Skip to main content

The Beginning

Blog Post 1
Monday, January 13, 2014

The Beginning

I'm in Thailand!  I left on Wednesday, January 8th at 1:30pm and flew to San Francisco.  I stayed the night in a hotel, and got to Facetime with my family.  Mandie (our dog) was very confused by my face and voice, but lack of physical presence.  I left the next morning at 11:00 for Tokyo, and then went from Tokyo to Bangkok.  The time change became very confusing for my mind and body.  I arrived at around midnight on Saturday.

We live in sort of a middle class village.  The houses are absolutely beautiful, and are much nicer accommodations than we all were expecting.  Our classroom is about a five minute walk, near the entrance of our village.

We have 12 girls on our DTS - no boys!  All of us are used to hanging out with mostly guys, so we were a bit apprehensive about it to begin with, but we all get along great already.  It's been a lot of fun getting to know each other in these first few days.  We're a fairly diverse group, ranging in age from 19-29.  There are four Canadians, five Americans, one Thai, one Indonesian and one German.  The German woman is married and has the cutest 15 month old girl in the whole world.  Her husband and daughter are here, but only the woman is doing the DTS because her husband already completed his.  All of us get along really well, and we've had lots of conversations sharing the differences between our countries and even provinces/states.  It's been very interesting.

The weekend was just a time for us to relax after travel, and settle in, and sleep.  This week is orientation week, learning about YWAM and Ark International and Thailand and how everything works.  Today we split into three groups and went on a scavenger hunt around our area, to a few markets and malls, so we could get an idea of the bus and taxi system.  Thankfully my group had the Thai girl with us, so we kind of got to cheat a little.

So far it's been really fun seeing a bit of Thailand and Thai culture, and getting to know this small group of girls that I get to live life with for the next few months.

Prayer Requests:
- that we'll all be able to get our visas extended for the time we need
- unity as a team

Comments

  1. We will be praying for you as you adjust to the time change and the culture that you will be ministering in. We will look forward to your next post with more stories of your adventure. <3

    ReplyDelete
  2. Say "selamat" to the Indonesian for me!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Going to Thailand!

On Friday, November 29, 2013 I was officially accepted to the CARM DTS in Bangkok, Thailand!  I saw the email and said, "Huh."  A little underwhelming of a response, I know.  But I had just been so stressed out for so long, being unable to make plans for my trip and frustration had been building.  So seeing my acceptance was more of an exasperated "Finally!", than a "Yay, I get to go!".  Of course, the news started to sink in throughout the day and I began to get excited about going to Thailand for five months.  At least I was excited when I wasn't looking at the overload of information and extensive lists of things to do, sending me into full on panic attacks. Then I had to figure out how and where and when to apply for my visa.  We conveniently have a Thai Consulate right in Edmonton, so the how and where was very simple.  The when on the other hand - not so much.  My work schedule, which includes three respite families and Famoso, is difficult t

I'm Staying

Basically it's official. I'm staying here. I love it!!! I love the people!!! I am staying. Saturday was awesome. We went to the cast party for Eli's play. That was fun. The chili and cookies tasted so amazing! The best I have ever eaten. And everyone was so overtired... wearing bowls on their heads... talking with stuffed dogs... laughing hysterically at Pixar's shorts. And stupid things people said. Sunday I went to downtown Quito - the tourist area. Saw some gorgeous churches. I loved the Basilica. So intricately awesome. When I got home (it was just Uncle Earl, me and some other visitors) Nathan was here. That was fun. XD Whipped cream... water... all over... yeah. Today I had my first Spanish lesson. It went pretty well. The teacher is really nice. It was mostly review, but some new stuff as well. Went to the first half of the soccer game, before we had to go shopping for snacks for this weekend. It was such an intense game. 2-0, for the other t

The Mountains and Valleys of India

Sunday, May 25, 2014 An overview of our outreach time in India - it's a bit of a long one.  India ended up being a very mixed experience for me.  Darjeeling really was beautiful and we were able to be involved in several different ministries.  It was such great experience to see such a variety of ministries. I went to a children's slum ministry, where the kids ranged in age from around 1 to 12, mostly falling into the 5ish area.  There were about 40 kids packed into a room slightly bigger than my living room (which is not big enough for 10 people sitting, let alone 40 brawling children).  Despite the utter chaos, we were still able to act out Daniel and the Lions' Den (I was one of the bad advisors.  It was a real big hit when I was eaten.), play some games (still not entirely sure how that was accomplished), do a lion mask craft (lions are now green, purple, blue and covered in flower patterns) and hand out snack.  It was over so quickly and all just went by in a blur