Settling In

Well friends, I’ve been in Chiang Mai for a little over a week now. Kenny, my supervisor, picked me up Saturday morning from the train station. When I studied abroad in Uganda last semester, Kenny’s wife Julia was my Student Life Coordinator, and Kenny worked in the Kampala office for Food for the Hungry. FH is opening a new study abroad program here in Chiang Mai this semester, so Julia moved here to be the SLC and Kenny came too, of course, and is working on projects here in the region.

It’s been a great joy to see Kenny and Julia again and I look forward to the next 4 months with them. I grew to love them a lot while I was in Uganda. There was one other intern here – Roshanda – when I arrived. For the next three days, it was just the four of us. Kenny and Julia took us out to numerous places – a Thai curry restaurant, a Thai BBQ restaurant, and others. The food here is amazing and ridiculously cheap. A meal that people would easily pay 10+ bucks for at home could cost a dollar or even less here. Apparently most Thais eat out because it’s so cheap and to prepare Thai meals is very time intensive.

Sunday night we went to the Sunday Night Market in Chiang Mai. It’s a good mix of Thai and farang (foreigners). There’s a daily night market which is mostly farang and a Saturday night market where it’s mostly Thai locals and not much that farang would be interested in. At the market Kenny and I got full body Thai massages for an hour for only 4 bucks! It was celestial.

Those first three days, particularly, we had some great stimulating conversation. I was thoroughly excited to find out that Kenny and Julia have been long-time fans of This American Life and Roe has just recently been getting into it, too. We had numerous discussions about various episodes. Kenny, Roe and I also had some great conversations on theology and the Christian life. It was comforting and encouraging to know that the next few months I will have some great stimulating conversations with some great people.

On Tuesday, the two other interns arrived, as well as the five students who will be studying abroad. One of the interns is Jordan Smith, who I’ve been friends with since freshman year when he lived on my floor. We went to Africa together last semester. He and I are interning with Kenny, supporting him in his work in the region while Roe and Anna are TAs for two of the classes here.

We live on the TLCC (Thai Lahu Christian Church) Bi-vocational Training Center. The Lahu are an ethnic minority group that are located in China, Burma, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. (On a side note, the Thai often refer to them as “Mussur” which means “hunter”!). The Lahu people are a very shy people at first, but once they are comfortable around you they open up and are extremely warm and loving. This often seems to be the case with traditional peoples. The Lahu love to hunt and fish, and I’m hoping to get them to take me on a hunting trip! Most of the Lahu here are training to be pastors in their communities, while at the same time learning useful skills to help support them. I had the opportunity to help out with an English class for the Lahu and assist in teaching them. I hope to have more opportunities to do this. For those of you from the E-Free Church, the TLCC training center was actually funded and built by E-Free churches. Diana Landis told me that Hershey actually helped contribute to the funds to build it. The two missionaries here teaching English are from an E-Free church in Minnesota!

The Lahu guys play this really cool game that's like volleyball, except you can't use your hands. You mainly use you're feet and head. It's 3 vs. 3. And I've seen some amazingly sweet bicycle kicks, and other acrobatics to get that ball over the net. I've played this game with them, as well as some football (soccer). They're not as good at football as a lot of the Africans I've played with, but it was still a blast.

The compound is actually located about 20+ minutes northwest of Chiang Mai in a town called Doi Saket. It’s kind of inconvenient – the public transportation (pickup trucks known as soerng taos with benches in the back) quick running into the city around 7PM and out of the city at 10PM. But the semi-rural location is also beautiful. We are surrounded by lush green rice paddies with mountains in the close distance. I don’t know which is more awe-inspiring: on the morning, when the mountains stick out from the fog, or in the afternoon when the sun shines brilliantly down upon the rice paddies in front of the mountains. I will soon post a picture of the postcard vista. Kenny and I went on a beautiful bike ride through numerous little villages and rice paddies.

The nice thing about being attached with a study abroad program is that I get to leech off of all the cool things the students do. So for example, the second day the students were here, I got to go along with all of them to an elephant show. We got to watch elephants play soccer and paint better than I can. I also got to feed them let them take my hat off and put it back on again. Oh elephants.

My job description changed a little upon arriving here. Kenny – my supervisor – his job description has changed as well, so ipso facto, mine too. Whereas before we both thought that we would be creating our own programs, we’ve now discovered that our job will be to support other workers in the region. I sincerely thought that I was going to be working with Burmese refugees and directly on issues of human trafficking, but I don't think that's going to be the case anymore. I told all my supporters that this is what I would be doing. I want to have integrity in raising support, so I sincerely mean this when I say the following: Because I told people I would be working with Burmese refugees and human trafficking victims, and many of you gave me money for that, if you find that you are not happy with the work I am doing over here, by all means, please contact me and I will return your money to you. I don't want to mislead anyone in giving me support for my ministry. I sincerely thought I was going to doing one thing and I've now gotten here and found out that that's not really the case. As my work and projects unfold, I'll report on them, so you can know what I'm doing. However, due to the sensitivity of the politics in some of the countries, I can’t give detail about where in Southeast Asia some of these people are, and when I travel I can not be specific as to where I am going.

