Evil Packaging

I had thought that Thailand was a safe haven from this sort of impossible-to-open packaging that has become so common in the US. I was very dismayed to find that it has infiltrated Thailand.

Lahu New Year

This was the second time I have gone to the Lahu village for New Year. So far, it was one of my more enjoyable trips to the village. I took a friend for her first village trip in Thailand and Eric & Gabe stayed at home. We (and everyone else in Gabe's class) were invited by Joshua and Somallay as their son, David, is in Gabe's class. Our home base was the house of Joshua's sister (standing next to Joshua in the picture). Half the village were related to Joshua. Joshua is the youngest of 12 or 13 children and it is only recently that a family of that size is no longer the norm in Lahu culture. That means that in every Lahu village we have visited everyone we talk to seems to be somehow related to Joshua. We had a really great time with Joshua's family and our other friends. Joshua spent time telling us his life story. It was amazing to me that 25 years ago, Joshua and Eric couldn't have been living more different lives. Joshua was a young jungle man without any sort of education and living at subsistence. Eric was a boy growing up in university town on the other side of the world. Yet 25 years later our sons are together in the same kindergarten. Amazingly, Joshua began attending school at 20, learned Thai well enough to graduate from Thai high school and then went on to learn English well enough to study at seminary in Singapore.

Anyway, one interesting aspect of this village visit was that while we were there, a short-term team from Australia came to set up a clinic. The whole town was dressed in their traditional holiday outfits (as you can see from the photo). These costumes seemed to make the team assume that they were talking to uneducated yokels. I was sitting by Somollay and a woman came up and started talking to her saying "I don't speak Lahu, but I have this book about the four spiritual laws and I'll speak very slowly." Wow, I was really annoyed. Somollay is studying for her master's degree in linguistics and speaks quite a few languages, including English, very well. She is far more intelligent than I could ever hope to be. I don't know how Somollay was feeling, but I eventually managed to tell this woman about Somollay's education and she was amazed and much more respectful after that. I have to be careful about my attitude toward short-termers.

Just one thing to point out in the photo: The woman second from right is wearing Somollay's wedding dress. It's hard to see from the picture, but it was a beautiful dress made all by hand. Somollay, who is pregnant (on the far left) was quite annoyed at have to wear an "old woman's dress" instead this year.

The Inventor

Christmas

I'm really behind in my blogging, but I here's a beginning of catch-up. This was Christmas number 6 in Thailand and the 4th in a row. Our first Christmas in Thailand we were just excited to be in Thailand and to be so warm on Christmas day. Our second Christmas in Thailand we were preoccupied with being new parents. Our third Christmas nice because my cousin was here, but these last three I have missed home in spite of having very nice times with our friends. This year, in spite of the effort I knew it would cost, I really wanted to have Christmas at home with all the Christmas food and typical Christmas day activities. We started out with monkey bread in the Wolthuis tradition. I made the dough myself and though the dough was very nice to work with it did rise a LOT and the individual bits that were stuck together were more like whole pieces of monkey bread. I'm sure next time I can fix that problem. For Christmas lunch we invited two families. One family is American with four boys. The other family was David's family(David lived with us earlier in the year). We and the other Americans made traditional American Christmas dishes. Our Kiwi friends made Christmas salads. Since Christmas is at the height of summer in New Zealand salads are much more the norm for them than all of the heavy food we Americans eat. None of us being confident to make a turkey we ordered one from a restaurant that caters turkeys at the holidays. It didn't really cost much more and we thought we'd have the confidence of knowing it was done right. When we cut into the turkey the meat was pink and we weren't quite sure what to do. We went and asked a neighbor to come and check it out for us. Julie came over and pronounced our turkey perfectly done but we still weren't confident. We ended up microwaving some of the turkey. We did a survey among our friends later and found out it was fine to have pinkish meat on turkey and none of us got sick. Oh well. Our second problem was that we didn't know how to cut the turkey. I wish I had a better pic of this, but you can see me holding up a piece I had cut. Larin (who was my turkey cutting assistant) is in the background with an expression of total bafflement. We ended up picking the meat off with our hands. It didn't look very nice but no one cared. We had a lovely dinner and the kids all enjoyed playing together. We had three teenagers so we were able to play some big group games. In spite of not having family there, I would say that this Christmas felt the most homelike of any Christmas we've ever had here. Just the enjoyment of being together at home the whole day made it feel Christmas-y.
However, the best part of the day was talking to our families on Skype. I really wish we'd been able to do it before this year because it was wonderful.

