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.