We Eat. And We Eat Some More.

(pictures aren't working, so please see Facebook for a visual accompaniment to this post).

Have you ever seen a real live dismembered pig’s head for sale? Well, now I have. I’ve also seen skinned, headless, but otherwise whole chickens arranged in neat lines with their wirey feet pointing straight up at overhead fans, which are spinning frantically in an effort to disperse the pungent smell of fresh meat and entrails carefully laid out along entire market aisles.

Yes, yesterday we visited the local market for the first time. And it’s not your everyday street vendors selling fried bananas or fresh watermelon outside the corner 711. It’s actually an adventure: a spectacular array of just about every fruit, vegetable, grain, spice, and faunal body part could you think of eating. But I left not with a pig’s head or chicken foot; only with 1.5 kilos of my new favorite fruit, some mangosteen (“mancoot” in Thai), which I bargained for and bought from a smiling Thai woman. Fun story, by the way: said fruit apparently got its English name when a farong incorrectly called it a “mango,” and the Thai vendor replied with “mango, su teen!” which loosely translated means, “What the hell kind of mango is that?” So the story goes.

But all this is only background for my real story. Our trip to the market transpired after five of the Chinese students, three of whom are returning to China next week, wanted to cook a Chinese meal for us. It was one of the highlights of the summer so far.

We started with a trip to the market, which got a bit complicated because the girls were trying to decide what all to cook. One of them, Playao, loves to cook and grew up working with her family’s restaurant, so she organized most of the evening. They took awhile at the market because, remember, these are the Toy Story aliens who move en masse and do everything in unison.

They cooked at least five different dishes, leaving pots and pans all over the back patio of the Zone and sending me and a few others on urgent 711 runs to buy extra cooking oil and such. I was also assigned to the rice cooker, which seems simple enough: throw the rice and water in, turn it on, and it does the rest for you. But who knew you’re supposed to wash rice before you cook it? Who knew you’re not supposed to open the lid while it’s cooking? Not me. Luckily, everyone was watching me closely, and somehow it turned out all right. Bethany, if you’re reading, I have found the miraculous answer to cooking rice successfully.

Quick tangent: we had a gorgeous sunset last night after it had rained all day. This is a view of Doi Sutep just down the street from the Zone.

Dinner was inside because a plague of harmless but irritating moth-like bugs had descended on the world, so we somehow fit fifteen people in the tiny inside kitchen area. The food was delicious, especially what Playao called “Grandmother’s Potatoes.” And beyond that, it was a just a great evening with all of them. Their English has improved so much even since we’ve been here, and we’ve become good friends with all of them. Everyone has been officially invited to everyone else’s homes in China or America, whoever gets to the other country first.

So there’s a semi-typical day. Today we hung around outside the English department building at Payap, which we’ve been doing more lately. It’s a good spot because most of the students really want to learn English and are more inclined to talk to you. A few of them gave me a brief Thai grammar lesson and then taught me the entire Thai alphabet—all 44 characters, of which I remember one—and we talked about school and travel and such. We've invited a lot of these students to come visit us and hang out at the Zone, but many of them are busy with school and just hesitant to really start coming around. Which is understandable, so we just try to go to them. We've been meeting a lot more people lately and trying to stick around while they overcome their reservations about speaking English. Most of them speak really well and just don't think they do.

Anyway, tomorrow we’re cooking farong food for our cell group, completing the week of delicious, eclectic cuisine and almost constant spending time with people and meeting new ones.

Still miss you and all and love you all. See you soon!

Stolen Pictures and a Weekend at a Pizza Shop (Minus the Pizza)

It's 1:30 a.m., and I don't feel like uploading pictures to Facebook, so I'm stealing pictures from other people's blogs and albums that might not be visible to some of you on Facebook and calling it my own original blog post.

Beyond letting the pictures speak for themselves, a brief summary of our weekend goes as follows:

Friday afternoon I left with a couple other interns and several people from church here to drive about three hours to Phayao, a city north-ish of Chiang Mai. We were going to help a group of missionaries from A&M with a pizza shop they're opening in just a couple weeks. The drive took us past rice paddies with foggy mountains in the distance and farmers bent over their fields.

