An encouraging story

You know God knows just what we need and when we need it. I've been re-reading Culture Shock Thailand getting ready for our team this summer. I read the section about how adapting to the culture here often makes you feel like a child again. You don't know how to speak the language, you don't know how to act, and you find getting simple errands done over-whelming. You have to rely on the "adults" around you to help you with the simplest tasks. Thankfully this feeling does not last forever but does seem to come and go at the most inopportune times.

I had my share of these experiences. I remember one time a friend saw me about to boil some eggs. She took the pan out of my hands and proceeded to tell me that was not the way to boil them! Haha! At the time it bothered me, but I let her do it herself. It didn't bother me to let her do it, but it did bother me to be told I was doing it wrong. Honestly, I called Rusty's dad later that day and got confirmation from him that I was not doing it wrong. I'm quite particular about being right. Now that I've lost some of the feelings of being a child, I've actually adopted the new way of boiling eggs. When I stopped long enough to find out why, I found out I was doing it "wrong" for a good reason. The way I was doing it took longer to boil, and I didn't really need that much water to boil the eggs. :)

I also had so many troubles with bills when we first came here. Our first landlord delivered our phone bill to our house. I didn't know when it was supposed to come, and he would forget to bring it sometimes. I've never had utilities cut off until we came here. Thankfully it was only 100B ($3) to re-connect.

All of that to share a story that one of our ESL students told us tonight. Rusty was talking to her about seeing an elephant on the road again tonight. We had a discussion about whether it was against the law for people to bring out the elephants and sell cucumbers or bananas to people so that those people could feed the elephant. Sounds like a pretty smart way to provide for your elephant to me. Our student said that yes it may be against the law, but Thai people don't care. Of course we don't care either--we enjoy seeing them while we are out and about. The funny story was that our ESL student once bought a bag of the cucumbers for 20B and then took them home for her family to eat! :) She thought it was a good deal...11 cucumbers for 20B. She laughed because she didn't know she was supposed to give them to the elephant. :) I told her that now she knows how we feel living here. Sometimes we just don't know how we're supposed to do things, and after we've left we realize that we did it incorrectly. It's ok though...God teaches us more and more each day and helps us adapt. We'll never have it all figured out, but we're thankful He's patient with us.