Gettin' Outa Town

Hey Everyone! 

I hope this finds you well.

This week was full to say the least. Teaching went well. I had one of those moments where I asked myself if this was really what I wanted to do with the rest of my life as I'm sure you teachers out there can identify. :) All is well now and I am so happy that I am here and have the opportunity to teach even with all of the struggles. 

We had two days of cooking class this week, which was a lot of fun. There are photos on the other two teachers computers, but not on mine. I'll try and get some more photos on here when I return. Maybe when I come home, I'll be able to cook some yummy Thai food for some of you. :) 

Attempting to hit Ben with the spatula.

I am off this evening to Cambodia on my first visa run. I have to leave the country because I've been here nearly 90 days. Nathan, Ben and I are going to go exploring. I am really excited about this trip. It will include and overnight bus ride from Chiang Mai to Bangkok and then flying from Bangkok to Cambodia. It will be a nice break and hopefully we will come back with a refreshed enthusiasm for teaching. :) We will be taking off Labor Day because we'll be in Cambodia. We however will get and entire week off. If only America did the same thing. :) 

Have a safe long weekend. Keep us in your prayers for traveling safety. 

Lots of Love,

Lainy

Being in Thailand is Still Sinking in...

Sawa- Dee- Ka! 

(Said in a sweet quiet voice while waiing.) 

I hope this finds you well and that your weekends are off to a great start whatever it may be filled with. 

I am doing well. I am fully recovered from being sick with whatever I had last weekend. Praise be to God. It was terrible being sick away from home. But I am oh so thankful to be better. 

Being in Thailand is still sinking in for sure. Sometimes when I am heading out to the farm or to my apartment, I think, "Wow! I am in Thailand." It's kind of crazy. Then I think about how blessed I am to have this opportunity. It's definitely a life changing experience. My views on life and certain aspects of it are certainly changing. When I come home, I know it will be a challenge to adjust to the US. I do hope that I bring back some of the Thai attitude and hopefully rub off on those around me. Definitely not all of it, but maybe a small portion. 

This week has been busy as usual. Kind of quiet without having a ton of visitors as we did last week. It was nice to have a "normal" week as normal as it gets in Thailand before we have another abnormal week. Aj. Leon is going to Myanmar to bring back some former Legacy graduates for further training at Legacy. Aj. Erika, Aj. Nathan and I will be taking cooking classes next week from Aj. Leon's daughter in law. We are really excited about this! Maybe I can make you some arroy mak (very delicious) Thai food when I come home. :) Then Aj. Nathan, Aj. Ben and I are going on our first visa run. We have to leave the country and get our passports stamped so we have decided to go to Cambodia. We are thrilled!! I'm sure I'll have tons of photos and stories to blog about when I get back. 

As far as classes go, I am still loving it. The students are great. There are some frustrations that have been pretty prevalent the past couple of weeks. It's a Thai mentality that I am still learning to deal with. At times some students not motivated and don't come to class prepared for what's going to be covered. It's somewhat frustrating because the most of the students are older than I so I automatically think I should not have to tell them they HAVE to do their homework and participate in class. It's kind of crazy. Other than that, classes are great! 

Reading is a fun class. I am trying to get the students to learn how to read to retain what they read and figure out definitions of words they do not know from context. These are skills that will help them if they go on to take the TOEFL test.

Writing is great! I love it! I am using ideas that I learned in my Education classes as well as my own English classes. It's fun to see how they respond. I am striving to get  them to think for themselves and not want to write only about what Aj. Elainea says to write.

Intro to Bible is so much fun now that the students are understanding more English. They amaze me at how much they have progressed in such a short amount of time. 

Journalism is fun too. We just finished our first issue of our school paper. It is very exciting! 

Health is fun because I have second and third year students. They are doing well in class. It's fun with some of the discussions we get into. 

Discussion is a combo class with second and third year students. Aj. Nathan and I teach this class together, which is a lot of fun. This is probably my favorite class if I had to choose one because I get to hear what they think about different issues and see them develop their oral English skills.  

Mae Sa Elementary School class is still quite a challenge. It's 7th, 8th and 9th grade, which is enough said to figure out why it's a challenge. But other than that, they know very little English and don't have a drive to learn English. The teachers who teach English in Thailand translate it all into Thai so they haven't ever heard straight English and definitely not from a Farrang. So needless to say it makes things interesting. I only teach them for about an hour each class once a week so it's difficult to make a huge impact on their English skills. 

