Today

Today was an interesting day and a reminder of why I love Thailand so much – you truly don’t know what will be coming at you each day.

Weather
Today is/was Sunday. We woke up and it wasn’t hot. Crazy! It was about 70-75 degrees all day and overcast and it reminded me of a fall day in Colorado. I wore longsleeves! I enjoyed drinking warm coffee and didn’t have to sit in front of a fan while doing so. Honestly, the “cold” was comforting and made me smile and thankful to feel a little more at home today.

Church
We went to church like we do every Sunday. However, I will never ever get sick of seeing one of my orphaned students that I had last term. Usually we look for each other in the service and give each other many waves throughout the morning once we’ve spotted each other. Then, as soon as the service is over, we find each other and give each other the biggest, rib breaking hug we can muster. We talk a little bit but she doesn’t speak much English and I speak survival Thai, so we let our hugging and smiling do most of the talking. She says “God love you,” I smile while my heart melts and I say it back and we go our separate ways. This is a routine that I never want to take for granted. Here's a picture of the two of us that was taken back in the summer time at school. Buddhist Wake
One of our best Thai teacher friends had to help her family with a 3 day wake and Buddhist funeral for her uncle this weekend. Today was the 3rd day of the wake and she was working hard to prepare for the funeral tomorrow. We offered to help her and drove to her family’s house in the Thai country side where there are chicken farms and rice plantations of plenty. We weren’t too inconspicuous considering we are all fair skinned and have “Foreigner” practically tattooed on our foreheads. However, we were excited to have the opportunity to help out our friend who has been such a huge blessing to us and would “give us the shirt off her back.” We did a few things like put stickers on pens that were to be given away as mementoes, put fresh sticky rice into individual bags for the feast, and help (or at least attempt to) a teenage monk fold banana leaves for traditional flower boats. I soaked up the experience. It was very different. However, it was an awesome time to get a front row seat to traditional Thai life.

Spicy Papaya Salad & Mangoes with Sticky Rice
Two of my all time favorite things to eat in Thailand and we had them both with our Thai friend after we left the wake. We ate Thai style where we had a bunch of plates in the middle and just picked at what we want (which is great since I “dissect” and pick at my food anyway).

Christmas Kringle
My 4 roommates and I decided to make a “Christmas Bucket List” of things we want to do this Holiday Season. We want to make the most of our time here. Along with our own personal traditions, we added some service projects to the list as well as Christmas Kringle. Basically it’s Secret Santa with a twist. The twist is each day, there’s a specific guildline on each gift (not to mention the fact that we could only spend $1 usd each day). Our roommate Misty is going home to the Philippines for the whole month of December so we decided to get it in before she leaves so this coming week is Christmas Kringle week! We went to the Sunday market tonight and all split up and went around finding our gifts for our secret person. Here is what the week looks like for exchanging:
Monday – Something Scented
Tuesday – Something Colorful
Wednesday – Something Soft
Thursday – Something Useful
Friday – Something Edible
Saturday – Something Thai
Grand Finale – no restriction on type, just restriction on cost and we won’t exchange until we’re all back together in January.

Today, God was continually reminding me of how blessed I am to be living here. Thank you to all who make it possible!!!