OceanicThai

Jae Gan, the word for flower pot. That's my new word today. The neighbor brought over a huge bunch of beautiful tropical flowers. She is decorating her shop for the Ngaan Khun Baan May, the party for the opening of her new shop. They are busy scrubbing and preparing shellfish, horsecrabs, big silver fish and all kinds of delicacies for the Buddhist monks that will come and chant to bless her new store. She is setting up chairs and tables for the dinner she will invite the whole shophouse block over for. My friend Eew warned me not to refuse if invited to come to dinner. It would be disrespectful, she is our neighbor and her husband has a high position in the government, too. I have a gift ready for tomorrow. Flower arrangements seem to be the norm, but since she is opening a flower shop I'm sure she would prefer something else. So I have a big basket with goodies, a favorite to give at the New Year. I'll have Eew inspect it first, though. Everything must be done carefully, ...

me  

The Thai pastor of our church here asked us to teach the Bible to the Thai lady that works for us, Eew. So today Kennedy started with the first lesson of New Tribes Mission's Chronological Bible lessons, a great way to teach anyone about the origin & message of the Bible. Earlier in the day one of the men that came from Northern Thailand to be a volunteer here after the tsunami came asking for advice. He gets a small salary from our church here, and would like to work with new believers, but the pastor wants him to help with the building of the orphanage instead. Situations like these are hard. There isn't much we can do for him except pray for him and encourage him to take his problem to the pastor himself. The problem is, that isn't how things are done here. You aren't supposed to confront, especially an older. For him, it is not just his older by 25+ years, but the guy that pays him, and his spiritual leader. We offered to talk to the pastor, which is the usual ...

That's what a Thai friend told me this morning. "I look at you and your life is perfect. The only thing you lack is a home." She sees we don't have to worry about getting enough food. We have enough money for all our needs and more. We can buy airplane tickets. It is true, I told her, my life is good. We live in a shophouse, my kids don't have any furniture and sleep on the floor. We have a simple lifestyle with mostly ugly and worn out furniture, but everything is relative. To the poor Thai we have nice furniture. To the poor Thai we are rich and privileged, they have never flown on an airplane and probably never will. If I compare my life to the life of my friends at home in America I can feel sorry for myself easily enough. But when I compare my life with most of the folks here in Thailand, and then in China, India, and most of the rest of the world, I can be thankful. I can rejoice. I try to keep it all in perspective. I am not from a poor family. I like nice...

I miss not having to wear mosquito repellent in my own house. I miss being able to put food down while I prepare dinner and not worry about it getting covered in tiny ants. I miss being normal. I miss having close friends. I miss the cool weather & seasons. I miss being able to have nice things without people criticizing me and asking how much it cost. I miss wearing whatever I want & not having to dress dowdy. I miss not having to worry about everyone getting offended at the drop of a hat.

This is a picture of the worker shacks at the back of our house. Jasper & Poppy will not grow up like their American counterparts. I worry sometimes they will resent the fact that they didn't grow up in the middle-class culture they are from. Instead, they have grown up being a foreigner, often among the poor and exposed to things most people only see on "National Geographic." Perhaps they will resent the fact they didn't enjoy the affluence we could have given them; the same-language/culture friends they could have been surrounded by, the comfortable, spotlessly clean and beautiful American home they could have grown up in. The piles of presents at big birthday parties, or the beauty and glitter of America at Christmas time. (The glitter of America at any time, really.) Instead their friends have been from poor Asian farming communities; so different it would take another article to describe them. Our home was a rough Thai country home, full of bugs and lizards, ...

Kennedy has been all over the tsunami-hit areas talking to the Thai pastors working there. He has been meeting with other Thai pastors in the area as well, in about a 100 km radius from where we are here in the city of Phang Nga. It has been very interesting to listen to him debrief each interview, and hear how they answered his questions. We have been learning so much and it will help us tremendously as we plan our own future here. Thais don't think the same as westerners, and throughout all the interviews of the past months, we have been struck again and again at just how difficult it is to be a pastor in Thailand, & hardest of all, to be a Thai pastor in Thailand. The expectations are overwhelming, and many pastors leave because of the intense criticism from their own flock. We are seeing the great need to encourage these pastors whose culture demands so much from them.

