Last two days in Thailand

At a waterfall

hailing a taxi

River rafting on bamboo

Street view from taxi

Friday July 15, 2016

Yesterday was our first full day off after the Refresh! program, which went great!!  Everyone was very appreciative of the time that we put in to planning for the kids.  A couple of people mentioned that it would not be refreshing without good children’s activities.  It is nice to know you made a difference.  The cards we got from staff and guests were touching.

So we couldn’t let any grass grow under our feet with only 2 days before we head back to the States (Pronounced “Ooosah” by ex-pats).  On Thursday we joined a group of 8 (Italy, Holland and France) for a day of trekking.  What an experience.  A two hour drive took us south of Chiang Mai to a Kah Ren village (semi-nomadic immigrants to Thailand) where we learned about their lifestyle and then hiked an hour to a waterfall.  The water was muddy after the rain, but very refreshing.  I picked up a pretty rock on the way that I think is schist.

From the waterfall, we drove to some elephants for a ride.  Nathan and I bounced around for an hour.  He had bought a coke and never dared to open it.  You spend most of your time trying to stay on the elephant without damaging your back.

After lunch was our favorite part.  We got on a 30’ x 3’ bamboo raft and went down river.  The boat is guided by a local man with a very long bamboo pole.  We wound around under downed bridges (recent flooding), between tight rocks and over rapids (perhaps under rapids would be a better description).  The more “white” the water, the lower the raft sat in the river.  We were quite wet at the end and happy to find Magnum (ice cream), if not a bathroom, waiting for us.  Great day of trekking.  I was bushed.

Today we had accomplished all our resort activities by 10:30 AM and decided we needed to get off campus.  We thought trying out the local transportation, instead of the hotel provided taxis, would give us a challenge.  So, after listening to a broken English explanation of how it was done (and Nathan reading about how to hail a yellow truck online), we headed to the highway and crossed 5 lanes of traffic.  When we saw the truck coming we held our hands out horizontally with our fingers facing down.  We were happy to get a truck to stop on our first try :).  We saved about 440 baht by using the local’s method which only cost 60 for 2 people.  (35 baht to $1 USD)

The truck took us to Central Festival, a large mall outside of the city.  It is huge and very modern.  All the store names were in English but we were essentially illiterate otherwise.  At one store we bought 2 donuts, one chocolate and one cream cheese.  When the woman handed them to us in 2 bags, Nate said, “the more expensive bag is cream cheese.” He looked at the price tag, but it was in Thai so we couldn’t even tell which was which.  Nothing one bite couldn’t solve and we went to buy lunch. 

I got the attention of the cashier and pointed at a picture of what I wanted.  The soup I got was horrible (not unlike pond water)!  I didn’t see squid in the picture!!  So, Nate ate mine and I went on to try again… beef this time.  Finally, we decided a little Cold Stone Creamery was our best bet… it was fabulous.

So, our time here is ending.  There are many things that we want to remember and in view of time I think I will make a bulleted list:

• They drive on the left in Thailand.  It is in our nature to look the wrong direction when crossing a 2 lane road.  Nate always has to remind me that the traffic is coming from the opposite direction.  Surprising I made it to the mall at all.
• Both my Taiwanese students and the ones from China speak and write in Chinese. The kids from Taiwan write top to bottom, right to left and the Chinese girls write left to right.  Both use the same characters. Confusing.
• In the Philippines the prisons are like villages with a fence around them. Inmates build their own homes and their families can spend the day with them except on Mondays and Tuesdays.
• One of the kids told their mom that I am not “jerk enough” to have been a principal of a school. Lol.
• We made an illustrated prayer journal with the kids during the program. 
• One of the kids told me, “I went to a park once and saw a puppet show.  There was a girl and a dog, and a robot and a lion.”  Can you guess which show she saw?
• I kept finding trash made into origami figures in my classroom :)
• Kites make great room decor.
• We went to the old city to buy souvenirs on Sunday.  The older boy told me that his family bought all theirs at the Seven Eleven along the main street (mostly snacks to take back to Taiwan).
• Thailand has a plant called “shy grass”.  When you touch it, it shrinks up.  I remember having this around when I was a kid.  I will have to ask my mom where that was (Hawaii?).  I find myself often touching plants with a similar shape to see if it will move and it doesn’t.  I was beginning to think I had imagined this grass.
• When we heard fireworks while shopping on the 4th of July (from the embassy?) Patricia, Anna, Lois and I nearly hit the deck.  I guess terrorism got the best of us in that moment.
• Nate learned how to play Chinese Chess from a great kid in our program.  He won all three times he played.  I thought he would at least have thrown 1 of the matches.  The game pieces use Chinese characters.  We wrote the English on the underside.  He even won playing with the Chinese side up!
• Nathan bought me a 20th anniversary band at a gem shop in Baan Towai.  Super-psyched about that… As it turns out, the jeweler was from Camp Hill, PA.  Nate enjoyed talking to him.
• We have noticed many people wearing face masks… pollution?  illness?
• We made a snail habitat with the kids.  The girl that kept it in her room was very happy because they were her first pets.
• I am getting better at using squatty potties.  Always carry your own toilet paper.
• There is a popular skin whitening cream here called Snail White.  Why “snail”?  I haven’t seen any white snails here except dead ones bleached by the sun…
• Nathan enjoyed being the Candy Man here for the missionaries.  He filled a small suitcase with US snacks and then brought them out every chance he got.  You would not believe how this brings joy to a room.
• The hot air balloon was lovely to see each morning right outside our villa.
• At the hotel museum, we learned about the Lanna tribe’s way of life (the architecture at our hotel is Lanna).  We got a shock when we saw the display that featured a horse drawn carriage.  The concept arrived in northern Thailand… eighty years ago.  What?!
• We had two nights of outdoor oldies sing-alongs.  At the second, Nathan and I danced under the moon and the colored-paper lights that hung from the tree.  It was lovely.  The song “Moon River” struck me as particularly fitting (Nate’s the river and I am the girl singing).

