Europe: Getting Here

After we got back to Chiang Mai on Tuesday night (36 hours of hiking/motorcycling/sleeping on the bamboo floor of a hut in 100 degrees/boat riding/truck riding), we had about 24-hours to do our final clean out. The first stop in CM was the bus station, where we rented a scooter for 24 hours (we sold our scooter before we left for India). Next stop was The Salad Concept, a delicious restaurant that caters to the vegan/vegetarian crowd with huge piles of organic greens and choose-your-own-toppings for the splurge prices of 100 baht or so ($3). We ate salad AND an in-season smoothie of strawberries and mango AND each bought a dessert - we really splurged on that meal, and after a month of anticipating it, it was taste-bud bliss!

Next was home - to our condo - to start washing our clothes from the jungle and scrub our shoes and backpacks. 1.5 hours of scrubbing in the shower later with dish detergent and a scrub brush, and most things were pretty much back to a normal hue. After scrubbing myself almost an equal amount of time, we hung up our clothes, rigged up a fan system to blow on the backpacks, and fell into bed for the first horizontal-on-a-mattresses-surface sleep we'd had in a month.

We packed up our stuff to bring to Europe (a backpack for each of us, my purse, and a little day-pack satchel for Gabe to carry), boxed up a box to ship to New Zealand, tried to straighten/clean our apartment a bit, and hit the road on our scooter to head back to the bus station to return the scooter and catch our bus out.

The bus was overnight (6:30pm to 5am) down to Bangkok. We've done this route a few times, and our tickets were the cheapest yet (488 baht each - about $15), and the experience was probably the most ghetto yet, but hey, we made it! Once we got into Bangkok, we strapped on our packs and walked the few kilometers through a park to get to the metro station. When it opened at 6:30am, we rode it out to the airport.

Our flight leaving Bangkok was delayed, which was a blessing because we got a meal voucher (800 baht total for a meal at Burger King! We felt like we'd won the jackpot!) and had plenty of time to sort through a potentially complicated immigration situation leaving the Kingdom of Thailand. We thought we might be charged a fee (possibly banned from reentering the Kingdom for a time), but neither happened, which we were praising the Lord about!

Our 11 hour flight departed 3 hours late, and we realized that one of the reason our tickets to Venice had been so cheap initially was because we had purchased the "basic" fare - which meant no food service. I'm sure there was probably information informing us of that fact when I bought the tickets or received the confirmation or something, but somehow I missed it. The stomach pains of hunger abated about 6 hours in and I slept the last 5 hours, and the 2 free glasses of orange juice and one free tea we were able to procure got us through without purchasing overpriced airline food!

Upon arriving in Cologne, we found out that the last flight out for Venice had already departed, so our airline put us up in a hotel near the airport with breakfast included, paid for transportation to and from the airport, and gave us a dinner voucher. We had a delightful dinner with a Hungarian gal - probably a few years younger than us - that had just spent 4 months in Asia. Since everyone had been on the same flight and flooded the hotel restaurant for dinner at 10:30pm when we all arrived at the hotel, it was fun to have the shared suffering to bond over. Our flight the next day left at 2:30pm, so we had a free morning to sleep in a little and then walk around the neighborhood we were in. It was beautiful, albeit cold, and Gabe loved his little glimpse into German life.

We had a taxi provided to take us to the airport, and our taxi driver proved to be a delightful addition to our German experience. He was a Syrian immigrant (30 years ago) that shared more about how he feels regarding the situation in Syria when we asked him questions. He was also able to talk about the local industry and the historic places we were going through. We hit a major traffic jam that delayed is about an hour getting to the airport, but we were glad to have the extra hour to visit with George - we saw photos of his family and we were complimented on our English ("where are you from? I can understand you so well!" When we told him we were from the USA, he remarked that he thought we went to school at Oxford or something because we pronounce things to clearly. Gabe and i realized later that our English has changed to be much more ESL friendly over the last year - we choose international words and speak slowly and clearly these days!). We talked about what it means to be a Christian in response to poverty and this tragedy in Syria, and we discussed knives and German products. It was delightful.

Our flight to Venice was smooth (another conversation with the money change person who converted the last of our Thai baht into Euros reinforced that Germans find our English easy to comprehend), and we walked the 6km to our Airbnb place in Venezia Mestre from the airport because neither of us could stomach the idea of paying €8 each for a 15 minute bus ride. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and we enjoyed getting to walk through wheat fields, although the road was very narrow at times and the cars very fast! The packs on our back counted as our "weight lifting" regiment for the day!

Although long, the journey was full of surprise blessings along the way!



- Dani

JSMK: Final Thoughts

Although there were moments, during the hottest part of the days during our time at JSMK, when it felt like it would never come, we exited the jungle this week.

I could use this blog post to tell you about the final days and details - getting sick the day before departure, lying on the floor of our hut in the sweltering afternoon heat repeatedly taking off my shirt to soak it in a bucket of water and then putting it back on wet to try to bring my (not-too-high-but-still-miserable) fever down, and the pounding of the dehydration headache and turning of my stomach through the long, hot afternoon.

