Christmas & tsunami remembrances

We are gearing up for Christmas celebrations as a family and at our Thai church. I have wrapped up 50 bags of candy to give to the kids that show up for the church party. The whole region here is also gearing up, to remember the devastating tsunami that came Dec 26th, the day after Christmas. There are memorials planned at different key points throughout the region. At Phuket where the rest of the victim's remains, now just bones, are. At Baan Niang, and at Takua Paa, where we worked at Yan Yaw temple, processing the dead. We will go. I've wrapped gifts for the family that gave us a bedroom to use while we helped at the temple, and for the man that arranged it for us. I am thinking of all the people that came to help from all over, and all the people that saw the horror of it first-hand, of those that came to the morgue/temple Yan Yaw looking for their loved ones, and of the dead... And people are coming back to remember, still devasted, still traumatised. A Thai friend told me tonight there was a European man that came back, he was here when it happened, and he was afraid to get in the water. Who could blame him?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Our Airport-Closure Adventure

We knew that time was tight between the end of our conference in the Northern end of Thailand and our flight out of the country from the Southern end. We figured that since we would be flying there would be no problem getting home in a day and giving ourselves 2 full days before our flight to the U.S. We were scheduled to fly back to Southern Thailand on December 1st and get on our flight to the U.S. on December 4th. We flew to Chiang Mai with no inkling that the beautiful new airport we transferred at in Bangkok would be seiged by protesters just a few days later. At our conference we realized that we were not going to be flying back. The alternatives were train, bus, rent a car or rent a mini-van with a driver. Being economical we chose the train or bus, and in the end, due to scheduling, it had to be the bus. It would be a grueling 20+ hour trip home, but we weren't overly concerned because Thailand has beautiful VIP buses that are really nice to ride in. Unfortunately ther...
Read more

Red-Necked Keelback Snake

This is our "snake of the month," this time just a few steps from our kitchen door. I found it Monday afternoon, a strange pattern unlike the grass surrounding it. I yelled for the kids and our guest to go upstairs, handed them the dogs, and got my cell-phone and snake book. Kennedy, Trevor (Dean's intern) and a handyman all came to help, and the Thai handyman killed it. It was a very pretty snake, I'll upload a picture later. It is venomous, with rear-fangs. Most keelback snakes are not venomous, (we just got lucky?)
Read more