Month 4: Thailand // This month, as crazy as it was, was my favorite month on the race so far. My team stayed alone in Ban Doi, a small village in the Chiang Rai district. Our ministry for the month was teaching English at an elementary school. I taught a class of 13 fifth graders and I absolutely loved my students. One of my students, Mesa, asked me what my favorite color was and then brought me that flavor of juice box the next day. On the last day of class, each of my students had a goodbye card for me, two of which had a printed picture of me and that student inside. I’m telling you, these people love to love. Their Thai names were difficult for us to pronounce so they gave us their American nicknames to call them by. Here are the names of a few of Ban Doi students:
Boys names: Program, Yo, Meth, Hope, Hart, iPhone, Egg, Chicken
Girls names: Rat, Donut, Yok, Bum
The joke is that the kids probably just opened the English dictionary and chose the first word they saw to be their name. Despite having questionable names, the Thai kids and teachers were so welcoming. One of the teachers gave us her “extra” house to live in for the month. The house was completely empty, no beds, a sink or shower. As I told my family, you could call the rooms by their names such as kitchen, living room, and bed room, but there was nothing to set each room apart from the other. You could have cooked in the bedroom and slept in the kitchen, all rooms were as equally empty as the other. No counter or refrigerator marked the kitchen, just a microwave and rice cooker sitting on the tile floor. We took cold bucket showers and then laid on our sleeping pads in shorts trying not to move much so we wouldn’t sweat again.
Despite having virtually no accommodations, our Ban Doi bungalow provided us with so many laughs and memories. Here we celebrated Christmas Eve by having candle light worship together as a team. We spent our Christmas dinner eating spaghetti on the floor out of a rice cooker. We were too far away from Chiang Mai to go back and celebrate with the rest of our squad, so while they spent New Year’s together at a huge lantern festival, we set off lanterns with a few of our Thai neighbors. This holiday season was unlike any other I’ve experienced, however it wasn’t as hard as I expected it to be. With every gift of chips and candy I opened from my teammates I knew I was loved. It wasn’t the best Christmas day I’ve ever had, but I was humbled to spend it teaching 13 students (that may or may not have understood my English) about the birth of Jesus.
Team Selah’s Christmas Eve candlelight worship:
Our Christmas “tree” cut out of a banana leaf with presents underneath:
New Years Eve:
On our off days, the host liked to take us out and experience Thai culture. Here’s a bit of what we did.
Choui Fong Tea Plantation:
Elephant sanctuary:
White Temple:
Hot Springs:
Golden triangle:
While these activities were fun, I think our team would all agree that the highlight of each week was being taken into the city an hour and a half away for groceries so we could eat KFC.
All within a 3-day period I broke my phone, got bronchitis, and fell through a roof. Let me tell you what to do when things like this that you just can’t make up happen. Laugh. Laugh while you eat pasta for the 8th day in a row on your floor. Laugh (and take pictures) when you fall through a roof because you were climbing to get leaves to wrap your Christmas gifts in. Laugh when you are served some of the most questionable, cold meats. Laugh when you come home from ministry to find your food strewn about the front yard. (We were outsmarted by a dog. Two days in a row.) When the school says they’ll pick you up at 3:30 AM for field trip day, laugh. There were so many times that living as we did could have caused frustration and resentment with each other. But rather than allowing these things to irritate us, our team used them to bring us together in laughter and memory making. While I can’t say that I’d like to go back to Ban Doi, I wouldn’t trade the experiences we had together as a team for anything else. Except maybe a bed(;
