Kolkata Check-In

We're currently visiting our awesome friends in Kolkata - we got to briefly see them in Chiang Mai last summer when they came through the city for a conference, and we thought it would be fun to make the jump over to India while we're here in SE Asia to spend a little time with them before we leave this part of the world.

On my last trip to India (6 years ago or so) I came and worked at Mother Teresa's Mission House. I remember it as a blur of traffic and rain and heat and languages and bright colors and smells and dirt and people. The emotional impact was similarly confusing and tangled! I went home with head lice, malaria symptoms, and a bag full of questions about how God could be good when so much hardship existed in the world and who someone became and the life they lived seemed to dependent on circumstances and one's place of birth.

Of course, if you know the story of how Gabe and I fell in love, you know that it was the "India Aftermath" for me (and a similar "Mozambique Aftermath" for him about the same time) that led to us processing our experiences in these different countries with each other and then realizing in the processing just how much we appreciated having someone around to talk through and explain the mix of emotions and thoughts.

Fast forwarding to present time.... On this trip, I braced myself for a similar repeat of my last time here, but I should have known better because rarely does God seem to walk you through two identical situations!

I think this time around, I've been able to see the people of this region separate from the environment. Maybe that's because the pace of this trip has been a little more relaxed. Rather than heading out many days to go to the Mother House and catch a bus to my duty assignment and spending four hours washing clothes and visiting with other volunteers from around the world, we've spent time just being with our friends in their home, playing with their kids, and sitting around their table or in their living room talking, and really trying to gain a better understanding of the dynamics of the subculture they live in and the people around them.

The honking is still there, the women still wear beautifully vibrant colors, and it's still warm, of course, but there's a little more time to sit and talk with the "Auntie" that comes to help clean the house and cook and watch the kids when our friends are needing to focus on the language class in their home or running their business. She loves to embroider, and she was telling me how much she's enjoyed embroidering saris. She worked in the home of a consular employee in America for a year, but when he was relocated to Dehli, she asked to come back to Kolkata. Her knee was hurting yesterday, so I asked if I could pray for her. That lead to an interesting conversation about her experience with Catholic and Evangelical organizations here in the city, and the significance of this weekend with today being Good Friday.

Earlier this week I joined my friend, Stephanie, on a visit to take a surprise birthday cake to a young woman in her community of friends. We sat on a mat on the floor eating a delicious pile of rice and meat and spices with our fingers, laughing at the children of the house, and visiting about birthday traditions and food and family members and fashion. Stephanie prayed for her friend before we left with many hugs exchanged at the door.

Every morning our friends run a little language class in their family room for two of their interns and another couple that is new to the city. Stephanie helps pace the class and plan it and then co-teaches with a local native-language teacher. The teacher brings little food treats for our friends youngest daughter each morning, and it's so fun to watch the toddler spot "Auntie" coming in the door and abandon whatever she's doing and beeline over to sit with Auntie on the couch and eat her morning snack. I love seeing how the toddler and the language teacher relate to each other and participate in this morning ritual. Gabe and I got to sat in on the language class one morning and it as fun to also see Auntie teach these adults using many of the same techniques we used in our ESL class at Bawrirak Suksa - apparently beginning-language learning is similar across the world! Lots of using pictures and pointing 😊

Language class happens for 2 hours each morning, and the language learners lock themselves in the family room while the kids have the run of the house under the watchful eye of the Indian house help. We've been able to play Uno, teach the older ones (8 and 6 years old respectively) a simplified version of Qwirkle, talked about Star Wars, built train track complexes, visited the roof, and clean up after the two toddlers. The couple that is doing language learning adopted their son from Eastern Europe. He has multiple developmental delays - possibly due to his time at the orphanage and being under-stimulated or possibly genetically related. It's been sweet to see how the house helpers respond to his needs and seek to encourage him and contribute to his continued developmental progress.

In the afternoons we've been able to run to the market with Paul, visit The Loyal Workshopoffice and production house (if you're looking to invest in a quality leather accessory like a purse or messenger bag or wallet, check them out! Their work is awesome - both on an ethical level and quality level!) walk to a coffee shop, make fresh salsa, and Gabe visited their business office with Paul.

