Highlights from March 2012

Ahna’s family came to visit! Her mom, two of her brothers and her baby sister (she’s 9) came for a whole month. It was SO wonderful to have an American “mom” around for so long and pray for us and give us insight and love and support. They also brought some books for me so I could take a class called Perspectives for my missionary training. It was a great class, but I had to do it super fast so I could finish before leaving to the US in April. I kept up with my self-imposed schedule right up until I had to write a paper at the end It’s not that I didn’t WANT to write the paper, it’s just that every time I would write a few pages, I would come back the next day and think it was terrible and start over again. Finally, I decided to employ the tactic that had served me well countless times in college: procrastination! Yes, I waited until three days before I was due to leave for the US and stayed up late writing page after page about the Akha people, their history, and how best to start a contextualized church among Akha villages. It was fascinating reading about their traditional religion and heartbreaking to hear how former missionaries had abused their trust. Well, it was supposed to be 5-8 pages long, but I cranked out 21 in those two days. Overkill works though, I got 100% on it. ;)

March was the beginning of summer schedule, so some kids went to visit their families in the mountains, some came back from school for the holidays and we got a few new little ones for the summer. We also changed the schedule to make our days longer (11am-7pm, which we discovered too late left us NO rime for prep) and add different activities. We had Bible stories on Tuesday, broken up by age group; Art class on Wednesday, also by age group; Outreach on Thursdays, when we exposed the kids to the idea that they can do things for other people and give back to their community, regardless of their social status. We visited a nursing home, who LOVED it, an orphanage and walked down our own street giving out Jesus Loves You cards for Easter. Finally, Friday was character building time, when the older kids learned about things like Respect, Honesty, Loyalty and Trustworthiness. We kicked it all off with a parents meeting where the parents got to come hear what we would be teaching and get a tour of our facilities, which apparently had never been done before, to my surprise!  They were excited about the things their kids were going to be able to do that summer, and approved of our schedule, so it was a great success!

We also went to the Royal Flora several times over the winter months, which is a huge celebration of all things environmental. There are all sorts of exhibits about how water works, conservation, Thai culture, different trees and flowers from around the world, how the king has helped advance agriculture production, etc. It was a fun time every time we went! 

February update: Rollercoaster of life month

So exciting to see Cody’s house go from a falling apart shack to a livable structure with a solid roof and a sleeping loft. It was fun to get to participate in the building of it as well. My participation consisted of me holding logs in place while Billy’s dad hammered them into place for the loft. It was cool to get to spend some time with the grownups for a change too.

I was so honored to be invited by Cody’s mom personally to come to the housewarming party and dedication by their church priest after the house was completed. They invited everyone, but Ahna and I were the only farangs who showed up, because Rob and Judy were sick. When Ahna and I got there, we were the first to arrive, so Billy’s mom, Winnie’s mom and Cody’s mom were saying “Oh, don’t be greng tjai! (That is like feeling undeserving of the special treatment you are receiving). You are like family now. You are Akha now.” And they were saying I was doing such a good job as Sophie’s mom. They were telling her, “You need to listen to your mom now. We loved your first mom, but now she’s gone and if not for this mom, you would be dead! You were so sick walking around here coughing all the time. Where would you be if not for Heather? You’d be dead!” Even other parents who I don’t really know, but they live there too and have littler kids not in the program, will come and say “it’s so good that Sophie is living with you. If you hadn’t come here, what would have happened to her? We don’t know where she would have gone or who she could have lived with.” It’s just such validation and love from this community who loved her parents so much. I’m so happy that they feel that way and I totally love them too.

February is also Valentine's Day, obviously, and boy do these kids get into it. I literally spent more buying V-Day junk for Sophie's friends than I did buying Christmas presents for people. I kept going "IT'S NOT A REAL HOLIDAY!" But that didn't really work, I still had to buy chocolate.

Also, we FINALLY got to go on Flight of the Gibbon, the treetop zipline experience that is awesome! Sophie brought a friend from school, and my friend Aimee came with me. We had a great day in the trees and it wasn’t too hot. I loved it, and would do it again every month if I could! I cannot stress enough: SO MUCH FUN!

