Forgive the Silence....

Here's a "photo - athon" to catch you up on the past 6 months:

In August I moved to Bangkok to study for intense Thai exam - 4 hours a day in language school and lots of reading and writing. Here's the view from the apartment I stayed at for those months:



In September my Bangkok housemate Amy got married at a beautiful wedding at the Marriot Hotel by the river. Here we are: Amy, James and I. It was fun to reconnect with old friends from ECB church and the food was amazing.





In October I went back to Udon for the weekend to "meet" Stacy, my new housemate who was staying in my Udon Thani house while I lived in Bangkok. I also visited my church, and was happy that on that afternoon a group from an area village was teaching us how to weave baskets.




In November I went to Udon again (yes, I was missing my home! I apologize for the lack of pictures of Bangkok, but, well, I just didn't do much except study and go to English speaking movies and out for Lebanese food... that's not true actually. I have some really good friends in Bangkok and enjoyed spending time with them, it was relaxing and refreshing. I also visited many churches in Bangkok and was able to connect with a lot of new people. )

But, back to Udon in November. Here's pictures from the baptism service my church held at an a pond outside the pastor's house. It was a beautiful service, although I was wondering if there were snakes in the pond...



In December I took my "big language test" - and passed! Yeah! The end of formal language school! So, I went to the US to celebrate for Christmas! (Actually, the trip was planned first and I had to wait until January to find out my score, but I still felt good about the test and celebrated anyway).

December in the US was great - I spent time in Vermont, Philadelphia, D.C and caught up with friends and family and even relaxed a bit.

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Let it Rain.....

Well, rainy season has finally hit, and at just the right time. It rained 3 days in a row, day and night and the farmers are now out in full force, well, as full as the force of farmers can get out here....Some said that if it didn't rain this week, many farmers would have lost their crop for the whole year. It takes 3 months for the rice to grow, which has it has to be harvested in November, when the rains have ended and the cool season is beginning.


Rice seedlings are planted in small groups of 3-4 plants, and ideally are planted in standing water.

This woman invited me back to help her harvest in a few months....

Visiting the Silk Farm in Northern Laos

LIfe on the farm....lots of cows and water buffalo.

Here is the process of spinning the threads from the cocoons into finer silk threads

Natural dyes are used, including saliva from insects, certain leaves, berries and barks. Here the thread is being dyed indigo, one of the colors that is dyed in cold water, not by boiling.


Here's freshly dyed red silk threads, hanging out to dry and set.

The farm employes women to weave on site, and it's amazing to watch the work that goes into some of the intricate patterns that are woven, often the texture that is put into the cloth by the weaving style is much more complicated than merely weaving with different colored thread. I'll never complain at the seemingly high prices of handmade silk scarves again! So much work goes into the product....and the women at the farm are paid well for their labor.


The final product! To see more visit: www.mulberries.org

Visiting Laos

In July I went to Laos and visited coworkers there and the businesses they run in partnership with Laos owners - a language school, a handicraft project and a silk farm. I really enjoyed visiting Laos, because they used to be colonized by France, they have great bread and European restaurants and coffee shops, as well as great coffee and cheese ( a large price to pay for being colonized, I know!). Although Vientiane is only about 1 1/2 hours from my home, it seems worlds away. The Lao language is similar to Thai, so I can understand it for the most part and people can understand me. By the end of the week I was speaking some Lao, especially the endings, question words, common phrases and greetings. The fun thing is, that is also spoken here out in the villages of the northeast of Thailand, and is called the Isaan language. So, since I've returned, I've slipped into speaking Lao more with my neighbors, and they think it's a lot of fun. It's harder to learn here, because everyone around me will speak central Thai to me, and a mix of the languages to each other. In Lao, I just heard it all the time and it was much easier to figure out.

The Coffee was great!



There is a lot of history in Laos, old temples and chedis like this one..

Night life in Vientiane can revolve around this "Arc de Triumph" type monument, in a park central to the city where people gather at night to exercise and eat. (Sorry it's a blurry picture).