For my Go-ED friends who have been to Africa: the development circle is entirely different here than in Africa, particularly for this organization. Money flows into Africa like snow falls in Houghton. Here, things are much more modest – sometimes because the projects are under the radar, other times, simply because the philosophy here is to work on a small-scale, grass-roots level with the local churches. They seek private donations instead of aid from Western governments and the UN. It’s kind of a refreshing model but I think both have their pros and cons.

Things here have been slow-starting in terms of doing things and serving. But right now they’ve asked me to sit in on some classes so I can learn about the region and gain a better understanding. Eventually my work will pick up more, but until then I’m learning as much as I can so that work I do will be more effective.

Two quick notes

Two quick notes to my readers:

1) Sorry for my lack of posts since being here - A) I've been really busy settling in, but also B) Due to my own meddling, my internet wasn't working on my computer shortly after arriving here. But I have got that fixed. I am in the process of loading some of my thoughts over the past week, but I am super busy, so it may take a while to catch up.

2) I'd like to load pictures, but apparently it is sometimes blocked here. So I will when I can.

Hope to soon explain more about my experiences so far and what I will be doing!

Thailand vs. Everywhere Else

I arrived in Bangkok yesterday around noon. I write this as I’m on a train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai where I’ll be staying for the next four months. I kinda feel like I’m in Darjeeling Limited as I ride on this train, except I’m not in India, Luke Wilson is not with me, and I’m not going to find my mom. Nevertheless, the train has the same developing-country feel, I’m in a Buddhist country, and even the Thai script comes from Indian Sandskrit!

I went to the bathroom and by the loud sound of the train passing over the tracks that came up out of the toilet, I’m pretty sure that the toilet just opens up underneath the train. Awesome. I’ll leave it to you to conclude where the waste goes!

Besides the occasional bug I see scurry across the floor, though, the train isn’t too bad. I had pineapple jelly on my toast this morning which was a new treat! There’s an old Thai man across the aisle from me who’s got a briefcase by his side and a 12-pack of beer under his seat.

The sun went down shortly after the train departed last night at 6:00pm. So unfortunately I couldn’t see the landscape most of the 13-hour trip. I slept for about 7 hours. When the sun finally came up this morning, it revealed a beautiful Thai landscape. I’d look off into the distance and see mountains covered in lush overgrowth. My eyes would follow the landscape down into the deep valleys in between the mountains and my train. Suddenly, as my eyes followed the valley closer and closer to the train, I suddenly realized that we were also directly above the valley, going across incredibly high bridges with the valley deep below us. This happened several times.

So some thoughts about Bangkok: I spent about 6 hours in Bangkok yesterday – I arrived at the airport and went through immigration and customs. I then caught a taxi to the train station, but had the next 5 hours to wait until my train left, so I meandered around the neighborhoods close to the train station, with all of my luggage.

I couldn’t help but compare Thailand to everywhere else I’ve traveled and note the similarities and differences. I’ll probably do that a lot this semester, because I think it’s quite interesting. Bangkok isn’t at all like an African capital. Granted, most African capitals are more developed than most Americans realize, I think. And yet a place like Bangkok is still significantly more developed than any African capital I’ve been to. I’ve forgotten what a middle-income country feels like after spending so much time in Africa. Bangkok actually reminded me of Lima, Peru– about the same level of development. They even have tuk-tuks, which, for those who have been to Peru, are the Asian equivalent of what we liked to call “giggle wagons.” I certainly couldn’t help but miss the chaos of Kampala, Uganda, however. Any international driving is chaotic compared to the US., but Bangkok’s was significantly more orderly than a place like Kampala.

A lot of people had masks over their mouth. At first I thought this was for the smog. But it’s the same even here on the train. I then realized that people are scared of the swine flu! (inserted note: Kenny told me that he asked one man in Chiang Mai why he was wearing a mask and he said swine flu. Kenny then proceeded to ask him, “Did you know that more people die of regular flu than the swine flu? He was quite dumbfounded upon this realization).

