To jump start our busy weekend, and feeling desperately in need of exercise, Saturday morning Emily and I tried out Turbo Fire. Let’s just say the three of us didn’t get along too well. Next on the itinerary was babysitting for Debbie while she and Doni went out for Doni’s birthday.
These pictures are deceitful because they look very calm and peaceful. Nonetheless, we had a great time.
After a quick grocery run, Doni and Jason dropped us off at the Walking Night Market for round #2 of shopping there. Yes, I know, it’s not night quite yet in this pictures, but the earlier you get there, the less crowded it is. Around 6:30 or 7 it starts to get REALLY crowded which makes actually shopping a bit challenging sometimes.
As I think I’ve mentioned before, the Walking Night Market isn’t super touristy, and has all sorts of everyday things for sale, from underwear and sheets, to knives and idols. They also have puppies! It took a huge amount of self-control to not buy like 3 of the little fluff balls…they were SO CUTE!
This group and a couple others provide live music at the night market. As you can see, this group is a little older. They played more traditional music on much more traditional Thai-looking instruments.
Jenna and I split mangoes and sticky rice for desert..yum!!
So for dinner we ate very Thai style, sitting on the ground at a tiny table. Unfortunately the table was on a slant so I think we had like 4 spills…but that’s what tide-to-go is for so it’s all good! 😀
We went to Shalom again on Sunday morning, the Crusade run church.
After eating lunch with the Crusade people at Church, we walked to the mall. On the way we passed like 4 wedding dress stores. Excuse my girl moment, but I really love their wedding dress styles here. Oh, did you know that in Thailand you don’t buy your dress? You rent it, which is probably a lot more practical.
Also on our walk to Central, we passed a little wat (Buddhist temple), that also doubles as a community center.
I believe I mentioned this before, but Thai people buy these little statues and offer them as presents to the spirits for answered prayers, or to try and bribe the spirits to do something (remember animistic Buddhism). There were a TON of these little offering animals there.
note the woman bowing to the left
We crossed some railroad tracks and took some silly pictures 😀 soooo attractive, i know haha
courtesy of Emily’s awesome photography – Let me explain why both this picture and the next one are included. All along this little river are these sort of down-and-out, grungy looking houses. RIGHT behind them, as you can see better in the next picture, is a huge, very modern, very nice and pretty Western shopping mall, Central. It just struck me as a really dramatic and kind of sad contrast of worlds.
A side view of the mall – this pictures actually picks up the side of the mall where the previous one left off.
I just had to include this one because Jenna’s first reaction on seeing this was to squish herself into it as fast as she could…we’re not sure why that was such a gut reaction but it was funny.
just look at this gelato display
yes i got some – mango and peach, and hazelnut
We heard from Doni and Jason and Les and Debbie that the new Spiderman movie was in fact not lame, but better than the originals. We had some free time at the mall so we went to see it, in English of course, and it was SOOOOOOOO GOOD! I totally agree that it is much better than the originals. The acting is fantastic and the movie is just really well done in general (in my professional movie opinion). This picture was taken after we saw it, and I wanted it to be of us swooning over the sign, but these movie advertisements were right under screens playing previews. These screens were being watched by a rather large amount of Thai people, so I vetoed that idea in favor of preserving the dignity of white people in general.
Fun fact about movies in Thailand: a song is played right before the movie starts all about the king and how good he has been to his people. Everyone in the theater is required to stand for the song.
Sunday night the Global Breakthrough team (Gentanna, Dhoom, and Ohm) came with two of the Global Breakthrough employees from the U.S. to meet with the Encompass missionaries about strengthening their partnership. We had dinner at an Italian restaurant.
After dinner, we walked around the red light district of Khon Kaen. It was a little anti-climatic after Pattaya, but still very sad. This sign was probably the most shocking thing we saw. It is a bit reflective of how some Thais think about Thai husbands going to prostitutes.
There was one other place that was also rather shocking. As you can see, it advertises that it has girls, and it is only open at night. It seems that a lot of prostitution/trafficking in Khon Kaen itself happens in really really sketchy establishments a bit off the beaten track. Since Khon Kaen doesn’t receive a lot of tourists, most of the bars and brothels service Thais. The small stretch of bars that make up the red light district is right next to the 2 biggest hotels in Khon Kaen, providing easy access for foreigners. The brothels that some Thais frequent (such as this one) aren’t right in the red light district, and some are little more than shacks.
This picture is for my family – gnocchi in this delicious pesto sauce….I died and went to Heaven 😀 Debbie was like, “Does anyone like gnocchi? I was like “MEEEE!”
Monday morning we went to the co-op and helped out for a couple hours.
We went out for Isan food (grilled chicken and sticky rice) for lunch with the Global Breakthrough team, and then all met for a sort of vision meeting after. Alex (in the black) and Jason and Les talked through what Global Breakthrough’s vision is for this area, as well as ways for the Encompass team and Global Breakthrough to partner and support each other more in the future.
After the meeting we three interns went to help out with the Campus Crusade sponsored English club on KKU’s campus. The Korean team was there teaching Korean (did I tell you guys that Thai people LOVE Korean culture? It’s like their Hollywood…) and we taught English. The three girls I taught already knew a lot of English, which I found really impressive. The club is held in what is called the Complex on campus, which from what I can tell is sort of like a student union. We were on the second floor and here’s what the floor below us looked like, with little stands for various products and places to eat.
I got a cold yesterday, and Emily had a sore throat, so we took a “how I really feel” picture haha
Another picture for your viewing pleasure of the market on campus.
Prayer Requests:
-For continued health. As I said earlier, I have a cold 😦 and a lot of the Crusade Korean team is sick, so if you could pray for healing and for Jenna and Emily and me not to get sick (again) that would be great! 🙂
-We’ll be doing a lot of English teaching in the next couple weeks, and I’m not an ed anything major so I’m just sort of playing this by ear
-Please pray for divine appointments with the people who come for English/Korean tutoring. The kids that come aren’t Christians so it is a great opportunity to share God’s love. If you could pray for eyes to see the opportunities God gives us, and for courage to step out in faith and take them, that would be great.
-Also, we only have two weeks left here. I’m not really sure what this request is, but if you could be praying in general for our return travel and adjustment coming back, as well as for us to be really focused on serving these next couple weeks, that would be great also!
Trusting In Thailand 