This weekend we're planning to head to a flower market for a photo-taking walk early in the morning. Paul has promised that we'll have great images to send out in our quarterly newsletter next week. I think dying Easter eggs might be on the agenda as well, which will be fun to do with the kids!

Among all these activities and outings and projects, though, we've most enjoyed the chance to share space and conversations. They've asked us some thought-provoking questions and provided insight and perspective into living and working overseas through their experience, and we've been able to pick their brains on various topics which has helped (and I think will continue to help!) as we progress through this Vision Season.

So far, India has seemed a lot more manageable than the last time I came through here!


- Dani

Check Lists and Reviews

It feels like we have a lot of lists to check these days - and often times, as soon as we get items crossed OFF our list, we'll add more things to our to-dos, and as a result, I feel like I live in a perpetual state of accomplishing a lot... and needing to accomplish more!

This week, though, with the end of the school term, means we're coming down toward the cut off point for a lot of items on our "do while we're in Chiang Mai" list.

Today we got a lot accomplished!

This morning we graded and added scores from our grade books.  I finished Grade 2's final tallying, but we still have a little to do with Grade 1 and Grade 3 next week.

We also bought our tickets fly home from New Zealand in December.  This is the last of our international airline purchases (well, except for how getting from France to Dublin in order to catch our flight to Honiara, but we might try to do a bus/train/ferry option with that anyhow).  The good news? It was $600 cheaper than my estimated budget.  Thank you, Jesus!

So, this blogpost is serving two purposes - to record our check list accomplishments, but probably more importantly, to contribute to the online community of information about how to travel and live overseas - specifically in Chiang Mai right now.

First review: www.skyscanner.com  This website has been my best friend as I research for our various flights.  Skyscanner has three amazing features we love:  

First, you can search from a starting point to "Everywhere" (without specifying a destination).  You'll get a list of possible destinations sorted by descending price.  That was how we found our rock-bottom prices from Bangkok to Venice.  We knew we wanted to get to Greece, but we also knew that it might actually cost us less to fly into Germany or France or something like that on a sale deal, and then catch a small, budget-airline flight a day or two later closer to where we wanted to go.  As it ended up, the cheapest price to ANYwhere in Europe from Bangkok was going to Venice - which happened to be only one country over from Greece ;)

Second, you can also search using a departure point and a destination city, but look at the whole month of prices at once.  This helped us as we planned for getting from Athens to Marseille, for example, but wanting to get the cheapest possible flights within about a 2-week time zone.  

Third, Skyscanner has a map feature - it's similar to the "Everywhere" feature, but rather than a lift of destinations, you can see a map of the world with prices listed next to cities - so we could see that flying to Nador, Morocco, was significantly cheaper than flying into Melilla, Spain - even though they're basically right next door to each other.  

All in all, Skyscanner.com has been an awesome resource for us to use as we've planned our trip.

Second review: today we went to the dentist for our 6-month cleaning.  Last fall, we went to a dental clinic that a friend had told us about and, although it wasn't super expensive (I think less than $30 for both of us), it was a little bit of a freaky experience - the dentist spoke a little English, but not a ton, and I'd told her I wanted my teeth cleaned, but the very first thing she did was start up a machine that sounded an awful lot like a drill!  Now, I have to say, I've really had very pleasant experiences with dentists - I've never had a tooth pulled or a root canal or anything like that, just cleanings and the occasional cavity to fill or sand blast - and because of that, I LIKE my teeth!  When that dentist started in on "drilling" near my gums, I about came out of that seat!

We decided to not go back there.  Instead, we went to a commonly referenced English-speaking-friendly clinic called Grace Dental.  (Also recommended by friends)  The website is a little cheesy, I'll admit, but the care we received seemed top notch!  First, they actually used the pick/cleaning things that I'm used to seeing at a dental cleaning, not a weird, high-pitched drill!  Second, the dentist that cleaned my teeth spoke excellent English, as did the receptionist when I called 2 weeks ago to get an appointment set up.  And third, even though it is slightly more expensive than the very Thai place we went last time, it wasn't that much more so!  We ended up paying less than $40 for both of us to have a 50-minute cleaning.  Am I happy? Yes.

