Hello from Thailand!! We made it!
We arrived safely in Chiang Mai on the 13th where our whole squad stayed at the base in the city for a few days. AIM has a hostel called Zion where they house racers during their stay in the country as well as outside guests. Below the hostel is a coffee shop, Bella Goose, that’s owned and operated by two former racers. “Bella” stands for beautiful, and “goose” stands for leadership. The company seeks to raise up women leaders and empower women all over the world. They have several other locations around the world including Malaysia. We stayed in the city for 2-3 days for orientation and to catch up on sleep before ministry began on the 17th.
Three of my squad’s teams are scheduled to stay at Zion and have their ministry site within the city, and the other four (mine included) were sent out into the Thai villages working in the schools and orphanages.
Our ministry site is Mae Ai, a district about four hours outside of Chiang Mai. We are teaching English at a Buddhist school for children aged roughly four to sixteen. We’re split into different classes, kindergarten, primary one, and primary two. I teach primary one 2-3 times a day for an hour each with two of my other teammates. So far, we’ve taught animals, colors, and prepositions to three of our classes. We also have a decent amount of free time spent at the school where we can hang out and play games with the kids, or spend time in the break rooms the teachers let us use.
The kids here are so different than the children we taught in Guatemala. In Guatemala it took us several weeks for the kids to open up and talk to us, but from the very first day here the kids were all over us, playing games, and showing us around their school.
The hardest thing so far has been the language barrier. Thai uses an entirely different character alphabet than English, including five different tones, so it’s almost impossible for us to understand our students. The school we teach at has a heavy influence in English, so the students know some, and our ministry host speaks English fluently. In Guatemala we picked up on Spanish pretty quickly and could understand a lot by the end of three months, but here we honestly have no idea what the kids say even when they tell us their names. The teachers and kids are patient, though, and have a lot of grace for us.
On Tuesday, we were invited to “sports day,” where eight schools got together and competed in track, basketball, football (soccer), volleyball, and school spirit. We spent the day watching our school compete and getting to know the teachers we will be working with. The school also provides lunch for us every day, and so far we have loved the authentic Thai dishes they’ve served us, especially the milk tea.
We live in a house right across the street from our school! It’s much nicer than we expected, but we’re still getting used to the squaty-potties throughout Asia. It has three bedrooms, one main room, a bathroom, and a porch. We sleep on our sleeping pads in our rooms, and our kitchen consists of a fridge, a hot plate, and a microwave. We have a shower and running water, but it’s not safe to drink so we buy bottled water for drinking and cooking. Other than that our house is empty, but we’ve made it ours and we love it. We even painted a Christmas tree that’s hanging in our living room!
The school has WIFI that we can use, and right in front of our house is a tiny restaurant where we get dinner every night for 30-35 baht (the exchange rate is roughly 32 baht to one U.S. dollar!). Other than that, Mae Ai doesn’t have much around it. If we need to go to the grocery store we ask our ministry host to take us (about a 45 minute drive), and there’s a 7-11 gas station about three miles away.
We will still have ministry on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but we will have New Year’s Eve and Day off. We plan on celebrating as a team, but it will be harder to celebrate without our entire squad. Even though we’re apart for this month (and most likely the rest of Asia) we’re still fighting for each other from across the country.
Thank you for your continued prayers and following me this far. We are in a Malaria zone and lice is known to run rampant throughout Thailand in general (we can see it in our students’ hair…), so please keep our health and safety in your prayers! I am also starting to look for jobs and what to do after returning to the States because we will probably not have WIFI in Africa, so I’ve begun to start looking around. Please pray that the Lord will give me guidance and direction in what to do next 
Also, including my monthly supporters through January (the final deadline), I am only $31 away from being FULLY FUNDED!! The Lord has been so faithful throughout my support raising process, and I can’t believe that he has given me almost $16,000 in less than year, as well as being able to pay off my student loans before coming on the Race. When I think back to where I was this time last year, I was finishing finals and starting to write my letters, but I didn’t even send them out until mid-January. Wow. The Lord has been so good to me.
Thank you Jesus for all the people you’ve put in my life to bring me to where I am now.
And thank you to everyone who supported, encouraged, and prayed for me throughout the past year. I don’t think you will ever know the true gratitude and life changing experiences I have encountered because of your willingness to bring me here.
Thank you from the depths of my heart!
Love, e