But I'll keep that part of the post short: we got sick, we recovered, we hiked out to the supply village and then rode on the back of Honda Wave 125cc scooters the 20km out of the jungle on the route we had previously entered via tractor. It was very exciting, at moments, and you should definitely ask Gabe, "What happened to the soap?" the next time you see him, and you can ask me, "How did you commune with the water buffalo?" if you want, but those stories would be better shared in person (when we're home safe and reading about them on our blog doesn't terrify our poor mothers!).

Instead I want to spend this post talking about the feeling I experienced hiking out. I was behind our friend Klo Law Law Say, in front of Gabe, who was in front of another ranger. We knew we were going into the zone of space as we left the jungle that is within a few miles of the Burma army, but with the present ceasefire, we didn't have to be quite so cautious as in past days (we heard that they used to only hike the trail at night, now we can hike during the day).

Although I had my heavy pack on my back, and I wasn't feeling 100% anyhow, and I was certainly a far cry from speedy on the mountainous terrain, I realized as I watched Klo Law Law Say's back disappear around a bend in the trail in front of me: I felt safe.

Oh, I'm not talking the kind of safe one feels when they're sipping hot cocoa in front of a cheerful fire on a dreary, rainy Washington day, or even the kind of safe possible to experience when one crawls into bed in a place where there are no venomous centipedes - I'm talking about that safe feeling that isn't dependent on creature comforts or surroundings, but rather on the presence of someone strong, someone good, someone brave, someone who you know has already made up their mind to do the right thing, no matter what the circumstances involve.

You see, not only was I with Gabe, who is certainly that kind of a person, albeit as foreign in this territory as I am, I was with two Free Burma Rangers. And because of that, I knew I was safe.

If someone or something should attack us, they would put themselves between us and the danger. If I grew too weak and weary to continue carrying my pack, they would carry it for me. If I slipped and fell and hurt myself - broke a bone or hit my head or got stuck in a ravine, they would do whatever it took to help me, to get me the medical care I needed, to get me out.

That's what they do - and for just a moment, in a very limited, narrow, Galawa (foreigner) tinted way, I felt what the thousands of Karen and other minority tribal people of Burma have experienced when walking trails just like the one I was on in the presence of a Free Burma Ranger: come what may, I have a strong, friendly, trained, warrior type of person here with me, and I know that I'm going to be OK. They won't leave me behind, they won't abandon me, they know this land and this trail, they will go through whatever I have to face, and they will do it with me.

And then, as such feelings and thoughts often - and perhaps ought to! - do, I realized how limited my scope of view was, as if walking in the presence of a good, strong, committed, resourceful, brave, honorable being on a possibly dangerous path was limited just to being in the presence of a Free Burma Ranger.

Do I not walk EVERY path with a personal, relationship-oriented, friend-God? Is not God's Spirit - brave, strong, good, honorable, resourceful, and even all-knowing and all-powerful - with me EVERYday, living inside me and accompanying me on any trail I travel, be it an urban or literal jungle, or figurative or physical mountains, carrying emotional or spiritual or tangible weight on my shoulders? But of course! "Even when I walk through the darkest valley, I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me" (Ps 23:4), and "He set my feet on solid ground and steadied me as I walked along" (Ps 40:2).

It was, despite the liter(s!) of sweat pouring out of my forehead, stinging my eyes, and making my vision wobble and stretch, a moment of clarity: "Put your hope in me, Dani. Travel steadily along my path (Ps 37:34). I know this trail, even if you don't. I won't leave you behind; I'll help you carry your pack when it gets too heavy. I am prepared, I am ready, I am walking before you and behind you. You can be at peace, even if there is war on all sides of you. You are safe."

What a tangible moment! What a visible revelation!

Later, when Gabe and I were talking about our thoughts on leaving, we decided that if something were to happen and we were to be told that we had to leave the US and never come back, abandon our people, and no longer claim association with them, BUT we could choose one people group in the world to ask to adopt us and take us in as their own, we would ask the people of Karen State (home of the Free Burma Rangers). And we would understand if they told us no, because we are so unfit and unknowledgeable about how to survive in their way of life, and we would bring so little to be able to offer them. But if they said yes, we would be so honored!

Our time at JSMK has redefined my mental image of a hero. Now, if Gabe and I were asked to picture our hero, we would immediately envision a small, dark-skinned person, wearing basketball shorts and flip-flops a couple sizes too small, carrying a huge, camo-colored backpack up a 45 degree angle mountain in blazing sun for thousands of vertical feet, perhaps stopping in a few square feet of shade cast by some tiny, scrubby shrub to say, "Ah! Teacher! Is so hot! I am so tired!" Before flashing a big smile, taking a deep breath, and hefting the pack onto the shoulder of their olive green t-shirt with a badge across the left breast that states: Free Burma Ranger.

My heroes keep climbing. There are supplies to deliver, people who need hope, justice to stand for, and they still have a long way to go.