Third review: another thing on our to-do list was getting boosters on a couple vaccines.  We are required to have some basic vaccines for our DTS, including Tetanus and Typhoid.  Gabe's tetanus is due to expire in January 2017, and I figured while we were here in Thailand, we might as well try to get that taken care of - presumably at a fraction of the cost, since we don't have "insurance" per se in the USA, we have a Christian "bill pay" cooperative - but they don't cover vaccinations.  We also both needed Typhoid - and frankly, since we're heading out into the jungle of Burma for a month in a few weeks, I figured we should get those NOW rather than wait until the day before we leave SE Asia!

I had initially thought we'd go to Ram Hospital, but after reading some reviews, I was feeling hesitant.  I stumbled across the name of a clinic in the area over by Grace Dental: CM Mediclinic and even though it looked relatively new and didn't have a ton of reviews, I thought, "Let's just give this a try."  We didn't call ahead - we just planned to drop-in after we finished at the dentist.

Now, to be fair, it was a little confusing to get to just because it's off the beaten path (fortunately, it's very close to one of our favorite post-church-on-Sunday lunch spots, so we had an idea of where we were going), but nothing that having a good map and a little extra time planned didn't take care of.  It's a small, two-staff-person place, only open in the afternoons on weekdays and then all day Saturday, but it was a great experience!  The gentleman that greeted us was a chap from England, and we had a lovely talk with him.  He was able to give us the prices of our vaccinations up front so we could decide if we wanted to get them there or go elsewhere.  The woman who actually administered our shots was very kind, explaining what brand she was using and why, and honestly, it was one of the gentlest shots I've ever had!

We were in an our in about 20 minutes, and that included a fair amount of visiting.  The total cost for both of us to get a Typhoid vaccination and Gabe to get a Tetanus/Diphtheria: under $75.  

After that, we went and got one last Mexican-food dinner at The Salsa Kitchen, a seriously unique and fun take on Mexican food.

Lastly, we stopped at Boots, a pharmacy chain, and picked up a 40-day supply of Doxycycline for an antimalarial while we're out in Burma for $35.  Sometimes I just love how convenient Thailand is!  No call to the travel advice nurse, no $50 charge for a consultation, no special trip to your healthcare provider's in-house pharmacy... Just go to the store, tell them what you want, ask for any advice that you need, and purchase the product!

Now we're home to do a PiYo workout (and since I'm posting links and reviews anyhow, we're doing Chalene Johnson's Beachbody series that a friend back home super generously gifted to us last fall!) so I'll sign off.  But now you have my recommendations for flight planning, dental cleaning in Chiang Mai, vaccination location, Mexican food, and a workout plan ;)

Final week

Our internet isn't working at our house (again... still...) so internet-ing happens at school or at a coffee shop, and with a long list of Internet tasks (fill out travel insurance application, check on flight info, email so-and-so) blogging hasn't been the highest on the priority list. I apologize. We'll (and by that, I really mean I because I'm not even sure Gabe knows the password to get into blogger!) try to do better!

This is our last week of classes. In truth,we give all our finals on Thursday, so we really only have 3 days of review-intense classes. We're feeling mixed emotions, which I'll try to articulate:

Sadness - we're sad to be leaving these precious kids. They are SUCH fun - they're cute and smart and funny and vibrant and joyful. I think my heart is mourning saying goodbye to them a bit!

Happiness - it has been such an honor to walk through 39 weeks of teaching with these students. I always knew I'd fall in love with them, because I asked God to give me a special love for them and I knew he would, but I never expected to feel so loved BY the kids. I've lost my patience, I've raise my voice, I've made the students do extra work or taken away privileges, and throughout it all, even amid little ups and downs, they show me they love me - gifts of just-picked weeds, hugs, greetings in the morning, shy smiles, quickly granting forgiveness when I apologize and ask for it... I don't think I'd realized just how BIG these kids' hearts are. I am happy to have been loved so well by these little ones.

