Thai BBQ and a bonus!

Last night, I (Dani) took the older girls (Hope, Naomi, Sarah, Faith, Cheri, Grace, Ruth, Esther, Abby, Debbie, and Rachel) out for some fun!  Jesse had money left over from the USA team's visit, and he wanted to have some of it spent on fun times with the girls.  Due to my gender, I was lucky enough to tag along!

First we hit up Central Festival - one of the busy, crowded malls here in Chiang Mai.  Each of the girls got 80 baht (almost $3 US) to spend as they wanted.  After an hour, we met up back at the Song Taew (vehicle) and House Mother and House Father drove us to a Thai BBQ restaurant.  Thai BBQ is a unique eating experience!  There's a huge buffet of raw meats and veggies.  You dish up what you want, and take the raw foods back to your table, where you have a dome-shaped contraption over hot coals where you can put your food on the dome and cook it.  There's a lip around the bottom of the dome into which you pour water, and you can also boil your veggies if you'd like.

Since it's all-you-can-eat, we ate... and ate... and ate!  For dessert, fresh fruits (watermelon, pineapple,  and cantaloup) is available, along with an assortment of tasty Thai-style coconut-milk based jellies, and an assemble-your-own ice/jellies/coconut milk concoction.  And, of course, ice cream for the unimaginative!  

After eating until we were rather miserably full, off we went to the Saturday night walking street in one of the local towns outside of Chiang Mai.  Walking street/open markets are a common event here, and they're a GREAT place to find cheap things for sale - food, clothing, backpacks, toys, soaps, etc.

I didn't pull my camera out at the mall or at the walking street, but I did snap a couple shots from the BBQ.

Song Taew Ride to the Mall

Debbie, Ruth, Esther, and Grace enjoying their BBQ

Abby dishing up at the meat station

Faith, Cheri, Faith, and Hope - working on their meal

Abby's and my plate pile after our meal

House Mother and House Father

BONUS:
We've developed some delicious drink recipes here, and as a bonus to you for getting through these blog posts, we thought we'd share one of our favorite recipes with you.

(Note: We make this in our magic bullet, so measurements are approximate because we just make it based on how it "looks" in our magic bullet container.)

Blend together:
2 Tbs cocoa powder
2 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup of milk (we use coconut milk - it's quite creamy, so a good substitute for you dairy drinkers would be whole milk or even half-and-half!)

Add about 2 cups of ice cubes (we fill up the container) and splash in a bit more milk (approximately 1/4 cup - enough to almost cover the ice cubes), and then blend thoroughly.  If desired, artistically "splash" the inside of a cup with chocolate syrup, pour in the chocolate milkshake/smoothie, and enjoy!

Variations:
We've tried this with a drop of doTerra peppermint essential oil (AH-mazing... like a cold Christmas drink!), and we've also tried it with strongly steeped chia tea (rather than the splash of milk at the end), which is also quite delicious and a bit exotic :)  If you find any other tasty variations, please let us know what they are!  I'm thinking I might try it with lavender oil next :)

Thai Tea-Party

From Dani:

Last weekend, Gabe and Jesse Larsen (our short-term roommate/new long-term friend!) took the older boys on a "boys-only" adventure.  I'm not entirely sure what all it comprised of, but I know it was about 12 hours long, it involved at least 2 meals, an arcade, and a movie.  It sounded like they all had fun!

Meanwhile, since I had most of a day to myself, I decided to host the little girls (Becky, Joy, Hannah, Cadia, Blessing, and Tamar) for a tea-party at my house.  I invited them via a scroll addressed to the girls, with the option to dress in their favorite dressy outfit and come for tea at 3pm.

