Loy Krathong

So, November is one of the biggest festivals of the year: the combination of Yee Pang and Loy Krathong. Yee Pang is when you send paper lanterns up into the sky. I’m not really sure what it commemorates, but every year at Mae Jo University thousands of people gather to send up lanterns at the same time. It’s just like in Tangled!! I was SO excited for this festival because we missed it by mere days last year when we were here on the mission trip. A bunch of people wanted to go, so we all met at Troy and Grace’s house (other missionaries) and rented a couple of song thaews to take us up and back. It was so crazy! It’s about 10 miles away and it took us over an hour to get there with the traffic. Finally, we got to the entrance. Only one problem: it was on the other side of a canal. Not the kind that you can just jump across, like a real canal. They had built a small bamboo bridge over the water for people to cross on because it was about a half mile one way to the next road across and about a mile and a half the other way to the main road across the canal. So, when I say bamboo bridge, I use the “bridge” loosely. Envision something out of Romancing the Stone or if you have never seen that movie, then picture two long pieces of bamboo tied together with twine for the walking part, one long piece of bamboo to act as a hand rail and two pieces of bamboo sticking up out of the water to stabilize the foot path and hand rail. Sound stable? Hahaha. Well, we were all up for an adventure and Ahna was desperate to get across because she was trying to meet her students from the school she used to teach at whom she hadn’t seen since she got back to town because the kids had been so busy. We finally all made it across (19 of us!) and headed into the campus.

There were already thousands of people there and more coming as we arrived. There was a really long Buddhist prayer, followed by a few hundred monks walking with candles and then they announced that the special monks were going to send up lanterns first, then everyone would send their lanterns up together. Man, that sight is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. Standing in the midst of thousands of lanterns floating up into the night sky toward heaven was just an amazing experience.

After most had gone up, we found Ahna’s students and then reconvened and sat down to eat our picnic dinner that we had brought but didn’t have time to eat earlier. It was a nice time to hang out and catch up with the other farangs who I haven’t seen in ages. As we were finishing up, all these Mae Jo students started walking past and wanted to get a picture with this huge group of farangs. So, about 20 of them sat down with us and took a bunch of pictures. It was so funny! Normally, it’s foreigners who want pics with the locals, but in this case it was the reverse. It was kind of awesome. J

The past weekend (Nov 10-12) was Loy Krathong. The Krathongs are little floating flower bouquets put on banana leaves that you then Loy, or set on the water, to float away down the river. You can buy them everywhere along the river and they are so beautiful. Apparently, this festival celebrates the river goddesses from ancient Hinduism I think.

It started on Thursday with tons of fireworks going off everywhere! The streets were closed already because they were doing a small parade so it was difficult to get around, but so cool to see the fireworks everywhere. I bought a few to do with Sophie at the hospital. After work on Thursday, Ahna, Franziska, Inna, and I took Willow and Bastian from my class with us to see the fireworks from the bridge. On the way, we saw a little amusement park and decided to take the kids on the Octopus ride that I LOVED as a kid. BIG mistake (for me). I hadn’t gone on it for years, and was excited, but I get bad motion sickness, so I was fine for the first normal run, but they kept going, and going, and going, for maybe 10 ro 15 minutes!! Finally I signaled to Ahna, who had gotten off, that we had to get off NOW. They finally stopped it, but I was so dizzy I could hardly stand up, and Bastian was no better, he fell over when he tried to walk. It was not as much fun as we thought it would be. I was so woozy, I almost couldn’t get home. But, I am a trooper, and I had promised Sophie we would do Krathong, so I stumbled to find some and bought two with beautiful orchids and then made my way back to my motorbike as the others continued to the bridge where they stayed for two hours lighting fireworks and had a grad old time. I made it back to the hospital ok, and we got permission from the nurses to go to the moat to do krathongs and fireworks. It was fun and we got some cute pictures!

Friday was a big day for LK. First, Ahna and I took Ning to lunch for her birthday and we got her some running shoes which she has been wanting for months and months. It was nice to be able to get her something that she really needed and wanted and deserves and can’t afford herself. Plus, it was nice to just spend time with her outside work.

Then, Friday night, there was a huge parade where all the different schools make ginormous floats and then parade them down the street from Thapae gate to the big open air market and then up to the river where they put the floats on the water and they float downstream. It’s pretty amazing. We were there for 3 hours and the parade still hadn’t gotten to the point of the river where they actually put the floats in. I guess it goes all night long and there are literally about tens of thousands of people who watch it. It was great because we started at Thapae Gate and walked along Thapae Road to the river. Along the way, we saw the families of a lot of our kids from Taw Saeng and we ran into a bunch of our friends scattered along the road. I went with Ahna and her students from last year. Their float got first place, and it deserved it, it was a-MAZ-ing! We got a bunch of food, including cotton candy(!) and bought some Krathongs to send down the river. Ahna was conflicted about taking part in a Hindu festival, but I told her to rewrite it to be like reenacting the sending of baby Moses down the river and then she felt better about it.

