Currently I am in Myanmar and will be here until February 22, which marks the end of my time in Asia. At that point we will fly to Colombia, South America! Asia has been absolutely amazing. It definitely surprised me at how much I would fall in love with all the different people and cultures we have encountered our last 4 months.
I just want to take some time and do a re-cap of Thailand. It was incredible and I’m sad my time is over!
I’m just going to start walking you through my time in Thailand….
We left Cambodia and our 3 squad leaders at the beginning of January and headed on to Bangkok, Thailand for a couple nights.
But first we had to walk across the Cambodia/Thailand border!
We found a park once we got to the city of Bangkok and got a cool picture of the skyline!
Next we journeyed on to Chiang Mai, which is by far one of my favorite places! We hung out there a couple days while getting details figured out with our host. Once everything was figured out, we jumped on this bus with fans on the ceiling to take us about 3 hours north to the Fang District.
We arrived at Fangchanupathum School which is where we would be for the month of January. We actually had our own house to stay in and this was the view from the back! We were so far north that those mountains are actually the border between Thailand and Myanmar! We got to wake up and see this everyday!
The schedule was little different at the school because of testing, a new director coming and field trips but I still got the chance to hang out with some awesome students! These were my side-kicks and they are so sweet! It all started with them giving me some squid candy and some wasabi flavored peas and it ended with lots of hugs and tears.
One of the last nights there we were able to host a teacher appreciation night for the teachers in the English department. One of my teammates had really been seeking and asking the Lord what we could do to bless the teachers here. This is what He pressed on her heart and I’m so glad He did.
We got to host them at our house where we were staying and just plan a night all about them and thankfulness. We got to share who we give thanks to and why we are thankful for them. It was one of the most impactful moments on the race for me so far. The things that the teachers shared about how they have never had a team do this for them was so encouraging just to know we were following what the Lord wanted for them this month. We had a great time getting to know them and just sitting and talking. They also bought us some keychains as gifts!
This really tied into our month nicely because one of my teammates, Kat, did a team time talking about thankfulness. Some of us had read the book 1,000 Gifts and so she challenged us to see if we could create a list altogether with 1,000 things that we are thankful for.
We showed this list to the teachers and they were able to help us add some things to the list! God is so cool and just cares about all the little details!
Some of the teachers took us on some adventures! We got to go to an orange orchard, a vineyard, the cave where the soccer team was trapped, a white temple, sticky falls, and a tea farm! They seriously spoiled us!
After we finished our time at the school we went back to Chiang Mai to meet the rest of our squad for debrief. Our squad mentor, Jeremy came to join us. Debrief was so restful and refreshing! One of the main things I’m learning is to let go of control. This could be a whole blog by itself! Just learning to take one day at a time and to continue speaking truth and just doing it in faith so that it becomes belief! Debrief was everything I wanted and needed it to be and i’m so excited to continue this journey for 4 1/2 more months!
One of the last things I got to do before leaving Thailand was to go see ELEPHANTS! It was one of the coolest things I have ever done. We learned how to care for them, feed them, and bathe them!
Okay- I think that’s all I have for Thailand-not really but I’m just writing a blog not a book haha! It was a great month and I was sad to say goodbye! There are some pictures that are in my photos tab on my blog that I didn’t add to my blog so you can always go check those out too!
Thanks for reading!
Charla