That's an update on what I'm teaching and how the classes are going just so you know. 

Sorry only one photo this week. Not to say their wasn't anything interesting to take photos of. :) One day this week we were walking down to where we play sports and you wouldn't be able to guess what we saw. There was a pony eating all of the shrubs to clean up a particular area. So I have concluded that there isn't a need for lawnmowers! Everyone just needs a pony to take care of it. I'm assuming a goat would work too. So all of you who have grass should run out and purchase a new and improved type of lawnmower. 

Speaking of animals... I had another gecko in my shower this week. If I ever come back to the US I am going to think that it is strange to not have geckos all over the place. Maybe I'll bring some back with me to share with all of you. :) Just Kidding! 

I think that is all for now other than a couple of prayer requests. Please continue to keep me in your prayers as well as all of the teachers over here. Pray that we will make a difference and have an impact for good. Pray for traveling safety of Aj. Leon and the three of us who are going on the visa run. Also, one of my students fell off of his bike and broke his arm. His name is Jay. Please pray for a speedy recovery. 

Take Care. I think of all of you often. 

Much Love and Hugs,

Aj. Elainea  

Just Another Week in Mae Sa Luang

Hey Everyone! 

Hope all is well with you. I am doing well. I am thankful I am feeling better. I was pretty sick Thursday then felt better and then felt terrible last night. Thankfully with lots of rest I am nearly back to normal. 

This week was just another normal week in Mae Sa Luang. Nothing too exciting to report happening outside of teaching. We have had a couple of visitors from the States so that has been fun. 

Tuesday was the Queen's birthday. We had it off from school. Nothing too exciting happened on that day though. I lesson planned most of the day and worked on things for my journalism class. The Queen's birthday is on August 12th. It's Thailand's mother's day. The children give their mothers jasmine and sing a song to them. They also have a special dinner, but the moms cook it! I thought that was crazy!

This is just a short update. I hope you are all doing well. Prayers for teaching and health would be greatly appreciated. 

Lots of Love,

Elainea

Road Trip in Thailand and Randomness

Happy Sabbath Everyone! 

I hope everyone has had a fabulous week wherever you are whenever this finds you! I love hearing from those of you who have been emailing me. Thanks for keeping me in the loop of your lives even with me being so far away. It means so much to me. I enjoy hearing what all of you are doing back home. 

This week has been a great week! It has been full of many things. I am thankful for the Sabbath and a day of rest. This week, we taught Monday to Wednesday morning as usual. Wednesday we headed to Mae Hong Son. It is about 5-6 hours by car away from Mae Sa Luang. Aj. Erika, Aj. Nathan, and my student who I have talked about in one of my blogs, Norah and I headed up there. It was absolutely beautiful. We went to visit a school. It's a King's project school to help poor tribes in that area. They teach English, Thai, Math, Science, Computers and various other subjects. Our purpose was to see how they teach tribal people and to see if there are any ways we can improve our teaching at Legacy. We observed a couple of classes and guest-taught a couple as well. It was a lot of fun. I always enjoy team teaching and seeing how other teachers teach. It was interesting seeing the classes we saw. The trip was really good. God kept us safe even with all of the rain. It's rainy season, so it rains generally at least once a day. I nearly slipped several times on our trip, but thankfully I did not. While we were in Mae Hong Son, we traveled to another village. It was a quaint little village that sold teas, coffee and dried fruit. It was a Chinese village. 

Now I know you all want to know what it looked like... so I took a ton of photos, which I have posted for your viewing pleasure.

This was a small village we went to visit on our journey.

This was in Ban Rak Tai. I was trying to be artsy with this photo.

A pretty rose. 

This was a sign I found interesting. Love Thailand... I agree. :) 

I really liked the little brown house on the lake. I wouldn't mind living there.

But alas, I took a photo instead. :) 

One more flower that I thought was beautiful... 

almost looks like a gerber daisy so I couldn't pass it up. :) 

I thought this building was neat, but I didn't just want to take a picture of it,

 so I asked Nathan to go stand in it. It definitely made for a more interesting photo! 

What do you think?

I have decided that Thai people and Nathan are hardcore football players.