- Dani

JSMK: Birthdays, House Dedications, and Thoughts on Concluding Teaching

Birthday:
Today we went to breakfast at our up-the-hill neighbor's house. It was for his oldest daughter's 2nd birthday (yesterday a pig was purchased at the vaccination village and driven all the way back to JSMK by a very dedicated and persistent pig-handler - it was the main course for the celebration). The party started happening at 7AM. I commented to Gabe, "This is thinly sub-culture know of that would have a turn out of 35 people for a birthday party at 7AM with all ages on a Friday morning." But, when the ENTIRE community wakes up sometime between 4:30 and 5:30AM and goes to bed by 8 or 9PM, 7AM feels more like 9 or 10AM in my home culture!

Anyhow, at the birthday today, there was a ceremony - singing, scripture message, a time for the mom to briefly share - and then a feast of rice, broth, pork, and spices. The child's gifts were mostly from the families with other small children, and they were comprised of a box of soy milk boxes, wafer cookies, and various other edible goodies. They weren't really opened or exclaimed over, just scooped up and taken into the back room.

A few hours later, the house was torn down so a new, larger house could be built, I guess!

House Dedication:
At lunch, someone stopped by our window and gestured for us to follow them, speaking to us in Karen. One of our lower-level English students was motioned over to translate, and we got, "Teacher, you go" as the translation. So off we went, following the inviter. We went to a house where the community was gathering again, and apparently we able to participate in some kind of a house dedication service. The gentleman who did the ceremony followed a Catholic-type format, complete with flinging water at everyone out of a shampoo bottle. The candles kept blowing out, which I felt badly for him about, and I'm pretty sure about 9/10ths of the people attending dozed off at some point during the hour long ceremony, but it was still fun to be included.

Teaching Conclusion:
I ended up starting class 15 minutes late because of the house dedication ceremony, but i don't think the students minded too much! After our class finished, I had everyone come pose for a picture with Gabe and me at the front of the room. It was a short, sweet, cheerful goodbye, and the students left on their merry way (as the hillside across from us was engulfed in flames, but that's a separate issue altogether. By the way, did you know that bamboo sounds like a gun shot when the chambers in each section of the bamboo get hot and then explode from the heat of a large brushfire? Yeah, for a few seconds, I thought we were under attack from the army and were needing to flee... In my flip flops! But it was just a clean-up fire).

It's strange for me to reach the end of this teaching gig. For the past seven years, I've been teaching year round, and whenever something "finished" (a quarter or even teaching at a certain place), I was already mentally working on the plan for the next place. I spent so many years developing new curriculum what felt like EVERY quarter at LCC, that I always needed to be jumping in with both feet the second the last quarter was finished and final grades were submitted.

Last year, when I finished at LCC, I had 6 weeks to focus on selling stuff, emptying our apartment, getting our to-be-stored things into storage, and the hundreds of little tasks that needed to be done before we left the country. And at the back of my mind, I was also thinking about how I was going to switch gears from teaching college students to teaching primary school ESL. Once we got to Thailand, besides climate and time zone acclimating, we worked on getting prepped and planned for the year teaching.

Last month, with the conclusion of our time at Bawrirak, we knew we were coming into this month-long gig of teaching ESL to jungle medic students, so I'd started thinking about and planning for our time here, even as we finished up details in Chiang Mai and jetted over to India.

Now, for the first time since I got that job at LCC the week after I graduated college, I'm done. Like, I don't have a teaching gig planned on my calendar. At all.

I think there may be a whole compartment - like a closet-sized office! - of my brain that has been solely dedicated to teaching since I first became a teacher, and all of a sudden, that office space is no longer needed for that work responsibility. I don't even know what I'll do with that part of my brain, but it is a little weird to think of rerouting the brain traffic away from there!

In reality, I'm not sure I'll ever be concluded with teaching, though, or at least not in the near future. It's become such an integrated part of me - making plans in a teacher way, interacting with kids in a teacher way, even structuring myself and my days in a teacher-ish way - that I feel like even if I never go back to a classroom, it's going to take more than a day to just STOP being a teacher.

I think I'm glad of that. There's something comforting to me, even in the presence of rejoicing at the break from lesson planning, that likes having that predefined role to function within for now.

I guess I'll just go into Teacher-on-Holiday mode in that brain office for the time being.

- Dani

JSMK: Vaccination Day

The calf muscles of Khyar Hel's leg rippled above his 2-sizes-too-small flip flops as he took another step. His calf was at my eye level, even though he was only two feet ahead of me. That's how steep the hill (mountain?) we were climbing was. We'd been climbing for 15 solid minutes and sweat had dr niches my shirt. And it was only 5:45AM - literally the coolest part of the day (about 74 degrees).

We went on. And on, and on, and on, and on. And on some more. The hill seemed to continue for.ev.er. In reality, we only climbed UP for about an hour and 45 minutes. I have no idea how many vertical feet that was, but I'd venture a guess from the views at the top that we were about 3000 feet up, and we started probably somewhere in the vicinity of 500 feet elevation.

And yes, we did stop to catch our breath four or five times! But it seemed an eternity - beginning in pre-dawn shadows and mist (Gabe and I were the only ones that used our headlamps when we left camp at 5:15, though - jungle dwellers must have better eyesight or surer footing... or both!) and seeing the sun slowly, dimly emerge from the smoke-filled atmosphere before it began blazing away at us near the summit.