I am surprisingly unnoticed and under the radar here. I’m so used to Africa now, where every person yells out “Muzungu muzungu!” in East Africa, and in Sierra Leone, every person yells “Oputu oputu!” The Thais are much more indirect and subtle. I can’t imagine them being so direct. It certainly ruins the self-esteem though, when you’re used to being the spotlight of all attention! Haha. It also leaves me more flexible to take pictures, though too. In Africa, I constantly felt uncomfortable whipping out my camera. Here, I feel I can blend in much more.

I saw a motorcycle driver who apparently didn’t know it was a fashion faux pas to wear socks and sandals.

During my 5-hour wait for my train, I met a fascinating French man with his Thai girlfriend. He’s in his late 20s and has frequented Thailand for about 6 years and he’s currently been dating this girl for about 6 months. Through his broken English and thick accent, he freely gave me advice on picking up girls and bragged about how the Thai women will do all of your work. “For example,” he said, “she carries all of my stuff when we walk around the city.” He told me that every conversation with farang (foreign) men is about sex with Thai girls. I feel that women are commoditized and demeaned more here even more than they are in Africa!

In the train station I met a Dutch woman and had a fascinating conversation about Muslim immigration problems in Holland. Tensions are very high between the Dutch and Muslim immigrants there, and she was the first one to admit it. She did not have a high view of them.

It’s quite entertaining to see monks in their saffron robes riding taxis and tuk-tuks (high-tech chariots, if you will. Carts pulled by motorcycles, more or less. For those of you who have been to Peru – tuk tuks are the giggle wagons!) It’s just fascinating to see Buddhist monks function in every day life. You feel like they shouldn’t.

There’s significantly less cell phone usage than in Africa. In Africa, everyone has a cell phone, and everyone uses it. Sometimes they are using two at the same time. Here, everyone may have one, but they’re not necessarily using it like Africans do.

So these are a few of my first impressions upon landing in Thailand.

Reflections from an Airport Terminal

I'm sitting in the JFK airport as I write this first post. Airports probably have to be ranked #1 in the list of "Coolest Places to People Watch." All sorts of fascinating and diverse people pass through the terminals and security check points of international airports. Particularly a global hub like JFK.

It is here that I see the Muslim women, probably somewhere from Southeast Asia, who have clearly just arrived as they stand with their heads wrapped, gawking at the New York city skyline out the window of the terminal train car (in actuality, it was just a few apartment buildings nearby, as JFK is still quite a distance from downtown Manhattan. Nevertheless, they were excited.) Their younger brother, however, stood rather unimpressed beside them. When they exited the train, I noticed one of the girls was wearing Chucks.

There was the Korean girl who jumps onto the train sweating beads frantically trying to catch her connecting flight. I had an urge to fan her in the same way you get an urge to clear your throat when someone else has a frog in theirs. Then there's the gazillian Hasidic Jews diasporing out from Jerusalem II, also known as New York City. Some were on their pilgramage to the real Holy Lands, while others were going elsewhere, particularly on Austrian Air for some reason.

There was the....uh...woman, I guess, in the security line who clearly used to be a man but is no longer. There was the businessman with his Bluetooth in his ear waiting to pick someone up and numerous TSA employees, most who seem to be African American. And then there was the Italian-American TSA official who was just sitting beside me who used the f-bomb in each sentence while venting to a co-worker about his work schedule. There was all the French people at the Air France counter heading back home, and the Eastern European lady who barely spoke any English and needed help from an American.

I've been beside numerous Spanish speakers and it's reminded me of how much I long to go back there, even as I'm going to Thailand.

And of course there are the countless people who appear very similar to me in appearance, dress, and probably background, too.

These people-watching experiences exemplify the fascination I have with the cosmopolitanism of New York City. As many of you know, over the past year I've fallen in love with Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. I seriously wish that I could call him up right now, tell him I'm in the neighborhood, and have him come meet me here at JFK so that we could chat. If only that was a reality...

Listening to Tim Keller though has made me think differently in many ways. One thing he constantly stresses is the strategic value of the City (not New York, per se, but any urban area). Everyone lives in the City...except for white, protestant evangelicals. Buddhists, Jews, secularists, Muslims. The people that evangelicals should be interacting with the most. Unfortunately, we've had a tendency to flock to and congregate in groups of people just like us. In some ways, evangelical Christianity has become more militaristic and political and engaging, and yet in other ways, we've grown more insular as we flock towards people just like us in suburbia. I guess that's fairly natural and human. I do it all the time. And yet JFK reminds me of how many people out there are extremely different from me - and how many different "differents" there are! These people are both fascinating to learn from, and yet as a Christian, I also have things that I hope they can learn from me.

Living in suburbia isn't wrong or evil. We need Christians in all circles of society. I love being within driving distance of a rope swing or a mountain to climb. I love being around people of my own kind, too - my deepest friendships are with the people who understand me and my faith the most. And yet, as a Christian I want to be mingling with as many people who are different from me as possible. It's a constant struggle I feel.

