Thanks for running with the blogspot Jen. I wasn't able to get on the internet till today, so that's why I didn't respond to you suggestion earlier, but you made it all easy:)
We are back in Chiangmai after our wonderful vacation and have hit the ground running. Eric has orientation next week and I have been taking care of our new SIL teachers. The day we came back from Bangkok I went to the airport a couple of time to pick the up and oriented them to our group the next morning. They are busy going to Lotus, getting cell phones, buying motorbikes and getting into the general swing of things.
I could say a lot about our vacation in general. It was lovely and wonderful. I could also say a lot about our time in Bangkok. We stayed with our Thai friends, Ped & Tik. God seems to be working in their lives in ways I never imagined he would. Praise God, I can also now talk to Tik about what's going on in her life since I can speak Thai pretty well now. After numerous week-ends spent in awkward silence with her this is a very freeing thing.
We just passed the fifth anniversary mark of our arrival in Thailand so I'm glad I can finally speak the language. Gabe also is progressing in his language though in a different way. Every time we passed bargirls in Phuket he'd say "Sao Sao" which means "chicks". Where does he learn these things?
Anyway, I just want to relate a story about our trip down to Phuket. On our way down to Bangkok, we took the sleeper train. While I was taking Gabe to the bathroom, the porter came to make up our bed. Eric cleared away our bags for him but didn't see the video camera I'd stowed under the seat. I myself forgot about it too. When we arrived at Bangkok at 5:30 in the morning, we had a only a minute or two to unload our mountain of luggage and the video camera didn't make it off the train. We went into the airport and were sitting down to breakfast at BK when we realized that the video camera was gone. Within a minute I was running back toward the airport train station to catch a train to the central train station which was our train's final destination. This was the beginning of a day full of God's grace. On the comuter train to downtown Bangkok, each person I met was interested in why I was on the train to the city and wanted to help me. The train took about a hour and a quarter to get to the city. When I got there, I was picked up by tourist police who took me all around the station while they looked for the video camera. Unbelievably, it was in the lost and found. Not a thing had been stolen from the camera bag. The policeman stayed with me to help me fill out the paperwork (I'm still semi-illiterate in Thai) and then wanted to help me find the best way back to the airport. To him, the best meant the cheapest, so they put me on a 3 baht train. This train was the oldest I'd ever seen in my life. It was also very slow. However, the people were again very kind and friendly. The tourist police watched over me till the train left to make sure I made the right train and didn't get robbed of my video camera. Finally the train left. However, halfway to the airport, they stopped to have a karaoke party and some food. Again, everyone was really friendly, but the party put us an hour behind schedule. I already knew my flight was gone, so it didn't stress me out much and gave me a glimpse of Thai society I wouldn't have gotten otherwise. I finally made it to the airport and got another flight to Phuket for the evening where I again had a very cheap and interesting ride to our hotel. It could have been frustrating, but I felt like God was taking care of the me the entire day and was blessed by the love he showed me through other people. Here's a pic from our vacation.
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