The Refresh Children's Program

(Blogger is slow today, I will use fb to do pics instead of the blog)

Our typical daily schedule:

• 7:30AM breakfast
• 8:30 staff prayer at the seminar room
• 9:00 Group worship
• 9:40 Children, Nate and I head downstairs for the kids program
• 12:15 - Lunch at the restaurant
• 1:30 prepare materials for afternoon activities
• 2:00-4:00 PM Pool/ activity time with the kids
• 6PM dinner
• 7:30-9:30 PM optional group activity (games, shopping, art, movie, etc)

There are six kids in the program this year.  All are Asian Americans and two of them are living in China, while four live in Taiwan.  There is some disagreement about whether Taiwan is part of China.  Not knowing the political background here, I try to keep the peace between the factions. 

The kids range in age from 6 to 13 and are bilingual. The 13 year old likes to join us when the activity is particularly engaging and otherwise attends the adult meetings which discuss topics such as burnout, conflict, and personality types.  One of our biggest accomplishments as a group has been the construction of 6’x 5’ castle out of Cinnamon Toast Crunch boxes that I brought from the States.  The kids have gained some crazy building skills with boxes and tape.  They understand the importance of right angles and firmly attaching adjacent boxes to create a durable structure.  Our completed castle was on display today complete with curtains, origami window decor and epic music. One parent suggested that I write to General Mills and tell them about our project… so I did.

The amazing castle came out of our study of Nehemiah.  Each day we cover a chapter or two of the book as Nehemiah is rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem.  It provides great opportunities to discuss topics such as prayer, endurance and conflict.

We have also enjoyed breaking geodes and making necklaces out of the shards.  The fashion statement (of beauty that comes out of brokenness) has actually caught on around here and there are a few requests for necklaces from the adults.  Yesterday we made tie-dye bandanas using permanent markers and rubbing alcohol. 

Nathan was a HIT when he arrived last Thursday because he could take pool time to a whole new level.  He chases the kids around the pool in various forms of tag and acts as the bottom layer for human towers.  Right now (Sunday afternoon) he is playing chess with one of the kids, poolside in the rain, as I write this blog.

Being at Refresh! Thailand is a unique experience.  It is a mission trip in that there is a lot of work to do, sacrifices to be made and people to serve… but in many ways it is a retreat.  We are surrounded by skilled counselors, experienced non-profit workers, and Christians who are experts in a variety of fields from finance, to medicine.  We have daily worship and wonderful Thai meals together as a group.  There are activities each night (some of which I lead and others I get to participate in) and gardens to be enjoyed by day when I can get a free moment.

My favorite part of today was video-talking with my boys, Gabe and Luke.  I love seeing their faces and hearing about what they are doing. Luke was on lock-down in his dorm room due to a protest occurring outside the college where he is attending a summer program, a reminder that our world is in need of healing.

I NEED BLEACH!

