Resting.

Have I mentioned we love the beach? I think we MIGHT be able to teach again this month.

Maybe.

Sand Castles

Andrew is so fun at the beach. He pretty much just reverts to being a five-year old. He is totally happy to build sand castles, and then watch them be destroyed. It's a process that takes HOURS. It's not so much the building that is so interesting, as it is the destruction. This makes for LOTS of good beach reading for me. :) So we're both happy.

Yes, we stay till the bitter end. No matter how hungry the wife is.

Oh, I love him.

Kho Pi Pi

We're in Kho Pi Pi for a few days and then headed to Phuket before heading to Nepal.

We spent the day today Kayaking around the island and snorkeling off pure white beaches.

Pluses:
*We paid fifty cents for our snorkeling gear.
*I saw the fish I made out of paper mache in the sixth grade while snorkling today! I got so excited I tried to talk to Andrew under water.
*We had mango shakes. Yum.
*We saw monkeys today.
*We kyaked all day. And basically I'm super buff. (In my dreams....)\
*It's so much fun to be in the open ocean.

Minuses:

*During our kyaking break I asked Andrew if he wanted cookies or a Snickers bar. He said he'd take cookies because he REALLY wanted the Snickers, but he was going to save it. Thirty seconds later a pack of monkeys came and stole it. :(

*I lost a toe nail while snorkeling. I kicked a rock coming in. Same toenail I lost last time I was here. Maybe it likes Thailand better?! I'm glad the rest of them want to make it to Everest.
*Our kyak was MUCH smaller than the swells in the ocean.

Update

Burma pictures to come. Technical difficulties.

In the meantime, I've been sharing a room for the past week with an amazing photo journalist, Maggie. She's been running the photo trips this year for rustice, and along with being one of the sweetest people I've ever met, she is also an incredible photographer. Check out her blog.

Burma: Part Two

A few pictures of Burma. The river divides Thailand and Burma.




The piece of paper they gave me when they took my passport from me. I've never been quite so nervous about the location of my passport. Really? A ripped out piece of paper is supposed to get me passport back when I leave the country? Sketch.

Burma

Going to Burma was by far the most emotional thing I've done all summer. My visa was set to expire. Burma is the closest country. So off I went.

A little background: Burma used to be an English Colony. They gained their independence in the early 1940s, with the effort being led by Ang San. He was assassinated in 1947, and there was shaky democratic rule, but in the 1960's a man named Ne Win took power with a coup d'etat.

Since then there has a been an incredibly harsh government ruled by the military. The country is incredibly poor, and the people very oppressed. While the government is cruel, however, the people remain incredibly kind, and have fought back in non violent ways for decades. The country is actually made up of several different states, with very distinct cultures in each state. Two of these states have continually fought against he oppressive rule, the Shan and the Karen states. The government reaction has been to obliterate these states and the hilltribe people that live there. Essentially there has been a genocide for years. And so many of these people have fled to Thailand as refugees.

Now, to my journey. I left at 6 am in a Song Two. The trip is about 6 hours. As you can guess from the picture, it's not incredibly comfortable. A picture of me at 6 am.
The Song Two.

So spent a total of twelve hours traveling on the uncovered part of the truck. As I got in the Song Two there were three brothers sitting in the Song Two with their belongings in rice sacks. They were clearly Burmese, and looked to be about the same ages apart as my brothers. I immediately began to cry, as I thought of the lives that they've lived as refugees, and thought of my own brothers living that same experience. The next six hours passed much the same way. And the six hours back the next day. People jumping on and off. Some carrying chickens, others tree trunks. One couple carried a baby that couldn't have been older than a week. Many jumping off before the police checkpoints that were set up to catch them.

I choose not to take pictures of these people. It seemed wrong to take pictures of them in their plight. And so there are only pictures of what a beautiful country I traveled through as I talked in broken Thai, communicating primarily with gestures, and re-evaluated what my priorities in life are.