Once Gabe and Jesse left at 11, I took the scooter to the town about 3 miles away and made several stops:  first at the grocery store for cookies and tea-appropriate snacks, and then over to the open-air market where I found some ADORABLE polka-dot tea-and-saucer sets (I bought 7!), a teapot, and fresh flowers.  I scootered all my party-prep back home - stopping at the school to grab a pack of crayons and copy off a bunch of color-pages for after-tea entertainment - and got to work.  Since we only have 2 chairs, and a lot of tile, I decided the safest route was to set up a picnic-style tea on our living room floor - less distance for dropped ceramics, and plenty of space for all of us.  I dressed in my prettiest dress, and welcomed the girls when they arrived en masse at 2:55pm.

They helped me finish doing my hair, pick out my necklace and earrings, and we all got a generous squirt or two of my favorite perfume.  While we were donning appropriate scents, we saw one of the 3rd grade boys lurking outside the house, so we invited him in to join us for tea as well.

Tea was served, along with coconut milk as a creamer and as much sugar as I had available in the house.  Needless to say, tea was a hit!  ALL of the cookies and sugar and tea and cream got consumed.  And then we commenced coloring.  And then we watched some Barbie short videos on YouTube.  And it rained, so the girls were thrilled that they had to "stay" at Teacher Dani's house.  AND the plans were made for (at an undefined time in the future) the little girls to come have a sleepover at the house.

Below are some pictures of the day:

Sweet Joy

Impish Luke

Tea is served

Spunky Tamar

Resourceful Hannah loved the iPod!

Becky, Hannah, and Cadia

The Coloring Corner!

Overall, we had SO MUCH FUN doing girl things (Luke left not too long after he finished his tea :)). These precious girls are just a huge blessing to us.  We are really enjoying getting to spend time with them and get to know their personalities.  I think tea parties are going to have to be a regular part of our time here!

Field Trips!

We are well into the school year flow, and we feel like we've (mostly) hit our stride. Praise The Lord (and THANK YOU for the prayers!)!

This last week and the week before we had field trips. These were the only two field trips we've done this year, so I think it was accidental that they were in two consecutive weeks. Both were an adventure!

The first one was a "science day" field trip hosted by a local university. We think every.single.child between the age of 3 and 18 was present. It was nigh unto insanity! We were given charge of 8 students. Fortunately, the other teachers were very gracious toward us and gave us 8 of the easiest students to handle!

The day started full of anticipation - and rain! All the students showed up in their purple PE uniforms, and the teachers wore their pink shirts. We lined up for our usual routine of singing National Anthem, reciting The Lord's Prayer, singing the King's Anthem, and reciting the school motto. Then everyone got divided into their teams with their adult supervisors, and we loaded up into the vehicles. Grades 4, 5, and 6 rode in the back of one of the very large songtaews, and grades 2 and 3 loaded up into the back of the small songtaews. Grade 1 piled into a 15 passenger van, and off we went on our caravan to the university.

Once we arrived, there was loud music, there were exhibits, there were dance troupes, there were snacks, there were booths, exhibition halls, and 5 buildings on campus to explore. Due to our lack of Thai language reading ability, we mostly just wandered around with our 8 kids trying to keep everyone together and find interesting things for them to do (at which we were only partially successful!) but at least everyone made it back to the lunch rendezvous location :)

Last week we went to a Lanna Heritage day at one of the schools here in Chiang Mai. This event was to celebrate the culture of the Lanna kingdom - formerly Northern Thailand. This event was much smaller than the Science Day. We enjoyed getting to browse through booths selling traditional Lanna style food, watch the kids explore the very large playground, and see some traditional Lanna dancing and games - and a lot of cute little kids in their traditional clothing uniforms (usually worn on Fridays).

One of our first graders getting a little goofy at Lanna Day.

My lunch at Lanna Day.

Playing on the playground.

This week it's been back to normal, although we do have an additional person in our classroom these days:

Jesse, a fellow that came on the team from Longview last month, is here for another few weeks. He's been working a lot with our second graders, who love having him around!

I'll close with this blurry picture of grade three doing a "get your wiggles out" dance. We figured out how to get the to do it: turn it into a competition! Ah, the joys of teaching!