Last, we continued in our Christmas tradition of celebrating with the kids of BBF. We weren't able to do it on Christmas day as this year Christmas was on a school day, but we did have a party on the week-end and were able to bring lots of friends with us. We're sorry that we'll have to break this tradition next year. Here's a pic of them singing in front of a stage they made for the occasion out of bamboo. A celebration isn't fun without being able to sing on a stage:)

Christmas Craziness

December is always a crazy time. It's crazier than usual for me this year because in addition to parties and people leaving for furloughs or for good, I am trying to wrap up loose ends in a big part of my job. Nevertheless, we are still enjoying this season of togetherness. These pics were taken at Gabe's kindergarten Christmas party. You can see some of the kids on the floor with their Christingle oranges. Bronwen introduced me to it last year and it's a great Christmas party activity for kids. It's short, everyone can participate in the service and it's a very concrete way to talk about the meaning of Christmas. It worked great with the 32 children we had at the party even though the majority were seven and younger. In addition to Christmas parties we have had impromptu game nights with neighbors as people realize that time is short with some friends who will be leaving. Sometimes I feel very good about this. I'm happy that we know so many of our neighbors so well that it's easy to get a bunch of families together on the spur of the moment. There are many people here that we have now known and loved for many years. On the other hand, it's so strange to have a close community, but then to be saying good-bye forever (or at least a long time) so often.

The Hazards of the Holidays

Yesterday I was injured by a sheet of wrapping paper.

Here in Thailand you cannot buy a big roll of Christmas wrapping paper; you may buy one sheet rolled up. I bought four rolls and went along to the bookstore to continue my shopping. I saw an interesting book on the bottom shelf and as I was bending down to look at it I hit my wrapping paper face on. The wrapping paper did not bend or crumple. It felt like a wooden dowel had hit my face. I thought, "that will leave a mark". Sure enough, I have a semicircle on my cheek from my sheet of wrapping paper. Beware the hazards of the holidays!

Thanksgiving

I thought I'd post a few pics from Thanksgiving. Just like last year we joined our next-door neighbors for Thanksgiving. We really enjoy celebrating with their family. We do have to make a lot of food as our neighbors always invite all the singles in our organization to join us. We still had to go to work and school on Thanksgiving. I happened to be at a seminar held at a large restaurant which caters to foreigners so the smells of cooking turkey and pumpkin pie wafted up and made us all very ready to leave at noon to prepare for dinner. The picture here is of Pii La helping me cook green bean casserole. Of course, we don't have all the ingredients here so we have to figure our subsitutes. Canned beans cost an arm & a leg so we cooked fresh beans until they were soggy. The beans at the market were so green and fresh and particlularly delicious that I was depressed to find that once they've been boiled for half an hour you can't tell whether you started with good beans or bad beans. We had no Durkee fried onions so I had Pii La tempura fry some onions. That turned out to be a good substitute as tempura frying (unlike deep-frying) is stir-frying and makes for a very light taste and texture. You can see the big pile of onions next to her. They were so good that it was hard not to eat them all. The next pic is Eric & some of the guys taking our tables an chairs to our neighbors' house. It was a lovely day and we set up some of the tables outside. After the dinner (during which we at almost no pie or sweets of any kind) (see last post for the reason) we hung around and talked and thought about how we'd miss our friends and neighbors next year, but how excited we were to being looking forward to the next Thanksgiving with family. There's no substitute for family on a holiday.

