The End of Camp

The last day of church camp was always a really sad day for me. The end of the ESL/basketball camp in Isaan was no different. Not only did we have to go back home, we were going to lose our summer intern, Carmen on the following Sunday as well.

In true Isaan fashion we had a closing party/ceremony. We the new schools basketballs and certificates for completing the program. Then we had some entertainment, a big Thai grilling party, and of course some karaoke.Some of the students did the traditional Isaan dancing for us.


It was hard to say goodbye. We didn't get to spend as much time with the teachers this year, but we really invested our time in the lives of the advanced English class. We still get phone calls from them, and we're supposed to be sending some Bibles to them. Pawn and Kaimook did a great job sharing the Gospel with them, and it meant so much more to the students coming from people who speak the same language as them. God can use anybody, but there's something special about Thai people reaching Thai people with the Gospel message. The students said they could really tell that Pawn and Kaimook believed what they were talking about and that they really felt loved since Pawn and Kaimook were so sincere in sharing their faith.

Learnng New Things

Near Ms. Rerai's house there's a place where they make khanom jeen. These are noodles that came to Thailand from China. They're good to eat with green curry chicken and other dishes. I had never seen them made before.
We walked behind the house and found this noodle factory. They had already mixed up the dough before we arrived. They had a machine that kneaded the dough, and then they put it through this bag to get separate the dough from the excess water. Then it was time to check the consistency of the dough. You can change it depending on how you like your noodles. Since I'm not a noodle connoisseur I will just have to take their word for it. Then it was time to boil the noodles. First you stir the boiling water to get it swirling. Then they start piping in the noodle dough using a shower head. Once the water slows down you start dropping in the dough using a circular motion. They scoop out the finished noodles and then rinse them in water.Then the noodles are divided into bunches and formed into a circular pattern and placed in a bowl or on a tray. These women make these noodle to sell. I joked with them that they should be able to charge more for these noodles since they were made by farangs. Farangs = higher prices. :)

What We Do In Isaan

It seems we are always busy when we're ministering in Isaan. Since we're living with friends, our days are filled with lots of activities which help us build relationships with the people. This year we often went to our hosts' farm and picked fruit or did other agricultural work. They love it when we enjoy life there and the new experiences we get to have.
This year I learned some interesting things about lamyay. There are so many interesting varieties of fruit here, but I don't really buy too much because I don't know how to choose the best ones. What I learned about lamyay won't help me in choosing it, but I did learn a bit about taste-testing. I don't like the lamyay that has a high water content. I compared the lamyay from our hosts' farm and another farm, and there was definitely a difference! I'm partial to the fruit from out hosts' house. They really liked that.
We teach basketball skills every afternoon. Some of the students take these drills very seriously! Most of the students do a very good job, and they can't wait to get to the actual games.
This year we had a different schedule for the English classes. Rusty had an afternoon class with the teachers. Some of the students were so interested in studying that they joined in too.
We also had an intensive English conversation class with some of the top students from the school. We really got to spend a lot of time with these students as our classes were two hours long, and we did some activities with them in the evening as well.This really doesn't have anything to do with our work, but we just like motorbike pictures. :)
This year the scheduling at the school was extremely crazy. The school we work at had just been upgraded to dream school status (not sure what exactly that means but I do know it gives the school more prestige), and their schedule was crazy with installing a new assistant principal, having district-wide competitions, and adapting to their new status (workload). Since school was canceled for a couple of days during our camp, we set up teaching appointments at the temple kindergarten. This was a hard class to teach because we only taught them for a couple of days, and they had never studied English before. But like all of our kindergarten students, they did a great job!
You can always find a group of kids around Rusty. This year he had another lunch bunch who wanted him to read English books to them, and they were worried about quantity as well. They didn't want him to spend very much time on any of them--they wanted to move on to the next one! They were a very faithful group until the schedule change.

Saaw Chiang Mai

We're on school break here during this next month so I'm hoping to use the time wisely and get caught up on some work. It's always harder to go back and write about things that happened a couple of months ago, but I do want to share some of the highlights even if they are a bit out-dated by now.
One of the highlights of my summer is our trip to Isaan. We've been blessed with the opportunity to work with a school in this part of Thailand conducting a two-week basketball and English camp for two years now. This year our team was rather small, but we enjoyed it. We started off the two weeks with a school holiday. In Thailand that means an opportunity to have a picnic at a waterfall! We picked up some grilled chicken, spicy green papaya salad, and ice and headed off for a day of fun in the water.
After a long, hot day of work, there's nothing like sitting around Ms. Rerai's gazebo or making good use of the hammock. The kids warmed up to us pretty quickly. I don't think they forgot us. We also enjoyed preparing food together and spending time together. This picture shows me working on eating some special fish that Mr. Korn made for us. It wasn't that bad except that it was really salty. Carmen couldn't handle it so I took one for the team and ate her plate too. She didn't know about the special fish breakfast sandwiches yet, but I remembered them so I made sure we didn't have any leftovers.
And of course in Isaan there's always plenty of good sticky rice! This year we enjoyed steaming the black rice...it's a special treat for us.
It looks like Kaimook is stocked up and ready to go with two large baskets of sticky rice. At our house we don't usually eat sticky rice so I guess we stock up when we go to Isaan. I still don't have one of these fancy sticky rice baskets, but I plan to add it to my Thai kitchen soon.

I also need to mention that Kaimook is our saaw Chiang Mai, northern Thai girl. They really like talking to Kaimook and having her sing the song on karaoke/party night. Some of the teachers are supposed to come visit us this month, and they had to time their visit with Kaimook's school break. :)

Fun in the Sun

We finished out our trip with some R&R south of Bangkok at the beach. We had lovely hotel rooms on the side of a mountain with either pool or bay views. The area was beautiful, and we only to walk down a patch and cross a street to get to the water.

