Hello Everyone - Merry Christmas & Happy New Year from Thailand!
We thought we would share an update about the past couple months here in Thailand :) Yep, I missed the mark on updating the blog every month so this one is a rather long one - be prepared. It has been busy, yet rewarding couple months for sure! Now that we are overseas and have almost hit the 6 month mark of living here, we realized how quickly time is going to fly. So, we are being very intentional about doing and seeing things on this side of the world while we have this amazing opportunity and only 2.5 years left. Thankfully Taylor's school and Jason's work allow us a good amount of time to be able to plan many fun adventures.
So what have we been up to these past 2 months?
Well, let's start with Jason. He has now started biking into work a couple times a week. He loves getting his exercise in this way, while it also provides a good Thai cultural experience as well. So, it's a double win! He is a crazy man but he loves the adventure! It takes a little over an hour for him to get there one way on days that traffic is ok. So one day he will ride into work and take a shuttle home and another day he will ride his bike home from work to spread out the exercise. We just have a system now that he texts me when he gets there safely, so I can have a peace of mind that he is ok. I'm still intimidated to drive into downtown myself, so imagine what it's like riding a bike into the craziness of it all! Wish I had a pic to share of Jas on his bike and his biking attire, lol. Maybe next time :)
Back in October Taylor had a fall break, so we decided to head to the Krabi area. This is the beach area that Jason and I had visited a few years back when we had travelled to Thailand for our anniversary. The kids loved it and we all had a ball! We took our first family boat trip excursion while we were there and saw 4 islands and snorkeled for hours. Taylor's eyes were opened to how fun snorkeling is and Ty just loved swimming in the ocean and looking at all the fish. He clung to me for dear life on the boat, as that scared him quite a bit. We were all shocked about that! The resort we stayed at was right on the beach and we could choose to stay in our swimsuits and eat dinner on the beach or at night walk a short distance to many dinner options. Perfect and relaxing with kids our kids' ages.
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| He was trying SO hard to be good and not destroy Taylor's masterpiece! |
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| Snorkeling Buds |
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| They didn't have picnic benches on one of the islands but they did have tires to sit on while we ate our corn - HA! |
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| At low tide you could walk from one of the islands over to the next. |
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| Monkeys, monkeys everywhere! |
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| 5 sand dollars found! |
Also at the end of October, Taylor had an International Day at school. It was AMAZING!!! The entire day was set up to teach the kids about other countries and their cultures. There are 57 countries represented at the International School of Bangkok this year. They kicked off the day with a parade in the gym and each kid dressed in their own country attire including flying their own homemade flag. It brought tears to my eyes to watch as all the kids proudly flew their flags as they marched around the gym. Such a powerful reminder of what an incredible opportunity God has provided to our family! Then they did some special cultural shows that the different world language classes performed. My favorite was the Chinese show. It was really cool! I have a video of some of their performance that you can view if you go to our blog directly at
wilestrials.blogspot.com. The rest of the day was spent rotating the kids through the different classrooms that were transformed into different countries. They would spend about 40 minutes in each classroom with a group of parents that organized a story, activities, games and treats that their countries were known for. What an experience! I'm already looking forward to participating in this again next year!
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| Love all the different attire the girls were sporting! |
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| Representing Napal, Thailand, Japan and USA |
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| This was in the Thai room and one of the activities focused on growing rice fields. |
The next day was Halloween/Trick or Treat. It makes me laugh just thinking about trying to describe Trick or Treat in Thailand to you all. The management company of our neighborhood does a good job of making sure that Nichada (our larger expat neighborhood that feels like a small town inside) is decorated for whatever occasion it is. However, sometimes it's just a bit off in terms of being kid appropriate. For example, some of the decor were witches that showed cleavage and sexy outfits throughout the neighborhood. Christmastime held the challenge of seeing Mrs. Claus without her cleavage hanging out. Just different here - Ha Ha! Anyway, because our neighborhood is considered Bangkok, still being relatively close to downtown AND we live in the sub-division that is traditionally known for being all U.S. Embassy, the local Thai's SWARM to our community for Trick or Treat. They want the good American candy! Most American's get their candy shipped in by end of August/no later than beginning of September to ensure they will have what they need in time for the big event. When I talk swarm, I'm talking it's jam packed! We went through handing out 1,200+ pieces of candy before the trick or treat time ended! The U.S. Ambassador even came out to our sub-division and handed out candy since it's such a big deal here. We also enjoyed having a sweet couple that Jas works with come to visit and spend the evening with us and experience what this is all about here which was nice to experience it for the first time together. While we carried on our tradition of eating chili and cornbread on Trick or Treat night, I'm not sure that is one we will continue as it was super hot still and just not as fun eating chili while sweating your head off. Taylor chose to be a gymnast to try to keep as cool as possible that night. I forsee her being a swimmer next year - HA!
