Saturday, January 23, 2010

Heading Home

We've spent the last few days in northern Thailand's Chiang Rai at Nate and Rachel's home. It was a last-minute change in plans, but we wanted to learn more about SOLD and explore the potential for our future role in their work. Nate's sister flew in from teaching in China, plus Rachel and Carrie are here, too. There has been a lot of great conversation, and we're so grateful they let us crash for a few days.

Yesterday we tagged along with Nate and Rachel to English class at the school where the scholarship kids are, and it was a blast. The sixth grade practiced introducing themselves to Mike and I. The class included Aff, the boy we stayed with in the village, Meenong, our scholarship student, and Cat, the first scholarship student featured in their film. (She's so much bigger!) It was surreal to watch these kids learning and playing and laughing together, especially Cat and Meenong who we've seen and thought about so much.

We rented motorbikes to experience what it might be like to get around here. Mike, who has never been on a motorcycle before (much less driving one), hopped on one alongside with Carrie and Rachel while I opted to ride along with Nate in the truck. Long story short, we were immediately in rush hour, the driving is on the opposite side of the road, and Mike took a pretty rough fall when a Thai stepped out onto the street in front of him. We are thankful for traveling with two nurses, because there was some blood loss from his hands and feet, but he is okay! Nothing a few shots of rice whiskey and lots of gauze couldn't handle. He is going to have a rough time traveling as he is pretty sore and stiff, but we're just thankful that is all that happened. We returned the bike the next day. :-)

We are leaving in a few minutes for our 40+ hour trip home. One bus, four flights, and a night sleeping in the Bangkok airport. I am keeping our toothbrushes at the ready. We'll arrive Sunday night around 5:45 p.m. EST.

1 comments:

Marilyn Amstutz said...

Still praying! Sounds like it's been an amazing trip!