There are MANY unexploded bombs remaining in Laos, it's tragic, still causing deaths and lost limbs each year of many people, especially farmers and children. It's frustrating because it's not only killinhg people, but preventing people from using land because of the fear and reality of these unexploded devices. Generally, the poor are the ones who suffer most, getting killed by discovering these devices while farming, and also being kept in poverty by not being able to use large sections of land for farming out in the villages. There are organizations working to remove these unexploded devices. Here is one that simply was unearthed in an area up north by a famous tourist site, the Plain of Jars (those with me told me this one wouldn't explode, it was sort of there for the tourists to see).


Up North in Phonsavan, I visited the Plain of Jars, which is a huge plain full of, well, large jars. They are over 3000 years old and are thought to have been used for burial, or to store Lao wine. It was a beautiful place to visit, somewhere I had wanted to go to when I last lived in Thailand. So thankful for theo opportunity!




There were clearly marked placards, telling us which way to go to avoid the unexploded bombs.

Yes I'm getting Old!

ECB Youth Graduation Banquet: In June I also went to a graduation banquet for kids that I had taught in middle school youth group many years ago when I was working at the Evangelical Church of Bangkok. What fun to see these kids all grown up, no longer awkward, blowing soda out of their noses and taking pictures of their feet (well, some of them were still doing those things!). I was so proud of them as they all survived high school, were still speaking to their parents and seeking the Lord. It was fun too to catch up with parents of the kids that I hadn't seen in years. It was a great night that really honored and celebrated the kids.

Summer Travels

In June I took a vacation to the beach in Hua Hin, a few hours west of Bangkok. A family joined me from Bangkok, as well as Jenny, who works with CAMA in Laos. I had a great time getting to know everyone better, we took morning walks on the beach, ate out at Subway a lot (big treat for me!!), played games and watched videos at night, even a concert of the Bee Gees! We went to "monkey mountain", where all these monkeys live at a temple and were literally attacked by monkeys who wanted our fruit. We didn't really like it much, but felt like you had to visit monkey mountain if you go to Hua Hin! The mountain in the picture below is monkey mountain...


Me and Jenny...
We visited a hotel that one of my old students in Bangkok's family owns. I hadn't seen or talked to them in at least 7 years, but we caught up immediately and were invited to stay at the hotel, given a seaside room and enjoyed our last couple of days in a really beautiful hotel.

Happy Thai New Year!

For those of you counting, I just celebrated my 3rd New Year's celebration since 2007 - the first being the traditional "watch the ball drop in Time Square" New Year, the second being Chinese New Year, when the city was painted red and we enjoyed an evening of Chinese food and streets closed to traffic. But, I must admit this 3rd celebration was my favorite - Thai New Year, known as Song Kran. This holiday centers around the tradition of blessing your elders by pouring a little water over their hands, and giving them flowers. Traditionally Thais believe that this act causes evil spirits to go away, and also pours out blessings on others. Well, this tradition has evolved into an all out water fight....where the city spends 3 days "blessing" each other with water guns and buckets full of water. In Udon, most of the vehicles are motorcycles, and most of the other vehicles are pick up trucks...so people load large garbage pails full of water into the back of their pick ups, pile on 8-10 friends and family members, and drive around....throwing water on the many other people piled into pick up trucks...and the many motorcylces manuevering thru the streets.

There no way I can really describe this event in a way that does it justice. But, I spent 2 days, about 4 hours each day, joining in the fun. We had 10 in a pick up truck, 3 huge containers of water, a few small buckets and tupperware containers to scoop the water out with, and some water guns. We drove around and threw water on everyone we could....as traffic stopped, we engaged in longer fights with those trucks or people nearest our car. If things got really slow, we even got out of the truck and ran around splashing water on people. It was fun to get wet, but the craze this year is to drop big blocks of ice into your garbage can, causing the water to be VERY cold. The end result is a loud squeal or a deep "OH!!!" from those that are hit with this freezing cold water, apparently adding to the fun. Those without pick up trucks had buckets of water outside of their homes, sported large water guns, or simply used their hoses. Those without access to water walked around with large bottles of scented, menthol baby powder, which they (usually) gently patted onto your cheeks, wishing you a Happy New Year.

