thoughts from here

Hi friends!

Okay. Almost two weeks have come and gone faster than I could have imagined. I am going to start this e-mail with a scripture that my sister Jonna sent me on a card:

"I the Lord, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you a covenant for the people and a light for the gentiles, to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness..." Isaiah 42:6-7

My heart feels broken today; it might have been that I had a bad dream last night, that birthdays make you rethink your life and if you are where you 'should' be at the age you are turning, or that I am missing fellowship. Or probably lots of other things too.

Last weekend I went down to Chiang Mai (about a 4 hours bus ride) to meet with a friend I had written about previously and that I had met in my TEFL course. He's the one who married a Burmese woman and does relief work in Myanmar. He said he has English books that I could have for free, so I spent Monday morning looking through his stacks of old children's books and readers sent from Australia. He has a new born baby and I was ecstatic to hold little Ewing and and bounce him, kind of almost pretending he was my sister's first child, born on Saturday. *sigh. So, I came back from Chiang Mai with a big box of easy readers and posters for my classrooms! He and his wife also prayed with me before I got on the bus back to Mae Sai. Today I started cataloging the books; I've decided that it will be a better use of myself to set future teachers up for success by building up usable resources and and creating syllabi then to put all my efforts into creating perfect English speakers in 5 months. I'm excited about this; I think I can do it. I want to create a comprehensive report for the next English teachers, so they won't have so little to work with, as I have.

Life has been really busy here with DEPDC's upcoming 20-year aniversary on Dec. 11. My classes have been canceled recently so the kids can make decorations for the centre and cards and paper flowers and stuff. Today I was helping my student KamTheep with her paper flowers by glueing little stem-dots to them all. It's neat to see all the little handicrafts that my kids are capable of! So many of their crafts could be easily bought at a dollar store in Canada, but seeing each piece be made and put together makes them all so precious and beautiful. Things like tiny looped wires twisted together wrapped in coloured panty hose material bound by thread put together to make beautiful ornamental flowers, and long lupin-looking flowers made from using knitting needles to make a chord of loops with yarn tied to the spine of a palm branch. Pretty cool, I was impressed.

One of my favourite parts of the week are my Monday, Wednesday, and Friday classes with my four 17-22 year old monks from Myanmar: Arnone, Moei, Dang, and La. Arnone is quiet and pensive. Moei is the furthest ahead and always goes out of his way to learn more and to show me what he knows; he's also really good at helping the others. He picks up on English intonations really well, he always says a yes/no question, thinks, and then says it again but raises the last syllable. It makes me so proud every time! Dang is quiet and funny, and texts a lot on his cell phone under the table. Whenever we read books he gets really into as he is pretty good at sounding out words, he read loudly and guesses at words more than the others. La sits on the far right of the table. He wears glasses and reminds me of a 8 year old camper I had once named Ian. Whenever he thinks he scrunches his whole face up and it makes me laugh every time... once I asked him if he understood and he shook his yes, and then slower and slower until it turned into a, 'mm no, no I don't actually have any clue what you're talking about' head shake back and forth. Oh, those kids crack me up. Each class we review the last class' work, learn something new, play a game, read a book, copy down a verse of song lyrics and fill in the blanks, and then talk about the best and worst parts of our day. Today Dang said that the best part of his day was coming to English class because it makes him happy! They're getting braver and braver about trying out English words and speaking up... sometimes my heart feel like bursting, I am so proud!

So; I had a really great Birthday... Thankyou sooo much to everyone who sent me a birthday message! That was so lovely :). I got to talk to my sister and see her gorgeous new baby, Oliver, on skype, and then my housemate Sarah made me breakfast! I got to school to find that my classes were canceled and so spent the morning learning how to make woven palm-leaf fish to decorate the centre for the anniversary. During this one of the kids hijacked my camera, so they played around with taking movies and pictures of themselves for a couple of hours (really- immediate entertainment! And my camera didn't even get dropped!). It was so nice to just sit with my kids and teach some of the younger ones how to make fish, and see how proud they were when they were capable of doing it! One little girl was so happy when she learned how to make one that she threw her arms around my neck and gave me a big kiss on my cheek, Haha, a little affirmation goes a long way! I then walked up to the main building that I teach in and some of the staff called me over, with a surprise ice cream cake waiting for me!! There's the CUTEST little girl at the centre who is only 1 year old, named Pancake. She is a vocational student's daughter, and she sat in the middle of the table wearing extra large pajama pants eating ice cream with her hands... oh it was adorable. She's starting to not be so afraid of me. Sarah and Jamie and I then went out for lunch at my favourite place, a little restaurant owned by Muslims that has my favourite soup - Khow Soy - for about 90cents(25Baht). It's delicious. The afternoon was spent writing and editing the finishing touches to a grant proposal for the government US state department of Trafficking In Persons (G/TIP) which was due, and then we were invited out to dinner with the Director and his friends that were visiting! He didn't know it was my birthday, but when he found out they all sang happy birthday to me :). It was so lovely... I love how they eat here; everything is communal; you are given rice, and then people spoon different side dishes on to your plate. Mmm... yeah.

