The Shed-yule!

Today was just such a great day! Aside from the fact that the government in Thailand is in a bit of shambles, there are a lot of good things to report. For one, it's December already and I can hardly believe it. The weather has cooled down quite a lot for us with chilly 68 degree mornings and comfortably warm 83 degree afternoons and evenings. For the Thai's this is practically freezing and everyone walks around with sweaters and jackets on-no joke! Last night I was fiddling around with my computer and managed to completely mess it up to the point where I didn't have internet and then did long enough to call CougarNet and have them help me.


There are so many things planned this month that I can't wait for. At school we have a Christmas dinner planned along with a show that consists of performances by students and our teachers. We were all divided into regional teams, so we are on team America doing a Thai-school rendition of the 12 Days of Christmas. Then, my teacher is teaching all the girls on our team traditional Thai dance. It's so fun! We practice during our breaks and of course our teacher makes it look so easy and graceful. A lot of the hand gestures require you to bend your wrists and fingers into nearly impossible positions, but it's still fun to learn. We don't get the cool outfits though.


Also at school, one of our teachers is getting married to one of the other students in January and a lot of us students are invited to their wedding in Hua Hin so we are starting to make plans to carpool there together. They are so excited, and we are excited for them as well. They are an older couple and neither have ever been married before. She is Thai and he is Swiss.


This Friday the 5th, we have off of school because it is the King's birthday, which is a major holiday here filled with parades and all sorts of celebrations. It will be like a sea of yellow this Friday. Next Tuesday we have another day off because it is Constitution Day that day. Hmm...I wonder if this day will be celebrated in the future.

On the 13th of December we get to go to the Bang Na daycare for the first time to meet all the children there and help out with their Christmas program.


In other news, I was able to get in touch with someone I knew from my first year at Concordia and find out that she and the people she is travelling with are fine, despite being stranded in Thailand for 2 weeks longer than they planned. I had been worried that they were stranded at the airport this whole time and found out that the Thai tourism board is taking care of them and housing them in a hotel in town. So that's good news!


On the 21st we are having a Christmas celebration at Concordia Lutheran Church Phongphet, and we have a whole agenda planned, including dressing Pastor Bob up as Rudolf and having all the other "missionary group" people sing Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer. That's our addition of American humour!


The next day on the 22nd the LCMS and CWEFT people are going to the north near Burma I think, to a refugee camp to share Christmas with the people there. That will be very exciting I'm sure! I think we wither come back Christmas Eve or Day.

I feel like I am missing something else, but I'm sure I will bring it up eventually. Now it's time for homework!

In The News

Tuesday night I got back to Bangkok, only to discover that the protesters had become more than just a nuisance. Instead they decided to get the world's attention by closing down one of the largest airports in Asia causing thousands of travellers to be stranded there. We weren't sure what exactly was going on when we got there, only that there was a mass of people trying to get out of the airport and taxi's refused to take people out for less than 800 baat. We turned them down at first because we though they were just scammers. Then I noticed that I got a message from Dang who was worried about us. She called me and told us to get out because the protesters were building blockades and eventually no one could get in there. We were blessed to get a taxi that only charged 700baat for the trip home. Nonetheless we made it and are safe. Mostly everyone here is frustrated because of what they are doing to the economy and for inciting alot of unnecessary fear. A lot of people here depend on tourism for their livelihood, and this is the high tourism season. Already several hotels have announced that they will have to lay people off next month because everyone has cancelled their reservations. We just pray that this will end soon and that no one else will be hurt. For now it's life as usually for most people here.

Happy Thanksgiving!

So this was definitely the most unusual Thanksgiving I've ever celebrated. It started like every other day, meaning I went to school. The temperature outside was a cool 77ish degrees that morning. I had Thanksgiving lunch in a Thai garage kitchen which consisted of rice and spicy crispy pork with stir-fryed vegetables. Then things got a little more normal. We went to Pastor Bob and Diana's house for dinner. They invited everyone from church and the office, but only about 14 people were there at various times. Pastor Bob's brother wasn't feeling well so he and his wife had to miss out on Turkey ;( Here's Diana getting the Turkey ready to eat. We had lots of Thai fruit, and desserts as well as the American standard mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, yams and pumpkin pie! Mmmmm-mmm good! After dinner we all sat down for a Thanksgiving devotion led by Pastor Bob, and then we just visited with each other. It was a great evening. When I got home that night I called my family and got to be the computer in the room. It wasn't the same as sitting around the family table but at least I got to say hi to everyone and wish them a Happy Thanksgiving.

Hong Kong

I don't even know where to start! My visa expired on the 24th, so that meant it was time for my first visa run. According to the other missionaries in Hong Kong, it was the perfect month to do it, and I can't say I disagree! Hong Kong is such an entirely different city from Bangkok, so I spent most of the time there in a daze. For one thing Hong Kong is hilly and mountainous and everything is dense and compact. There are hundreds of skyscrapers there and incredible views of the city everywhere you go. Even from our guest house we had a pretty good night view. Transportation was really convienient and had us going all over the city in a relatively short period of time. The Thai Embassy didn't open until Monday morning so Sunday we did other things to keep us busy. First went to the LCMS-WM office and met up with everyone taking the shuttle van to church on Hong Kong island. That's where I met Carl Hanson and his family, as well as Hank Rowland, a good friend of my former Pastor. We concluded as good Lutherans always do, that the Lutheran world is ever small.