I have been searching for bleach like a crazy person!  Each day I run a program for MK’s (Missionary Kids) here at the hotel.  My luggage was packed with play-doh, jewelry tools, rocks, games, pool noodles… I have to tell you that it is a personal weakness of mine (after careful planning and joyful children working hard) to have a project go south. We finished creating our masking tape designs on our red and blue shirts. I got out the spray bleach AND… no color change on the shirts…  apparently the bleach I had brought (illegally, I later learned) was color safe.  And so my OCD kicked in and the pursuit of bleach, real color whitening bleach, ensued.

Bleach seams like a fairly common product, and it is.  You can do a bleach project in nearly any nation in the world.  Here is the problem… the writing on the containers is in Thai and I know 3 Thai words: hello, thank you, and now “Bleach”.  They do not use the roman/latin alphabet which makes it exceedingly hard in a store.  I went to six places trying to explain what I was looking for.  The funniest was when I found an English speaking barista at a coffee shop.  I explained my situation to him and he patiently listened and said, “I don’t speak Thai.  I’m Korean.”  Ah! He proceeded to check with another worker and discovered he can’t communicate in a common language with her (Poor guy).  In the end he gave me the building wifi code and I google-translated the word “bleach”, screen-shotted it, and headed back onto the streets to search for this common whitening product.  

In the end, it was Dick (our team leader) who saved the day.  On a trip to the grocery store he found a bottle which he could not read except one word in 10-point font that said “bleach”.  We still weren’t sure it wasn’t color safe.  But the results of our project were great!  

There were never more prayers for bleach and my anxiety was unwarrantedly (real word?) high, but God is good and when these shirts finally dry from the hand-washing, I will be able to give them to the kids (4 days later…)

Gotta go to class now!  Here is a pic of my great group (plus the teams worship leader who joined us for the day).

Getting acquainted with Staff and Guests

I found the perfect gift for Gabe.

Sunday, July 3

I have now been in Thailand for two days.  I feel acclimated to the time zone (11 hours different from home). I have met all of the guests for the program.  They serve in Taiwan, China, and the Philippines.  For their privacy, I won’t use their names in this blog.  There are 6 kids that came with their parents and these will be my charges for the next week and a half.  All of the kids are of Asian decent although most of them were born in the USA.

There is a new counselor with us this year.  Anna is from NY (born in Hong Kong) and is a clinical psychologist. Not to mention a delightful woman about my age. It really struck me this afternoon when she said:

In my practice, I see my role as helping people to suffer well.

The phrase looks odd sitting on the page up there. When she said this a team member from Spain had been talking about how God does not allow suffering to be wasted.  I hate suffering, but I am comforted to think about those awful experiences as jewels that will not be wasted.  They will bring comfort to others by giving us understanding and compassion.

Refresh! is about helping people to suffer well and find strength for their journey.  This particular trip has guests that are doctors, a physical therapist, a lawyer, prison chaplains, and another guy whose profession I can’t remember… struggle and burnout can happen to anyone.

The kids that I will be working with seem awesome!  It is always a little scary when I get a new group and have to prepare without really knowing them.  Just another area of my life that I need to learn to trust God with.

On another note, we took a van into the city on Saturday night and went shopping.  Besides the great deals, my favorite part was getting a 100 Baht ($3 USD) half hour foot massage.  Wow…  I passed on the foot treatment where 50 little fish eat all the dead skin off your feet, but I was tempted cause I thought it would make a great picture. :)

Chiang Mai Night Bazaar

JFK to CNX (31 hours of travel to Thailand)

July 2, 2016

A girl from Pittsburgh locked in a glass room for 8 hours, a group of Asian adults weighing themselves on a baggage scale, and an eerily music-free airport in China.  One of the things I like most about traveling is having unanticipated experiences.  Now I wouldn’t have chosen to have the teen behind me at the international transfers line have a seizure, but watching the passengers act and then be baffled by the lack of assistance from the Chinese airport employees was, if nothing else, intriguing.

Nathan drove me to JFK airport on Wednesday evening and I walked for 5 hours up and down the halls until my flight left at 1:30 AM.  The 15 hour ride was uneventful. I was thankful that China Eastern Air was tolerant of passengers standing and stretching in the aisle.  Sleep was hard to come by, but over the 15 hours I felt fairly refreshed.  I took many catnaps with my jacket thrown over my head.  This did not lead to a good hair day on Friday (Thursday got skipped when I crossed the international dateline).