February was also the month that Ning left, which was excruciating having to deal with both her departure and the weight of the entire program falling on the shoulders of myself, Ahna and Orawun, with a few amazing part-time volunteers to help pick up the slack.  Finally, I was so exhausted that I was about to snap, and said straight up that we needed to close for a week so we could get some rest. I, for one, had not spent any time in prayer or reading my Bible since Christmas, and I was drained in every way possible. So, we closed for a week, and Ahna and I were so blessed to be given a free night at a private resort just outside town to rest and recenter. It was an amazing place, and the woman who runs it is so sweet and wonderful, and made us amazing meals. It’s such a great retreat, and we definitely left feeling refreshed.

The flower festival was this month as well, a whole weekend devoted to flowers, with a Rose Parade and everything! They closed down a whole section of the city for booths, flowers, snacks, rides and lots of clothing sales. It was a blast to walk around with Sophie and see the floats and eat lots of goodies.
 

Stolen Land, Broken Promises

Here is the info people keep wanting to know, so I'm giving it to you in a nutshell.  Sophie's parents left her land in Chiang Rai at her family’s village. The people living there were supposedly her mom’s best friends. Well, they wanted to buy the land from her, but Ning and I said she was not prepared to make a decision of that magnitude less than a year after her mother’s death and at the age of 14. The guy kept calling and harassing Sophie though and wouldn’t give up. However, here’s the clincher. Because her parents couldn’t technically own land, he had the deed cause he’s a citizen. So, what does he do? He sells the land to the highest bidder for 4 times what he wanted to give Sophie for it. 400,000 baht and he only wants to give Sophie 200,000. He basically sold her history, her heritage, her inheritance so he could buy himself a car. A CAR!?!! We finally negotiated him to give her 230,000 with the sob story of the fact that we still owe the hospital nearly 100,000 baht, so if he didn’t give us that much, she would only end up with less than what her parents paid for it 10 years ago.  The money is not the point. I don’t care if he HAD given her all of it. He had NO RIGHT to sell it in the first place. He sold the memory of her parents and the only thing of her bio father than she had in this world. AWFUL.

Here’s the reason that I am so incensed about all this. If I had never come here, these are the people Sophie would most likely have ended up with. These lowlife scum who would have taken her in, refused to take her to the hospital and would have sold her to the highest bidder to get a car, never mind the land. She would have either died from TB or been sold to a brothel and died there. That is the thing that really kills me and makes me want to kill him. Not just the idea that he sold her land without the slightest moral quandary, but the fact that if he is that money hungry, he would have not hesitated to get rid of her the easiest way possible to save him the cost of an extra bowl of rice at dinner every night. Terrifying. 

So when people ask me why I want legal guardianship since I'm not allowed adoption with her lack of citizenship, this is what I think of: I want to be able to protect her from people like this with the law backing me up, so no one can say they have a claim to her and then take advantage of her.

Sophie's schooling

A quick recap of how we got Sophie back into school. From the first week she was admitted to the hospital, I was going to the school to talk to her teachers and try to figure out what to do about her schooling. At first, the higher ups just wanted her to repeat 7^th grade, but I really didn’t want that to happen. She’s already 14, and she didn’t want to have to redo half the year. So, if they insisted on that, I was just going to withdraw her from school and put her in what is basically alternative school so she could catch up to her age level. I kept asking them if we could just homeschool her, and they were like “What? Homeschool? What’s that?” I was like “You know, you give me her homework, I get her a tutor, she comes back to take her tests and then she continues to study with her class.” They were like “uh…I don’t think we can do that.”

However, I kept going to the school to talk to different teachers. Her homeroom teacher was amazing and I totally credit her with getting through to the headmaster. She really wanted Sophie to continue with her class, so she wrote a letter to the headmaster/principal, petitioning for Sophie to rejoin them after she was discharged. After Sophie got discharged from the hospital, I went to talk to her headmaster one more time. This time, she said that IF Sophie could do all her homework she had missed, AND take her finals from first semester and pass, AND take her mid-terms and pass, THEN she could rejoin her class. I don’t think she really expected that to happen though. But…I had my amazing Thai teacher, Kru Niti, come tutor Sophie every day for a week, and she passed all her tests! Not only that, but at the end of the semester, when I went to get her grades, she had gotten a 3.42 GPA! Not bad for a kid recovering from a deadly illness and missing nearly two months of the semester, huh? I was pretty proud of her perseverance and her good grades. She was disappointed because she wanted a 3.5 but my reaction is, hey, she’s alive and she passed. That’s enough for me. We’ll work on the 4.0 next year.

