Taco Pado

Very correctly titled. These past couple days I've been walking around saying "Taco Pado". The children laugh, and agree, then they repeat what I say but in English- "Very Hot". Taco means hot and Pado means very. It has been so humid here. If I just stand outside I am dripping with sweat, I've probably lost 3 pounds just in water today :) It hasn't been raining, even though this is the rainy season, so we haven't had relief from the heat in a couple days. My new best friend has become the fan. It is way too uncomfortable to sit inside a room without a fan blowing on you. There is a little bit of a breeze outside, and every time we do feel a breeze we praise and thank God.
This weekend is a 4 day weekend for the children because Friday was a buddhist holiday. All the children and the people left school and work early on Friday to go to the buddhist temple to pray to buddha. Monks have been walking around Mae Sot with baskets accepting offerings of food from people to give to buddha. They will take the offerings and bring them to buddha. Our children and staff do not participate in this holiday, so they simply returned to the orphanage after school. Pastor Winai drove a lot of the children to their villages, so they can stay there for the weekend. So there are only about 70 children at the orphanage this weekend. So Friday night, I decided to give the children a break from learning English and we just played games. I learned two new Thai games. One of the games the children line up in rows and they connect their hands. You have two people, one person is the tiger and one is the deer. They have to chase each other through the rows of children. It is so much fun!! Me and Leslie played and I was the deer and she was the tiger. Then we played a game that is really similar to musical chairs, except you play sitting on the ground in a circle and you have hats on your head. There is one less hat then people. You take the hat off the person in front of you and you keep doing that until the music stops. The children play really intensely. They hold onto their hat until they take off the other persons hat. It's crazy! Me and Leslie were the last two left, and we were playing some hard core musical hats and she stabbed me in the eye with her finger. It was really funny!
Today was also a really fun day! I taught the children directions. I taught them forwards, backwards, left, and right. They had to pair up with another person and one person had a blind-fold on. The person without the blind-fold had to direct the other person around the room using only English. They had to tell the person forwards, backwards, left, or right. The children loved it. They boys were being boys and they were directing each other to run into the girls or the wall. It was so fun and the children were speaking very well. Then the English lesson was over and I played red light, green light with the children. It was a little bit difficult because there were 70 children, but they loved playing! They get excited about everything. I would give whoever touched me first a peice of candy that I brought from home as prizes for the children. They would bow with their hands together as if they were praying and say "Thank you teacher". It's incredible how grateful these children are. It blows me away! They are so polite. Even if they just walk by me they bow until they pass me. Their culture is so different from ours.
Me, Carl, Leslie, Noah, and Mae drove into town today. They don't use toilet paper here, they use a little hose to spray their bottoms clean with water. So I had been using baby wipes but I was really starting to miss toilet paper, so I decided it was time to drive into town and buy some :) I also needed some laundry soap. It's coming time to do some laundry so I needed to buy some soap. There are 3 cement water tanks that they fill up with water to do their laundry. They fill up a plastic bucket with water from the container and then put some soap in the bucket and then they put their clothes in and wash them with a scrub brush. Then they hang all their clothes to dry. This is how I'll be doing my laundry for a year :) While we were in town we stopped at a 7 eleven and bought some ice cream. It was pretty good. Not American good, but pretty tasty. I was sitting in the back of the truck with Leslie and Mae and I started to feel really sick. Noah drives like a crazy person and it was really, really hot, so Carl let me sit up front where there is air conditioning and Mae drove instead of Noah. I started to feel so much better and we drove through the market so Mae could buy vegetables. She rolled down her window and some rank, nasty, funky smell made it's way into the car. We were driving through the fish market where there was fish, pig heads, pig intestines, and other fowl things sitting right on the tables out in the open. There is also this fruit here that the Thai people love that is called Durian. It smells like poop and tastes just the same. Solo told us that if you eat too much of it, gives you a fever because it starts to burn your insides. It's some nasty stuff. So the fruit was also in this market. All these smells together made me almost throw up. It's so funny how weak us Americans are. The smell doesn't even faze these people and me I can barely hold down my throw up. I'm going to be "strong like bull" when I come home in a year :)
After we came home from the market I went in my room to sit in front of my my fan and read for a while. I guess I was exhausted because I fell asleep in the middle of reading and slept for about 2 hours. It was very nice, but when I woke up I was so sweaty. I'm really starting to appreciate the air conditioning I had back home. We have so many luxuries in America that we take for granted. We are so blessed in America and so many of us have no idea, and we're constantly wanting more. These children have nothing, and they are the most unselfish children I've ever encountered and they all take care of each other. The older girls cook and do the younger girls hair. We all could learn so much from them. I wish everyone could come here and live even for a week. It would change your life. Hopefully, it would change it not just for a month, but for a lifetime.
Tonight, the sunset was absolutely gorgeous. On one side of the sky you could see the moon, bright and hiding half-way behind the clouds and on the other side you could see an array of orange, pink and purple amidst the clouds as the sun said goodbye. It's better then Phoenix sunsets. As I came out of my room with my camera in hand to capture the beauty of the sunset (which photos can not do it justice), I ran across the stage that takes me from my side of the building to the other side of the building. The children were all sitting by the stage, and I stepped up to the stage and didn't step up high enough and I fell right in front of all the kids. It was so funny. I jumped up and said "I'm ok". The kids all just stared at me because they had no idea what I was saying. We'll call this my first embarrassing moment in Thailand. Although, the kids only cared if I was ok, there were no wrong intentions at all. But it was hilarious. Sorry, I have no pictures of that. Also, today it was very neat because I spoke with Noah's English teacher. Me and Noah are meeting with him August 8th and we're talking about an English camp. They are having an English camp at the University and I am going to teach at it. I pray God will use me during this event to witness and be a light. God is so good, and He is totally directing me and stretching me and opening up so many doors.
Tonight I ate a wonderful dinner. They truly treat me so good. I think they want to make sure I'm healthy so I can teach the kids :) I eat a lot of garlic. Tonight the weirdest thing on the menu was fried flowers. They are this certain flower and they cook it up. It's delicioius. I never thought I would be sitting in Thailand and eating flowers. Amazing the places God takes us :)
Speaking of places God takes us, I was doing my devotional this morning and I loved it! I read John 7:17. It talked about how the way we understand spirituality is not through intellect but through obedience. This is so true. We get so caught up in knowing and memorizing scriptures and the rules and going through the motions and thinking we're all high and mighty because we can recite scriptures, but we get spirituality mixed up with religion. It's not about religion, it's about our obedience to our Love, our Father. We grow spiritually when we obey. The last line was the one that hit me the hardest- "First go- at the risk of being thought fanatical you must obey what God tells you." No matter what, we must obey. When we obey God can use us in ways we never knew He could before. I'm learning this day by day.


p.s. Thank you all so, so, so much for your prayers, words of encouragement, and love! It means so much to me all the way out here in Thailand land :)

p.s.s. I can't upload my pictures to my blog for some reason, but I'll be uploading them to kodak gallery and you can view them by going to this website. It takes forever for them to upload so I'll be uploading them as I get time :) I think each time I upload them they'll show up on this site, but if not I'll keep you updated on the website address.

http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLandingSignin.jsp?Uc=9g2wdfq0.81wlq2oo&Uy=-915v4m&Upost_signin=Slideshow.jsp%3Fmode%3Dfromshare&Ux=0