Anticipation - we have a "quiet" week planned here in Thailand after we finish finals to pack up, get our classroom in order, say our goodbyes, and then we start a series of travels,  staying and working with ministries and visiting people for the next 4 months where our longest time in one location will be a month. Basically, we'll be living out of our backpacks and experiencing some amazing things and spending time with wonderful people. I'm excited (and, for parts, a little nervous) about it!

Satisfaction - I think it is without the wrong kind of pride that I can say I'm satisfied with what we've done this year here teaching. We haven't done a perfect job, but we have earnestly sought to teach well, love well, share Jesus with these kids, and be a blessing to the ministry here by trying to help build into and invest in the English program here through developing detailed daily lessons plans , creating re-useable materials for future teachers to use, developing an "orientation document," and seeking to help the administrators with feedback about what is working well and ideas for how to make the experience of teaching here better for teachers in the future. There's a lot I would continue to build on and develop if I was here longer, but I don't think there's anything major I would change about how we've been teaching.

It's hard to believe we're almost finished - especially when I think back to the beginning of the year and remember how I thought it would never end! - but it is. And our hearts are full of precious memories and joy from this year. In the words of Paul in his letter to the Philippians, this little school, and the people in it, "have a special place in my heart."

Moments: A Hannah-ism

Gabe and I have developed alter-egos.  These egos come out strong on school function days when our presence isn't so much necessary for the education of the students, but rather vital for the appearance and presentation of a white foreigner on behalf of the school.

We call each other by our best prize-winning-at-the-fair cow names: Angus and Bessie.

On Fridays, we get to dress up in traditional Northern Thai clothes and stand in front of the school for 45 minutes while the students arrive.  It's actually kind of fun to see all the parents drop their kids off, but we do feel rather like we should have blue ribbons tied around our necks  (or, at least we HOPE we'd get blue ribbons!)

A few weeks ago we went with the Principal and our Office Administrator and the Grade 1 Homeroom Teacher to be visible at a presentation at the local government office regarding the school.  We were asked to speak (we've become what I'd like to think of as GOOD at off-the-cuff, public addresses) about the school, and then greeted all the community members that had come, and then we went back to school.

This all happened during our normally schedule time for Grade 1, but we were later than the start of Grade 2 when we got back to our classroom.  With only about 40 minutes left in their classtime, Grade 2's appointed speaker (our smart, sassy, fun student Hannah whom we love and would be delighted to scoop her up and keep her forever!) came into our classroom where we'd just set down our stuff, walked boldly up to me and said:

"Teacher Dani, today we are learn?"

Yes, Hannah, I sure hope so!

Moments: Flowers, Immigration, and Bathrooms

Yesterday some of our Grade 1 little girls came in after classes to bring me some decorations: a handful of weeds flowers and a weed flower crown.  This particular plant looks a bit like a mini-daisy crossed with a dandelion: cute, sweet, a little bit fuzzy, and stinky.  Regardless, they were thrilled when I got a glass of water to be the new home for their gifts.


Today we were planning to go to immigration to check on the status of our visa, after which we needed to go to City Hall to do something with our Work Permit.  When we got to immigration, the powers that be in Bangkok hadn't sent our papers back, so we drove back to school to wait to call them until this afternoon.  They hadn't arrived this afternoon, so we'll go in tomorrow.


During Grade 3, two of our boys disappeared during their 5-minute break at the half-way point of class.  Gabe went to the boy's bathroom to see if they were hiding in there.  Toilet paper is not traditionally used in bathrooms here, so the kids just have the ceramic throne in each stall, plus a small hose with a sprayer (kind of like what my mom uses to water her plants) to clean themselves with.  Gabe heard giggling and saw water shooting over the top of the stalls.

(Do you know where this is going?!)

One door was open, and our student Happy froze when he saw Gabe. Then he started fumbling to put away the hose.