I have been biking most weekday mornings, but I haven't been doing any situps or crunches. I bought an excersize ball, now I need to blow it up & use it. My last one became our family beach ball. It's starting to warm up here, but the evenings and mornings are still comfortable. In a few more weeks we will be sweaty and hot all the time. Come April we will be in a virtual sauna, lose our appetite, it will be hard to do anything that month because of the intense heat. Thai schools have their break that month, it is too hot to do much.

Our visas run out end of February and we need to go to Chiang Mai to get a new one. We also have some other business there, so we'll spend about 13 days in the Lanna Kingdom, (Chiang Mai, as it used to be called.) We are looking at condotels, some as low as $100 a month, that are what they sound like, a cross between a hotel room and a condo. The lowest ones aren't so wonderful, but they rent for either $12 a day or $100 a month, can't beat the price! They have higher-priced ones; really there is something for every budget. We will look for something clean and quiet. Breakfast included would be nice. There is one beautiful place that is running a special for $20 a night including breakfast if you stay a week. Breakfast and a bed for the kids would make it $30 a night. Living here so long makes it hard to want to pay the extra $10 a night. I think we will bring a mattress & sheets for the kids and some extra croissants and yogurt in the morning for the kids. They might g...

Poppy & Jasper's friends from church, Gip, F, Ap, Mee, were jumping with joy when their parents gave them permission to go on an outing with us, "by tiaw." First we had lunch; spicy fried pork with bay leaves, fried eggs, fried chili peppers and meat, all over rice, 90 cents a plate. Then we toured the sad little zoo of Phang Nga. After that we went to the city park, Forest Monk Cave. For Thailand it is a large and particularly lovely park. We found some bananas and fed the monkeys. We ran around the caves and ate a Thai version of crepes, 25 cents each. Then we went to the newly installed playground equipment and the kids played & played. I was so happy for our kids, they finally feel like they have friends. We will try to get them together with their friends every week on Sundays. Ap and F get horribly carsick, so we can't go too far. Someday we want to take them to the beach, they haven't been for years, and they are so close by. Like most Thai families...

They were all waving and shouting "hello" frantically, and when I finally made it over to where they were swimming, in their clothes, they grabbed my pale hands with their small brown ones and started asking me a million questions. They were children of both Buddhist and Muslim parents, the ones that owned the line of "long-tail" boats along the seashore. They told me they lived nearby, and with one girl on one hand and another on my other hand, they took me exploring around the tidal pools, telling me all they knew. When they found out I had kids they raced off to get them, too. All 4 of us played together with them, about 16 kids aged from 8 to 12. They gave us rides on their funny rag-tag boat, picked up a sea cucumber for us to touch, and we had a wonderful time playing in the water together for nearly 2 hours. They asked us why we didn't move there near them. I started wondering why not, too! What wonderful friends they would make for Poppy & Jasper. Wh...

Today is Wan Dek, Children's Day, in Thailand. All over the country prizes and treats are given out, and every park, zoo, aquarium, whatever, is free today. Children of all ages dressed up in costumes and danced on stages. Today is the most exciting day for a child in Thailand. Games, crafts, blow-up slides & balloons...fun to be had everywhere.

Taboos...it is easier now to simply know them by feeling instead of having to try to remember them all, like several years ago. Several years ago I was afraid to say much, do much, because there were so many cultural taboos here in Thailand that I had read about, heard about, or been corrected on. Today, many times I don't think about it first, but I feel it first. First there is a bad feeling, then the reason will come later, swimming up from some part of my brain. Sometimes I don't know the reason, it is merely intuitive, and then when I ask a friend about it later they will explain why. Sometimes, though, they can't explain why. Just like sometimes I can't explain the "why" of my own culture to them. Often I have been asked, "Why do you keep your children in a separate bed, even in a separate room?" It seems kind of mean to Asians. I couldn't answer that one. I just know we westerners have done it a long time, except when there wasn't room...

My friend came to see us this past weekend. I was so happy to spend time with her, talking about life and showing her around. We went to the ocean, we took her to look at the tsunami-hit areas, the monuments and the reconstruction. When she left I felt awful. Then I realized much of what I have been feeling these past few months has been loneliness. When I'm with a friend I feel wonderful, all the bad feelings go away. How could I not recognize such a simple emotion? Perhaps because it made itself manifest in so many unrecognizable ways. It is the most comforting thing to be with a friend that you are not a "foreigner" to, because that is the feeling we must live with here day in and day out, being a foreigner. Looking strange, acting strange, eating strange food, speaking a strange language, probably even smelling strange. To their credit, our Thai friends and acquaintances work hard to make us feel welcome, and we, too, work hard to do things "the Thai way." N...