We were on our way to a nearby village to see (and hopefully help) FBR medics vaccinate the village kids. If I thought the hike was tough for me (carrying, in my borrowed Karen satchel, the following contents: my 28 oz waterbortle, a ziplock with TP, my point and shoot camera, my headlamp, a package of instant Mama noodles, and the and notebook and pen which I used to jot down notes - a grand total of maybe 1kg), Khyar Hel had a backpack loaded with about 15kg of medicines and supplies. And I could barely keep up.

Gabe and I had volunteered for this - no one had forced us or even asked us - and I had to remind myself of the positives as we continued to climb (i.e.: my legs were getting a killer workout!).

Of course, we did make it to the village - a tiny ridge-top scattered with bamboo huts which we approached through a bamboo-grove ravine. Water buffalo, cluster of chickens, and families of pigs wandered at will. Our final destination was a smokey, 800 square foot hut, distinguishable from the others only by the parents and children that began to gather outside.

The FBR guys took a few moments to rest, drink some (boiled) water, and then they started setting up. The kids started to cry on cue!

Each child received three injections and two oral vaccinations. Gabe helped fill the DTP injections, but we're not sure what the others were ("For fever" we were told when we asked). I alternated between trying to teach the kids waiting outside songs in English and attempting to distract the little ones who came with their parents to the closest injection station. Gabe and Abbi filled syringes. Four others worked in pairs running the stations (sometimes they had to work with them parents to physically restrain the little ones). One guy washed arms and legs outside before the kids were taken inside, and one guy filled in immunization charts and handed out candy and oral vaccines.

Within an hour, it was all over - the brave older kids stoically looking away form the syringe, the toddlers that screamed in horror as they saw the needle pierce their skin, and the babies terrified by the noise, wailing into their parent's shirt.

We sat on the bamboo floor (sheets of flattened bamboo, spread over the wooden frame of the floor, about 4 feet elevated off the ground), and the parents came in with the their children's immunization and health record safely protected inside a ziplock clutched in their hands. I assume that ziplock might have been protecting those records since their child was born. Everyone carries their too-small-to-walk kids tied to their back with a large piece of cloth. One mother had several children and her oldest daughter, who was maybe 8 or 9 years old, seemed just as proficient at tying the little ones onto her back as the adults. One dad had two kids with him - one strapped to his back, and the other balanced on a hip. After the horrors of climbing that hill, I thought to myself, "Thank goodness that these kids are getting immunized. If I was a parent, the very last thing I'd want to do would be to carry my child back down that hill with a strange fever!"

After injections and clean up was finished, we wandered around the village while the owners of the house were we'd set up clinic made us food. We saw the (roofless) primary school, and saw our hosts' little daughter carry 3 large "buckets" made of bamboo (each one holding probably close to a gallon or so) head down the hill to the creek a little ways down. She strung the buckets on her back, with the strap of the contraption over her head. It was humbling to realize that was the water we used to wash our hands before eating our meal.

Fish, rice, some green mango, and several kinds of boiled vegetables were served to us, which we are with our hands, and then we waiting a bit while the FBR guys visited.

At 10:45AM, it was time to hit the trail for the long, long, long descent down. It took a little less time to go down, but not as much as might be expected, since we were slow, ("Slow, slow, slow, teacher!" our walking partners kept telling us!), and our legs seemed to be rubbery and shaky, and the dirt wanted to slide out from under our feet. There were a couple slips, but everyone stayed on their feet, and eventually we made it to the cool(er) shade of the valley floor, and finished the last 20 minutes back to JSMK.

Our bucket showers and lunch of Mama instant noodles were well deserved, we thought!

- Dani

JSMK: The Characters On Our Stage

By far, the biggest blessing of being out here at the Jungle school is getting to interact with and meet some of the sweet people who are here. We thought it might be fun to record some of our observations and interactions with them here on the blog both for your knowledge and our memory!

The director here at JSMK is Toh. He's probably in his early to mid thirties, although it's always hard to judge age - SE Asian people seem to be perpetually ageless and young looking to us, but out here they also live a pretty hard, subsistence-based life, which can give them a "weathered" look. However, they're extremely fit, so that aspect tends to communicate "youth" to our American stereotyped brains. Anyhow, he's a soft spoken, serious, thoughtful, humble, and kind man, but he's also got a quick sense of humor and a willingness to laugh at simple things. He's a medic and also one of the people who seems to teach the most. He's married and he and his wife have 3 kids - his eldest son is in our preschool, and he's a crack up! The other two (another boy and then the baby girl) are a little too young to come to school. Toh speaks English very well, and he often times stops by in the evening to check in and sit with us for a spell - checking email or informing us of something that's happened during the day. He's obviously a man that carries a lot of responsibility on his shoulders, and we will continue to be praying for him as we leave here that God would sustain him and encourage him in his role.

Toh seems to have two main sidekicks - Silverhorn is the one we interact with the most, probably. He's also quite proficient in English. He has two adorable preschool girls who come to class - only one of them actually does anything, the other one just enjoys sitting in the crowd... Perhaps a bit young yet! Silverhorn is quick to laugh and tease, and always has a big smile on his face. His sweet wife has also earned our appreciation as she gave us bananas the other day - when raw foods are as slim-pickings as they've been for us this trip, a bunch of bananas is like a New Year's party for our taste buds!