The other student, Luke, didn't realize Gabe was there, so when Gabe tried to open his door, he held it closed, thinking it was Happy.  Gabe leaned around the door and said very sarcastically: "Are you having fun?"  At which point, Luke's face also froze into this pained/scared/I'm-in-trouble/What's-he-going-to-do? look.  

They started plodding meekly back toward class, and Gabe hollered after them, "I want to see some hustle!" At which point the rocket fuel in their behinds lit and away they went, bursting a few seconds later through my door and speed-mumbling, "I'm sorry I'm late!"

Fortunately, Gabe had already talked to their homeroom teacher - since all the students have been unruly the last 2 days in that class - and arranged some extra-boring writing assignments to complete in her classroom under her supervision for any troublemakers.  Gabe marched them into Krue Ratt's classroom, gave Ratt a meaning-loaded nod, and walked out. 

We'd like to think the students believe we've developed superpowers of communicating with our fellow teachers through nods and sign language, without having to use words!  Hopefully this event supported that belief.

Once they were out of the classroom, things turned around a little and we were able to finish the class without going completely bonkers!

Tech Problems and Social Lives

We've had some tech issues in the last two weeks...  Honestly, technology issues is probably one of the quickest ways for God to get our attention and show us how UN-patient we are!  Call us a product of the 21st century, or a First World Spoiled Brat, but whatever it is, we recognize this is a good area for us to grow in!

Problem 1: The Wi-Fi at our house is dependent on a booster from our neighbor's house.  Usually, it's fast and available all over our house, and generally, wonderful!  However, it seems to have mood swings every so often and will just STOP working for awhile, and then somehow get over it's issue and reboot and everything's back to normal.

About 2 weeks ago, it stopped working.  It hasn't gotten over it's bad mood!

Now, we CAN access internet from our neighbor's router directly, but it requires us to go sit on the cement outside their back wall and even then, it's pretty slow... uploading photos, streaming videos, viewing any website with a lot of graphics, etc, are just not really happening. (So, the umbrella festival blog post I had planned to do two weeks ago has been put off for the duration of that time.  Sorry.)

We also can scooter to a coffee shop to access internet if we need to, or go down to the school and try to tap into the Wi-Fi there (which is what I'm doing now), but the regular speed at the school is about similar to sitting on our neighbor's sidewalk, so it's not a much better solution (although it does mean we avoid being giant targets for the mosquitoes!)

Problem 2: The classroom computer has been crashing multiple times a day for about the last 2 weeks as well, and last week, it seemed to have given up the fight.  So we went for a week double planning our days, (one plan for if the computer recovered after a crash, and one plan for if it didn't), and now we've been teaching for a week without a computer (I know, I know - people taught without computers for centuries... I get it.  Like I said, we're First World 21st Century-ers, though, so this has been an adjustment for us!), and frankly, we've passed the "I'm patient about this" mark!  In truth, it wouldn't necessarily be so bad if we knew the computer was going to be out of commission for a week or two, but the not knowing how long it will be until the computer comes back means we're sort of in this "put off that activity/prep/lesson until the computer comes back" and it just keeps dragging on and on!  We're hopefully supposed to get our computer back from the computer repair office it was taken to today, but we'll see :)

So, all that to say, these two issues have been a bit of an irritant for us the last few weeks.  It's obviously revealing how much we depend on technology, and probably a good reminder for us to NOT depend on it so much... So you can pray for us to learn the lessons God has for us in this situation!

On to a more happy, social note, we've been playing "Pandemic Legacy" with our friends, Jacob and Jonathan from church.  Pandemic Legacy is, like, a board game that married a choose your own adventure story and had a marathon of a baby!  The basic premise is that the four people who play the game are a team of World Health Organization workers that have to work together to fight against a dangerous epidemic that is threatening the world.  Each play through of the game is one month, and we fight the epidemic over a year's time (so, at minimum, 12 rounds of the game).  However, after each month is finished (if you don't meet your objectives for that month, you replay that month), new rules come into affect, new characters show up, and it generally causes you to evolve your strategy or lose!

