Working in Bangkok

Well, I think I mentioned that Amanda and I were volunteering with Christ Church Bangkok, right? Well...we're still doing that--but for a bit longer than originally planned. We've agreed to stay on here until October! (I know--that's a long commitment for us!) However, within that time we still have time to take off for a few weeks or a month and travel to places like Russia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and India. :) (The picture's from the Grand Palace in Bangkok...)

We are officially helping with children's ministry--quite a bit on the admin side of things, but also directly with the kids. At the beginning of March, for example, we took 12 kids on a two-day barge trip. It was fantastic! We both love the water anyways, so hanging out on the river for two days was great. The kids had fun too. We had a program for them focussed around the verse: We tried to explain the concept of living water through the example of physical water. The barge team lead by Linda (the friend we stayed with in Chiang Mai) did the environmental demonstrations and the Christ Church team did the spiritual connections. Amanda and I (and Milo--he was still here) mostly just supervised. And, yes, when I mean supervise I mean we did some work... :) We were able to go along as only supervisors because there's a team of ten young people from the UK working with Christ Church right now too. They've been a huge help with all sorts of things--including the barge trip.

Besides special trips like the barge trip (shown in the picture), we do help out on Sundays with Sunday School classes if need be. We do a lot of pre-Sunday prep for the lessons and activities and we are going to start creating/sourcing new curriculum after Easter. I also put together a kid's newsletter, Amanda did a powerpoint for the church about the barge trip, we co-ordinate schedules, etc. Generally we keep busy! :)

We've also been trying to visit the Pakkred orphanage once a week. The church has a weekly visit there to help out with the kids who have cerebral palsy (well, most of them do anyways--some of them have Downs Syndrome I think). It's a very unfortunate truth that many kids with disabilities get abandoned here. The orphanage is government-run, though, so they are trying to be part of the solution. Pakkred is always fun--we just go for a few hours each week, to play with the kids, take them out for walks in the strollers (most can't walk), feed them lunch (including chocolate cake!), and then go.

We have also rented a small apartment here (apartment being just an appropriate word...). It's really just one room and a bathroom, but it works for us and it's cheap! It fits two beds, a closet, a desk, and a fridge--what more do we need! :) It's also in a building where there are mostly Thai people living--not "farangs" (foreigners). We really like that 'cause we like being part of the local community. The picture shows a bit of the apartment--and another favourite part of living in Thailand--all the fresh fruit!

It's quite fun actually, 'cause a lot of the other foreigners we've met (many of them also work at the church) live quite close to us. Within a few blocks of where we live there are at least five other people/couples living. The great thing being that a lot of their apartment buildings have pools that we can use--which is brilliant as we're now entering the hot season. (The picture was right before Milo left and it's at Matt and Kathy's place--they are an Australian couple here with CMS (Christian Mission Society).

The neighbourhood around the building is one of our favourite parts of living there. There are lots of street food stalls (Milo's favourite was the banana pancake guy) around; there's a small local fruit and vegetable market across the road, there are three small restaurants in our price range (one which sells only pad thai!); there's several coffee places (very important!) of various prices--the cheapest of which is always in our price range! :) It's just a really great place--busy without being too loud or raucous. I'll miss it when we leave!!

Since we are now going to be here for awhile, we are also trying to learn some of the language. It's a tonal language, which makes things a bit more difficult. That means you can say one word and it can mean four different things depending if you raise your voice, or lower it, or keep it flat, etc. It is hard to hear and duplicate! However, we can now shop sort of and ask simple questions in Thai. Very exciting! We can't, however, read or write any of the language--that's really difficult since it's not in the Latin script. Thai is especially helpful when we're in restaurants. The english translation for this dish was snakehead--so naturally we ordered it...only to find out it was only eel... *sigh

Okay, enough about Bangkok, I think. We agreed to stay on starting in January (so this is a January post even though it's April ), but at the beginning of Febraury we headed to India. Next post about that trip coming soon... :)