My introduction to the Shanghai (China) Airport was eye opening.  Having never been to China other than these 6 hours, its hard to know what to make of the experience.  I will let it speak for itself.  I stepped off the airplane at 5AM into a sweltering hallway at the end of which was a sign.  We had two choices: Transfer Hall & Baggage Claim.  This seemed simple enough as I was transferring to a Thai flight.  What puzzled me was that no one else on my flight seemed to be choosing “Transfer Hall”.  Could I really be the only passenger not staying in Shanghai.  I turned to a woman, a 21(?) year old marine named Alexis who said “Don’t go there!!”  OK…

Alexis and I followed the crowd toward baggage claim and then turned off at a poorly marked counter where we waited in the heat with 50 or so other transfer passengers from around the world.  The counter was not yet open.  Folks communicated with strangers and friends in their language group.  Most people determining if they could get wifi on their phones even as they heard the ding of inboxes belonging to travelers with whom they did not share a common language.  I made another friend in line, a woman from Haiti/NYC (Mirielle). Yes, you can find someone with whom to practice Haitian Creole while briefly visiting China.

So it was at this point that the teen behind me collapsed with a seizure into her mother’s arms.  I tried to tell the mother to lay her down gently and I would help her, but the mom could not speak English, Spanish, Chinese, or Haitian Creole.  She could however yell “Help me! Help me!”.  A most important phrase to know.  We were able to gain the attention of one of the bored employees who, once the girl became conscious, guided them away from the crowd.  The incident left behind a rather large pool of urine and blood which no employee showed interest in cleaning, so the passengers redirected the transfer line to work around it.  Eventually I was through and directed to go “that way” and with very little assistance, Mirielle, Alexis and I found our way through a minuscule security area to the nearly empty, stifling hot main terminal.

I spent the next 6 hours (flight was delayed 2 hours) noticing the changes in the airport (A/C comes on at 7:00 AM — Praise God!—and then a moderate collection of stores starts to open). I was very thankful for 2 other women traveling solo and interested in doing laps with me.  We enjoyed the misspellings of words like soap (sope) and poisoned one of us with Starbucks that contained milk (one vomiting episode resulted).

Now the very best belly laugh that I have had in a month was when I finally got on the next plane and met the girl who had been locked in a glass room all night long.  She is a Junior at Waynesburg College (PA) and had gotten a grant from Pitt to study abroad in Thailand.  This was her first time away from the US. 

The girl (sorry I don’t know her name) arrived in Shanghai airport as it was closing for the night and she felt uncomfortable accepting a ride to a local hotel.  Little did she know that an airport employee would escort her and 2 other American men to a glass room (called “Transfer Hall”) and lock them in for the night.  She slept one hour with a blanket she had in her luggage.  There was a bathroom and on occasion other passengers would come in and then leave for the hotel, but the employee would not allow the three of them to leave.  The only words that the man knew were “Sit down!”  The room got more and more hot as the air-conditioning was off all night.  This sweet girl is telling me all this as we are being shuffled around an airplane so that we can replace a 3 year old who has been seated in an exit row. 

At that moment the steward came to us with a very serious face and pointed severely at the exit door.

“Don’t touch!  Don’t touch!” he said pointing at the door.  Then he hands us a page to read about how to respond in the event of a water landing. 

“OK?” he demanded pointing to the paper.

I looked at the girl who looked stunned but smiling.  I pointed at the paper, “It says that we have to agree that we can communicate clearly with passengers.  Do you think they care that it will be with charades?”  She started to laugh.

“OK?” the man repeated.

“OK” we said.  The steward grabbed her blanket, which had been under the seat in front of her and put it on her lap.  Then he took her camera from her hand and put it behind her back… ok… then he put her seatbelt on her and tightened it up (all while leaning across me since she had the window).  She and I looked at each other and the giggles set in hard.

He pointed at my items and seemed to want me to put my purse behind my back and my pillow under my seatbelt. I couldn’t keep a straight face, but I did what he said. The two of us looked like the most uncomfortable passengers on the whole plane and we laughed so hard we were crying.  I assured the girl that foreign travel really can be fun and she was going to have a great trip.

When we landed in Chiang Mai, I found that one of my two suitcases has gone missing and the other broke open.  Lol.  At least I have clothes.  I am hoping that the one suitcase will be found soon. It has lots of materials for working with the children.  I am now in my room with a wide open day ahead.  I am glad to have wifi, to have slept well and I am surrounded by beauty.  I began my day (Saturday) with a run through the botanical gardens. I even risked entering the labyrinth… the fact that you are reading this is evidence that I made it out.

Thanks for taking the time to enjoy my experiences with me… travel is best when shared.

It is nice to make friends while traveling.

Boarding in Shanghai

Why do we worry so much about spelling?  The rest of the world doesn't seem to.  Lol.

Morning run through the gardens

After this are the posts from my previous trip to Thailand in 2013.