After about 30 minutes...our water filled garbage cans were empty, and we were forced to sit as helpless victims as others continued to get us wet. We headed to one of the lakes in the city, which used huge hoses about 5 inches wide to pump large quantities of dirty lake water into our garbage cans at a rapid pace. So, with our arsenal once again full....we were off to play again. As we drove throught the streets, I noticed that while about 95% of the people were involved in the water fight....there seemed to be those that were untouched. I tried to notice what the "unwritten rules" were that protected these few from getting drenched. It seems that those selling food, those who were very old and looked grumpy and not dressed to get wet, as well as some on motorbikes who really looked like they were going to work, were not bothered by the water. Thai people are really very nice!

Here are some pictures of the fun:







Although those with more energy than I continued to water fight on the 3rd day...I took a break and collapsed on my sofa for the afternoon. It's amazing how the hot sun, cold (dirty) water, menthol powder, and sitting on the edge of a pick up truck can wear you out. Happy New Year!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! Here is a video of kids leading a song at the Easter Service in the village of Nong Mek.... Easter Morning: I woke early and went to a sunrise service at the only Christian cemetery in the area. This is an annual event organized by 5 area churches, and after singing and celebrating everyone wanders through the cemetery to put flowers on the graves of relatives and pastors. It's nice actually, people chat, and stop by to give encouragement and blessings to those who are visiting graves of family members. People pass out eggs (hard boiled...) with Easter messages taped to them, or written in marker. They just give them to anyone. Here is the grave of one of the founding pastors in the city. It's quite large, they don't make them as large anymore.... Following this service (and large quantities of coffee) I went to Nong Mek village to attend a service in a small church made up largely of extended family members. These youth are great worship leaders, and there was a time for people to stand up and share testimonies and sing songs. My coworker Norm was called upon to preach without any warning (after 30 years in Thailand, he’s quite used to this!). After the service, I gathered with my coworkers for an Easter egg hunt for the kids and a very American Easter meal of ham, mashed potatoes, corn and apple pie.

Raising Catfish...

This is a vdo that goes with the "frogs and iguanas" blog below....these are the containers that are used to raise catfish, you will also see some larger containers and hear Thai. Can you understand?? By the way, adding vdo's is new for me, please let me know if you can see these, or if there are any problems (along with suggestions of how to fix them, of course!)

Frogs and Iguanas...a tasty treat

Last month I visited a community development project just outside the city of Udon Thani. A member of a church in Udon oversees this project. It is a training sight for sustainable livelihood projects and brings in groups from all over the northeast to learn how to use their land and a small amount of resources to grow food and raise animals to meet their own living needs and also to sell in their local communities.

There were many things going on at this farm, located in a rural community. They were raising catfish in small round concrete containers with a radius of less than 1 meter, about 100 per container. They also had larger concrete vats and small beds that were dug in the ground to show different ways to raise catfish, depending on the area available and the amount that is going to be raised.

They also raised pigs, to both create natural fertilizer that can be sold in the market, as well as to sell when the pigs grow large. A small pig can be purchased for about 1000 baht ($30) and then sold by the kg when he is older. The fertilizer is sold as it is made. There were two different pens for these pigs, one was basically mud, and the pigs laid on top of the mud and that could eventually be used for fertilizer. Another, far cleaner pen, was raised off the ground and contained straw and other, less muddy substances, this kind of pen is more useful when the dirt is too hard for the pigs to really burrow into. So, both of these ways of raising pigs was modeled.

There were Iguanas being raised, which I was a bit surprised to find are quite a tasty delicacy here in the Northeast, so they are sold in the market for food. They were raised in one large cage, about 40 of them (although I only saw 3-4) with a few large bushes in the cage for them to play and hide in. As we explored the various projects, we found a few stray iguanas who had apparently left their pens to find new friends.