After stopping to help a couple headed to Phayao with us whose car had for no reason spun out on a curve in the mountains (they were both just fine) we made it to Phayao (there's a huge lake smack in the middle of the city, by the way), had dinner, went to bed, and woke up earlier than most of us would have liked to for a day of cleaning every bit of dust left from construction out from every corner of a whole building. Fingers were turning blue from Windex, lungs were suffocating from dust leaking between our face masks, feet were pruning from standing in soapy water used to clean the floor, and everyone was having a fantastic time even if we weren't eating any pizza. The shop looks great and is getting close to ready for its opening day.

On the drive back to Chiang Mai we stopped to visit the family of one of the women here, Oi, and they served us traditional Northern Thai food, and lots of it. I even tried boiled pork blood, which is placed in a bag and then boiled until it congeals into a gelatinous blackish lump. I can't tell you how it tastes, only that I ate it; I took only enough to legitimize that claim and not gag, not taste anything.

The weekend was great, as were all the other moments seen in the pictures here (which are not laid out rationally or in any kind of aesthetically pleasing manner, I know, but oh well):






Heading to Phayao, with Oi, Ahn, and Ying (left to right)

Stopping for coffee, of course

The whole group at Phayao, matching Brick Oven Pizza shirts to celebrate being finished.













And Berm ("Bum") with his chihuahuas. See a previous post for more explanation. Hah--now I've got you interested and you have to read my blog if you haven't been...

blessings.

Just Smile

Cultural observation: Thais tend to resolve most things by smiling. Luckily, smiling is something I can do well; I’ve had to do more smiling in the past four weeks than possibly ever in my life. This trick comes in especially handy during two very common everyday occurrences: 1) when someone is speaking to you in Thai and you have the glazed, deer-in-headlights, I-don’t-understand-a-word-you’re-saying look, and 2) when you’ve done something stupid and are trying to get out of an embarrassing moment.

To illustrate, let me narrate embarrassing moments #36, #37, and #38. Yes, there have been at least 35 other moments you haven’t heard about (averaging over 10 each week, a new record), but for the sake of time and convenience I’m skipping straight through the three most recent.

#36

I’m trying to copy an entire TOEFL practice book for two of our Chinese students at the copy shop next door. There are apparently no copyright infringement or unauthorized reproduction laws in Thailand, by the way, which I love. Anyway, the first person speaks no English, so with the expert charade skills and “Tinglish” I’ve developed over the past three weeks, I get the second person to understand that I want two copies, front to back, with a bound cover. I’ve been told this will cost about 70 baht per book.

I wait at the table outside, reading through my Lonely Planet Thai phrase book. The worker, who has learned as much English in the last twenty minutes as I have Thai, signals to me that the books are ready. The copies look great; very professional and good quality. Then he pulls out the calculator—the tested and proven method to communicate prices with foreigners—and it reads 1,780 baht. I do a quick calculation in my head: almost $60. I’m incredulous. And angry. He’s ripping off a dumb farong, and I don’t even have that many baht on me. So I charade-say that I’m going to get more money and will be right back, since I feel I have no other choice but to pay up.

(Embarrassing Moment #36 ½:) Back at the Zone, I ask two Thais how much a copy should cost. They debate for awhile, and decide it should be about 40 baht per kilo. I’ve never measured copies by kilo, I think to myself, and I wonder how one would go about doing that. I decide to ask, and after much confusion realize they think I’m asking about “coffee.” The miscommunication, a common theme of the day, is resolved, and one of them goes with me back to the copy shop.

At the shop, my friend asks the man how much it is, and he shows her the same calculator, which at a different angle out of the sun’s glare now reads 178.0 baht. I realize my blunder immediately and ask my friend to explain to this honest, hard-working man what happened. I pay him 200 baht, he gives me the correct change, and with many smiles and several iterations of “kop kun mahk ka” (thank you very much), I leave the copy shop with two very nice TOEFL books. I turn around one more time to smile again. He smiles back. We’re cool.

The next day, when I need another copy, I go to the other copy shop down the street to avoid doing anything else stupid.

#37

So I’ve been trying to learn some Thai words. I’ve even invested in an 8 baht notebook to write down some of these great new phrases and vocabulary. I also try to forego any reservations I might have about being annoying and not hesitate to ask anyone who speaks Thai to teach me a word here and there and listen to me say it several times until I get it right. Either they’re very good at hiding their exasperation, or they’re actually excited to teach a farong some Thai words.

Anyway, the other day we were riding back from the waterfall adventure with a couple from church, and they decide to teach me and Fish a few Thai words. They teach us one phrase: “c(h)oat aroi,” meaning “damn good” (that c(h) means you pronounce it like “coat” but with a little bit of a throaty “h” sound). But they explain that while it is slang, it’s really not like cursing; it’s more just expressing extreme emotion and is fairly common.

