was fighting to keep my cold from turning into bronchitis, then picking her up, and opening our other presents, and then helping her study for her English final the next day. We had KFC for dinner because we rarely eat it, so it is a special treat that Sophie requested. Quite the tradition, eh? Pizza and KFC for our “special” dinners. Sophie got a bunch of stuff that I have been acquiring over the year, some clothes, school stuff, candy (of course), and a care bear. Her two biggest presents that she was most excited about were a bicycle from my parents and me, and a book called Jesus Calling that just came out in Thai. I have a copy in English, given to me by Vicky Johnson, so I bought Sophie the Thai version and we are going to read through it together in the New Year. She was really excited about it and wanted to start reading it right away, but we decided to wait until January 1 to start it, since it is a daily devotional. 

Advent candles

Happy bike rider

•          Dec 29 was the Chiang Mai Akha church Christmas celebration, so we went to that and saw a lot of the kids’ families and some of Sophie’s friends we hadn’t seen in a while. Several groups of people did dances, both kids and adults, and the teenagers sang some Akha songs. I always like going to Akha church because if they sing songs that I know, I can sing in Akha. Their language uses English letters, so it’s easier to read than Thai. I love being able to sing in a different language, but I’m not very good at keeping up with Thai, so singing in Akha is more fun. It was a fun day, with everyone dressed up in their Akha traditional clothing, even me! Everyone was so excited to see me dressed up like that, random people kept coming up and saying I looked so pretty, so I kept telling them it was all thanks to P’Beauw because she gave me the clothes and dressed me. It was actually pretty funny because I didn’t have any clothes when I got there, so Winnie brought them from home and then all the moms from Taw Saeng shuffled me off into another room and just started dressing me and lacing up all the pieces while a bunch of kids gathered around to watch. Then, the church gave presents to all the people visiting, and they called my name, so I had to walk up in front of the whole church (about 75 people by that point) and get the present, wearing my Akha clothes. They were all like, “today you are not farang (foreigner) anymore; today you are all Akha!”  It was really fun. Then, after service, we all sat together and ate delicious Akha food for lunch. 

 

In addition to the jacket, note the leggings and belt, all hand sewn by members of P'Beauw's family

•         For New Year’s Eve, Sophie had said she wanted to go to her friend’s church for a sleepover, but at the last minute she changed her mind and decided to go with Ying and Winnie to Thapae Gate. I was a little worried because of the creep who was stalking us last year (read last year’s entry for that horror story), so I told her to be really careful and stay away from all foreign men, and stay with Winnie’s mom the whole night. I ended up going to Bob and Grace Shim’s house for a party there with a bunch of other missionaries. A lot of them I had never met before, but the Bevises and Palleschis were there too, so I had some familiar faces. I was with the Dave and Jeanne Palleschi for a camera scavenger hunt in the neighborhood and it was a lot of fun doing creative photography with them. I am going to be teaching English and working on the camp project in Mae Taeng with them in the new year, so it has been good to get to know them in the past couple of months since they came back to Chiang Mai from the US. At midnight, we set off fireworks in the neighborhood and then I headed home. Sophie and I both got back about 1am and collapsed into bed.