They also raised frogs, huge frogs who can deliver 4000 baby frogs, we’re talking about amazing female frogs! These baby frogs can be sold for 1 baht each in the market, so in a female frog’s reproductive life, she can produce about 4000 baht worth of little frogs, or over $125.

It was great to be exposed to these various, simple projects, which the Thais I was with assured me could be easily done by individual families. We left encouraged that my coworker’s father in another province could raise catfish, and maybe a couple of pigs. A local pastor was also with us and began to talk about raising catfish behind the small church property, which is also his home, in order to raise money for himself and also teach these skills to his church members.

Ban Per Village

Today I went to a nearby village about 40 km away with the youth and others from my church. There is no church in this village, so they go each month to put on a special program for the kids and to build relationships. A short term medical team came through about 6 months ago and helped to build a positive relationship for the church. While the youth were getting ready for the camp, a few of us went and visited the community leader, just to let him know that we were putting on a program and would be playing music, so it might be a bit noisy. He was really supportive and said next time he would broadcast the program over the community loud speaker...and that we could use his house and property, which was not overly excessive, but was really nice and big, especially compared to other houses in the community. He and his wife are really interested in Christianity, so they are open and supportive.


Here are some pictures of the kids.....I really enjoyed spending time with them and feel like spending time out in the villages helps me to understand life here more and more.






I enjoyed talking to Lee, the woman who hosted us, she has a 1 year old daughter and lives with her mother and brother in a 1 room house, with a kitchen and bathroom off the back. Her husband is working in Singapore, working as a laborer building the subway system. She showed me his picture and said that he's been gone for almost a year and hasn't met his little girl yet, but will come home next month and stay for 1 month before returning again to Singapore. This is a common story here in the Northeast, families are split as young men and sometimes women go overseas with contract companies to Taiwan, Israel, Japan or Singapore. Although they often spend up to 2 years working just to pay off the "start up fees" that they had to pay, they still take these jobs and feel that they are worth it. There are few other options, not a lot of economic opportunities in this part of the country, just farming.

Here's a picture of Lee's cute little girl...

Comments Please...

After several months, I've finally fixed my blog so you can now leave comments. I know, I'm clearly a blogger rookies, thanks for your patience!

Bangkok vs. Udon Thani

This week I went to Bangkok for a couple of days and then went immediately out to a village when I returned. I was surprised at the contrast between urban and rural, developed and not quite so developed, rich and poor, crowded and wide open. In Bangkok they have built mall after mall surrounding the sky train, you can walk from one to the other on sidewalks along the skytrain, you don't even have to go down to the road anymore. In one mall I found a 3 floor bookstore, complete with a Starbucks inside and people drinking coffee and reading books without paying for them (just like in the US!). I can't resist the opportunity to look at English books and usually go to the movies in English while I'm in Bangkok. But this trip I didn't even drink Starbucks coffee, but just had instant Nescafe at the home of my pastor's wife, Uut, who I drove down with. I guess I'm adjusting to Thai culture, where Nescafe is much more popular than real coffee! It was fun to drive the 6 hours to Bangkok with Uut and to stay at her family's home, which happens to be on the same street I lived on when I first moved to Bangkok 10 years ago. So, we laughed at how many times we had probably passed each other without even realizing it.

Upon returning to Udon, I went out to a village church, the one in Na Khun Yai that is growing rubber trees and raising fish, with Norm and Dorie, my coworkers who are about to retire. They went to say goodbye, which was hard for them, but they were great. They will be really missed and have been a good example to me of the importance of taking the time to build relationships, to visit and listen to people and to spend time together, even when it doesn't seem like "productive work". It's amazing how essential this is in such a relationally oriented culture. Nothing you do has any value without being built on a solid relational foundation, and this can take a lot of time to build trust. Without this, it's almost impossible to find out what people really think, what they want and need. If someone comes in with an idea or a project, the Thai's will simply agree, they are too polite to express their true views if they are dissenting. However, once the person leaves they will change or fix or abandon the project and continue to do what they were doing before. This is one of the reasons why I'm so thankful for my "forced" language learning/culture learning time before I begin my "real work". It's allowing me to understand more of the culture here and begin to develop relationships. I find that many times already I have really misinterpreted people's actions and thoughts and misunderstood many things that I've seen and been exposed to. Will I ever get it?? I pray for the humility to keep learning and growing in this area!

