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.