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