It was raining and dark and they were still playing. They were playing on the basketball court. They were having a blast. It was a bunch of the students from the school we went to visit and Nathan who decided to join them, which they thought was great.

I'm not sure what kind of tree this was, but I thought it was really cool especially with the mist in the background. This was the third shot I took. It was about 6 AM and my camera has a mind of its own sometimes. It thought it was too dark to take the photo.

Here is an up close photo of the tree. Isn't it neat?

The mist is one of my favorite things as it sits on the top of the mountains. I absolutely love it! 

Here are the students working on the farm. They must get up at 5 a.m. They do their exercises, and then they work for an hour, then breakfast and finally classes. They end their day with another hour of work before homework and dinner. They have a couple hour set aside to worship the religion as their pamphlet states it. I'm not sure what the religion is. Well, I am assuming it's Buddhism, but I know their are Christians there too. So I'm not positive if they get to worship how they see fit or simply worship Buddha. They play music, which we went and watched for a bit. It was really neat. There was the cutest boy playing the drum. I didn't have my camera, so not photos of that. Sorry. They also had a classroom where students were dancing. They performed a couple of different dances for us. It was really neat! 

Here is a photo of the herb garden they had at the school. 

Mom, Grammer and Aunt Cathy, this is for you. :)

This is probably on of my favorite photos from our trip to Mae Hong Son. 

1. Because those of you who know me, know I like cows. They even have bells on them, which was pretty neat! 

2. They just roam on the road no matter what. 

3. There is a dog helping herd them. 

This sighting made me laugh pretty hard. I just stuck my hand out the window in hopes I got the shot. I am pretty happy with it. :) 

Here is a glimpse of the windy road that we traveled up and back down. 

Here is another view captured by sticking my hand out the window. It's so green up there. I don't that I've seen so much green in my whole life.

Those are all the photos from our trip. I hope you enjoyed them. I have a couple more photos that are pretty random, but thought you might enjoy seeing. 

This is a photo of me teaching at the elementary school on one of the Thursdays. This is proof that I do teach. I don't just hang out with the other teachers. :)

I thought this was kind of interesting. Last Friday night, we made Sabbath dinner. We went to the store to buy some groceries. While we were in there, we saw colored rice so I had to take a photo. I'm not sure why it's colored. I've only eaten brown and white rice since I've been here. I thought it was pretty interesting.

This is from the game last Sunday. Our team is in purple. YAY purple! The red is another church. I think it was the Korean church. 

The purple team from left to right... NaungNaung (graduated last year), Atiwat (1st yr.), Chalermsak (1st yr.), WiChai (1st yr.), LaNuNan (2nd yr.), Aj. Ben (teacher), Jaseefu (3rd yr.), Buut (3rd yr.), Aj. Nathan (teacher), and Andrew (cook/takes some classes). 

I think that's it for my photos this week. I hope you enjoyed them. I am still doing really well. I am enjoying teaching more and more each day. There are times when it's frustrating, but overall I am having a blast and absolutely love it. I am having fun getting to know my students and the Thai culture more. It's definitely a learning experience, but it's great! The other teachers and I are becoming closer friends. They are really great! I am so blessed to be able to work with such amazing people. I am so thankful for the opportunity that I've been given. Thank you so much for your continued prayers, love, e-mails, and support. I could not be here serving without all of you. 

I pray that those of you who are beginning a new school year soon will be blessed. I hope that it starts of well, whether you're teaching or you're a student. For those of you who are not in the school field anymore, I pray that your adventures of life whatever they may be will be blessed as well. 

Lots of Love and Hugs from Afar,

Lainy

Sunday Football!

Hey, 

Today was a beautiful day. The sun was shining and a perfect day for a football game. Although I ended up getting a sunburn... My farmer's tan is improving. :) We had a lot of fun watching them play. The score was 3 to 4.  We didn't win, but the guys played a great game! They are getting better and better each time they play. It was a very close game. It was almost a tie game. They seem to have a blast playing! :) All of us girls have a great time cheering them on and watching! Even if we didn't win, I would definitely say that we had the best cheering section, if I do say so myself.

Here was the lovely cheering section! :)

We are the purple team! Look at them go! 

Go Ajan Nathan, go! 

Shooting for the goal!

Hanging out with my students and adorable Myula! 

Alrighty, have a great week!

Lots of Love,

Elainea