around the next bend...

being here.

me in thailand.

lessons are to be learned around every corner, i just chose to learn some over here for awhile. i didn't come to thailand with many expectations as i didn't have any real clue as to what my life would look like here and also because i just didn't want any.

however the lessons i am learning are much different than what i expected to come across, let alone the way they go about looking for me.

as i wrote in a past entry, my motorbike was stolen. it was of no real fault of my own and after the police report was made there was nothing i could do about it. the ball was in God's court, or so i thought i left it there. i tried so hard, or at least i believed i was, to understand why my bike was stolen. it was a big investment that allowed me to have a life outside of the four walls of my house.

i contemplated the possible reasons for my 'punishment' thinking maybe i did something wrong, maybe i've steered away from the direction God wanted me to go. i knew there had to be lesson in this whole thing somewhere but the ones i thought i was learning just didn't seem quite right.

or i would just try to ignore the very thought of the situation all together.

but it's been over a month since the theft and even though i tried to put it behind me, the whole incident never left my thoughts for very long. there was something to be learned for sure, i just didn't know what for so long. but as i am now being reminded, God's timing doesn't always match up to our expectations and desires, He reveals things on his own schedule which is always on time.

and it was time for me to finally learn my lesson.

During the whole motorbike drama i always saw Go

d as apart from me, as though i was a victim of his wrath. but now i know better...

God was standing there next to me, waiting.

with his hand resting between my shoulder blades.

he sat there as i watched Esther give my report to the thai detective.

he was there as we walked up and down the same alley so many times in hopes that every turn around would shed some previously unseen light.

he was there waiting as i asked him for answers,

but he knew he had to wait till i was willing to hear them.

so while i was trying to be quiet and listen to God, he was talking.

the realization that i learned something was so sudden and unexpected, i didn't realize God even spoke, it was so subtle.

but i understood his lesson so easily it

felt unreal.

easy to understand yes, easy to adhere, not quite.

my lesson:

my mom will always say she wanted to raise her children to be independent and well, in my case she can say she reached her goal. i take my independence with fierce pride and i revel in it.

to a fault.

though i may think myself to be self sufficient, losing my motorbike taught me i am so very not.

in order to get around i had to depend on the generosity of others, namely sarah and amy who so graciously decided to share their two bikes between the three of us. i enjoy giving yet i have always found accepting generosity from others to be so difficult. i was brought up to believe that if there was something i wanted but couldn't afford it, then i must not need it.

but i'm realizing now that when i don't allow myself to accept things from people then i block myself from truly opening up to possible relationships because that means i'd have to rely on people, that means i'd have to be vulnerable.

which means in my head that i am no longer self-sufficient patricia.

being this so called 'independent' is not all it's cracked up to be. it can be lonely and isolating and can cause the heart to turn bitter when the 'i could have done that better if i did it myself' takes a stronghold amongst conceit and arrogance.

and most of all it stops me from truly relying on God. really truly relying on Him.

i do believe God gave me independent tendencies for good and they have served me well but now i see where they can and do hurt me.

God can give me strength to do anything, this i know for sure.

however, with out Him, i am nothing.

so i am learning what that means, to rely on God.

to bring myself to a whole new level of intimacy as i learn how to be vulnerable, to let go of my independence, and become dependent.

...i've got a lot of work to do.

slow to anger and rich in love

it's not summer.

but the walls are starting to warm up and i can no longer lean against them lest i wish to enjoy a shower of perspiration.

but today is clear, a cool breath is taking a walk through my house and i find myself still able to sit comfortably in my long pants.

life here, despite my recent trials, has been simply good. not having the same freedoms of mobility i once had the taste of has not left an entirely bitter void behind. these last few weeks have been a season of community in my house as four new volunteers have moved in with in the last month as others left for their home lands. it's surprising easy to avoid the people you live with by simply choosing to be quiet or be confining oneself to the four corners of a bed. yet an energy can't help but be felt when there are so many new souls to explore.

agape home is teaching me how to live up to it's name as i realize more and more how i'm falling deeply in love with the kids. my relationships with them have begun to feel more concrete as even the hardest upsets give me

hope. i look at their faces everyday and just marvel at what insanely bewitching little creatures they are.

working with children can have it's trying moments and learning how to deal with each new situation can be an interesting learning experience to say the least. being involved in a tantrum from the other side of the battle field makes me realize what a terror i was as a child and i constantly feel like i need to apologize to my parents for all they had to put up with. i cringe sometimes at the memories of my insubordination that resurface from time to time. dealing with disciplinary issues can be a touchy subject with people and that doesn't exclude agape home. except in this case there are 14 kids being raised by 50 mothers each with their own standards and ideas as to the best course of action. there have been days when i feel like i could kick puppies [sorry sarah] i was so frustrated. but even though at times i feel at a lose as to what i should do, there is one tiny little verse that keeps knocking at my door:

'the Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love' Psalms 145:8.