Birthdays

We are now on the other side of a couple of weeks of non-stop parties and are looking forward to another month of non-stop parties. November & December are full of celebration for the Wolthuis family. We started off with me and and about 4 times of celebrating my birthday in a week. That meant that we already had lots of leftover cake going into Gabe's birthday. Nevertheless, we had to make a Lego cake for Gabe's birthday party. In past years, I have invited a few children over for a low-key party. However, with Gabe now in school I was worried about esprit de corps so I invited the entire class-all 15 children. As the date for the party drew closer, I wondered if I'd been insane to invite all the children over. Eric couldn't come home until 12:15 and Pii La would not come until 1:00 so I had 45 minutes of the kids all to myself. Thankfully, my friend Bronwen offered to help and I'm so thankful that she could come. The kids were perfectly well-behaved (kudos to the parents & teachers) but they inhaled the food so quickly that Bronwen & I were hard pressed to keep the food stocked. Within 30 seconds of putting a plate on the table the food was gone. I was amazed it was how easy it was to keep the kids occupied and we ended with a treasure hunt in the long-jump pit at the school.

Gabe also greatly enjoyed the presents from family. Here's Gabe in his Superman costume from Kev & Jen and playing with his Contraptions Balloon Vehicle from Sam. Only days later we had a little family party for Eric. Gabe planned and performed most of that party with help from mom. He did all the decorations and planned a treasure hunt, science experiments (the picture is from Gabe's experiment), pass-the-parcel and snacks. Eric's students also outdid themselves with presents and treats then on Sunday night we also had friends over to play games and MORE treats were brought. On Monday our small group celebrated and we brought home even more treats. By the time Thanksgiving came we had a refrigerator stuffed with cake, cookies, brownies, bars, candy and we were tired of sweets. I guess it'll help with acclimating ourselves to the season of non-stop sweets:)

Misunderstanding

There are times when the best language skills are just not enough. Cultural understanding is essential as well. For example: The other day I needed to move a filing cabinet from one of our offices to another. Unfortunately, I had to take the large metal filing cabinet down 4 flights of stairs and up one long flight of stairs so I hired Uncle Blessing to help me. Uncle Blessing is an older man who drives a songthaew. He could be out in the night bazaar fleecing the tourists, but he is content to charge modest fares to drive the clients of the clinic below one of our offices. He is a little, bald man who likes sleeping much more than working. Whenever I see him, I enjoy thinking of him as a chubby, happy baby whose parents adored him so much that they named him "Blessing". Uncle Blessing drove me to the other office and as we reached the top of the stairs I smiled at him and thanked him for dragging the cabinet up and down the stairs. A minute later I looked for him and he was gone. He had left me instead of taking me back to the office with him. Baffled, I got another ride back to my office. I asked my secretary, "What happened? Why did Uncle Blessing leave me?" It turned out that saying thank you meant, "thank you and you may leave." My secretary said, "Don't say thank you unless you don't need any more help." Uncle Blessing summed it up, "You speak so clearly, but in the end you don't understand."

The above pictures have nothing to do with my story, but they are pictures of Gabe making crafts, one of his favorite activities and attending a superhero party for his buddy Stanley.

The Outdoor Life

Even though our houses and building are designed to let the outside in, we actually spend relatively little time just enjoying the outdoors. The main reason for this is that it's so hot. Spending a couple of minutes under the blazing sun is usually enough to make me light-headed. In the cool of the evening the mosquitoes come out to play, so we spend most of our leisure time indoors. For the kids of our neighborhood it's a different story. Seemingly immune to the heat they play in the streets at all hours of the day and have lots of elaborate games. There are some favorite hang-out spots. This blurry picture is the neighborhood soccer field and trampoline. Most afternoons and evenings kids of all ages hang out playing soccer and other games. Gabe loves going there, but unfortunately, he's a little bit young to go there alone, so he has to wait for mom or dad to take him. Most of the time one of Eric's students will play with him. Gabe has always been popular with the girls of Eric's classes.