Anyway, in the first picture above you see the sky train in Bangkok, with a new fountain next to one of the malls. In the second picture I'm being stared down by a water buffalo who wants to cross the road that we are driving down. Needless to say, we yielded and he won. If you have ever seen the damage that hitting a deer can do to a car, just imagine what marks a water buffalo will leave. That alone will make you yield everytime!

New Friends and Tasty Kangaroo...

This is my new friend Jiab, she's a college student at my church who is smart and funny and a strong leader among the young people. She told me that she wants to serve the Lord full time with her life, but doesn't know what that will look like, so she's praying about it. Last week I took her with me to a missions conference at the Bible School in a neighboring city about 1 1/2 hours away. We heard one of my old college professors speak to the Thai students about what it means to cross cultures in order to serve the Lord. This was a message that, according to Jiab, she hasn't really heard before. It seems like since Thailand is only 1% Christian, there isn't usually much of a challenge for young Christians to go overseas to serve the Lord. It was interesting for me to hear what she thought of the message, and she was still talking about it days later. It was also good for me to hear this message, as a good language practice opportunity, but also as an encouragement to me as someone who has crossed cultures to live and serve the Lord. It was a reminder to understand and accept the culture that I'm in, not to try to change it to be more comfortable for myself, but to remember that I am the guest here and I chose to leave my own culture behind. Also, it was a reminder of God's faithfulness to us no matter where we are and what new challenges we are dealing with, and finally a strong reminder of the importance of commitment.

It was really fun to hear Larry Person's speak, he preached in Thai, which was no problem for him as he grew up here in Thailand, but he was relatively easy to understand, I find that when foreigners speak Thai well, they are much easier for me to understand than Thais! But also, I understood his preaching style, as it was pretty American: introduction, three points, solid summary and a few memorable stories!

Oh, a highlight of the missions night was the chance to eat international food. The picture shows Jiab and I eating Kangaroo meatballs from Australia! They weren't bad, salty and a bit fatty. The Australian English teacher who brought them was appalled that her Thai students prepared them Thai style, complete with chilis! I thought they were much better that way. However, I'll admit that my favorite food of the evening came from the good old US booth - egg salad sandwiches, chocolate chip cookies and rootbeer floats! Definitely worth driving 1 1/2 hours to sample!

Repeated, meaningful practice in every day life (aka: Tips in Language Learning)

My full time job at this point is to learn the Thai language. When I started this a couple of months ago, this primarily involved book learning, as I had to relearn the Thai alphabet (which has 44 consonants and 28(ish) vowels), the tonal system, (5 tones, 4 tone markers which mean 3 different tones when used with the 3 different classes of consonants, and the lack of a tone marker can mean any of the 5 different tones, depending on the class of the first consonant, whether the vowel is short or long, and whether the final consonant is “dead” or “alive”). Just writing about this makes me want to move to a French speaking country...

If you are still reading…you are amazing!

The more I study Thai the more I’m convinced that Thais have to be some of the smartest people on earth. King Ramkamheng the Great invented the Thai alphabet in 1283, based on the Indian alphabets of Sanskrit and Pali. Knowing that his people were incredibly smart, the King decided to make things a bit more challenging by creating a system with no capital letters, no punctuation, and no spaces between words. There is, thankfully, a space at the end of each sentence. So, a Thai sentence would look something like this:

This is John 1:5: "The light shines in the darkness but the darkness has not overcome it."

By the way, did I mention that the vowels can appear before, after, above, below and surrounding the consonants??