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| This was the only time we could get him to keep the gloves and mask on. What a hoot! |
Moving on to early November, Jas and I went to our first ever Marine Ball. We have a few marine families that live on our street or one street over and we wanted to go and support them. So... off we went. It was a fun night and I think the most fun part of it was that the entire group danced! When it was dancing time, I would say the majority of the people there in a roomful of about 500 people were dancing. It was fun! And we enjoyed hanging out with some good friends here too!
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| This was taken right by our house. |
Toward the end of November, Taylor had a field trip to an island called Ko Kret. Jas was able to join us for the day and experience another fun adventure. We learned about the Mon people that live there and about the pottery process which Ko Kret is known for. Taylor even got to make a few pieces of pottery as part of her activities. Thankfully it's really close to school and would be easy to get back to again if we would like.
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| Working on the potter's wheel |
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| Painting clay pottery |
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| Making a clay animal |
After returning back to school, we joined Taylor in class as they made Loy Krathongs to celebrate the Holiday that evening. In Thai, Loy means to float and Krathong means a circular floating object with a decoration of banana leaves, flowers, candle and incense sticks. The Thai's celebrate this Holiday to show gratitude to their Goddess of Water and ask for forgiveness in ensuring pollution. Also, floating the Krathong away in the water represents to them flying away misfortune and bad things in the past and asking for good luck in the future. So it was a good opportunity to teach Taylor what the Thai's believe and why they celebrate this Holiday, while comparing it to what the Bible says or doesn't say about it all. It's one thing to read about other religions and their customs, and it's definitely another to see and experience them in person! So the kids dressed up in their Thai attire and we headed out to the Loy Krathong Festival that evening within our neighborhood to float off the Loy Krathong that Taylor made at school and enjoy some yummy Thai dishes that evening.
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| Behind us in the lake is where we lit the candles and floated them off. It was funny to watch as the enormous fish would start playing with them and moving them all over the place. |
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| The party was held at the biggest pool in our neighborhood, since it's right beside the lake where the lanterns are floated. |
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| He looks so innocent here, but he is NOT! |
We also had a fun day adventure with one of our ESL students Krapuk and her family. They are local Thais and insisted they give us a tour of the Grand Palace downtown Bangkok. So off we went, our family and theirs to learn more of the Thai history and sight see together. Since the Grand Palace had a dress code, this will probably be the only time you see us in long pants while living here in Thailand :) Krapuk and her family were so generous of setting up a private family shuttle so we could travel together,paying for our lunch and bringing lots of snacks for us all. Please pray for their family as she is curious about learning more about Jesus and has come to our church a few times with her family.
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| Our ESL student, Krapuk and her family. |
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| The level of detail and sparkle the temples and buildings here are over the top! |
Thanksgiving was definitely different this year! The strangest part of it all was that Taylor had school that day, while Jason was off of work. So, Thanksgiving was celebrated over the weekend with friends once we knew that we didn't have school the next day to get up for. Taking advantage of Jason's time off on Thanksgiving, he and I took off on a day trip to Ayutthaya. It was just a 1.5 hr drive north of where we live so that was nice it wasn't too far away. Ayutthaya was the former capital of the Kingdom of Siam (what Thailand used to be called) and was a prosperous international trading port until attacked by the Burmese in 1767. The main thing that you will notice throughout our pictures below are that most of the Buddha's are headless. When Ayutthaya was attacked by Burma (neighboring country) that was what they were most known for doing was beheading all the Buddha statues. It's incredible to see how many headless Buddha's still exist there today! It was neat to sight see by bike for the day to see the ruins, temples and all. It was really beautiful and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed spending the day there. The architecture of the buildings was pretty incredible.
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| Beautiful building structures! |
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| Here the tree roots grew around one of the Buddha heads in the park. |
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| There were so many headless Buddha's everywhere you looked! |
Another AWESOME thing to wake up to on Thanksgiving was to find out that we had received an offer on our house! WHAT INCREDIBLE NEWS! Also, that same week we had put an offer on a vehicle for us to get around Thailand in since our first vehicle purchase was not approved by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs here. God was definitely sending us encouragement when we needed it, as our house had been for sale since last May and we only had a couple months left on our 6 month window of purchasing a vehicle and getting it approved in time for the duty free window regulations. THANK YOU JESUS! What a relief things were moving in the right direction :)
And the extra icing on the cake that weekend was that with the help of some very sweet friends, we were able to stream the OSU vs. Michigan with some other mid western friends living out here. Go Bucks!