What else? Things that make me happy are: sweetened warm milk in the evenings on my way home, some sketches I bought in Chiang Mai to decorate my bedroom, my duvet (that I am SO glad I brought! That thing comes with me everywhere. If you're thinking of buying a duvet, it's a worthy investment. It's been with me to England, two season of tree-planting, and now Thailand.), my pair of leather sandals a friend made me in Chiang Mai which I wear every day, and... oh, learning the names of the street vendors. The Roti lady's name is Bai Sai, and the Milk Man's name is Soh. Oh! And the Khow Pat Soy lady's name is Newee. When I told her my name she pointed to a Coke bottle... no, not Cola, 'Nicola'.

So, Jonna's scripture verse really made me think. When I was at the Muslim restaurant a beggar was there who was blind in one eye. I didn't have any food to give her and Sompop said not to give them money (many of them are trafficked and they don't get the money), so I felt helpless. When I' m at food stalls I usually just buy them one of whatever I'm getting, but we were in a sit-down place and they don't like to sit down and eat with you. I refuse to ignore them; one cannot ignore humanity - ignoring people robs them of the dignity of being human... yet she stood there, pointing to her eye, with her hand out. And I sat there, smiling sadly, looking her in the eye, and shaking my head. As Christians and people who believe in the redemptive power of Jesus, can we believe in actually opening eyes that are blind? On my way home tonight I stopped in front of a stranded British man who's motorcycle had broken down 60km South of there and he was trying to get back to it (at 10:30 at night). I stopped and chatted, told him how to hitch hike in Asia (I promise I have never done it, nor will do it, I had just read about how in Lonely Planet while Brad was here), which is much different than in the West, and he (very randomly) proceeded to tell me how guilt ridden and hypocritical Christianity is and how terrible Catholicism is, and etc etc. Man, I've never met one person that hasn't been hurt by Christians/ the Church saying one thing and doing the other. He went on to say that Christianity is a great set of morals, but hardly anyone lives by them. I told him that it's not really a set of morals, but a God who wanted his children to be with him, and so decided to fulfill the 'rigid set of rules' so we would not be judged by them, and instead can live in relationship with him. So, the key word is relationship, and in relationship we will naturally become more and more like Jesus himself. Someone (Tozer, maybe?) said that all sin comes from wrong thoughts on God, and an other from my Prof, 'lack of intimacy with God is how we measure our pain' (Gregg Finley... I'm sorry if I said it wrong, I couldn't find where I thought I knew it from). So Christian morals and disciplines (not the same thing) are not the spine of Christianity, they're helpers to keep us close and growing with God, and as you are more intimate and growing with God, it pours out in characteristics that are like him. Doesn't it? This seems to make sense to me, anyway. So how can we be those people that heal broken hearts instead of hurt? Genuine-ness; perfection is only a painful stereotype and should be throttled; patient open-ness. Those sound like a good start. We've got to be able to give the blind, the captives, and the poor more than sad, sorry smiles. Mmm. Son Jai. Interesting. I left the man at the side of the road with a, 'God Bless'. I thought inviting him to grab the wicker couch at my house was not the smartest thing to do :S. Hm. Son jai..

Well! That's about it for now. It's Saturday tomorrow and I am very determined to find somewhere to set up my slackline, a birthday present to myself. I heard there was a lake nearby, maybe I will check that out.

Blessings. Sorry if my theology is wrong; I can't understand the sermons here... they are in Thai ;).

Love Nicola