The Orphanage

I've been at the Orphanage for about three weeks now. To call it an orphanage isn't entirely accurate, but it's close.

The boys that live here are Burmese refugees. Many of their parents are still alive, but they are in Burma, or in camps, or just don't live very close to a good school. There are eight boys that live here and attend school close by. Before living here, they lived at the school up the street which also serves as an orphanage, but the conditions there are very poor.

The goal of the orphanage is to give the boys hospitality skills that they can take and use after they graduate from high school, as hospitality is the number one industry in Thailand. The giant building in the picture is eventually (hopefully by next summer) going to be a hotel, and the boys will help run the hotel. As time goes on, more kids will come live here. The boys were chosen by their teachers as boys who have excelled in school, and have also been great role models.

It's been a lot of fun to be here, and interact with all the boys. They really are incredible role models, and I've never met teenage boys that work as hard at they do! They wake up early to do their own chores before school, they attend school, and then they work on taking care of the orphanage and learning English in the evening. This is a picture of us after painting a wall up at the school one afternoon after school.

The setting here is pretty rural, and it's been a fantastic place to get some good mileage in running. These pictures were all taken from a bridge about 500 m down the road from the orphanage. It's even more beautiful in person.

Tired

Here I am a few days back, when I was asking myself why I decided to work with 15 year olds, 24 hours a day, for an entire summer.

After spending a day at the village school teaching English, I was ready to wring some necks.

I sent the American kiddies home a head of me, and walked across the street. I bought some ice cream, put in my headphones, and reminded myself that I was in Thailand.

And everything was suddenly much better.

Bus Adventure

On our last day trekking, we came down to Chaing Mai so the kids could fly out the next morning. We had been about an hour when I got a phone call asking me if I could go up to the orphanage that Rustic Pathways runs on the border of Thailand and Burma. I said sure, no problem. Next question, can you leave in 20 minutes? And so I packed up really quickly, and took the night bus up to the orphanage. Now, the part that made this really fun was that I didn't speak any Thai, and I didn't actually know where I was going.

Mr. P had been our driver for the trip, and he was hilarious! He gave us all fake names. He took me to the bus station, and made sure I go on the right bus. His English isn't all that great, but he was able to manage, "get off in about four hours."

Super.

So off I went. On a bus made for Asian sized people, about 50 years ago.

This picture doesn't capture it well, but the lights are more like bathroom lights, and you might notice the fan in the lower left quadrant of the picture. It was a pretty neat trip to say the least. Especially the part where the back door, which was right behiind me, would periodically swing open.

I did get to the orphanage-at about 2 am.

For the record, Mr. P, it's closer to five hours.

Karen Long Neck Village

Our last village was a Karen Long Neck Village. Traditionally these women wear jewlrey to extend their necks. Not all women have to, but if they choose to they begin wearing the necklace at around 5 years old. It was fascinating to see. Sorry, I'm still on the sticky keyboard that is really tough to type on, so that's about it for now.

River Rafting

Our next adventure was white water rafting. Again, fashion coorination is essential. I promise, it is pure coincidence that the vest and helmet I was handed matched.

Our guides were fantastic. They were both Thai, and loved to speak English, although it was often a little choppy. They both had great humor.

We rafted for two days, stopping to camp for one night. We were with four other people who had signed up for the tour with us. Because our number were off, I rode in the boat with the folks we didn't know. They were college students from England, and it was nice to talk to people who were born before 1993.

Kayaking and Caving

While at our second village, we also went kayaking and caving. The river that we went down went through a couple different caves. Two of them were wide open, but required a lot of climbing. Up in the tops of the caves were coffins from thousands of years ago. It was interesting to think about how the coffins were carried up, but my assumption is that the river was much higher then.

The final cave required climbing down into a narrow hole, something I had never done before!

