Wow! This has been a full week!

Hey, hey!! 

I am so thankful for a day to stop and pause and reflect. I can hardly believe that it's already Friday night! But in the same respect, this has been quite a long week!

Seng Moon needs your prayers. She is in the hospital somehow she has contracted MRSA. Usually you only get this when you are in the hospital, however she got it when she wasn't. She is 2 years old and the daughter of one of our grad students from Burma. All of us teachers went to visit her last night and we got a couple of smiles, but not the same Ah Moon that we love and miss. She looked so sad just lying on the bed. They have started giving her antibiotics that seem to be working quite well. So we are hoping she gets to come back soon. In the mean time due to her getting MRSA and not knowing where or how. We have been disinfecting EVERYTHING! Everything smells like bleach. It's like spring cleaning in January. The school is quite clean now. The walls have been washed down, the floors, the tables, the chairs, anything and everything you can think of! The afternoon classes were canceled so we could get everything disinfected and boy are we all tired. 

Our Bible Study tonight was on memorization of Scriptures. Just some general ones that we should know what they are and their references. It was fun. I think Nathan did a good job, even considering he had a tough crowd! 

In the realm of classes, they are still going quite well. Reading is trucking right along. We are reading from the Bible, which has been fun. So far we've read Esther and Jonah. It has led to some really, really good discussions. The fun thing is that we were talking about Jonah not only in my Reading 3 class, but also in my Bible 1 class. It was really neat to see their different perspectives. In writing we are cover a lot of grammar as the semester comes to a close. Oh man! I'm not a huge fan. It's so hard to explain when they want concrete rules. English always breaks its own rules. It's gotten to the point where the 3 of us English teachers start to analyze what we say how we say it and whether it's proper or not. As far as proniciation goes, Ben and Erika are from MN, Nathan is from MS and I'm from CA so as you can tell from the states, we say things differently. We all think we're right. The poor students! It's pretty funny though! I think Nathan and I are the closest in pronouncing things the same way minus the "fixin' to" and "ya'll s" although I must admit I said ya'll for the first time in class today. I caught myself after I said it. The students didn't catch me, but I did. Writing was a bit disappointing this week after grading the students' persuasive papers. We have to do it again. The fourth day explaining it might be the charm. :) I really want to see the lights bulbs go on! In Health, everyone passed their tests! YAY!! They are pretty difficult tests. I have two makeups, but I'm confident that they will pass as well!  In the teaching class, we have covered philosophy in education and now we are talking about lesson plans. The joy of teachers. ha...ha... We are going to cover some methods for teaching. The following week we will hopefully have placements for them to teach. It is quite interesting being on the administrative/ teacher side as opposed to the student side of this whole process. Overall the week of classes went extremely well. Please pray that the last 2 and 1/2 weeks of classes and half a week of finals go well! Everyone is getting excited for graduation and the end of school. 

Time for an update on the leg. I've been walking for one week now. It's still quite exciting. At first I didn't know what to do with my hands when I was walking. I couldn't help but laugh at myself. On Monday, it was really nice to be able to carry my things out to class all by myself. I even carried a cup of coffee and didn't spill it! Quite exciting! It's the little things that make me happy! I still walk pretty slowly. Going up and down stairs I still rely more on my left leg than my right. The pain comes and goes. I think this is a good sign. My ankle still swells up quite a bit. I may be doing too much on it, but I generally listen to my body. If it hurts too badly I won't push it. I've been walking on daily basis to build up my muscles in my leg again. Wow! My right calf has never been so sore. I was kind of shocked at this. 

Mom and Dad, you can skip over this next part! :)  I rode on a motorbike into Chiang Mai for the first time Thursday night. It was kind of scary, but not too bad. Nathan is a good, safe driver. It's not him that I worry about, it's the other people on the road. We didn't have a truck around when we were going to head in to see Ah Moon. So, we had to take bikes. It's probably a good thing to ride on a motorbike again, like falling off a bicylce? Especially since I'm coming back next year, it's probably a good thing. I think at this point, I still like the truck more. 

For being such a productive, full week, I don't have any photos for you. I think I should get some of my without crutches on here. I'm working on it. 

A verse, I want to leave you with is Jonah 4:11 "But Nineveh has more than 120,000 people living in spiritual darkness, not to mention all the animals. Shouldn’t I feel sorry for such a great city?” If you haven't read the book of Jonah in while, I would suggest reading it. I remember hearing the story of Jonah when I was child and thinking oh that's such a good story. Jonah didn't obey God, the fish swallowed him, he repented and did what God told him to do. Great story, right? But reading on further, there is so much more meaning in the story. The fact that Jonah gets mad at God just causes me to shake my head sometimes. The analogy that Jonah is given is really good and applicable to our lives in different ways. This story provoked some really, really good discussion. Is it okay to be angry? Or are we supposed to be happy about everything all the time? Just a couple of thoughts that came up in class.

My countdown is now at 32 days! I'll be in the good ol' USA so soon! Kind of crazy! I feel like I just got here and I feel like I've been here forever. I'll be seeing all of you soon. Hope you're have a fantastic day and this finds you well! 

Sending My Love and Hugs from the Lovely Country of Thailand,

Lainy J.