I figured I would whip out my computer and jot down a few of these thoughts as I wait for my flight. By the time I board, I’ll have been in JFK for 9 hours. Too bad I have to pay to use the wi-fi here. I guess I’ll just have to post later!

Ode to a Good Summer

I leave for Thailand tomorrow. I think back on my summer and conclude that it’s been a good one. God blessed me in many ways, including in areas I wasn’t sure if He would or not. My faith was strengthened through that. This summer, I saw beautiful pictures of how the Kingdom of God is supposed to function, and what happens when it does function like it’s supposed to.

I was worried about finances and how I would pay for my internship in Thailand – and yet I was overwhelmed at people’s generosity as financial support poured in as a response to my letters. Even random people who saw my group on Facebook supported me. Sometimes I hear people in the US complain about how everyone only cares about their own lives and not at all about the rest of the world. That’s not what I experienced with this internship. I was humbled at how excited people were to support me and the sacrifices I’m sure they had to make financially in order to send me. I had my own friends - not their parents - giving me 100 or 200 dollars! I was humbled and thankful for every contribution - big or small - that people made to help me serve others.

Along the same line of being stretched in my ability and willingness to trust: I was worried about finding work for the summer. I came back from Africa in the beginning of June, but then my family went on vacation to the Smokies. I didn’t start job searching essentially until mid-June. Could I find work for the summer?

Well, thanks to God, there are some amazing, godly people, like Mark Moad. Mark Moad, for those of you who don’t know him, is a man from my church, Hershey Evangelical Free Church. He’s a businessman who has a heart bigger than his body (and he is a big guy!) He had the vision laid on his heart to help young men who couldn’t find jobs for the summer. So he decided to pay them to do work for other people who needed work done - such as the Hershey E-Free Church - as well as other people in the church. Mark got as much financial support as possible from people in the church to help him with this project, but he still fronted much of the money himself.

Imagine paying multiple full-time laborers for jobs that bring you no financial payback! Economically, it makes no sense. But as Kenny Miller, my supervisor in Thailand said: “That right there is Kingdom economics.” Such community support and utter sacrifice is a beautiful picture of how the Kingdom of God should be working. It has humbled me and I pray that more of us can catch that vision.

One of my favorite people in the world and one of my close friend’s dad, Bruce Clutcher, contributed to Mark’s funds and Uncle Bruce had me come work at his house for 2 weeks. I got plenty of work done around the Clutcher’s house, and I also got to enjoy watching YouTube videos and playing tennis with Uncle Bruce! What a great job!

I also enjoyed spending a good week or so at the house of the parents of another one of my close friends: Jeff and Cathy Davis (aka "Mom and Dad II, III, or IV"). To my lovely surprise, the first evening I went over to work, their daughter Jen and her husband (my long-time best friend Ben) had driven up from Annapolis! In other words, I got to spend most of my summer working around people who are very close to me and who mean the world to me! I also enjoyed Mr. Davis’ lessons on leadership principles on our trips to get more mulch!

To help Mark out a little and lessen his financial burden, I passed around flyers in my neighborhood explaining that I was looking for work. Despite getting reprimanded by the post office for using mailboxes, I got several jobs – one doing grounds work at the local animal hospital which provided me work until the end of the summer!

I really enjoyed doing landscaping this summer. I put on my iPod and listened to podcasts while working with my hands all day. I loved listening to podcasts. My favorite included: This American Life, Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me, Slate Magazine, NPR’s Planet Money, PRI’s America Abroad, The Veritas Forum, This I Believe, The Moth, Stuff You Should Know, PRI’s To The Best of Our Knowledge, The New Yorker’s Fiction and Out Loud podcasts, BBC Documentaries, as well as sermons by Tim Keller, John Piper, Mark Driscoll, and Rob Bell . I looked forward to work every day so I could listen to my podcasts! It was pretty good simultaneously working with my hands while being intellectually stimulated.

God also blessed me with friends this summer. As all of my best friends are no longer in the area, I wondered how lonely it would be at home. Fortunately, I was blessed to make a whole new group of friends at Infusion! What an awesome group of people! In addition, I also got to spend a great amount of time with my best friends, despite our distance apart. My time in Africa, apart from them, reminded me how much Ben, Jen, Alissa, Dave, and others mean to me. I cherished every moment I got to spend with them this summer. I've had some stuff to work through, and my best friends were exactly what I needed. I also loved meeting Alissa's boyfriend Dhilan and happily receive him into the family!

I was also blessed to spend some great time with the fam this summer, including a week-long trip to the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee!

All in all, it was a great summer and the Lord was good.