January 2012: New Year's and being a tourist at Home

Well, January was the most fun and exhausting month yet! My friend Jenny flew up from Phuket to Chiang Mai with me and stayed for 10 days! It was a blast to have someone from home to do tourist stuff with. I had jumped right into full-fledged work schedule so fast that I hadn’t really had time to explore the city much. Jenny had a whole list of things she wanted to see and do, so we did as much as we could before she left for Bangkok.

We visited Wat Chiang Man, the oldest temple in the city, Wat Phra Singh, where the walking street ends, and another one I can’t remember. All of them were decorated for New Year’s celebrations and were packed with people. It was cool to see how they were all decorated differently and see the amazing detail that went into the architecture of the elephants, the gold filigree and the buildings themselves. Jenny was excited to try all different kinds of street food, so we ate a lot of small restaurants in the areas we were exploring.

I finally got the chance to see the Lanna Museum, about the history of Chiang Mai, and the joining of Northern Thailand, or Lanna Kingdom, with Thailand. It has lots of interesting things about the king and the Thai language too. You can even listen to all the different tribal dialects spoken around the area on headphones. Thai is one of the only languages that has more single syllable words than multi-syllable words.

Other highlights of Jenny’s visit were another trip to Doi Suthep, and a hike around the Huay Kaew waterfall on the way up the mountain; another fun-filled trip to Bua Tong waterfall (the limestone one where you stick to the rocks); a trip to Mae Sai waterfall, which has 10 levels, including one where you can swim at the bottom of the waterfall, or go behind it to jump through and into a deep pool; and a Khamtoke show, where you get to see traditional dances of many of the areas’ tribal groups as well as traditional Thai dances. It also comes with a huge meal of all kinds of delicious Thai foods, so that was a fun night!

Jenny was also with us for New Year’s Eve, when we went with Ning, Sophie and Sophie’s school friend to eat moogataw and then to Thapae Gate which was packed with people celebrating the new year, letting of Kom Loi (the paper lanterns), drinking and listening to the free concert put on by the top 7 of the Thai version of American Idol. We met up with some of Sophie’s other school friends and they had a blast listening to the concert. 

This was actually one of the scariest evenings though, because it was the first time I had felt the real danger of human trafficking up close. The whole group of us was gathered close to the stage, when Jenny and I both noticed a creepy white guy with glasses staring fixedly at the teenage girls in our group, specifically Sophie. We discussed what we should do, but seeing as it was a public place and public venue, other than just taking the girls home, there wasn’t much we could do to get away from this guy. As the night progressed, we kept a close eye on him, as he moved to get closer to the girls, we would counter him, keeping a human shield between this creep and our kids. At one point, I lost sight of him and when I turned to look over my shoulder, he was literally RIGHT BEHIND ME, like in a horror movie. I kind of bumped him to get him to move away, and eventually, he shifted around away from me. Another time, Sophie had her camera and wanted to get closer to the stage to get some shots of the singers. I had warned her several times about the guy by this point, so when he was to my right with his back to the stage and staring right at her, and she tried to run thru the crowd, I physically pulled her back to me and told her if she tried to take off like that again, we’d go home, no matter whether it was midnight or not. Finally, after about 3 hours of watching this guy like a hawk and trying to have a good tie in spite of him, he disappeared into the crowd.

Another scary thing that happened was a little girl about 18 months wandered past us with no mother in sight and we lost her in the crowd of people. About 5 minutes later, her frantic mom came running, looking for her. Jenny went off with the mom and found the little girl, but geez, what parent takes her 18-month child to an outdoor event with thousands of people and then puts her down so she can wander away?

Anyway, after all this drama, we finally got to see the big finale with the governor of Chiang Mai province speak to the crowd in English and Thai and saw the huge Christmas tree made of used cds shoot off fireworks! It was SO much cooler than Times Square: The tree was 10 levels tall, so at the 10 second countdown,  each level shot off fireworks and then at midnight, the top exploded with about 10 minutes of fireworks. It was so much fun, especially since I had watched them building this thing for weeks with no idea what it was going to be used for. 

After the show was over, we followed the crowd like sheep and made it back to the car, parked near Taw Saeng. We had gotten a couple Kom Loi on our way, so we set them off from our rooftop into the sky and nearly caught the trees on fire when the wind caught hold of them! Luckily, disaster was averted, and Sophie and her friend decided to put up the tent and sleep on the roof that night. The next morning they were awoken by pigeons, curious as to whom had taken up residence on their stoop.