There are also intramural sports for kids at the school. The school fields just across from us are in constant use. Right now it is frisbee football season and Eric with his team, the Turboslugs, have been doing well. A few days ago Gabe & I went to watch. It was a perfect afternoon: cloudy and breezy. Instead of watching I spent time playing in the perfect grass with Gabe. It was so much fun teaching him to do gymnastics moves and kicking a soccer ball with him. It made me realize just how little time we spend outdoors together.

Finally, last week-end we went to an outdoor party. Our friends, the Coes, officially opened their cricket net. Because they thought it would be fun to have an American try it out, I was the first one chosen to bat. Though I haven't played any sort of batting games for a long time I did manage to hit that very hard, scary little ball once. Here I am covering myself with glory. I'm wearing pads meant for a six-foot plus man.

As of a couple of weeks ago David came to live with us. David is in 10th grade and came back to Chiangmai while his family are on furlough in New Zealand. We've known David since our first year here in Thailand. He stayed with us last year when his parents were away and I guess it went well because they asked us if he could stay again. Gabe is really enjoying his stay as David likes to rough-house with him. We've learned lots of new Kiwi slang and Eric has actually been watching rugby this week.

The First Day of School

"Ramona could not understand why grown-ups always talked about how quickly children grew up. Ramona thought growing up was the slowest thing there was, slower even than waiting for Christmas to come. She had been waiting years just to get to kindergarten, and the last half hour was the slowest part of all."-Ramona the Pest
I think this quote sums up the feelings of the kids and the parents on the first day of school. Gabe couldn't wait to go to school. He woke up extra early and immediately asked me if I thought he looked like a bigger boy now that he was going to kindergarten. Eric left a half hour before Gabe did and Gabe was very impatient. He was yelling "I can't wait to go to school!" at the the top of his lungs and I'm sure it was causing the teenagers next door to roll their eyes.
When we arrived at school there was a big crowd of parents sending off their children. For some, it was the first day of kindergarten. For others, it was the first day after a couple of years of homeschool in the village. Some were sending their children to their very first day of school living in a new country. You can see the crowd at the fence in the background of this picture. There were tears and some anxiety(mostly from the parents) and even after the children had lined up and the Thai national anthem had been sung and children were ready to go inside over a hundred parents lingered, clogging the walkway. Some stayed for a prayer walk around the school. The kindergarten moms went to one mom's house for brunch-a pre-arranged event designed to keep our minds off the fact that our babies are growing up.

Gabe thoroughly enjoyed his first day of class. Many of his classmates were in the co-op last year. His teacher is Mrs. Jarot, whom some of you may have met. She has been teaching for longer than I've been alive and has raised/is raising 6 children. We've known Mrs. Jarot for 7 years and although her style of raising and educating kids is very different from ours, we know she'll have a lot to offer Gabe. Gabe has a very diverse class. The classmates I have met are from America, the UK, Thailand, South Africa, Australia, Burma, Korea and the Netherlands. It should be a fun year.

Sunday Afternoon

"In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn't cope with, and that terrible listlessness which starts to set in at about 2.55, when you know that you've had all the baths you can usefully have that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the papers you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o'clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul."


I thought of this quote from Life, the Universe and Everything a couple of weeks ago. It was another hot and listless afternoon at home on a Sunday afternoon and I finally decided I that there had to be more. A couple of years ago, Eric decided that we should not work on Sunday afternoons and that we ought to avoid shopping and other things that prevent us from resting on Sundays. It was actually a great idea because I do feel more rested, but sometimes it does feel a bit dull. As I mentioned above, a couple of weeks ago I started to feel that sitting around reading and sweating wasn't as restful as it could be. We decided that we'd try to go out and do restful outings after church more often. Last week we went to the night safari and walked around the lake and enjoyed a truly beautiful sunset over the mountains. This week we went to a lovely botanical gardens. The gardens seem lovingly cared for and besides an extensive waterway on which you can take a paddle boat or canoe and miles of shady walks there are lots of bushes shaped like animals. These monkeys were the oddest bushes I saw. They also have a hedge maze. Gabe is peeking through the branches on the other side of the wall in the maze. The highlight of the day was sitting in a sala (a small, covered pavilion) and watching the rain come down in sheets onto the little lake in front of us. I really love watching rain.