So they say, at least. The next day happens to be Sunday, and we’ve all come back from Sunday lunch after church. A few of us are sitting on the back patio eating various fruits I’ve never seen before, most of which are delicious, including: durian, the fruit that smells like a toilet but has such an intriguing, complex taste you kind of want to eat more; mangosteen, which has a beautiful bright pink pulp and a delicious white fruit inside; sala, which is just okay and not worth the effort to peel; and a few others.

The context of embarrassing moment #37: I’m eating my third mangosteen and saying how good it is. I am the only non-Thai person present at the moment, so I try to speak all five words of “Tinglish” that I know. One of them is “aroi,” delicious. And this fruit is very delicious, so I decided to use my new vocabulary. I preface it, saying, “I’ve heard you can say ‘c(h)oat aroi.”

They all laugh kind of an awkward laugh. Then one says, “Yeah, I mean you could, but it’s kind of bad.” Then I realize that, sitting among this particular group, is an older man who is a judge at the courthouse, owns three houses in Thailand, and is currently working on a paper about the EU system of government to present to the Thai government as it tries to re-envision its own systems. Brief deer-in-headlights look again, though for a different reason: all of these man’s qualities are reasons why I should have not chosen this moment to practice my new vocabulary.

So I throw in several smiles—I think I even “wai” him, putting my hands together in the form of a respectful greeting, then realize there’s absolutely no sense in greeting this man now. Frantically, I add a few “kawh tohd ka”s (sorrys), and more smiles. He’s been smiling a chuckling, amused smile this whole time.

The next day when we visit the courthouse, we happen to see him and he is very friendly. So I believe all has been set right again.

#38

We've gone to get Thai massages. After two women wash our feet--which are disgusting and calloused unlike Asian feet, which inexplicably somehow always look smooth and clean--we go into a dressing room to change into our massage clothes.

This outfit consists of a loose-fitting cotton shirt, which we don easily enough. The only other article is a pair of pants, the waist of which would fit a 400-lbs fat American. There is no drawstring or elastic, only two strings that presumably can be used to secure these pants.

After the most creative efforts to tie the pants, we somehow get them to stay up well enough to brave walking out of the dressing room. All the extra fabric that makes these pants the versatile one-size-fits-all pair that they are, has been gathered to one side and tied with a ginormous knot. We look like we weigh 400 lbs.

Halfway through our massages, the masseuses ask us to flip from our backs onto our stomachs. This rolling motion disturbs the delicate knot we’ve concocted, and we’re suddenly swimming in ten yards of untied cotton, wearing only our underwear (luckily we’ve left it on). The masseuses find this quite amusing and show us the proper way to subdue the troublesome pants, smiling all the while.

We’re smiling too, and after we’ve finished we tip the masseuses rather handsomely.


Moral of these stories: I don’t know. Just smile. Especially when a green caterpillar is crawling up your nose (Baffling Moment #43).

Mission Accomplished

I have conquered the chopstick.

Okay, enough excitement for one post.

Define "Hang Out," Please

So you may have noticed that I have changed the name of my blog. It is now more alliterative and interesting. It is also more cheesy, but I don’t care. So welcome to the new and improved summer blog. Happy reading.

You also may have noticed that we seem to be doing very little “work” here in Thailand. That’s the impression I get when skimming back through my blog posts and scrolling through the pictures I’ve posted to Facebook. You may be wondering what we’re doing out here besides teaching a few English classes, eating, hanging out, and climbing waterfalls (see picture at right).

Okay fine, so we’re pretty much just eating, hanging out, and climbing waterfalls. And teaching some English. But that's exactly what we should be doing, and I promise I won't just be using subtle rhetorical tricks and clever word choices to make a summer of having fun seem like “ministry.”

When we eat all the delectable Thai food I’ve talked about, we’re usually eating with Thai and Chinese students we’ve met at Payap University or with members of the Payap Church. Many of them also join us for dinner on Thursday nights when all the church members get together for Cell Group (picture at left). When we spend entire afternoons hanging out and playing games and going to local coffee shops, then evenings wandering the city and seeing movies, we’re with these same students and church members. Many of these students start coming around because they want to get to know a bunch of “farongs” and practice their English; then, we try to encourage them to continue coming and get to know the church members so that when we leave they won’t leave too.