Elephants and Bamboo Rafts

After a few days of trekking, we came down from the mountains and took the kids to an elephant conservation camp. We rode the elephants, and then took a bamboo raft down the river. Riding the elephants is actually a lot of work for the person riding. It's not the smoothest ride, and there was a constant balancing act as I constantly felt like I was going to fall off. It could also be that we weren't on flat terrain, and the elephants were doing a lot of climbing. It was an incredible experience, but I don't have any pictures of me on the elephant, aside from the shot of my foot while I was on top of it.

Koko the Cook

I have been amazed at the use of banana leaves here. They use them for EVERYTHING! What you see here is our lunch for the day. It was packed in banana leaves, and tied with bamboo string. We then ate it with sticks Koko found and cut to be chopsticks. Perhaps the best lunch I've ever had while backpacking.

Koko is an amazing cook! All the food you, besides the eggs, he packed in and created over a fire.

Waterfall

First, you should know that we were seriously trekking through the rain forest. And it's rainy season, so we were NEVER dry. If it wasn't raining, it was warm enough that we were drenched in sweat. On our third day we hiked into the waterfall to take a dive with lunch.

Bathrooms and Showers

Behold, the bathroom and shower of the villages. Every shower was a bucket shower, and every toilet was a squat toilet. It was nice to come back to a "real" shower" at the orphanage. Although, even that is just a shower head in the bathrooom, and tepid at best.
Needless to say, I've become more and more grateful for the little luxuries of my life in America.

Our First Village

The computers I'm working on are a little tricky to type on, so I'm not going to be giving much commentary. Most of the pictures speak for themselves, anyway.

Cooking our first night in the village. All the homes have bamboo floors, ceilings, and walls. They cook typically in the corner. I never saw a home with anything more than a fire to cook with.
Our hut from the outside.
The village.

Koko Loves

There are two things Koko loves and constantly had with him: spiders and Mentos. One the group loved, the other we could do without.
However, please note the jungle behind me!

Tribal Trekking with Koko

This was the group I hiked with. This is on our first day out, so we're all just a little tired. We also had asked Koko what the climb was like, and he had said, "Oh not bad. Just rolling a little bit. Not bad, really."

Liar. Big fat Liar. Straight up would have been the correct answer.

According to Koko this is the Thai version of the Cliff Bar. It has carbs, protein, and sugar. It's sticky rice and beans cooked in bamboo. Mmmm.
Here I would like to note that I am wearing and carrying only one color: Green. My kids thought this was hilarious. I guess I need to branch out a little bit in my wardrobe.
And this is the one and only Koko. He was the best guide we could have asked for. He wore that smile day in and day out. I would, however, like you to note how much he is sweating for our "rolling hill" hike.
The view from one of the vistas. It is beautiful country up here in the north west.

Visiting Teaching

Going to church here in Thailand has been such an interesting experience. The language barrier is huge, but so many Thai people are so eager to talk to me that we've really talked quite a bit. There is a lot of small talk, Thai's practicing their English and I've attempted to use what little Thai I know. Some of them know English quite well, and have really enjoyed having another English tongue to talk with.

One in particular is King. He is about 20, I would guess. He is a counselor in the district young men's presidency, which extends up into Laos. There are no proselytizing missionaries in Laos, and from what I could gather it's fairly dangerous for members to be very public about their religion.

In our second conversation he asked me what my calling was at home, and I told him. He immediately wanted to talk about visiting and home teaching. He asked what our numbers are like, and we talked about how in both of our circumstances, in both Thailand and America, the programs are often not executed as well as they should be. He talked about how he often has to sheepishly look away when asked if he has done his visits.

He then looked at me and explained that in Laos, where they aren't allowed to even where suits to go home teach because they will be caught and get in trouble, their unit is consistently 100 percent. He told me about how the trials of these faithful members have truly helped them to remember the Lord. He then asked a question that has really made me think. He asked why that in a place where it is practically forbidden, the saints are able to complete such simple tasks, while he and I cannot when given absolute freedom?

And then I walked back to the bus. And all I could picture where these beautiful Laotian saints, walking to the neighbors to home teach, in their everyday clothes, so as not to be caught.

And realized I need to do better.