Vang Vieng

After a few days in Vientiane we headed to Vang Vieng. Laos pretty much only one decently paved road going through the country. This road is from Vientiane to Luang Prabang, the ancient capital. We had wanted to go to Luang Prabang as it is supposed to be amazing, but decided it would be too difficult a trip for Gabe. Even though the road is paved it goes through the mountains and is not a terribly pleasant trip. Gabe is a little to young to really appreciate Luang Prabang anyway. Vang Vieng is about halfway to Luang Prabang and many people break their trip in this little town. Even though we took the aircon bus, the trip was still pretty uncomfortable. I was just getting over food poisoning and the air con wasn't really working on the bus so it was hot and the hills were getting the best of my stomach. We didn't arrive in the best of moods, but a couple of days in the quiet but beautiful town did a lot for our spirits. Vang Vieng is surrounded by Karst mountains and they were just gorgeous. My camera could not do justice to their beauty.

We found a nice guesthouse room for $10 a night (the whole trip was ridiculously cheap). The town was so small that we rented bikes were able to use these to get around during our few days there. Vang Vieng is a big hangout for backpackers on their way to Luang Prabang, so the whole town is full of restaurants where European, Australian & American 20-somethings lie around on makeshift beds and watch American TV sipping fruit shakes and Beer Lao. It was a bit weird to be around that scene and we could tell that a farang family was an unusual sight. Everywhere we went we could hear Lao people saying, "Look at the little white boy." It didn't bother me, but I could tell they thought we didn't understand what they were saying. One time I heard this I repeated in Lao, "Yeah, just look at that little white boy." They just stared at me.



Anway, the backpacker scene aside there is a lot to do in Vang Vieng. Of course, just taking in the scenery was enjoyable enough. While in Vang Vieng we finally learned how to ride a motorbike. There were so few cars that we felt safe riding around as beginners.



Most people spent a lot of time on the river that runs through the town. I really wanted to go tubing, but we weren't sure how safe it would be for Gabe so we chose to go kayaking instead. The river was actually pretty calm, but at the same time swift enough that we didn't have to paddle much. It allowed us to take in the scenes along the river. Lots of backpackers enjoy drinking while tubing. There are little bamboo huts along the river advertising beer for sale. As added inducement many have built jumping platforms from which you can swing down into the river. This was my favorite sign. Not only can you jump for free but you also get a free banana!


Vang Vieng also has lovely caves. We didn't have time to go to the famous elephant caves where the cave formations look like various animals, but we went into this cave with a guide. Gabe didn't much like the dark, but it was interesting and the air was cool.

The restaurants in Vang Vieng are humble but they have a million-dollar view. We ate one night at a restaurant along the river and watched the sun set into the mountains. O for a better camera to capture the beauty. All too soon we had to go back to Vientiane, but we hope to go back again some day. In a few years Gabe will better be able to appreciate Luang Prabang and then maybe we can make the trip south to Vieng Vang again.

Girls & Boys

The family we stayed with has three girls aged 10, 7 and 5 and one boy aged 21 months. Gabe used to play a lot with Laura, the five-year-old and I wrote a blog about it a couple of years ago. Apparently, Laura was thinking that she & Gabe had been engaged for the last two years. However, Gabe and the 7-year-old, Allison, really enjoyed each other's company. Allison and Gabe are both very talkative and they really made a connection. They bought each other the Laos caps they are wearing in this picture. A few days into the trip we were sitting at a lovely little French restaurant and Laura reminded Gabe of their engagement. Gabe chose that moment to tell her that it was off. Our attention was drawn to the situation by hearing Laura say "I'm going to be honest and share with you!" in a very loud voice. She scolded Gabe for breaking faith with her and ordered him to sit quietly in his chair and think about what he had done. Gabe obeyed. A few minutes later I asked him what he was thinking about during his "time out". He said, "I was thinking about flying cats." Sounds like a typical relationship.