We’re here to have relationships with the Thais. Most of them are college-aged students, so these relationships look a lot like “just hanging out.” Everyone who works here long-term says that without us being here, very few new people would ever end up coming around to begin with. We try to welcome them and invite them to be a part of the community here, so we take group trips to spend a day at a waterfall or have dinner downtown. The rest can develop from there if they want it to. Just look at how youth ministers spend their summers; I rest my case.

And now for the cast of characters:

Tum (“Tuhm”) is studying linguistics at Payap, and he and I study advanced English from a TOEFL book three times a week. I also get a ten-minute mini-linguistics lesson because I find it fascinating and because Tum is incredibly intelligent, even if a tad awkward. He’s studying linguistics so that he can develop a written language for the hill tribe he comes from. Which is suutnyaaht, awesome.

Palm (“Pahm”) is a Payap student who wants to learn English, graduate, and one day start his own business modeled after philanthropic ones like TOMS Shoes because he grew up poor, is paying his own way through college, and wants to help other people like himself. He doesn’t have many friends, at least that we can tell, and he’s already become a regular part of our group and comes around nearly every day. He also really likes rabbits and brought his pet rabbit, Moo Grawbp (Crispy Pork) to visit us one day. That’s (mostly) why he wears Playboy glasses, he says—they have a rabbit on them. Right...

Sea Game (by the way, these are all nicknames because their given names are all exceptionally long; but don’t ask me how they come up with ones like this one) is a high school student who wants to learn English so that he can pass the TOEFL test and study in America. He’s a great teacher when it comes to learning Thai.

Iris, Ivy, Faith, Michelle, and Piiyao are Chinese students studying abroad in Thailand for the year (picture below). Remember the little aliens from Toy Story who all look similar and respond to things in unison? Well, just envision them as 19-year-old Chinese girls, and you’ve met this group. I study English with them, and Fish is continuing some Bible studies that they’d already started, and they teach us some Chinese. Ivy wants to be a tour guide, so we let her practice by showing us around, and Piiyao wants to become a professor in China. They’re all going back to China in a few weeks, and we’ll miss them.

We also spend a lot of time getting to know the church members. Ball (“Bon,” don’t ask), the other intern here, is a self-proclaimed soccer “superstar” and likes to teach us various slang Thai phrases. Berm (“Bum”) was the first member of the church here and is now an art teacher who breeds chihuahuas on the side. Then there’s Ying and Ahn and Ohn and Uhn and several others whose names sound the same except for a slight difference in vowel sound or intonation. And they’re all wonderful, even when you call them the wrong name.

Hope that gives a somewhat better idea of what we're up to all summer. Miss you all and love you all! Now off to coffee...

Eight Weeks and...Not Really Counting

Well, I landed in Chiang Mai two weeks ago today. This is causing the weird feeling you sometimes get when traveling that you’ve been in a place forever and not just 14 days. But I also realized, while waiting out the afternoon rain at a local coffee shop and making new friends with a little Pomeranian who apparently lives there, that already we only have about eight weeks left in Thailand. Which really isn't very long. Coincidentally, maybe, today I also finally noticed that other feeling you get when moving somewhere new: you're actually kind of living there and not just visiting.

A few reasons for that feeling (this will be another long post):

Yesterday I gave my first real “English lesson,” informal though it was. A group of five Chinese students who study at Payap University have been visiting the Zone for several months now and have worked very hard on their English (two of them are in the picture on the left). They came to Thailand with six years of practice reading and writing English—and no practice whatsoever with speaking. I helped one of them with a fairly difficult vocabulary and sentence-writing homework assignment, and I was very impressed with her near-perfect grammar. But it’s still difficult for us to understand one another, which is a large part of our purpose in being here as interns: give anyone who’s interested a place to practice their English just by hanging out with native English-speakers.

So far, it’s actually been pretty easy building some of these relationships with Thai and Chinese students: they want to be friends with foreigners and practice their English in hopes of finding better jobs in the future, and as clueless “farongs” learning about Thailand we need all the help we can get.

Speaking of teaching English, it looks like I’ll be able to teach some sort of weekly, casual “advanced English” class each to students who are already fairly fluent in English and want to improve their vocabulary, knowledge of idioms, and so on. I have a TOEFL book we’ll work through at their own pace, and I doubt there will be many people coming. Both those things, I think, will work well. By the way, flipping through the TOEFL workbook I’m amazed that anyone learns English and that so many people work so hard to do so. I was having trouble with some of the exercises, like:

Rearrange the letters in bold at the end of the sentence to make a word with the same meaning as the italicized word: "The transformation is accelerated by adding salt to the solution." satheden.

