i dreamt of a thai christmas

i know, i know.

you're wondering where i've been for the last couple of weeks.

am i still alive, did i come down with malaria and why haven't i updated?

well to be truthful [as one always should be], i've been painfully busy and i say painfully because there is a certain amount of busy i do enjoy but i have long past that line and am now dwelling somewhere near dazed and confused.

the holidays, whoa.

a whirl wind of well, weird and a total lack of the classic holiday spirit [for the most part]. that sounds terrible, which it wasn't but that really is the best way for me to describe it. it was so difficult to 'feel' like it was Christmas when it's 85 outside and i'm wearing shorts. my roommates and i did our best to decorate our cement walled hovel and make it a little more cozy. our 3ft. plastic tree received a lot of love.

even with the huge Agape Home Christmas party and other parties at other venues, familiarity was not reached. it just felt like any other day. but it was good. it was really good. hearing 'jingle bells' screamed at five in the morning on christmas day

and actually receiving a real stocking for the first time in my life, the moments that were good were so good.

and though i missed my family, i had some pretty spectacular stand-in's as anna's parents, Rob and Esther, opened their home to me and really made me feel like i belonged there. plus there have been so many people visiting for the holidays, including amy's whole family, anna herself and her fiance dom, and Esther's cousin rick and his whole family.

so if anything, i wasn't lonely.

i was fortunate to have Christmas eve off, which i spent with my friends doing some last minute shopping and general wandering around chiang mai. normally my family has what we call a 'traditional swedish meal', this year i had pizza,

a totally acceptable stand-in. one event that did stick to some form of tradition was the candle light service i went to at my church. it brought back so many fond memories of singing carols and trying to mold my candle with just the heat of my hands [totally works].

i worked Christmas morning which was fun because i was able to be apart of some of the classic Agape home traditions like eating buttered toast with condensed milk and drinking hot milo for breakfast. it was so much fun watching the faces of kids as they torn through so much neatly wrapped paper to get at the new treasures inside. after shift i went to a lunch with my friend's families that a missionary couple has at their home every year. we played volleyball and ate actual turkey, it was wonderful.

on Christmas night it so happened that all the people who actually had family here dispersed to be with each other, leaving me, sarah and our friends ozzie and shanna with no one to claim us. we decided to call ourselves the 4 orphanes and proceeded to go eat at Subway for our grand Christmas meal, and grand it surely was.

i realized then as i realize now that i kept waiting for it to feel like Christmas when everything i was longing for had nothing to do with what i really should have been rejoicing about. but i have everything to be thankful for and though rejoicing may come slowing, it does come...even when i don't 'feel' like it.

in fact especially then.

finding time to breath

so while i have a minute where my thoughts are still and i can breath deeply...

my days seem to get away from me before i realize where i am with what seems like a nonstop build up of busyness. sometimes i'm ok

with this go go go but then i realize i can't remember when the last it was that i was free to write in my journal or take a nap or just think. any second i let the gears slow down i get bombarded with reminders that i'm not done yet, my check list for the day has just been revised and now i have ten more things to do.

sometimes i find myself getting so frustrated that i get overwhelmed and claustrophobic that in one way or another i end up exploding. it's the shorts moments when i can actually breath that take me a step back though, making me realize that i need to learn to 'move like water' [some advice i received this week].

i realized today that i've witnessed a lot of celebrations in the last few days and weeks.

some were hard but as a whole wonderful, as three of the boys i worked with were adopted during the last few weeks. it was hard to let them go, seeing apart of the Agape family leave. but at the same time, witnessing people becoming parents was so amazing and knowing that now those boys will have a family of their own just overwhelmed me.

today we celebrated the near end of my roommates Maiken and Hanna's time here in thailand. they don't leave till right after Christmas but with all the festivities going on, we had to have their party a little early. I have really learned to love their friendship and watching them work as they are so committed and really love the children. I'm going to miss their laughs as my house will be a little more quite and a little less danish with out them.

side note: they made danish rice pudding and it kicks so much ass. i've never made my dislike for rice pudding a secret but their recipe made me a believer.