The reason January was so exhausting is that, in addition to hosting a guest and getting Sophie back in the school swing of things, we were on deadline to finish all the copy for our new promotional materials, and I was taking point on it all. So, every day after work, and every weekend for about 6 hours a day, I was working on getting everything worded just right, writing up information cards about every kid for the sponsorship program, and doing the design so all the words fit correctly on the booklet and brochures. I really enjoy doing this stuff and miss doing it since it was my life in high school yearbook, but still, coming home from an 8 hour day to work another 4 hours is not the most healthy practice.

In addition, we had not one, but TWO teams come in January! It was lots of fun, but lots of work too, as we had to teach them about our schedule and help translate when they taught our classes. The kids loved having them though, and still talk about missing them. The first team was a group of students from Biola University in LA who did their Jan term with us, and helped us throw a girls night slumber party! The kids had so much fun, and we all slept squished together on every mat I could get my hands on in Chiang Mai. We watched a movie and then Ning talked to them about what it means to live in the area we live in, near the red light district and asked what the kids thought when they saw girls working in the bars. She told them that we (the staff) love them and do not want that future for them, and that even though those girls have nice motorbikes and iPhones, they are worth so much more than that. She told them that their worth is priceless in the eyes of God, so even if you work as a dishwasher and have a bad phone, or no phone or motorbike at all, it is still better to work at that and know your value than to sell your body to get nice things. It was a powerful night, and I think a lot of what she said stuck with the girls. It’s an important talk to have with them occasionally, to remind them of their worth and that they cannot find their worth in money or earthly things.

The second team came from Taiwan and filmed a lot of our activities and interviews to make an article and video for us. They also did an interview with just Sophie and me so I could use it in the US when I was coming back for fundraising. It’s such a great video of us and I love it, because it will be a great thing to have when we are older, a snapshot of our lives when she first came to live with me. 

The team was great, and paid for dinner and transport so we could take all the kids to Night Safari! When I was there in December with my parents and Sophie, I asked if they ever let groups like us come for free, and they said to just send them a fax with our info on it. So, we did, and first they said we could come for free, and the adults for half price. Then, they called back and said, nevermind, you have to pay half price, because it’s high season, so everyone has to pay half price. THEN, we decided it was too expensive, and they called BACK and said that after their staff meeting when they talked about the good work we were doing, they decided we should get to go for free after all. So! After a week of back and forth, we went to the Night Safari, and had a lot of fun. We fed the birds, did both trams and my group went around the lake to see the rest of the zoo, while the other groups discussed among themselves whether they should go see the zoo until they ran out of time to go and just went on the tram.

Christmas 2011: Taw Saeng

Christmas was wonderful this year! It started with decorating our house. Sophie and I bought a live Christmas tree from the flower market and got decorations from the Christmas store in the big open air market (Gad Luang) near our house. We put on Christmas music and decorated with Maiko. We put ornaments on the tree and hung Christmas lights outside. It was fun, even though our little tree looks like the one from Charlie Brown Christmas. But, that is why I love it. J Then, Maiko and P’Dtip (who is helping her with the house church) decorated the walls with ribbon and hung live roses with little pockets of water all over the walls and hung ribbon in our courtyard too. It looked so pretty!

We also had a great Christmas program at Taw Saeng this year! In the past, Taw Saeng has bought snacks for the families to eat during the Christmas party, but this year we decided to use Hollie’s baking kitchen and bake goodies instead. It was so fun, despite the fact that I was sick with bronchitis (typical for this time of year). I felt pretty lame driving around with my sweatshirt and scarf while seeing all these tourists running around in shorts and tank tops.

Anyway, we decided to make homemade cinnamon rolls, brownies, chocolate chip cookies and sugar cookies for the party. Franziska, Ahna, Ning and I went to the kitchen at the Kijkandee head office Tuesday, Wed and Thursday morning to bake for hours. It was so fun, but the oven ran out of gas on Thursday morning!! We had a mild panic attack, but luckily, P’Mary was there (she’s the cleaning lady, and is super sweet) so she called the guy to bring us a new tank. Crisis averted.