For photos, see my Facebook page under the album: Yee Pang and Loy Krathong.

Kai is for Camp!, or An October Update

First, a quick medical update: Ok, so even though Sophie doesn’t have an active infection anymore, the doctors think she is still resistant to the drugs because it took so long to kill the active infection. Dr. Peninnah wants to keep her on the IV drugs for another 2 weeks to try to get her lungs better because IV drugs work faster than pills. Also, she wanted to add back in one of the two drugs that can cause Hepatitis and wants to keep a close eye on her and her liver function to see how she reacts to it. If she can go two weeks without having bad side effects and her liver is not affected, they can keep that as part of the regimen when she goes home. If that is not part of the regimen, then she will have to take all the other medicines for a year. If that is part of the regimen, then she will hopefully only need to take meds for 6 months.

We are hoping that she will get released this Friday (Nov 18), as Akha Thanksgiving is Saturday in Ning's village in Chiang Rai and  we would like to go! 

On to October happenings: 

First, it was my birthday in October and I was so happy that we got to be at home that week. I was like “All I want for my birthday is to sleep in my own bed,” and I got my wish. Sophie was so excited, she was like “We should do moogataw for your birthday and invite Winnie and her family and my friend Mook and people from Taw Saeng…..” on and on. I was like “ok, whatever.” I thought it would be fun, but more for Sophie than myself. A couple days before, Sophie said she thought Winnie’s family wouldn’t come because Winnie’s uncle was coming to visit, so I made sure to invite all the people from Taw Saeng because we had already spent about $40 on food!

That day, I took Winnie with me from Taw Saeng because she said she could come after all, and as we drove up, we saw candles and balloons on our front patio and both of us were like “wow!” It was so cute and decorated, with the moogataw (Korean BBQ grills) set up and lots of food and mats to sit on, with drinks ready and music playing. The music cracked me up because it was Justin Bieber, so I was like “yeah, it’s totally my 14^th birthday party.”  But it was all such a nice surprise because I was so tired from work and three weeks of staying at the hospital, it was nice to have something special for my birthday. Sophie had decorated everything herself but was really modest about it.

So, we started to get some plates and cook some food when all of a sudden Winnie’s family showed up: her mom, brother, cousin Nok and even Cody from Taw Saeng because Winnie’s mom was babysitting him! It was so surprised and happy that they got to come after all. Then, the crew from Taw Saeng showed up: Ning, Ahna and Inna. Plus we had Maiko, Sophie, me and Sophie’s friend Mook, so 12 people in all. It was such a great time. They even had gotten an ice cream cake for me! The cleanup took forever, even with people helping, but it was worth it because it was such a great birthday! 

The next morning, Taw Saeng was headed to camp with the Penguins and Tigers class, so I was up early for that! We had a team coming in from Denver, CO to help with the camp, and we had hired a special speaker to give a message to the kids. It was so nice to basically act as counselors and not have to really do a lot of planning because I think all of us (me, Inna, Ahna, Ning) were just exhausted from running everything for 2 weeks with just the four of us. It was nice to not have to think for a couple days.

Of course, that’s not to say we didn’t plan ANYthing. We had been working on plans for a couple of weeks, so we had an outline of what would happen when and were really excited to put on the camp for the kids. We had some games planned, but the team also had a LOT of games so we did a mixture of their games and ours and the kids had a blast. We did Capture the Flag, Water Balloon Toss, lots of balloon games from the team, an egg relay race, a Thai game called ShareBall, Red Rover and many more. The only problem was, it was SOOOO hot that day that we did all the games and were exhausted and drenched in sweat by 3:30, and we had planned to do games til 5! We decided to just give the kids free time to run around and play or sleep or just hang out with their friends til dinner at 5. That way we all got to take showers before dinner and relax a bit.

The other nice thing was that meals were catered there and we didn’t have to do dishes or anything. So, we had dinner after free time, and then headed to our meeting room where we did a couple rounds of Chubby Bunny (shoving as many marshmallows in your mouth as you can and still say “Chubby Bunny.”) It was so funny to see the kids doing it! Everyone wanted to try, but I only had two bags of marshmallows, so instead, everyone just got to eat a marshmallow.