i can't believe it but Christmas is coming so soon upon me and i can barely get over the fact that i'm still wearing shorts in december. seeing Christmas celebrated so sparsely here makes me excited to even see a fake tree standing in someone's living room. this last saturday i had the pleasure of baking cookies all day with sarah, amy and our friend shanna. it felt good to be back in the kitchen along with all the cooking mishaps that are destined to happen. such as the salt slash sugar mix up sarah and i had with our first batch of molasses cookies. luckily we did some quality control before we actually baked them, only to realize what we thought was the sugar container was really salt. even after trying to possibly kick out the salt with some actual sugar, the batch had to be tossed.

esther [anna's mom, my home-away-from-home mom] used this experience to remind us that we are the salt of the earth. and honestly, until that moment, i never understood that story from the bible. so maybe that cookie dough didn't go completely to waste.

i keep waiting to feel like i've gotten the swing of things but i still end up confused every once in a while. trying to find a rhythem to my day to day can be difficult but maybe that's where i'm getting it all wrong in the first place. maybe i'm just trying to hard to make thailand fit for me, and really it's the other way around. i have to learn what it really means to be flexible and realize so called 'plans' can and will be changed or disregarded. i guess this is all one big lesson on patience...

my favorite.

little victories

life is moving on and at times it feels like there isn't really anything exciting to say. but lately i've come to appreciate the little victories that arise at different times of my day. i've heard amy talk about these 'little victories' for the past two years but i never really understood the importance of them till now. they are the little moments that happen where you win just a little bit even when it feels like everything sucks. when i would feel like the weight of my failures were overpowering, amy would always try to show me where the moments of triumph were amongst all of that. most of the time i just wanted to wallow in my own misery too much to realize the important of these little victories.

and even though i don't exactly have gloom hovering over me, my day to day can feel lackluster with routine and at times even isolating when i don't have the motivation to leave my house. however, it's come to my attention that despite the disagreements life and i may have, when it's all said and done, i'm doing pretty alright. and it's my little victories that give me a little peace with this understanding. my week's victory is walking into a room and hearing the kids scream my name and running up to hug me or at least attach themselves to my legs as i try and walk around. hearing them say my name has just been such a reward after the weeks of just feeling like a visitor.

they've accepted me.

next step: getting them to listen to me.

last night i had the pleasure to witness a huge victory. the nursing dorm that amy and sarah are r.a.'s for competed in this cheerleading competition between six other dorms at payap university. now when i say cheerleading, don't let images of crowd boosting catchy cheers and short skirts flood your mind [well, minus the short skirts, there were plenty of those]. thai

cheerleading is kind of a mix of traditional thai dancing, interpretive dance, broadway musical and mtv on crack all mixed together. this is a no joke huge production, pyrotechnics included.

the students take this competition seriously with practices starting with the beginning of school in october. during the week prior to the big event, amy and sarah could hear the dancers still working till 2 in the morning to get it perfect. and really, all their hard work paid off, their dance was hands down the best and absolutely phenomenal. i don't know any of these girls but i felt proud through association. watching the different dances was really fun and in some cases, um, interesting. one group left me with memories of a certain nfl wardrobe malfunction. over all the experience was awesome, i don't think i would every see anything quite like this in america.

oh and the best part...the nursing dorm won!

the screams of joy were over powering, jumping and hugging and crying all around. mind you thais' are not so keen to show heaps of emotion, let alone hug, so this was really a spectacle. not only was it great to enjoy the victory with the students who worked so hard, but it was also so good to see amy and sarah feel a little more apart of this huge family they've been trying so hard to break into. seeing them getting pulled into the coolest victory circle i've ever seen was such a epic moment.

...so a victory here and there, it makes each day something different from the rest and helps me escape the mundane.

today's victory:

i decided one of the little boys i work with looks like the thai version of gary coleman.

win? mmm yes, i think so.