The flowershop lady starting her business next door to our shophouse was outside planting rows of palms, honey-sweet flowered bushes, and some other low palm bush in a row down her driveway. Horsetail and other tropical reeds in large pots were placed at intervals. It was all quite lovely after all the garbage and rancid water that used to be there. I went out to talk to her, it is the polite thing to do. She told me about a house her family was selling near the area we are going to move to. It sounded small, but very nice, on a lot of land full of fruit trees. It's hard to hear these things. To think of having our own small house on a lot of land is a wonderful thought. We have never, in our 14 years of marriage, lived anywhere longer than 3 years. The thought of having a nice little home of our own to raise our children in is a wonderful thought. It's easier not to think of it, really, because I don't think it is going to happen and if I think about it too long, I start t...

I found a jar of Nutella, chocolate spread for toast, and I was so happy. No more yucky hydrogenated Palm oil chocolate baking bits for me.

This week's trip to the grocery store I deliberately didn't buy any chocolate. I figured the Christmas season binge was plenty for a long time. Tonight the craving hit me, and I sunk low. I was sneaking around eating Thai chocolate chips, awful stuff, out of desperation. Kennedy caught me and ate a few too. Horrid tasting.

Sticky rice, spicy-hot papaya salad, fried chicken, that's what those strange words up there mean. Kennedy is at the open-air market buying it right now for dinner. Delicious. He will also buy some marinated pork on a stick, and some delectable fruit, the varieties are endless. Hairy eyeballs or the stinky Durian are probably some of the oddest ones. The Som Tam, or papaya salad, is made of thinly sliced green papayas, hot peppers, fish sauce, dried shrimp, lime, sugar, tomatoes. The first time I had it I thought it was horrid, everything is all mashed up in a giant wood mortar and pestle, the smell sickened me. Now I eat it every week, it's pretty addictive once you get over the fishy smell & hot peppers. The variety of cheap and delicious food here is heavenly after paying so much in western countries. It is true that sometimes going to the open shophouse restaurants can be an upsetting experience for westerners. But if you just determine not to look to closely at anythin...

That's where I'm from, California. Great state, as long as you have a lot of money, because nothing is cheap. We will be going back to the U.S. for 3 months or so, from April 8th to August 2nd. It is always fun to go home, and then good to come back here to Thailand. We miss family and friends and it is always great to see everyone we can. Coming "home" is always a strange experience, though. Maybe this time it won't feel so odd, since we won't be gone over a year. There are always things that jarr me, like people yelling rudely to each other. It is a really big deal when that happens here in Thailand, and everyone gets upset. People are really attune to each other here in Thailand and make great efforts to make the other person feel happy and comfortable. I love that about Thailand.

Our whole shophouse was vibrating from the loudspeaker-festooned truck going by, an advertisement. There's no way you can help but hearing it; jarringly loud music reverberating through your entire body, some guy on a loudspeaker trying to convince you to open your wallet, purse, whatever you happen to keep your money in. This time it was for a Buddhist temple, they want to raise money. Sometimes it's for voting for a political candidate. No one gets upset but we falangs, foreigners. Thais aren't bothered by it. At least the trucks pass by, eventually. In the village they didn't just pass by. Often we would have weekend markets or weekend movies, the latter being the worst because it would go on and on into the wee hours of the night. Worst of the worst was funerals, with a 10-foot tall wall of speakers blasting all day until late and then starting up again at 5 or 6 a.m. It used to be all night, too, or start up at 4a.m. but every year it seemed to get a little better...

Phuket, the "Pearl of the South," innundated by tourists every year during the "cool" season. (Not really cool, just not extremely hot.) We go there to buy aahaan falang, or foreign food. We eat plenty of Thai food, but we like our own food, too. Yesterday we took our kids to Phuket's beautiful new mall to watch "Narnia," which we enjoyed thoroughly. It was true to the book by C.S. Lewis, one of my favorite authors. The story of redemption was surprisingly intact, Christ represented by Aslan, the lion.

artscapesofthailand.blogspot.com You can click the title above to get there. This is Kennedy's artblog, he has posted some of his paintings on it. I am hoping he will post his latest one of the limestone mountain range behind our shophouse. One of the first things that attracted me to Kennedy when he was 18 and I was 16 was seeing a portrait he had painted of a young woman looking pensively out a window. That painting isn't on this site, but he has posted others, many of which were painted here in Thailand.