We had a lot of fun playing in the water and sand. I can't believe all of the adults beat the kids in the race!

We all had fun playing in the water and sand. We created this guy on the beach. I don't think he has to worry about the Sun.We rented a boat to take us out to the island. That was a very good choice as the water was very clear around the island. There were lots of people there, but it was still fun. There was an area to sit in the shade, and we took turns walking around buying cool drinks, souvenirs, etc.We ended up at the mall for our last dinner. We were supposed to go to the puppet show, but it was closed due to the low tourist turn-out and poor economy. I was completely bummed about that because I had spent so much time bragging about how much fun it was going to be. We had to enjoy the Ripley's water fountain at the mall and dinner at Sizzler.From the looks of the plates a lot of people ordered, they weren't disappointed in the Sizzler. The salad bar was a nice change of pace, but the western-sized portions seemed humongous after what we had been eating for the past two weeks.

We went back to the hotel to pack up and then left out to get some foot and leg massages. Some of us girls got pedicures too. It was a nice end to a huge work opportunity.

Saying Goodbye for Now

The dreaded part of the whole trip seemed to overshadow us pretty much the whole second week. The day we all dreaded was quickly approaching. You could tell that it was on everybody's mind. The dinners became more special with more people included. We went out to eat lunch several times, and for our last night we traveled to the city to barbecue Thai style.

We all loaded up into trucks and headed off to the city. Mr. Korn was directing our truck, and we took a tour of the city before heading to the restaurant. He wanted to take us to see Rusty's favorite weekend spot...a nice 7-11 with an Amazon Cafe (coffee shop). We met Mr. Cool there also who is one of the teachers at the school, and he bought our coffee. I think that was mainly because Scott was with us. He and Scott had a good friendship.

We grilled and ate and ate and ate. I think Scott must have been sitting with the wild bunch. They enjoyed putting all kinds of food on his plate to see if he could eat it. They did some of that to Rusty also. I enjoy being a quiet girl...not so adventurous. After eating, we returned to Ms. Rerai's house for one more night of sleeping on the floor and to enjoy one more refreshing cold shower. I say that seriously because after you get over the initial shock of cold water it can be quite invigorating in a very hot climate.We awoke the next morning and began the ordeal of giving gifts and saying goodbye. Ms. Rerai's family presented us all with some Isaan cloth. We wore our cloth to the school in the traditional way, and I think everybody enjoyed that.
This girl was the spokesperson for her school. She started crying not long after she started speaking. So sad! They thanked us for coming and then each class presented gifts to all of us. Lili received more than any of us (the one the students couldn't believe was 14)...she almost needed her own airplane for all of her gifts, lol.We hated to leave, but I'm sure it will be good for the school to go back to their normal routine.
The goodbyes weren't over yet. We had to walk down this long gathering of students waving goodbye, getting last hugs, and taking pictures. It was a reaallly long walk.We finished packing up and were off to eat lunch together in the city before going to the airport. Even this last meal involved karaoke. We all said the final goodbye at the airport. We truly enjoyed getting to spend so much time with Ms. Rerai and her family. I hope they will come visit us in C.M. before too long.

Free evenings

Our evenings were often free, but we did have some outings to experience Isaan life. On this particular evening we went looking for bamboo shoots. One of the school officials let us come on to his property for this hunt. I must say we were all impressed as we toured the grounds and learned what plants could be eaten. If there is ever a shortage of food, I'm convinced I'd like to be in this country since I don't have any of this knowledge myself.

We walked through some of God's amazing creation. It reminds me of how different the world is, but how there is beauty everywhere. I'm so thankful we have a Creator Who loves us and cares for us.
Can you eat that? Yes, you can Scott. It's a jackfruit, and it's yummy!
There was also a special market a few nights a week. It was nice to walk down and sample some of the food, but a lot of the stands sold out early. I'm not used to having to get their early to get the good stuff. Life was different in Isaan. This is an interesting vehicle we saw outside the gate and look at the adorable girl who joined me in the picture!
We returned home that night to do some more work. All the bamboo shoots had to be cleaned and prepared for cooking. Our fingers were probably a little callused by the time we finished, but it was fun to sit around and talk together. I guess that means we were really adapting to the Isaan lifestyle...it's all about the group effort. It's fun that way and seems less like work.

Return from the city

So we returned from the city and left out early Monday morning for a school where Rusty has taught before. Actually he hasn't been teaching at this school but a special class set up by the local government. But first we had a few minor "injuries" that needed to be taken care of at the clinic.

Bryan had a splinter in his finger. I know from the picture it looks like it hurt, but it really wasn't that big of a deal. Of course it wasn't in my finger so it's easy for me to say that. Then I had my swollen infected leg that needed to be cleaned up. The people seemed pretty excited to show off their clinic to us, and I was more impressed with this small clinic than I was in the hospital. Did you notice how the doctor has on a pair of gloves? That made me feel better. After we were all patched up again we headed off to the school.



When we got to the school we had no idea what to expect. We had an assembly with all of the kids, and then it was showtime! We put on an impromptu English lesson, and the kids did great as well as the teachers! I couldn't believe the students were so well behaved in such a large group. We really enjoyed being at this school and would be very interested in going back.













Scott's ukelele has been a big hit with all of the kids and teachers.








Dion's always good at getting some focused teaching in.








After a delicious lunch it was back to our normal routine of basketball in the afternoon. The kids really started showing improvement the second week. We didn't have all of the students everyday for basketball so it was great that they caught on so quickly. They enjoyed doing the drills and playing with the coaches.