We decorated with some stuff we had upstairs, including our fake Christmas tree and lots of ornaments. We had the kids make angels and decorate them, then we got them laminated and hung them up from the rafters with stars and other decorations we had been making. We also made snowflakes and hung Christmas lights around our little patio area for people going by to see. It was so cool to see the whole place done up for the holidays!

We had been practicing with the kids for weeks for the program. We had Franziska’s kids doing a hip hop dance with the younger boys (SO cute to watch!), Ning had Sunny, Sophie, Willow and Yvonne do a traditional Thai dance, Ahna taught the littler girls a fun dance to a pop version of Away in a Manger, we had the older boys doing a song on their guitars, and my girls (Winnie, Amelie and Miriam) do their songs on the piano.

So many family members came out for the performance and it was so exciting! We started with the kids singing a Thai Christmas song while Ahna and I accompanied on harp and guitar, then they sang Silent Night in English and sign language, then in Thai, then we started with the performances. I felt like I was running around all night doing something for setup or videoing or playing guitar. It was really fun, but it all happened so fast! I was so proud of my girls playing their songs. They all had them memorized and they did a great job even though they didn’t play perfectly. For their first performance in front of anyone other than me, they were amazing! I was so excited to have their parents come see too, because I know they must be so proud of their kids as well. It’s really cool to be able to teach them piano, because there is no way they would ever be able to afford lessons or have a place to play without Taw Saeng. I know that playing piano for me is so therapeutic, so I think it’s kind of like music therapy for them too, since they have had so much stress in their lives. 

It was so fun to watch Sophie dance too because I have only ever seen pictures of her dancing before and never seen it live. She was the best of the girls because she is oldest, but it was so funny because she was concentrating so hard that she looked super serious, while all the other girls had big smiles on their faces. Every time she would look at me, I’d be like “Smile!!” and she would smile for about 10 seconds, and then go back to her concentration face. It’s pretty funny to watch the video of it.

Christmas, Part 2: Phuket

And now, the post you’ve all been waiting for:

Christmas Day was quite full! It started with Sophie and I picking up my parents for church at the Akha church. It turns out that basically all the families of Taw Saeng go to this church, or at least attend on Christmas! It was so fun to see all the kids and I got to introduce my parents to the parents of the Taw Saeng kids. They met Lucy’s mom and dad, who were very excited to meet them, and we saw Winnie’s family too. Sophie had pulled out her Akha special occasion jackets and there were three, so each of us wore one: my mom, Sophie and me. It was hot but fun to wear some traditional clothing, considering American “traditional clothing” consists of jeans and a t-shirt. 

Even though my parents didn’t understand a word of the service, they still had fun singing Christmas carols, they just sang in English while everyone else sang in Thai. After service was over, they got ushered to the guest of honor spots at the tables where everyone was eating Christmas dinner together, family style. Of course, my parents had never had Akha food before, so it was an interesting experience for their taste buds, and quite spicy, but I think they enjoyed it anyway.

Afterwards, we took some pictures in our Akha clothing and then went back to the house, where Maiko was having a church celebration with the house church. Faa was there, Ning’s sister, so it was great spending some time with her and catching up and playing games with all the people who had come to the house church. I finished packing up, and we headed over to see the world famous Chiang Mai Walking Street. We saw Lucy’s family again and Winnie’s mom’s booth too. My parents were stoked to get all their souvenir shopping done and see the amazing things people make in Thailand. We also ate a bunch of great food, of course.

Finally, it was time to head for the airport and off to Phuket. After a quick goodbye to Sophie, we got the hotel shuttle to the airport, checked in and flew through the night. Well, it was night, and we flew, but it was only 2 hours. Phuket was great! It was so luxurious to spend the day on the beach with the beautiful, soft sand and playing in the water. The day after Christmas, my friend Jenny flew in from LA at about midnight and rallied so well the next morning that she was able to come with us on a day of touring the islands. We took a speedboat with a bunch of other people and saw James Bond Island, Ice Cream Cave and some other really cool tropical places. We had a lovely dinner on the beach and my parents got to set off a paper lantern into the night sky. 

Our final day in Phuket, we took a cab into Phuket town and walked around a bit, visiting their library, “Muddy Beach” and, since it was brutally, swelteringly hot, we got fancy ice cream. We headed back to the hotel, packed up and sent my parents off to the airport, while Jenny and I walked down to the beach for a final seaside meal before we were off to the airport and up to Chiang Mai.