Eh Taw Boe is another fixture during this time - he's one of our students, and he's probably one of the most advanced in English. He comes to our house several nights a week to ask us questions about English and practice what he's learned. He's sweet and quiet and thoughtful - when we were playing w game in class a few weeks ago, he refused to wipe out the team that was his main competition when he got the chance. We appreciate his company when we hike to the village each Saturday, as his questions help make the heat and strain of lugging 13kg of rice back to camp over the big hill pass quickly.

Abbi and his wife are our up-the-hill neighbors. They have a small store in their house and Gabe usually goes to purchase a can of coconut water and a soda each day (the coconut water for me - amazingly refreshing even at 104 degrees room temperature - and soda for himself). Abby's wife was one of the ladies that helped me figure out the bathing protocol down at the river. Her English allows us to have simple conversations.

Sar Hey Blut and Tee Moo Paw and Mu Thal are three of our female students that have done simple things with us - either help me during the fishing expedition navigate a couple of the scary river crossings, or come sit with me on the front bench after sunset and make an effort at conversation.

Likewise, we've spent some time with Patalo (the Karen version of a Greek god/underwear model), Khyer Hel (always decked out in traditional Karen face paint), Soe Wil (with the most glorious mane of man-bun hair I've ever seen), and Daw Eh Doe (the mischievous-but-earnest little brother figure of the camp. All of these guys are in our classes, and we've had a few opportunities to hang out with them or need their help with various things.

Lastly, there's the random collection of people that we don't know names of, but they float around the camp - the sweet old guy that brings us bags of Birdy 3-in-1 coffee and beams at us every time he sees us, the spunky older fellow that we saw shimmy straight up a tree the other day and hack off the top 20 feet of the plant with his machete, and the little boy that sometimes squats down to see under the wall of our house to see what we're doing.

We are daily astounded at how brave, fit, strong, compassionate, kind, and generous these people are. Many of our interactions seem to entail hearing "Ta Blut" from these characters, which means, "Thank you," but in reality, we feel like we are the ones that are being gifted something extraordinary. These savvy jungle dwellers took in two foreigners with all the jungle sense of an infant and have helped them adapt and live here for the duration of our stay. And what a memorable stay it has been!


- Dani

JSMK: Dinner Guests and Differing Privacy Policies

This week, our up-the-hill neighbor invited us to come for dinner. Gabe buys little snacks from his in-home "store" every day, so he and Gabe have an ongoing relationship developing. His wife was one of the women who first introduced me to the fine art of river bathing, so we were excited to spend some time with them.

His wife and maybe some other ladies in the household had cooked up a feast for us. We had rice, of course, with the broth from a long-stemmed plant that had been boiled in water, and fried fish, fried and seasoned frog, and venison. It was delicious! We've had fish a few other times, but this was the first time we'd been offered red meat since we've been here.

The way one eats here is squatting or sitting on very low stools around a low table. Everyone at the table has a tin plate (if there are more people than plates, you just eat in shifts) filled with rice. Then you pour the broth over the rice, and start spooning toppings onto the rice. You eat with your fingers, so it's a bit of a messy endeavor.

One difference between American style food and Karen food is the presence of bones - in America, we usually try to remove bones as much as possible - although not every bone can be removed from chicken or fish or whatever - but here, it's just normal to have all the bones in the cooked food. I must admit, I chewed my fish carefully to make sure I got all the bones out before swallowing because the last thing I want here is a perforated intestine! Gabe found the frog skull he bit down on at one point a little disconcerting. I, personally, was having a little bit of a hard time with the hand-like front legs of the frog and the presence of it's skin!

The venison, however, was fantastic!

After dinner, we sat around playing with their toddler and visiting a little. We learned this couple has been married for 3 years and the husband is 26 years old. He's a medic here and sometimes helps with teaching at JSMK. Their younger child is 4 months old, and she was fussy because it was hot.

The wife invited me to go to the river and bathe after dinner, so i stopped by my house to grab my laundry pail and my lunghee (tube swimming dress/towel thing) and joined her. There were other ladies splashing in the water and washing their clothes, so I didn't talk much, but i enjoyed listening to their chatter. I'd taught "can" that day in class, and one of the things my students had learned was "can swim" so the students that we there had fun repeating "I can swim. Can you swim?" to me and to each other.

As for the rest of this week, we've chuckled a few times over how not-private our housing situation is here. The camp usually starts to wake up about 5:30 and work starts at 6am. We usually have our alarm go off when the roosters start to crow at 5:30 and we try to be heading out the door to either do a morning hike or head over to the PT field and do a workout. One day this week a crew of guys started coming up to our sleeping area about 5:35 to gather their tools for a construction project they were doing... And continued to come up and down the stairs for the next 40 minutes or so. Our "house" is also the storage shed for many things. I ended up taking my clothes to the bathroom to change because I didn't have any guarantee that I'd have 45 seconds of privacy to put on my workout clothes. Another night, after we'd gone to bed, a woman came upstairs shining her headlamp around the porch to search through totes in order to get more mosquito nets for the patients at the hospital. We literally never know when we're going to have people in our space.

