OIT-only in Thailand

March 18, 2008

So many more memories to share-and so many more stories to tell. J So my friend, Kat and I had a very eventful weekend, though not on our own planning. It was completely unintentional. Sunday morning bright and early we were just finishing breakfast when I spied an elderly man outside our door and gate shouting, “Excuse me! Excuse me please”. He was clothed in a sarang and had a somewhat angry frown on his face directed at me. I being myself, an honorary roommate, and still knowing very little Thai told my friend Kat that someone was at the door. Well, she went outside to see what he wanted. He proceeded to make a clucking sound and motioned like he was turning a key in the gate lock. Kat, inwardly laughing, went and got the key and unlocked the gate. He then came in, with a pot in hand and a large pole of some type. He pointed at something in the ground. Kat bent over to look only to discover it was some type of tea leaf. He then set his pot down beside it evident that he wanted to have the said tea leaf. “Mai pen rai” Kat told him, with a smile on her face (‘whatever’). He then proceeded to pull a hammer from who knows where and pound the his pole with it, steadily and slowly breaking up the cement around the area. J He finally reached his goal and extracted the tea leaf and put in his pot. When this was all over (which had been about 20 minutes) he turned to Kat and said gravely with a clear and loud voice, “thank you very much.” And left. What a story, hey? We are still laughing about it over here-oh the things you see and encounter in Thailand! :-D

That evening I was extremely excited because through an unexpected turn of events my very good friend, Desiree, who was on my team here last summer and whom I had not seen since then, was in Lopburi for the evening! She is studying at Chiang Mai university this semester and was traveling for a few days and happened to stop in Lopburi on her way to Ayutthua. We worked it out and got to have dinner together. When we met up at the steps of the Tesco-Lotus we both squealed with excitement and hugged each other—it felt so surreal yet so wonderful at the same time. “Can you believe it Mel—we’re here… together…in Thailand!” I was equally excited. It was such a true encouragement and blessing to my heart to be able to spend even a few hours with Des. I am so excited to hear about everything she is doing here and how life is going for her in the States….it was such a true gift. I think God might have known I needed a good friend—it was like seeing a bit of what happened last summer and Des is a true kindred spirit, as Anne would say. When we were here last summer, we talked about coming back together in a few years to live in Chonburi and teach English….we’re still thinking about it. And Des also mentioned working at Agape-which is the AIDS orphanage where she has been interning-for a 1 to 2 year internship. Something to definitely pray about….

Monday I spent the whole day in Bangkok with my friend Faa and her boyfriend Reg. We went shopping, had lunch, ate some ice cream, I met Faa’s family-her mom is so sweet and we just talked. It was an all around good day, even though it was full. J That evening however, as Reg and I were riding back to Lopburi in a van, we found out that my roommate Kat had had a fainting spell. She had been talking with some friends in the market and suddenly felt unwell, sat down and fainted. She is okay now—Renee took her to the hospital where they thought it could have been food poisoning/dehydration. They sent her home with some antibiotics and she’s been drinking lots and lots of liquids and resting a lot recently. I’m so glad she’s okay and that she was with friends when she passed out and that they knew what to do. She’s laying on her bed across from me “watching” Pride and Prejudice, but has fallen asleep already. She needs her rest, its good for her.

And I have once more incident that I wanted to share from this morning actually before sharing some of my more serious thoughts. J Lately, as in today and yesterday, I have taken to getting up a bit earlier and going out to sit by the river to have some devo time. Well, this morning, I headed out a different direction than normal and spotted the perfect spot—or so it would seem. J It appeared to be a bit of a steep embankment but then it flattened out and there was a beautiful small tree and a small rock to sit in, though I usually just sit in the dirt. Well, not really wanting to leave my bike up at the top of the road I thought we would go down the embankment together. Yeah—bad idea. J We were attempting to go down slowly (oh-and I’m also in flip-flops, not the best for their grip) but the bike’s weight made it roll a bit faster. Soon it was sliding and so was I. We slid together and landed in a rather ungraceful thud in about a second. I had reached the tree and only had a few scrapes. My bike seemed to bear the worst of it, for later I had come to find that the handlebars were twisted a bit (however, Bob was able to fix that for me in just a few minutes when I got to his house). I proceeded to have my devos and enjoyed spending time with God. I look back now and laugh though-a self-inflicted bike tumble, how funny! When I told my friend Kat, we both had a good laugh….ahh the things to learn. Suffice to say, I most likely will not be traveling down any more riverside steep embankments with Soliloquy anytime soon.

Josh and I have started reading this book The Sacred Romance together, by Brent Curtis and John Eldredge-they talk so much about what it means to draw close to the heart of God and how we have a longing in our own hearts for something that we can’t fully express. Though sometimes we can get caught up in putting on external selves and keep our real, inner selves hidden away. Frederick Buechner was quoted to say, “[our] original shimmering self gets buried so deep we hardly live out at all…rather we learn tno live out of all the other selves which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world’s weather.” That was challenging to me—how can I learn to express my real self, my ‘shimmering’ self to the world instead of hiding it behind. Sometimes I wonder, as one of my housemates pointed out, if by being busy, we choose to hide ourselves from the world. Do we choose our mask or does our mask choose us?

The authors go on to say “our journey will take us to explore the hidden questions of our heart, born out of the stories of our lives” (p. 10). That was just true poetry in the way it was phrased but I also was drawn to the idea by its use of journey and questions. I am learning more and more each day that life is a journey and I’ve been told that its more about enjoying the questions than getting the answer anyway. That causes me to ask how can I live the questions of my heart even they are questions without answers? How can I live them on this journey of life that God is walking with me on?