Goodbye Trip with Stacy to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Our hotel was part of an old train station....beautiful, but we were a bit scared of the elevator, since the building was built in 1910.

We had a great few days in Malaysia, with a good mix of Malaysian cultural things....

Like visiting the national forest reserve in the middle of the city. Louisa came with us too, she recently moved to Udon and joined our team. It's great to have her!!


And eating authentic Indian food with our hands, on huge banana leaves instead of plates. It felt so authentic and no one spoke English except the manager, who came over about halfway through our meal (unfortunately too late to help us order!) Wanting to be cultural to the end, we asked if he had any Indian coffee or tea that we could try. He hesitated, so we asked what everyone around us was drinking....he smiled and said "Nescafe! This is an international restaurant!!"


Feeling a bit like part of the Lord of the Rings cast, but dressed culturally appropriate to visit the National Mosque...


We went to see the Petronis Towers (the tallest twin buildings in the world). We waited in line for free tickets but all 1800 were given out before we got there at 8:30am


Since KL is such an international city, we also enjoyed some western treats, like dinner at Chili's, English bookstores, a trip to IKEA, an English movie.....and of course breakfast at Starbucks!!



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Learning the Local Craft

Orathai taught Stacy and I how to weave reeds into a placemat or a large bowl shaped cover to go over food so that the flies don't get into it.



Here's a picture - to prove I really did it!

Now here's Orathai fixing all my mistakes.....


The finished products!



And best of all - we were all still friends at the end of the day....

Wandering around Nakhon Phanom

Stacy and I went out to Nakhon Phanom together one last time before she moved back to America. There are many lives that she has impacted deeply out in NP and it was good for her to say her goodbyes...we had some great food together! That's the best way to say goodbye in Thailand.
We visited Khun Ulai, who is raising pigs with Insom's help, can you tell that the pic below are pig snouts??





Eating on the Mekong River with one of the pastors and his family - beautiful kids!!

Water buffalo - hanging out and keeping cool!

Annual Field Forum

Once a year we get together with workers from all over the country for our annual meetings and retreat time. We had a great speaker and it was fun to catch up with each other, many of us only see each other once a year!

Trip to Cambodia

After a year of trying to plan a trip to Cambodia to visit CAMA's work, I finally made it! There are a couple of great projects I was able to learn from - above is a Moringa tree, which the leaves are dried and crushed into a powder that has lots of vitamins and is really helpful for those with HIV/AIDS or those with nutritional needs. The powder is being used by many in conjunction with the HIV/AIDS and community health ministry and people are very pleased with the results (google Moringa, it may be the latest natural health craze in the US!!).



This pastor has her own business roasting and seasoning soy beans, peanuts, etc. to support her work as a pastor.


This little guy wanted me to take his picture as he proudly posed in front of his elementary school! His parents died of AIDS but he's living with antoher relative. I was really impressed with the Church Based HIV/AIDS ministry that the CAMA staff is working with there. They are really working with the church to have ownership of the program and to lead and direct it in the future.

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.