Anyway, I went on a little tangent with the explanation of the Thai language, but my point was that there was plenty of classroom learning to keep me busy when I first arrived. However, now I’ve learned all of the rules to navigate the Thai language, and although I still have problems with my high and rising tones, there is little more book learning for me, it’s all about vocabulary building, increasing my comprehension and sharpening my tones.

So, I’m trying to find multiples ways to study Thai, like watching Thai game shows, going to Thai movies (the ones with English subtitles are good if the translation is good because it really confirms what I know and is good for learning new phrases, vocab and slang), hanging out with my neighbors, reading books and studying my Bible in Thai. Tonite I watched a 30 minute Thai infomercial on upcoming seminars of “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”.

The best way to learn language, everyone tells me, is in every day use. Well, sometimes I doubt if that’s true for me because I really need to see things written and need to repeat them many times before I’ve really learned them, which is hard to do when I’m at the post office and there is a long line of people behind me and I'm trying to remember the classifer for stamps. But last week I had a good experience of learning language by every day use. It started with a small fire in my house…a citronella candle lit to keep the mosquitoes at bay accidentally became closely acquainted with the pillowcase that covers my printer to keep away the dust. I was able to put it out with no major problems, except that I now need to find something new to cover my printer. But, I decided at this point that since I live in a house with bars on my windows, it would be a good idea to have a fire extinguisher. So, like any good language student I looked in my dictionary to find the word before heading out shopping. But, for some reason this word is not in my Thai/English dictionary (although you will be happy to know that the ever useful words firebrigade and firedamp are in my dictionary…)

So I went to Lotus, the “walmart type” store in my city and used hand motions and sound effects to tell the clerk that I needed a machine that could put out a small fire. He didn’t have one, but taught me the phrase “Kreung Dap Peun” and I went to the Big C, only here I couldn’t quite remember the phrase so I asked for a “Krueng Doot Foon”, which is a vacuum cleaner, but quickly realized my mistake and was again given the correct phrase, but also told that this store did not have one. Finally, at the fourth store I was confident in my ability to ask for a “Kreung Dap Peun” and was easily understood, I couldn’t help but think that the clerks were probably in awe of my linguistical ability……and now my Kreung Dap Peun sits in my kitchen, easing my mind and serving as a constant reminder that the best way to really a language is repeated, meaningful practice in everyday life…..

For anyone still out there.....

If you haven't completely given up on my lack of blogging, here are some Christmas pictures. I spent Christmas weekend visiting different village churches, joining in with their Christmas parties and activities and found myself really encouraged. First, I loved the simplicity that Christmas is about the birth of Christ, and the parties celebrated that. Typically, the activities involved a meal together, a brief explanation of Christ's birth, fun games and songs and presents for the kids. Thais are really fun, joyful people and it was fun to play games together, sing, watch kids excitedly open gifts and be really thankful, whether it was a candy bar, flip flops, or a bag of rice! I of course had to join in the fun by singing in English. People were extremely gracious....

Here's a girl praying for our dinner....



Christmas Dinner....Thai style! Eating on the floor, everyone gets their own bowl of rice and shares common main dishes. We made wraps with lettuce, rice, fish and spicy hot sauce.


Here's me and my coworkers, notice the great Poinsetta Tree behind us, I am trying to grow one in front of my house right now, it's only 2 feet tall right now, I wonder if it'll make it to this great height??
For those of you who worry that my Christmas is looking a bit too rural and rustic, here's a picture of one of the Christmas trees in a huge mall in Bangkok....the contrasts of the rich and poor in Thailand never cease to amaze me.

Here are the some of the women at my church, who dressed in these traditional clothes to do a special Thai dance. I also have it on video, which I'm trying to figure out how to add to the blog site. I'm thankful for my church, I'm really enjoying it and slowly building relationships and friendships, and learning a lot about Thai rural life from these great people.


I made instant friends with these kids by playing soccer, the little guy dressed like Santa was so sad when I left. This church has a real outreach in their community with the kids through a soccer team, allowing them to travel, see different parts of Thailand, learn discipline and teamwork and achieve success while they work towards a common goal.