Difficult, no? So my sincere admiration and applause to all ESL students.

Speaking of language, I am bound and determined to leave this country knowing how to say more than just “hello,” “how are you?” “thank you,” “nice to meet you,” "pineapple," and "sticky rice." And "pad thai," which doesn't even count. I figure if I’m here teaching English, then it’s only fair that I try my best to learn some Thai. So, today I spent an hour drinking my iced mocha and listening to audio lessons in Thai, writing down the words and pronunciations of the native Thai speaker as best I could. I felt quite accomplished. And of course when I went back to hang out with our Thai friends at the Zone, I remembered close to nothing. But if they can learn English, I can learn Thai. Mark, the long-term intern here, also tried teaching me a few letters and words in the Thai alphabet. Ideally, this will help me order at restaurants and get a somewhat better bearing while living here. Realistically, I’ll probably leave Thailand able to spell my name and “pad thai.”

Speaking of leaving here, I would kind of rather not. It’s been wonderful meeting so many friendly, hospitable Thais and getting to know them better. I've said it before, but the food is delicious. Even the fish balls, which contrary to what it might sound like are actually just meatballs made of fish meat. I’m still mustering the courage to pop a few fried insects. In the meantime, I’ll eat my weight in pad thai.

Speaking of eating my weight, I decided it was time to start running again, so I took an evening jog around Payap’s campus. I toured the campus for the first time just yesterday (finally, I know), and it’s beautiful. Flowers and trees are everywhere--it kind of feels like being in a jungle--and the campus is linked by half-grown-over bridges crossing the ponds where the lily pads are blooming. In the evening, crickets and cicadas and frogs and a million other creatures buzz and chirp and make a thousand other noises that provided a much better rhythm for running than songs on an iPod.

Speaking of...well it's off topic but here's a picture of our group:

But I could go on for a long time about all this; in fact, I already have. So until next time, I miss you all and love you more!

Mai Pen Lai: Life in Thailand

After talking with my mom on the phone last night, I realized that even hundreds of pictures on Facebook can’t really capture Thailand and all we’ve been up to here so far. So, I’d like to attempt a description based on my first ten days in Thailand. Warning: this will be a long post.

I’ve mentioned already that I understand essentially no Thai. One phrase I do understand, though, is “mai pen lai,” and I would say it describes most of Thailand well. Translated, it can mean “you’re welcome,” “no worries,” “never mind,” or “take it easy.” People here must take that to heart because they’re easy-going, carefree, and entirely unhurried. They’re also friendly, polite, and seem to smile about everything. One woman who comes to our church is shy and speaks little English, but instead of just keeping quiet when people try to talk to her, she breaks out giggling. It works out well for her--everyone, American of Thai, starts laughing along with her. Another woman who runs a small fruit stand near the Zone (Payap Christian Zone, where we live and work) speaks as much English as I speak Thai, but she greets me every afternoon with a big smile and fresh saparoht (pineapple) already cut for me. I return the smile and give her 10 baht. I’d say we have a very good relationship.

Friendly though they may be, Thais are also crazy drivers. There are essentially no street laws beyond stopping at traffic lights, and I’m surprised more motorcyclists don’t die each day. But mai pen lai: most people ride these tiny motorbikes and don’t seem at all concerned with the size of the cars they consistently cut off and weave in and out between. This free-for-all mentality is kind of how most things seem to work in Thailand. You want plastic surgery, stop in a clinic at the spanking new mall, assuming whatever risk there might be. I haven’t seen anyone yet with a disfigured face, so apparently this approach is working well enough.

So we’re all learning to chill out, having found there isn’t much you can do about finding a giant insect cooked into your pad thai, driving through four feet of flood water to get home, or sleeping with no sheets and minimal clothing with the AC cranked way up and still waking up sweaty before you've even started another sticky day. Mai pen lai.

Tuesday through Friday, those sticky days generally consist of:

7:30 — Roll out of bed at 7:30, dress in the coolest clothes I can find, and patter barefoot downstairs to put on my shoes (always left outside, so our floors are spotlessly clean) and walk down the street to buy breakfast either at our corner 7-11 or one of the street vendors.