We did notice quite a difference between boys and girls during the trip. Gabe frequently has other little boys over to play and inevitably there is some fist-fighting or kicking or wrestling. I don't think I witnessed any physical violence even once while we stayed with our friends.

Vientiane

We crossed the friendship bridge across the Mekong into Laos late on Friday evening. It was dusk when we crossed over, but by the time we had done all of the border crossing paperwork it was night when we arrived in Laos. As we drove the 1/2 hour from the border to our friends' house in Vientiane, the capital, we noticed store after store with stacks of yellow crates. We soon found out that these were cases of Beer Lao. Being a communist country, you don't see as much in the way of thriving businesses but all day, every day you see Beer Lao trucks making deliveries to little shops. It seems that even if there are 5 shops per block selling Beer Lao each shop is still able to making a living by selling it. The shops don't even bother to put the beer on the shelves it is sold so quickly.

The next day we went to visit Patuxai (Baht-du-sai) one of the few tourist sites in Vientiane. In the 60's America gave Laos some money to build an airport. They used the money to build Patuxai instead as a memorial to those who had fought in the struggle for Laotian independence against France. It looks very impressive from afar but up close you can see that it's still not finished. This is kind of theme in Laos. We saw many unfinished projects. However, they have finished the park around it in recent years and we enjoyed our time there. On the upper floors of patuxai numerous vendors are selling the usual t-shirts and post-cards.

Thankfully, we found that Lao and Thai are very closely related. I was able to communicate very easily with Lao people who are familiar with Thai from watching Thai TV. They were very friendly and eager to speak with us.

Most of the time in Vientiane we spent hanging out with our friends which Gabe enjoyed very much. They have three girls and one boy and a large yard. Gabe would've been happy to spend the whole vacation playing in their yard. We also spent a lot of time going out to eat. We ate a lot of delicious food there. They have a great variety thanks to influences from France, Vietnam and China.

Funny Money

On my first visit to Italy, I remember being impressed by the value of the lira (the exchange rate was something like 1,200 lira to the dollar). Well, Italy got nothing on Laos, where $1 gets you about 10,000 kip (geep). For the last week, I carried around a pile of 1,000 (10c), 2,000 (20c), 5,000 (50c), 10,000 ($1) and 20,000 kip (2$) bills. Since the 20,000 kip seems to be the largest bill, we got a large stack of bills when we changed money. I can’t imagine trying to pay for anything really expensive (more than $100) in cash. So…when was the last time you spent 100 grand on dinner?

We actually didn't need to take much money as there isn't much reason to spend. We stayed with friends most of the time and even our guesthouse room in Vang Vieng only cost $10 per night. Since it is a communist country private enterprise isn't much encouraged and most products come from Thailand with a mark-up. However, we did find some electronic products unique to Laos. Interesting names, we thought.

Very Sad News

Please pray for Eric's principal as she and her husband lost their 25-year-old daughter to a mystery illness on Friday. Their daughter, Angela, worked with us last year and the year before at Grace. She was a wonderful young woman.

Laos

We have finally done something we have meant to do for many years now (7 years, to be exact) and have made it out of Thailand. Angela has been to Cambodia, but this is our first trip to another country since living in Thailand. We are 5 or 600 miles from home in Vang Vieng as I write this. The reason that got us motivated enough to leave Thailand to visit good friends in Vientiane which we have been doing for the past few days. Since this is vacation as well we thought we'd try to see other parts of the country and decided to head up North. This is a really lovely town on a river in the mountains and I'm sure my camera won't be able to capture the beauty. We plan to take a trip down the river tomorrow and explore some caves. Hope to have some pics when we get back to Thailand.

Sunday Outing

No one could say that Burger King isn't persistent. They have abandoned Chiangmai twice and yet they have come again. This week signs dotted the city announcing that BK was back. I don't know that I ever made an effort to go to BK in America, but there seems to be a strong correlation between distance from your home country and strength of affection for food that symbolizes that country. As we entered the brand new BK, I felt like my mother, for whom going to Burger King was a Sunday treat when she was young. Of course, many other foreigners had the same idea and it was packed with the after church crowd. I must say, it was pretty good.