Then we had a Thai band from a Thai church come do worship. It was awesome to hear songs I have sung a million times at camps throughout my life being sung in Thai! I got some of it on video and it was cool to see all the kids worshipping along. Then, Cynthia spoke about freedom in Christ while I snuck upstairs to put together gift bags for the end of camp the next day. The team from Denver had brought SO much stuff to give us; it was amazing and wonderful! We got to put more stuff in the goody bags than we thought we’d be able to. I had gone to the Christian bookstore to get some little gifts the day before, but they were gender specific, so I had to label all the bags so we would know who to give them to. The boys got magnets, yoyos or keychains with words like “peace” and “love” on them, while I got the girls little perfume bottles with Bible verses attached to them. For the kids on the winning team from games, I also got little notebooks with Bible verses on the front. Then, we put in stuff from the Denver team: candy, stretchy bracelets, pencils, and glow sticks.

After Cynthia finished speaking, the kids headed up to get ready for bed, but I was suffering from some sunstroke since, as usual, I had not drunk enough water that day during the heat. It was not fun trying to wrangle 13 teenage girls to get them into pj’s, brush their teeth and get into bed with the lights out. When we had finally gotten them all settled, Ning asked who wanted to tell a bedtime story and Peyton from my class wanted to. I couldn’t really understand it all, but later Ahna told me what she had said. Apparently, she started telling about a prince and princess and this kingdom they ruled. Then all of a sudden, an alien came and kidnapped the princess and the prince had to enlist the help of a magic bunny to get her back. It was the funniest thing listening to the story, because all the girls were silent while she was telling it, to the point that I thought most had fallen asleep, but when Peyton told the part about the alien and the magic bunny, everyone just cracked up! Finally, the story was over and they went to sleep.

We had rented one of the dorm rooms with 26 beds, so earlier that day, it had taken forever for the girls to pick where they wanted to sleep. Eventually, I ended up in between Faith and Amelie. Faith had night terrors all night, so I kept waking up to her crying and rubbed her back to get her to calm down. I don’t know if it is just being away from home, or if she has them at home too, but boy did it make sleep difficult. I couldn’t believe nobody else woke up! When everyone got up in the morning, I was barely able to open my eyes, I was so tired, but Faith just popped up like she slept like a baby all night! I could not believe she wasn’t tired at all.

After breakfast, we had an egg relay race and then a 3-legged race and then the Denver team took over and taught the kids some new songs that Ahna and I grew up with. Songs like “Halalalalalalelujah” and “God is Good all the time.” It was so fun to do them with the kids and reminded me of all the songs that are still buried in my subconscious that we could teach the kids. I’m not out of ideas for worship day after all! Then they did some skits about the Bible and taught about the whole history of the world up through Jesus death and resurrection. All in just 2 hours! 

When the Bible teaching was done, we played some games, and then headed to pack up and go to lunch. After lunch, I handed out the gift bags and the kids were all excited about them. We headed back in our Song Thaews and half the kids fell asleep. I nearly did too after all the excitement and exhaustion. All in all, a very successful camp experience for the kids. I think the next time, we will send them to a full weekend church camp with kids from all over Thailand, like Lake Retreat (the camp I went to when I was a kid).

After our return, I took Lucy to the bus station to buy us tickets to Mae Sai. I hadn’t gotten to hang out with her in months because she was so busy with school, so since we had a week off, I asked her if she wanted to go up and go shopping with me. She was SO excited to go! We had a really fun time, but the bus was almost 40 minutes late, so we had limited time to shop. Even so, it was a pretty successful trip. I got a bunch of stuff I needed and some stuff for Christmas and birthday presents too. It was nice to spend time with Lucy since we hadn’t had a chance to catch up in so long.

At the end of that week, I took Lucy and her little 4-year-old cousin Annie to the zoo. I had wanted to go for such a long time, and Nahng Annie had been begging to go, so I said I’d take them. It was so much fun! Here you get right up next to the animals and can feed a lot of them for just 75 cents! We fed hippos, elephants, giraffes, and you can even feed jaguars with meat on a skewer. We didn’t do that. The only thing separating you from them is a chain link fence, and their claws are probably sharp enough to cut through that, so if they got it in their head that you were being stingy with the meat, they might just eat the people for dessert. All of us were so excited to see the pandas too! They have three here, the mom, dad and baby girl panda, Lin Ping. They were all asleep when we went, but they are still cute!

We saw basically all the animals you normally see in zoos, only they are a lot less contained than in American zoos. The monkeys could easily just swing out of their cage and into the next ones, but for some reason they don’t. Also at zoo that we didn’t see: the aquarium, complete with those huge plastic balls that you can go inside and run around on top of the water. They also have a SnowDome where you can rent winter jackets and go sledding for a real winter experience or if you are having snow withdrawal as a foreigner. I was excited that I got to hang out so much with Lucy this week to make up for the fact that I don’t get to see her often. And Nahng Annie is such a cutie, I love hanging out with her too.