We're on October, so we've almost finished the game, which is fun, but even more fun is the fact that we've really enjoyed getting to know Jacob and Jonathan better.  Gabe meets with them every week or two for coffee and dude time, and our game evenings have allowed us to engage in fun conversations about the Bible, historical context of Biblical passages, life in Thailand, etc.

I've also been able to connect with a few ladies here.  One friend I meet with for coffee on mornings that Gabe has to be at church early for worship practice.  I think I could have cried the first time I met with her, as it was SO NICE to have a coffee date with a friend and just have girl time.  As a former multiple-times-a-week coffee-date-making gal, I have missed being able to connect with someone over a latte (or, in this case, a 3oz Marocchino - pretty much 2 shots of espresso with a chocolate bar melted into it... Amazing!).  Last week I even made it to a girl's night/valentine-making party with a group of ladies from various ministries and locations in the world that are all here in Thailand to serve God and the people of Thailand.  It was an evening of meeting new ladies and rich conversations for me.

Bottom line: God has blessed us with some great opportunities for developing friendships here, and we are grateful for how others have reached out to us and invited us to do life with them!

Moments of Success

As an experimental ESL teacher, I'm not always sure how to measure "success" in the classroom.  Students might perform well on a test, but then freeze up when I try to talk English to them in front of their parents.  Or, they might figure out how to sound out a word, but forget what their newfound vocabulary means and how to use it during a class exercise.

Today, in Grades 2 and 3, though, we had moments that I think classify as "success."

In Grade 2, I handed back spelling quizzes.  One of our sweet, shy, lower-performing students earned a spelling start today.  It was his first time.  All other nine members of Grade 2 cheered loudly for him.  Early in the year, we had a little competition problem with Grade 2.  One of our students got very, very bent out of shape when she didn't win a game, and we instituted a policy of, after every game, requiring the whole class to cheer for each other: "Good job Team 1! Good job Team 2! Good job Team 3!"  She didn't cheer one day, and we had quite a major struggle of the wills, but ever since then, all of Grade 2 has been good about cheering for each other - even if they are sad that they didn't win.

When our first-time-spelling-star student came up to the front to put his sticker on the "Star Speller" board, his class was genuinely happy for him.  It felt like a moment of "team spirit" success.

At the beginning of the year, I would avoid (at ALL cost!) allowing Grade 3 to get out of their seats unless it was a very specific, structure activity.  With 22 of them (23 for a while), it felt like the second they were released from the expectations of their seats, behavior dissolved into a chaotic, maddening, free-for-all mess.  I've gotten a LOT better about explaining my expectations of the behavior I want to see from them when we do classroom activities now (working in partners or small groups, relays, etc).  Today, probably for only the third or fourth time this year, I instructed the students to not only stand up, but also to move their desks and chairs to the sides of the room.  Six months ago, this would have resulted in a full 20 minutes of me trying to get their attention back on me, but today, in a mere five minutes flat, they had all the desks and chairs neatly against the walls, and were sitting in lines in their respective groups.

We played a version of a telephone-relay race (practicing asking and answering questions and pronouncing English words), and the game progressed in a (mostly) controlled manner, with everyone participating, and nobody getting hurt, and my patience remaining in check for a good 15 minutes.  I looked at the clock at four minutes until the end of class time, and decided to go ahead and keep going for the last four minutes, even though some of the students were starting to get a little crazy (competition gets fierce among some of them... and others get bored easily and want to do other things).  We were able to hold it together for those final four minutes, and the class listened diligently when I instructed them to put their desks and chairs back into order (in the past, I've been so frustrated at the end of class I just send the students on their way and put the room back together myself!).

Classroom management success!

It is in these areas - the character development of sharing each others joys and triumphs when one student makes improvement, and keeping yourself under control to be able to listen to the teacher and participate in fun games - that I find myself measuring my success as a teacher.  I'm not sure that's what all teachers do, but for my first run at teaching elementary ESL, I feel like it's as good of a measuring stick as any I've got!