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| Our audience for the big game was split but civil - HA! |
The month of December flew by quickly! It was a bittersweet one as Christmas especially has always been full of things we enjoyed doing together with our family and friends to celebrate Jesus' birth. We started off by decorating for Christmas, thinking that would get everyone's spirits up. Instead, it ended up in a tearful evening as it was an evident reminder that it would be different this year being so far away from home and seeing our things in a different home for the first time for Taylor. Tyler just cried because he was afraid of the tree and the hot lights lol. See here in Thailand, the Christmas lights are BLAZING HOT! I'm talking you plug them in an after a minute they could burn you. Talk about fire hazard! I couldn't handle keeping them, knowing how quickly something could go bad with them on, so we quickly sold them and resorted back to our US LED lights and managed to plug them all into our 1 of 3 transformers that the Embassy gave us when we moved. THANK GOODNESS! It was a really good reminder for us this year that where ever we live near or far, God will always be right there with us. Quite frankly he is the only one that can be, no human can fill in that gap. Thank goodness it doesn't require a plane ticket or a long travel time to spend time with him! So thankful for the comfort of knowing his promise that he will ALWAYS be with us.
The awesome thing about this December was that most people here in our community are in the same boat. I really felt we were able to gel together to help fill in the gap of missing our family and friends back home and celebrating together this year! We had fun decorating cookies, participating in a local Orange Drop (dropping off gifts to local Thai's in need in person), attending a choir concert, church Christmas program, neighborhood Christmas parties, work Christmas party, Christmas Eve Service, New Years Eve parties and some fun adventures while Taylor was off school for 3 weeks.
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| The orange drop was an awesome service project we did with our helper Khun Tuk and our church congregation. Tessa is a good friend of Taylor's that she calls her big sis since she is 2 years older than her. |
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| A local Thai family we dropped oranges off to. |
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| Jason's Work Party |
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| Thankful for neighborhood friends who invited us over for the fun Christmas activities. |
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| Zoo Trip - super close to the giraffe |
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| What a fun day at Dusit Zoo! |
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| WOW! Ty did NOT like Santa this year! Even when Santa came around on a golf cart and handed out popsicles! |
One fun place we went to with friends was an indoor snow town. Pictures say it all :) It's the coldest I've been in the past 5 months and it made me thankful after to know that I didn't have the cold winter weather to deal with this year!
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| Taylor's Buddies Hunter and Vivian that we try to do fun big kid stuff with on school breaks. |
We also went to a local Children's Thai museum which was nicely done!
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| Our neighborhood gang that we see daily! |
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| This room was set up to be a newscasting room. Ty looks so guilty! |
Friends of ours that live downtown Bangkok let us crash at their place for a night while they were vacationing. So we decided to take the kids to have a special meal downtown and then spend the next day at Ancient City. It really was a beautiful day biking around as a family and learning more about the Thai history and culture. We definitely have this place marked as a good one for when visitors come to town!
Jas and I did a quick overnight with just Taylor to Kanchanaburi (known for the Bridge over the River Kwai) and then spent the next day hiking the Erawan Falls. We are quite impressed with how well they keep their National Parks here!
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| Look at those fish nibbling on her feet! |
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| A closer look! So brave :) |
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| She got brave! |
We also enjoyed our first ESL (English as a Second Language) end of semester Christmas Party with our students. It was so encouraging to see the relationships that we have built our students and some actual fruit as a result of this ministry. Our ESL leaders were able to share some stats at the end of the semester that at least one person accepted Christ and 5-6 more were interested in talking more about Christ which is really encouraging to here how God is using this ministry to reach the locals here!
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| Our ESL Buds |
We are also THRILLED to share that we closed on the house on Dec 28th and that same week we also received approval to buy our car. PRAISE GOD for his perfect timing of both of these BIG hurdles being complete before the end of the year. Bittersweet to think about no longer owning a home back in Maryland, however it sets us up much better to be more open to going where God wants us to be next. Who knows what his plans for us in the future will be. Personally, it's exhausting to try to keep planing things out for the future and we are finally to a point of just putting it in God's hands and letting him lead us as to where and when we need to be somewhere. We are thankful for His clarity!
And now to start the new year we are celebrating in Koh Chang for the week, Thailand's largest island. We are continuing on the tradition on going on vacation as our big Christmas gift to ourselves and the kids to create memories together. It's gorgeous here! It was overall about 6.5 hrs to get here between driving to a pier, taking a 30 minute ferry ride and then another 30 minute drive to the resort once we arrived to the island. Long but in perspective not bad when you have 2 little ones and a car to load up with toys and all. The water is crystal clear here and you are surrounded by gorgeous mountainous views and other islands. Breathtaking! More snorkeling to do, we took a family Kayak trip to the next island (yes Ty too), going on the kids first elephant trek and a night fishing trip for Jason. It still is mind blowing how much less expensive these things are to do here to allow you to do them. We never could have afforded to do all these excursions and adventures back in MD on one income! We are thankful for these experiences!
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| The views here are AMAZING! |
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| View from our room balcony. |
With Much Love From Our Family to Yours,
Meg