[and the winner is...]

a giving of thanks

this is the rare part of my day,

when the day here is the same day back at home.

and of all days, it's thanksgiving. that's weird.

it doesn't seem quite right, if it was thanksgiving, i would be home wearing warm socks and my favorite winter coat. sipping hot coffee and watching my breath billow clouds into the air.

but instead i am wearing flip flops, it feels like summer on my face and arms and i'm biking to the market to buy sticky rice.

there are no turkeys.

thanksgiving has never been my favorite holiday per say. however, when i think of home my mouth waters for my mom's green bean casserole and a slice of the dark meat, a chance to see the dining room in it's rarest form [clean] and my favorite, sitting around the table with my family and telling each other stories that have us in our seats till our bellies are full and my sisters and i debate on who gets what job in cleaning up.

the few americans that work at agape will be putting on a little thanksgiving dinner tomorrow night. there will be chicken instead of turkey and the pumpkin pie may be a bit different [i'm making it...it will be an adventure]. i will sit on a mat on the floor and we will pass each dish around and scoop a little bit of everything on our plates. there will be different kinds of stories to tell and hear and i'll probably laugh at the way one of the australians says something.

it's not quite home.

but i'm thankful nonetheless. i'm thankful i have a wonderful family at home who will all be together today. i'm thankful i have so many amazing and wonderful people to think about and miss. i am thankful to be in thailand and the purpose God has for me here. i am thankful for the relationships i have started to build here and my love that has grown for the children i work with.

thanks.

all in a weekend

the idea of what to do for a birthday varies greatly from person to person. some people like a quiet evening with a few close friends...

or there's Avis Rideout.

founder of agape home, Avis is insanely energetic and full of compassion, which shows in the way she likes to celebrate her birthday. november 21st is the only day of the year the orphanage is closed because every single child goes to her house for a huge party. and i mean huge.first off, avis comes to agape to surprise the kids in some funky costume. last year she was a cowgirl, this year she was pipi longstocking, complete with orange painted braids that were held up with wire.

we spent the whole day watching the kids play and run around while the nannies and older kids sang karaoke to thai pop songs. the cooks from agape made heaps of awesome food for lunch and we all ate coconut ice cream for dessert. it was pretty awesome. some of the guys

even lit fireworks but seeing as it was a sunny day, there was more bang than a pretty sight. all of the kids then had a big sleep over at her house, every single kid.

wow.

well at 5am the following morning, the six of us volunteers [maiken, camilla, hanna, sarah, alice and well, me] headed out on a completely different sort of adventure. we all thought it sounded like a great idea to hop into a van with our trusty friend Noi and her family and set off for the mountains. now thailand doesn't exactly have 'the hills are alive...' epic alps, but thailand does have the most intense road i've ever been on. i even got a certificate that verifies that i have gone on the curviest road in thailand...1,864 to be kind of exact [and that was only one way].

first stop: pai [the p is pronounced like a b...don't ask me why]

a small town three hours west of chiang mai and i have never felt so at home as i did during the few moments we were there. pai is this little notch of bohemian slash art slash good coffee. i walked into a shop and damien rice was playing over head. now that may not seem of any consequence to you, but in a strange way it felt freeing. i was in city next to hills taller than houses, feeling a cool breeze and enjoying french toast and coffee and looking at the beautiful art displayed on so many walls. it was everything i loved minus the people i love, and if the latter had been there...well it would have been close to perfect. unfortunately we had an itinerary to abide by, so being yanked from my day dream, we headed off to many more sights, smells and sounds.

our destination for the night was a village type area in the mae hong son providence, a good few curves away from pai. along the way we made a few stops, one at this chinese village [random] where we took a ride on this crazy swing slash carousel thing. there was waterfall at one point and fish cave at a beautiful park.

our place of rest brought us to a glassy, serene lake and rooms that only used electricity between the hours of 6 and 9pm. we ate a feast in the dark, rice and fried omelet, veggies and other tasties. we actually had to wear long pants and sweatshirts, i almost freaked out when i realized i could see my breath. i was in the mountains and it was cold and it was wonderful.

the morning brought us freezing cold showers out of a bucket and a beautiful sunrise that was promised but never showed. we drank hot chocolate and i learned that everyone else in the world calls granola, 'muesli'.

we headed out to spend a little time of pampering, seeing as riding all day in a comfy van really wears you down, we decided we earned it. we went to a spa where we got mud masks, took pictures of us looking like silly monsters and then got thai massages. but once our faces returned to our normal state of caucasian, we set out for the real purpose of our trip...