Church was so nice. The people there were very friendly. Carl led a great bible study and we got to sing hymns with an organ (for some that's not a big deal, but believe me it was great.) Afterwards we took pictures and chatted with people. We took the shuttle bus back to the office and went to lunch at the guest house restaurant. They gave us the wrong food, but at least it had rice, so we got something to eat. I also had almond milk, which was interesting and reminded me of Christmas cookies that are baked with almond extract.

That afternoon was spent exploring with Emily who lives in Hong Kong and is friends with Sarah. She took us to the Peak via the Peak tram. I would definitely recommend it for anyone visiting. Even though the weather was a little hazy we still had incredible views of the city from the Peak. We had American food at Bubba Gumps with a window view of the city. I hadn't eaten a burger since I left the States, so it tasted really good. I could only eat half of it though because the portions in Hong Kong are huge compared with Bangkok. By the time we made it back we were pretty tired.

On Monday we made our way to the Thai Embassy by 9:15. Once we got all the paper work in order, it only took 10 minutes. We left around 11am and met Josh from the LCMS-WM office. He was our tour guide for part of the afternoon and evening. He took us to this great noodle shop, where we got beef brisket noodles that tasted just like beef stew! I had no idea where we were going as we wound in and around these hilly streets. I know we walked past the world's longest escalator, and then found ourselves at a buddhist temple, surprisingly the first one I had seen in all of Hong Kong. It was interesting to notice the difference from Thai Wats and the Chinese temple. For one thing, I was able to take pictures to show them to people and give them more of an idea of what I'm talking about. Imagine trying to describe this room filled with burning incense spirals that are supposed to take these prayers written on the cards to spirits or whatever they believe it's good for?

After a break at the guest house we went to a market, and then met Josh for dinner for the "best burger in town". Then, we went to a night market and bartered for some cool Christmas presents. By the time we got back to the guest house, I wanted to do nothing but sleep.

Tuesday came and we already had to pack to go home. We picked up our passports from the embassy and spent our free time taking a cable-car ride up a mountain and to see the "Big Buddha"- a glorified tourist destination and great calve workout. For me I was glad to make it all the way up without stopping. We took our pictures and then checked out the monastary nearby. That was pretty cool looking, and also nice that we were allowed to just take pictures anywhere.

After our picture taking was over we headed back to the office to pick up our stuff and catch a flight back to Thailand. That proved to be interesting itself. More about that later. For more pictures of the trip click here.

Friends in ALL places

So, I get a message from Bryn this week, "we have a PLI team from TX and WI visiting Bangkok this week and they would like to meet up with you and Sarah or anyone else there if you have time, let me know if it will work."

....I still don't know what a PLI team is, BUT we met some of them today and had a great time! Pastor Wayne Braun and his wife Linda from Texas along with Pastor John ? and his wife Stephanie from Milwaukee treated us to lunch at their hotel, and man was it a treat. They stayed at the Bangkok Marriot on the Chao Praya River. Sarah and I got off the train just in time to catch the river taxi over there. On the way there we got fresh, cold towelettes that smelled like lemons to refresh ourselves. The weather was absolutely beautiful today probably because it was cloudy making it not so hot.

Their hotel was really nice. We met them upstairs in the lobby and then ate at the buffet lunch. I can't remember the last time I ate that much food. I really enjoyed chatting with them and getting to know them. They were so friendly. After lunch they wanted to go to shopping at Siam, so we went with them. Once again I got to be Tour-Guide-Barbie-Betsy as Sarah Steiner calls me. I love knowing a place well enough that I can make visitors enjoy their time there. I think it just makes the experience all the more meaningfull and enjoyable. Plus it was the first time I felt like this was my city; neat! So the first place we went to at Siam was in the Paragon food hall. I bought them some fried bananas which they loved and then we watched the chef's make roti (and then we ate it of course). They were looking for more Thai souvenir stuff, so then we took them to MBK. Even if you don't buy anything there, it's still an experience in itself. It's like wall to wall stores ranging from Jewelry and shoes, to cell phones and pirated movies. It's not quite a flea market or market, but it's not like an established store in the states. I mean, no one walks into Old Navy and tries to barter the price of a shirt with the sales clerk. Even though the stores are semi-questionable occasionally MBK is a very modern building and thousands of people go through it every day. Quite the difference from our version of a shopping mall. Stephanie was looking for shoe's, but struck out. By the time we made it through the souvenir area, we were all pretty tired and it was already 5pm. They had dinner reservations and we had to head back. We parted ways at the Siam interchange station, glad to have made 4 new friends. Here's me with John, Stephanie, Linda and Wayne.