Today

Every so often I should write about a day we have. It seems every day for the last 3.5 weeks has contained something new and interesting. Right now we’re having a month long cultural training. A lot of it is about our group – which is called “Mainland Southeast Asia Group” or “MSEAG” for short. We’re learning about the different work going on in the 5 countries that MSEAG works in. We’re learning tips for living in Chiang Mai. We’re taking lots of field trips. One day we went to a huge market in town. We’ve visited Payap University which SIL partners with and where Damien will be doing his work. Tomorrow we’re learning about Buddhism and going to a WAT – a Buddhist temple. (FYI, about 98% of people in Thailand are Buddhists). Today we had a spiritual retreat in the morning. There is a great place nearby run by the Jesuits. It’s called “The Seven Fountains" retreat center.” It has beautiful gardens and a chapel and is a relaxing place to just sit and read your Bible and pray. There are even rooms there that people can rent for the night if you want to have a longer “retreat.” There is so much work to be done here in South East Asia, and so few people to do it. Everyone is completely overworked and the leadership stresses that people take personal spiritual retreats whenever they feel the need. Even taking a morning off of work if need be. Burnout happens so often and people end up having to leave their assignment because of it. It was a nice time for us in the middle of our month long training to have a few hours alone with God.

I haven’t written much about where we are living (that’s a huge post in itself). But basically, we’re in an apartment complex in the middle of the city. It’s a tall building with 11 floors. Everyone in our training class (5 singles, 2 married couples, us, and another family with 3 young children) is living here for a month. We’re all spread out throughout the building. On the 7^th floor they rented an apartment to serve as both the child care center (for the 6 children) and a communal room. We eat lunch up there every day. They bring in huge pots of two different types of Thai food each day. Orin will often eat the Thai food (especially noodles or green curry) but Micaiah has pretty much stuck to plain white rice. Sora will eat mostly anything. After lunch the kids just stay there for nursery and we go back to class. On the bottom floor of the building are a bunch of small business (a barber shop, a music shop, a laundry mat, etc…) There is an empty office that we use as our meeting room. It’s so nice to have things so close to us for the course. I'll write more about our actual apartment some other time.

So after class was out at 3pm, we came home and put Sora down for a nap. Damien watched some of the Saints game (which had happened 12 hours earlier) and then we ventured out to see a Doctor for the first time. We had all gotten two of our Japanese Encephalitis shots before we came (if you read about JE you can see why it’s so important to make sure you’re totally immune). One of the blessings about Chiang Mai is that there are plenty of other families here who have lots of good advice. A friend gave us directions to her pediatrician and instructions on how it works. Basically, there are no such things as appointments in this city. The clinic opens at 5pm (until 8:30) and you try to get there about 30min early to sign in. If you get there after 6:30pm there will be too many people in front of you to actually see the doctor before it closes at 8:30pm. You are called in the order you signed up. It’s this tiny clinic in the middle of the city with a waiting area and three little exam rooms. We went to this clinic because one of the Doctors (who is Thai) was trained “In the West” and speaks English. This tiny room was totally packed with people and kids. We waited for about 20 minutes and we were called to get them weighed. Then it was another 45 minutes before we actually got called in. The Doctor was great! We’ll be happy to keep going there when the kids are sick. Even though it’s a pediatrician’s office, he gave Damien and I our shots too. He mentioned he trained for 3 years in the US. We asked where specifically he was and he said New Orleans! Wow, made us like him even more. :-) He worked at Children’s hospital. So, we had our first intro to Thai Doctors and I’m glad we feel we have a good place to go if the kids get sick. Oh, and for the office visit and two shots it was 1,900 Baht. (No such thing as insurance). That is equivalent to $57 US dollars. Not bad.

After the Doctor (which pretty much was a 2.5 hour ordeal) we stopped at one of the popular Thai restaurants (at least with the other SIL families). We’ve already been to twice with other families. The Thai food is ok, but it has some western food for the kids when they are getting sick of Thai food. Some of the menu is also in English which makes things a ton easier. They also have these great banana or watermelon smoothies. The shakes are 15Baht (about 50cents), the Thai food is $1/plate and the hamburgers are about $1.25/plate. The kids got ice cream for dessert and our total bill was 220Baht. That’s about $6.50!!! And that is totally typical for Thai restaurants. Eating out is so much cheaper than buying food and cooking it. Besides the fact that we just enjoy eating out, it's a HUGE blessings since we don't have a kitchen in our apartment!

Ok, I could talk and talk about all of the random things around here, but I know this is too long already. The worst part about today...I didn't have a camera to take pictures of everything! I still can’t find my camera and I’m totally bummed. It’s a cheap camera, but I’m sad I lost the pictures from Bangkok and don't have anything from today.