8:30 — Begin nearly four hours of “spiritual equipping time,” where we read through a book about spiritual disciplines, spend 45 minutes in quiet time, then come back together a read a chapter of John. For me, these four hours generally consist of pondering what new Thai dish to try for lunch and injecting myself with coffee to stay awake. Don’t tell anyone, but “quiet time” often is very quiet—dreamily so, if you know what I mean.

12:30 — Eat lunch somewhere, then enjoy a couple hours of free time where I generally sit outside on our patio drinking Thai iced tea, reading or writing, listening to the birds and the trickle of water in the gutter running behind the Zone, and watching the trees rustle like the clothes we've hung outside to dry while the afternoon clouds roll in. Or I might walk over to one of the coffee shops near us or explore the winding market streets in the neighborhood.

3:00 — Return to the Zone and hang out with anyone who might happen to stop in and want to hang out. Most of these people are regulars who either go to church here or have been hanging around for months, although we’ve had several new people drop in this last week since the school semester has started up again. There’s a group of Chinese girls and several Thais who come in and out, and we hang out and play games and enjoy the AC and talk, helping them practice English while they teach us a little Thai.

6:00 — Eat dinner somewhere (we eat a lot) and start finding things to do all evening . This might mean grabbing pizza at the mall and going to see a movie at the big theater (before every movie they play a song written by the king, Bhumibol, during which everyone stands), cooking with everyone and having our Cell Group meeting if it’s Thursday, or grabbing dinner at a nearby hole-in-the-wall restaurant and coming back to play volleyball or cheer our Thai friends on at a soccer game or put in a movie, etc.

Mondays are our days off, so some of our new Thai friends have shown us around the city, taken us shopping at local markets, or gone hiking with us up in the nearby mountains. By the way, the mountains here are wonderful; it’s like being in the jungle.

Sundays we have church in the morning, a big lunch in the afternoon (sounds like Sundays at home, no?), and then walk around the night market in the evening or gather at a local coffee shop.

Of course there’s quite a bit more going on besides this, but hopefully that gives you somewhat of an idea what we’re up to here. If you’re asking how this is “mission” work, we’re building relationships where we can learn from the Thais and they can learn from us—all very casual, mutual, and friendly. Mai pen lai. I think we’ve all learned quite a bit already.

First-Week Highlights

Sawadee ka! So I’ve been in Thailand less than a week, and already way too much has happened to fit in a single blog post. I apologize for falling behind. We’re just having too much fun, I guess. So to summarize:

1. Major events and memorable happenings
a. Stumbled onto a major Buddhist festival at the largest and oldest temple (“wat”) in the old part of Chiang Mai
b. Played volleyball at 11 p.m. when it was still 85 degrees and humid enough to soak our clothes before even getting to the court
c. Visited the Agape Home orphanage outside the city where three of our friends from ACU are spending the summer working with AIDS orphans
d. Swam in a huge mountain lake in Sri Lanna National Park, where we also spent a night and morning on house boats on the lake
e. Consumed two full helpings of homemade Mexican stack--aroi! (delicious)
f. Drove through a legitimate flood: the water was covering the hood of the car and pooling at our feet. Rainy season has begun in Thailand.
g. Attended my first church service in Thai and English
h. Almost fell asleep during a Thai massage while the masseuses laughed at us farongs (white people)

2. Important lessons and interesting or otherwise significant observations
a. Sticky rice and mango is the second best thing after pad thai. The end.
b. Well, not really the end. When eating pad thai, watch out for full-sized insects, cooked unintentionally (I assume) into the dish, who are missing one or both of their wings. Then, don’t think about where the other wing might have gone.
c. Accenting a word even somewhat incorrectly changes what you’re saying. Thais find this phenomenon quite amusing.
d. Texans have nothing on the Thais when it comes to friendliness and hospitality. (And, yes, even when it comes to pad thai versus TexMex.)
e. There are mosquitoes, and lots of them. And they will bite you. And because Asians are apparently not attractive to mosquitoes, the damned insects will bite you even more to compensate.
f. Thailand might be the most beautiful country on earth, hands down.
g. Curly hair gets curlier in humidity, and what we consider cool clothing in the states may as well be winter bundling here.
h. The Arabica coffee grown just outside Chiang Mai in the hills is way better than Starbucks. Aroi.
i. If mission work means hanging out with fun people and meeting even more each day, then no wonder the Bible department is so big at ACU.

For pictures, look at my Facebook. If you’re not my friend, ask and it shall be given unto you. Miss you all and love you even more.