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

JSMK - Getting Here

Once upon a time, when we were living in Longview in our cute, white, clean, carpeted, vintage 1920s apartment with such wonderful things as a bathtub, and a memory-foam mattress topper, and a solid headboard you could lean against, and a crockpot and kitchen aid mixer and a blender, Gabe and I used to dream about going to other parts of the world. We would say things while we were sitting on our bouch (the bed-couch that served both purposes in our living room) eating chocolate watching episodes of 19 Kids and Counting, like, "This is great, but wouldn't it be fun if we could be traveling together right now?"

I was reminded of that while I was 3 hours in to a journey that required me to cling to a "bench" jury-rigged onto the front of a tractor as I descended the third or fourth mountain at what seemed a 45 degree angle. My back was bruised in a strip across my shoulder blades from the bar of the passenger bench, and the flesh at the back of my knees felt like they'd been beaten from jostling over the board that was nailed to the front of the bench to help insure riders didn't slide off the front and plummet over a cliff or get crushed by the tractor wheels.

That was also the moment I realized something that should have been way more apparent to a farm girl such as myself: tractors don't make comfortable carriages. And when I said I wanted to be traveling somewhere with Gabe, the very last thing in my mind was that such travels would include traversing the 3000 foot tall hills of Burma on farm equipment.

How did we get to that scene? What on earth are we doing? Good question.

No, this was not an "India gone bad" retreat back to Thailand via whatever mode available. We actually planned this trip separate from India. India, by the way, ended well and we came back from that jaunt with some good discussion happening between us as we look toward the future.

But I'm talking about Burma now. Backtracking about a month and a half, I was at a girls' night making Valentine's with some of the gals I've met in Chiang Mai, and I was talking to this interesting young lady named Benita. Benita and her husband work for the Free Burma Rangers - an organization that seeks to bring hope to the oppressed tribal people of Burma (it's official name is now Myanmar, but the tribal groups apparently reject that name because although it was changed to that in an attempt to symbolically unify the country, it contains sounds or letters that aren't in the tribal dialect of some of the people groups, if I understand correctly). FBR, as the organization calls itself, desires to see justice established by equipping volunteers from the tribes in ranger tactics - such a jungle survival and navigation and surveillance and medical skills - so they can, in turn, aid and assist their people when they are attacked by the Burmese military and document abuse for the purpose of publicizing to the global community.

As part of FBR's work, they have a training camp where they run an annual new-ranger's training boot-camp-type-event for 3 months, and they also have a one-year medical school for the Rangers that desire to become medics.

Benita explained that FBR likes to have native-English speakers at JSMK (there's a lot of acronyms in this social pocket - this one stands for Jungle School of Medicine Kawtoolie. This is understandable as many of the US volunteers are former military folks). Usually there are doctors or nurses that go out to the jungle school for short stints to teach the classes, but the months of March and April they didn't have any foreigners there. She asked if Gabe and I would be willing to go to teach English, math, and maybe some basic anatomy (right now the students are at the beginning of their one-year medical training, so they are completing a 2-month "foundations" study). We couldn't go in March because we were still teaching English at Bawrirak Suksa and we had our India trip planned, but we offered to go as soon as we got back from India.

So the tractor was one of the many phases of transportation we did this week getting from India to Chiang Mai to the very rural jungle camp.

In fact, we thought we'd have to hike the final 25km (yes, over those 3,000 foot elevation hills... Carrying our 20lb backpacks....), so the tractor was an unexpected blessing. And by unexpected blessing, I really mean a total act of sweet mercy from God because, let me tell you, daily PiYo workouts are wonderful for toning and strengthening, but let me make this abundantly clear: PiYo for 2 months is not sufficient preparation for hiking in the Burmese hot season over hills that are more than half a mile high with 20 lbs of weight strapped to your back. I don't know what we were thinking, but that is the voice of experience telling you there.

We did hike the final 5km or so, and that took us almost 2 hours. On the final hill (really, it was about the only hill we had to use our own muscle power) I wasn't sure I was going to make it. I kept telling myself, "Don't look up, just take one more step. Good job. Now take one more. Keep your eyes on the trail. Don't look up. Nice, even breaths. Don't look up." Going down that hill on the other side was almost worse, of course, since my legs were shaking so bad it was like balancing on jello. But the one time I had a foot slide out from under me, I was able to catch myself with my opposite hand by leaning backwards in a PiYo flip (so I guess that PiYo did come in handy for something!).

The sight of the thatched-roof, 2-story wood hut that is to be our home for this month looked like a luxurious palace when we reached our destination, though!

Now we're on Day 2 of being at JSMK - Gabe rigged up hammocks for us to sleep in (a gesture for which I'm very thankful for, having seen 3 rats in the past 24 hours that also seem to inhabit our living space). To be fair and give due credit here, Gabe has actually hung the hammocks twice - last night's after-dark hanging resulted in a long night of feeling akin to bananas with our feet and head about a meter higher than our sagging mid sections, so today he attempted to fix that inconvenient detail. We are diligently applying bug repellant and trying to get a lay of the land. So far today has not included any tractors or hiking beyond climbing the stairs to our living quarters, and for that, I'm particularly thankful!


- Dani