This morning, as I was kneeling on the floor to be below the bamboo partition level of our upstairs porch so I could discreetly pull my shirt on and apply deodorant, Gabe came up the stairs and as me and started laughing. He said, "I promise I will take you somewhere soon where you don't have to change and put deodorant on while kneeling on the floor." Oh, what luxury!

It's been getting hot - I added the nearest city that I know of to my weather app so I can see the forecast - with temperatures reaching a high of 105-108 for the next 5 days. Usually this hot part is during my English class, which meets from 1-3pm. With no fans around, we pray for a breeze! After class we retreat to the space below our house to wait out the heat and hope for some wind. About 4:30 people start migrating down toward the river to do their nightly scrub. One day we took our Qwirkle game down to some large, flat rocks and play Quirkle with our feet in the water. Little fishes kept coming over to nibble the dried skin on our toes.

We have one more week of teaching here - maybe an additional day depending on the schedule for when we leave - and I have to admit we're both pretty excited to be finished with teaching for the foreseeable future (although we know we might get to Greece and find that's the best way to serve, in which case, we'll thank God for all the experience we've gathered this year and we'll jump right in!). It's been a good experience and we've enjoyed getting to know our adult students, but without a curriculum or even a plan of what to teach, it has definitely been attention consuming and required a lot of creative energy.

Yesterday we finally figure out the names of our preschoolers. They group of adorable kids show up each day to the preschool, but they don't know the phrase, "What is your name?" in English, and we kept forgetting to ask what it is in Karen. We've tried a couple times to demonstrate what we're asking by asking each other, "What is your name?" And answering, "My name is Teacher Dani" or "My name is teacher Gabe." But our students always just repeat one of those phrases back to us when we direct the question at them: "What is your name? My name is Teacher Dani. My name is Teacher Gabe."

Finally, yesterday, I grabbed a white board and a marker and used the ever-handy stick-figures to draw a girl. I pointed to it and said, "Teacher Dani" and then pointed to myself. I drew another figure - a boy - and pointed to it and said, "Teacher Gabe," and then pointed to Gabe. Then I drew another, shorter, figure and pointed to it and then pointed to the title boy next to me and said, "What is his name?" The director's son, who seems to be the most bold with his English, immediately caught on and started giving the names of each student. We quickly transcribed each name onto a whiteboard, had the child hold the whiteboard, and then took a picture of the child with their name. Let's hope having the power of names on our side will help us keep that bunch of mostly little boys in line, since we've been getting progressively more rambunctious behavior each day!

In other news, the earthquake here in Myanmar didn't impact us in any way - I'm not even sure what time or what day it happened, as we felt nothing. The only way I knew it occurred was because we started getting texts and Facebook messages from people asking if we were OK.

Thanks form our concern!



- Dani

JSMK: Use of the Bambulance

This morning, Toh, (the director here at JSMK) stopped by to let us know that a young man was referred out of JSMK inpatient clinic early this morning to head to Thailand for further medical care. The staff here diagnosed him with likely appendicitis.

He was brought from a village about a day's walk away, getting here sometime in the night or early morning, and he's being sent out to make the day-long trek to Thailand. His transportation will include being taken by "Bambulance" - a bamboo pole carried between porters with a hammock strung for the patient to rest in - and boat and tractor and truck to get to the nearest hospital with surgical facilities.

Many of our students were conscripted to help as porters (usually about 20 people go and rotate through carrying him until they get to the part of the journey where motorized transportation can take over), so math class is suspended this morning. If they're back in time, we'll continue with English as planned after lunch.

The patient is 15 years old. Pray that his appendix doesn't burst en route.


- Dani

JSMK: Food

Our food and drinking water is provided for us. About 6:00 several students (presumably assigned to the kitchen work duty rotation) show up to gather the empty food containers from last night and take several of the large thermoses that live on our counter to the kitchen building. Within 45 minutes they usually reappear bearing our first meal and our day-time supply of hot drinking water.

Water is boiled over a wood-burning fire for the whole compound to sanitize it, so it is delivered hot and kept hot in large thermoses. We also have a Tupperware water jug that we can hold the hot water which eventually cools to room temperature. The water here has a distinctive charcoal flavor, whether served hot or cold, and it's kind of brown/cloudy in appearance.

In addition to our morning, served-hot meal, we also receive an evening hot meal about 4:30PM. These meals are always built around white rice, as would be expected in South East Asia! Eggs are also a regular component, and there is usually one other topping. So far, our meals have looked a bit like this:

1 - Rice + eggs scrambled and fried with onion + fried noodles with onions and eggs
2 - Rice + eggs scrambled with onion + broth with ginger and onion
3 - Rice + broth with ginger, onion, and yellow beans + fried potato cubes
4 - Rice + eggs scrambled with onion + broth with onion and yellow beans and small green leaves
5 - Rice + broth with eggs and onion + fried potato cubes
6 - Rice + fried potato cubes + stir-fried mystery orange vegetable (maybe a squash or another root vegetable of some kind?) with green onions
7 - Rice + eggs scrambled with onion + fish in a red sauce with onions

There isn't a distinction between breakfast-type foods and dinner-type foods so far as we can tell, and usually it seems like food is cooked and then continues to be served for subsequent meals until it is eaten up (i.e.: the broth seems to be the same base, but it's just brought to a boil before each meal and sometimes something new is thrown in to make it a little more interesting!).

