Recent Happenings

In searching my brain for stories of things that have happened in recent weeks, most of what I remember are the times we spent painting our building, scrubbing the floors, and cleaning the bathrooms. I now have a greater appreciation of Cinderella after scrubbing our entire building on our hands and knees; a product of the statement "Who needs drop cloths?"

(You can't really see how much dirt is caked on our legs from crawling on the muddy floor.)

I was so thankful to learn how to tile after two days straight of scrubbing floors. I was taught by our great friend Rob who selflessly comes to our school building most days and slaves away doing hundreds of jobs that we have no idea how to do. After a bit of a safety lesson he even let me use his special hand saw tool. (Daddy aren't you proud. ;) )

In preparation for our upcoming visits to the States(yay!), we made a trip down to the Walking Street/Sunday Night Market. Before we were even half-way there our approximately thirty-three year old car began to overheat. While this is not unusual it is still a bit of an annoyance. We pulled over into a gas station where Vente (our car) has overheated before. We put water in our radiator at least once a week (maybe we should try actual radiator fluid) so we carry a big bottle of water for the sole purpose of cooling Vente. Disclaimer: while the things I'm about to mention are probably not bright ideas we were told to do them by people who know more about cars than we do. Anyway we pour water on our boiling hot radiator but that soon gets old so one of my roommates touches the radiator cap. We all say "No! Don't take the lid off the car is too hot and it might explode!" However, our roommate says, "The lid isn't hot at all" and proceeds to twist it off. About a second later a geyser of dirty brown liquid erupted from our radiator. All of us who had previously stepped away from the car jumped even further back almost falling into a weird canal thing. Thankfully no one was hurt and we cooled Vente down with more water and were able to make it to the market after all. Lesson learned: really...don't take the lid off of the radiator when the car is still hot.

Yesterday, we had a special English as a Second Language training session with a woman from Australia. We are so thankful for all of her hard work and the time she has taken to help us. It will be invaluable. The training began yesterday morning and a headache that I had gotten a couple days before just continued to get worse. Thinking I might find some medicine I ran to the little shop next door. The one that when we sing our praise songs every morning we are able to watch the man and woman in their kitchen as they prepare food that they sell during the day. We share a wall and our buildings are extremely close. When I walked in I was so excited that he understand my question (I was speaking Thai) but he didn't have anything I could read the label for which made me a little uncomfortable. That was sad, but it necessitated a trip to the 7/11 which is exciting because that means...motorcycle! The trip is fairly short but is a pain to make in the car and takes twice as long. So, because Khruu Ooy wasn't there to stop me I borrowed Gordon's motorbike and headed off to 7/11. After a bit of a wobbly start I did pretty well, I even drove past the cars at the stop sign and pulled up next to the other bikes at the very front. I was nervous about having to cross traffic several times but the Lord protected me and it was great fun!

Today at the Thai school that Amy and I teach at our classes went pretty well. Although they were interrupted by the principal coming and taking pictures of us, which when you are either talking or making exaggerated faces to keep the students' attention are not very flattering. Then, he asked if we could Skype with a couple from Australia who often visit Thailand and volunteer at this school. We had actually heard about them before from the teachers at this school and some mutual friends (Rob the guy who helps at our school being one of them.) We had a nice visit with these people and look forward to meeting them in May. We also had a long talk with our principal today over lunch, he is trying to learn English and is doing really well! There is still some confusion about whether certain words are in English or Thai because the Thai speakers think he is speaking in English and the English speakers think he is speaking in Thai. However, after him saying "What?" when I'm speaking and me saying "Aray na?" when he is speaking we are able to understand each other pretty well. Which reminds me of something very exciting. This last week I read my very first sentence written in Thai letters. It was..."The crow has large eyes." well in English anyway. :)

After teaching we headed back to our school to continue our "manual labor" which the teachers at our Thai school think is hilarious. We began painting the front fence which at two o'clock in the afternoon receives direct sunlight. Amy and I began working with a bucket that had a hole in the bottom and had to be held in just the right way and with one pair of flip-flops between the two of us. Things such as shoes can be forgotten when one takes three bags, a change of clothes, and random things such as water bottles and coffee mugs to work in the morning. So we stood on one foot because the pavement was burning hot. After a little bit Brittany joined us and we continued the painting. We must have looked pitiful with our bucket and lack of shoes because our neighbor lady brought out three straw hats for us to wear. We thought it was so sweet of her to notice our dilemma and act on our behalf.

Last story for this extremely long blog. On Tuesday mornings Amy and I sit in a meadow for a little while and have our quiet times. (We drop our roommates off at another Thai school and then have some extra time in which it would be pointless to drive back to our school just in time to turn around and drive the Thai school where we teach.) Anyway last time we were in the meadow we saw this crazy dog run and stick his head through two rails in a fence. He started howling and Amy and I felt so bad for him. We were deciding how we could rescue him as he squirmed and struggled. Just then he was able to pull his head out of the fence. We were relieved that we didn't have to help him and went on with our time. About half an hour later later the same dog came and rammed his head through the same exact spot on the fence. This time we didn't feel so bad for him because...well... he should have learned his lesson. We joked about how sometimes we feel like we are that dog, trying to accomplish something that just cannot be done. However, today as we sat in that meadow that same dog came and jumped into the fence again! As we were laughing at his stupidity he was able to squeeze through the fence. We were quite surprised. I'm not sure how he was able to manage that feat, but we took it as a sign from God. ;) Sometimes those impossible things really are possible, we might just have to try what seems stupid a few times before we get it right.