FLOWER

MOUNTAIN.

during the later weeks of november, giant bushes full a beautiful and vibrant yellow flowers bloom everywhere. so of course we had to see it.

we saw little bushes here and there along our way but once we actually came to the main place the flowers grow, the sight look my breath away...seriously.

our entire trip was for this one purpose and it was worth it. i felt like every picture i took couldn't grasp the enormity of that place. it was a beautiful day and i just couldn't give it justice in a frame.

there was also another attraction that day...us. we only saw one other farong [foreinger] at the mountain, but the place was packed with thais everywhere at shoulder level. apparently seeing white people is just as exciting as the yellow flowers. we had more than a few people take pictures of us, including two monks. it was strangely ironic, however i would like to think i try and stay discreet when i take pictures of random people. all of us felt rather uncomfortable after awhile, it's tiring the be a circus act.

an adventure it was, my weekend came to an end with new memories and a nasty cold i just got over yesterday. if i disappear any time soon...you might find me three hours west of chiang mai.

the view out my window has changed

life is starting to settle in with the new house. i finally made my space my own, which meant cutting bird silhouettes out of yellow paper and making them fly amongst the photos on my wall.

i've also started writing those letters i promised to so many lovelies. but i've decided the bike ride to the post office alone makes it worth sending them, it's a long and peaceful trip through beautiful rural streets. it's a classic shot of an exotic asian country. chickens running across the road, rice fields and giant

leafy green trees.

i spent this last weekend sleeping on amy and sarah's couch, enjoying the air conditioning and long walks along streets we haven't ventured down yet. people don't really seem to walk from place to place in chiang mai, but considering the heat and the lack of accommodating sidewalks, i can understand. it felt good to move about on my own two legs.

here's a fun fact, yes there are starbucks in thailand [notice the gecko, perfect] and to my surprise, and maybe yours as well, it's one the few places where you can get a decent cup of coffee. thai's like their instant coffee...me, not so much. especially because when you read the nescafe label, the general amount of actual coffee is about 11% while on the other hand, sugar is about 40%. mmm...no

thanks.

oh and i got the coveted pleasure of getting to watch sarah, amy and shanna practice a dance they're choreographing with anna's mom esther, who lip syncs the lead vocals. it's to the song 'everybody dance now'. amazing.

getting to spend time with amy and sarah is always so good even if it means i watch them try and figure out what they will do for their next class. or watching them play charades with the entire class of freshmen nursing students. hearing 200 girls say 'sawadee ka' in unison is terrifying.

i am reminded of how lucky i am to have two of my closest friends in the same foreign country as me. even though i don't see them as much as i would like, just knowing they are there gives me a great sense of peace.

now i just leave you with a few pictures i find, well,...

lessons in patience

[that's right, our kids can fly.]

is it shocking to realize that children are just really short adults?it was to me...

i am constantly staring at a situation that appears to be general childishness. i may get frustrated when they throw fits over such small things or cry when they don't get their way. but then it hits me [or one of the kids do], grown ups are the biggest cry-babies i know. for serious. i think about all the petty things i get angry about and realize i have no room to tell the kids they're being ridiculous when someone has every right to say that to me.

it's funny that we call people grown-ups once they hit a certain age range when really, that 5 year-old mentality is still going strong. maybe that should be a test to see if you actually qualify for the title of 'adult'. i think a vast majority of us would fail miserably.

oh and my favorite thing is when children do something that they think is funny, but really it's not and they get in big trouble. like last night when one of the kids took a shower hose and sprayed down half of the room, getting water EVERYWHERE, then the other kids

used the floor as a slip n' slide. it was udder chaos and i even describe how frustrated the two nannies and i were.

but once everything was over, the storm calmed, and the kids were being half civil, one of the nannies took my shoulders and said in

an all-knowing tone, 'COURAGE!'

...then i thought to myself later,if i had been one of those little kids, i would have thought that was the best, most awesome thing ever. and that if an opportunity like that came up in my life now, i'd probably do that same thing. any punishment would have been worth it.