For lunch, we try to keep half of what is served to us at breakfast and save it for that meal - if it's a little short on quantity, we have a box of instant noodles packets that we can make up with our hot water and then add to the leftovers.

I brought some green tea with us, and we have Vitamin C drink mix packets. We also can get instant coffee (with sugar and non-dairy dried creamer) and cans of soda or coconut water at the little store. Those are nice options for giving our tastebuds some alternative flavors.

I won't lie: I'm definitely going to be excited if we can squeeze in a trip to The Salad Concept when we get back to Chiang Mai, and the fact that Italy is the next destination spot for us is perhaps gaining greater anticipation each day, but I definitely appreciate the hot meals and calories that are provided for us.

Living in Thailand and having a lot of our food prepared for us and being here now has definitely helped me relax during this season regarding food and nutrition - by nature of the fact that I can either be eating this food and be upset about all that it isn't, or eat it and be thankful for all that it is. Will I be super excited to make a huge portion of my diet fruits and vegetables again with whole grains and lots of nuts and seeds, and rarely contaminating my body with eggs and meat? Yes, you bet! When I someday have my own kitchen again and am responsible for shopping and preparing all our meals, you can bet the closet vegan will re-emerge. But for this vision season so far, it's been a blessing to be able to focus on many things outside the kitchen, and I'm grateful that my stomach is filled three times a day, despite my lack of time in the kitchen.

After all, if it was up to me to be trying to pack in dried goods and raise gardens for the vegetables and catch fish for meat, rations would look a lot less exciting!


- Dani

JSMK: We know we're in the jungle....

When we find ourselves saying things:

Gabe: "You know, I think I really, really like mosquito nets. I know in my head it wouldn't actually stop a Burmese cobra from biting my arm, but in my heart, I'm like, 'I know there are rats and spiders and snakes, but I'm inside my mosquito net. That's gotta count for something.'"

Me: [teaching about hungry and thirsty] So if I just ran all the way from the village, and I get to camp and I'm like, ah-ah [breathes hard dramatically], I can say, 'I am not hungry, I'm thirsty!' and then you take a drink of water [unscrews water bottle and tips head back to take a big drink, looking up at the ceiling] and - Wow, that is a huge spider hanging out up there! Does anyone else see it?!"

The JSMK Director: "If you go out at night, to use the toilet or something, take one of these [gestures to headlamp]. We have some snakes here. You know, sometimes there is krait or cobra or green snakes."
Me: "So, um, do you have anti-venom?"
Director: "No, cannot get. The bite goes into the blood stream, so we give IV fluids to support the kidneys and ibuprofen for pain. Hopefully, the body can handle the poison. Oh, also some scorpions and centipedes."
Me: I'm definitely glad there's ibuprofen."

Me to Gabe: "I wish I could just explain that I'm really not this much of an idiot when I'm not in the jungle, but that's kinda dumb sounding, isn't it?"

Me to Gabe: [rustling noises coming from the back of the office/kitchen/storage area where we hang out] Oh, look honey. It's another rat/mouse thing. How many is that, now? Four sightings?"

Me to Gabe: "These chickens could seriously be models. I mean, look at that rooster! He's glorious!"

Gabe: "The lights here are sort of like a rave party for bugs. The bugs hanging out farther out are like the people who sit at tables and drink their drinks, and the bugs smacking the light are like the the people who are all, 'whooo-whooo!'"

Me to Gabe: "Only a very fit subculture would actually call this thing we're walking on a path. To most people, it would be a canyon, I think."

Me to Gabe: "OK, so Gabe? Just a status update: there's a pile of centipedes that seem to be hatching or something by the door of the bathroom, and apparently the water bucket to flush the toilet is a cool spot for those big spiders to hang out."

Gabe: "The nice thing about dirt floors is that when you drop something, you're like, 'Oh no! I'm going to make it dirty!' And then you're like, wait...." [eyes start to sparkle]

Gabe: [About Qwirkle] "So the question is, can we play this game without turning on the lights?"
Me: "No, I think we need to the light on."
Gabe: "Ok, so then the question is, how far away from the lights can we get and still see the tiles?"


- Dani

JSMK: Meeting our (New) Students

Today we jumped straight into teaching English here at JSMK (Jungle School of Medicine Kawtoolie). Our self-appointed tasks for today's 2-hour session included:

- get names of students
- cover alphabet basics (names of letters and sounds of letters)
- group similar-sounding letters
- practice greetings - initial meetings and greeting acquaintances

The first task proved to be challenging. Every single one of our nineteen students have multi-syllable names like "Saw Pu Do Nee." My brain just does not seem to be able to put those sounds into the correct order and associate them with the correct person yet, but we had each student write their name on a paper and we took mug shots of them so we can drill ourselves all weekend.

Class was hot - no fans here - and the dogs roamed freely through the door-less frames to snooze at the feet of our students. However, our students were attentive and seemed willing to practice their English speaking with us, despite the challenge of not always understanding our directions.