...then i remember that well hey, God is the ultimate example. easier said then done, duh.

but it does cut my tongue short when i want to raise my voice and it does remind me to let go and move on. it can be all too easy to hold grudges against a kid when they've pushed my buttons a little too far. but then i realize that even though i may be giving them the stink eye, they've completely forgotten about the whole incident because well, they're 4 years old and now they are sucking on a popped balloon.

all this and i can't help but love them.

plus i may or may not have taught the 5 year olds how to blow spit bubbles [i don't think the nannies appreciated that one].

another plus, my thai lessons are continuing make my jaw sore but little by little i have been able to see progress as i can actually understand maybe 1/5 of what the children as saying to me now.

walking is slow but it gets you there eventually

a step, one after the other

an easy concept but one at times is hard to follow through.

i take these seemingly minuscule moves forward with a slower pace these days as i'm learning that in order to know which plot of ground my foot is to be placed next, i have to be ever so quiet and listen.

so i wait and listen.

i walked in silence along the streets of Pai during first few days of my week off from Agape Home. my friends and i ventured the treacherous curves of route 1095 for 3 days of perfect nothingness. Pai, the little bohemian town i mentioned previously where shops play damien rice and the french toast is good. we claimed the far upper corner of this 140 year old house turned coffee shop and feasted on good coffee and passion fruit cheesecake. i read anne of green gables and found myself longing for oceans shores and romance, two things i haven't given much thought in a long time. the weekend retreat was a much needed time of relaxation as i had been on and off stressed about going to Laos for my visa run that i was to do the day after we returned from Pai.

and so off to laos i went...

even before i left for thailand, there has been a cloud haunting me overhead about what i was to do with my visa and now that my first 3 months were up, it was time to see if all of my planning and research would pay off. the trip to vientiane, the capital of laos, was long and for the most part uninteresting as i spend a majority of my time reading, boggling over the price of food at the airport or slightly fearing for my life as i learned that laos drivers are even crazier than thais.

and though i was still unsure i would get the visa i needed as i turned in my application at the consulate, i decided long ago that what ever happened would be by the will of God and there was nothing i could do about it. leaving all of my visa worries to God did give a settling peace over my mind and heart though it did not brighten my spirits about having to go to laos. so with the visa application in, all i could do was wait till the next afternoon when i would pick up my passport. unfortunately the wait was not an enjoyable one as i did not find vientiane all too welcoming. while looking up things to do in the city, most websites i read were pretty plain when they said there isn't much to do in the capital of laos, and they were right. normally this wouldn't have bothered me so much except that i had already finished my book and i found myself feeling very lonely and awkward in this strange little city. i found myself longing to be back home, the home i had in chiang mai. this feeling however kind of surprised me as i had yet to realize how much thailand had begone to grow and become apart of me and i think this realization alone made the whole trip worth it.

need less to say, i was so overcome with relief when the next day came, bringing with it the visa i needed and another long journey home to chiang mai.

as some may know i was fortunate to get a motorbike right before the holidays. now a motorbike to must people sounds like a ridiculously extravagant expense. however in reality, motorbikes are the main mode of transportation in thailand and having one actually saves me money because the only other forms of travel i have access to are taxis. i live about 20 minuets outside the main city which means it's very expensive to get a taxi let alone being able to find one in the first place.

however...

last weekend, my motorbike was stolen.

stolen before i could even take a picture with it and impress everyone back home with videos of my motorbiking skills. obviously you should be just as disappointed as i am. it was a strange theft seeing as i had parked my bike on a busy and public side road that was crammed with many other parked bikes. anna's mom, esther [my adopted mother, ie i adopted her], took me to the police station to make a report but alas this is thailand and the police are not exactly known for their ability to do...anything.

this whole week has felt very strange as i think about what this all means, why did this happened to me and most of all, what is God trying to tell me through all of this. i haven't felt anger or even frustration and i don't think i will but for the first few days my heart held a sinking feeling as the realization of what going back to a life with out freedom of mobility will mean for me for the rest of my time in thailand.

one of the biggest struggles i have while being here is the feeling of isolation. i live so far from the main city and from my friends that it's difficult to have motivation to go anywhere because it can take so long and be expensive. i only had the bike for three weeks but it was a complete change in life that i'm finding is hard to let go of.

i've talked to a lot of people about the situation in hopes that maybe some one will explain to me what i'm suppose to learn from this but i know i can't get my answers from anyone but but God.

so i'm waiting and trying, trying so hard to be quite and listen.

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.