After class, I had sweat clear through my army green capris (hello, teacher-who-seems-to-pee-her-pants-during-class... No kidding, head sweat turned into back and pit sweat which turned into butt sweat and folks, it was just real life in the tropics, you know? I'm certainly no Queen Elizabeth II who reputedly never sweats, even in the hottest weather), so we retreated to our house to change and drill ourselves on names.

Let me tell you about our house (known as the Galawa House here - the foreign house - where the visitors stay): the downstairs has a large sink (with running water) and counter space - a rustic but very effective kitchen if I could figure out how the little portable burner works. Also downstairs is a large computer, a desk, a printer, a paper cutter, an assortment of medical books, and plastic totes upon plastic totes of medical supplies and supplies in general for JSMK to run. We are powered by solar energy, here, so we do have lights in the downstairs office/kitchen area at night (upstairs we use our headlamps). Immediately inside the barn-style double doors (which don't seem to be normally shut as the office is accessed by various staff members) are the ladder-stairs that go up to our living area.

The upstairs has walls that come up about 4 feet. In theory, this is enough height to be able to modestly change one's clothes, however, our house is toward the lower end of a hill which has other houses built on it, so in fact, I'm still trying to figure out exactly how best to change when students and staff are roaming around to avoid inadvertently scandalize get someone with exposed leg or something.

Our hammocks and mosquito nets are hung in the open, living area upstairs, as the two more private rooms at the back of the house are full of more supplies and tools.

After we had our dinner - which is graciously brought to us for us to eat at our convenience - we decided we should get out into the little community here. Last night I went to a little store (actually someone's house) and was invited to sit down and have a cookie and a cup of Milo with a little group that was celebrating someone's wedding. It was fun, but it certainly takes a measure of determination and energy to go out into a social setting where one knows no more than a handful of words of the other's language (and vice versa) and endeavor to engage with a group of others that are all speaking the same language. However, we know if we don't do it, we're liable to have very slow relationship growth, and since our time here is limited, it seems sensible to just get over our "I-look-like-an-idiot" tendencies - yes, even if it means repeatedly slaughtering someone's names or asking their name multiple times after you've already introduced yourselves to each other.

So we decided to go for a walk. On this walk, we came across one of our students that was playing a guitar. He offered it to Gabe, who quickly realized it was badly out of tune, so Gabe tried to tune it and promptly snapped the 4th string. I think Gabe would normally feel badly about snapping someone's string - but there's a whole new level of badness feelings when you realize you've snapped the string of someone who probably makes just a few dollars a year (teachers earn an annual salary of $40 a year) AND you're a strenuous hike from the nearest place you could get strings to replace them! Thereby started a good 35 minute effort to spliced the broken string with excess string and make the situation workable.

We continued on our way touring the camp - avoiding stepping on the chickens that are everywhere and waving and saying "hello" to the mothers and kids we passed. While we were trying to fix the guitar, a group of the boy students gathered, then left, then returned about 20 minutes later wet from the river that flows at the base of the camp. As we walked to the opposite end of camp, we noticed that a group of girls was heading toward the river with what looked like armfuls of clothes. I decided to go join the girls and see if I could glean any tips on jungle bathing, so Gabe went back to our house while I followed the girls down to the water.

Sure enough, bathing and clothes washing was in session. I greeted the half dozen young ladies, and through our very limited shared English and Karen words, they invited me to bathe.

Within moments I had a borrowed tubular piece of fabric around me, and I was attempting to get unclothed underneath the tube of fabric (they modeled how to hold it up with your teeth). At one point, the fabric slipped, about the time I was trying to unhook my bra, and while I was attempting to keep my left breast discreetly hidden, the right one definitely got exposed to the whole group. One of the girls very sweetly said, "It's OK. Don't be shy." To which I promptly replied, "Don't worry - I've never been this naked in public before. I'm definitely getting over the shyness. Besides, you're all going to be medics anyhow, you'll be seeing far more interesting sights then this!" I don't think they understood the words, but from the laughter, I think they got the gist of my meaning!

For the record, I now know that I am to hold the tube fabric, strip off my other clothes, and then wade out into the river and submerse myself up to my shoulders (fabric and all). Then you soap up - arms and armpits and neck and feet is obviously easy, while torso and upper legs required a bit of careful holding and balancing - and then you submerse yourself again to rinse. Hair washing is phase two, which I didn't attempt today, but it seems to involve tucking the tube fabric around you tightly like a strapless dress, then ducking your head into the water to wet it before lathering it. It seems commons to wash the clothes you just took off while you're all wet.

There was certainly an excess amount of giggling and encouragement, and I left with an invitation to join them again tomorrow evening.

While I was flashing body parts to the world at large by the river, Gabe went in search of a Coca Cola and ended up partaking of Karen "Chocolate" - a red, mildly stimulating seed called betel nut pasted in a chalky substance, coated in a brown syrup, and rolled up in a leaf that everyone seems to chew and spit like tobacco and actually has nothing to do with chocolate. He said it wasn't bad, although it did make his mouth tingle.

It looks like we both ventured into new socializing territory in our effort to get to know our students today.


- Dani