Buddhist House Warming Ceremory

Couple of weeks ago we were invited to our friend's new house ceremony.  The invitation said that the ceremony would start at 9:09am.  There were 9 monks at the ceremony. Have you guessed that "9" is an important number?

It was the first time for us to go to such a ceremony.  Many of the parents I know from our son's Taekwondo were there which made it fun.  The food was very tasty and lots of it too!  It wouldn't be a Thai event without ear piercingly loud music (and some dancers too).

It was a good cultural experience for us.

New school term

 Our oldest son's new classroom.  1st day at school

 Our middle son's 1st day at new school

Our daughter and son at the new school.  Our daughter must be the only child to cry when she has to go home.

The boys have started a new school year. Our middle school changed schools (again) but it has been a good change. It suits him much better than his old school. We wanted to enroll him in this school last year but we arrived back in Thailand 1 week too late and they wouldn’t accept him. There is a lot more play based learning and much less sitting behind a desk which we love. The teachers seem caring and nice. He is not in uniform right now because it is their summer program. Each morning at the school he is greeted by two ladies, one who puts antibacterial cream on his hands and the other who measure his temperature (so he doesn’t have a fever). He is still clingy in the mornings and yesterday I had to leave him crying and being held back by 3 teachers but when I picked him up in the afternoon he was happy and the teacher said he stopped crying pretty soon after.

Our oldest son has entered P.1 which is the equivalent to 1st grade. It is the same school as he went to last year but things have changed dramatically. His timetable starts at 7:30am with Chinese and he has another 8 periods of 50 minutes before he ends the day at 4:10pm. He has two 10 min breaks and 40 minutes for lunch. We received two notes in the last week, advising of additional classes now on Saturday 10-12noon for additional Thai and homework class from 4:10-5:00pm. We need to supplement his Thai schooling with homeschooling so that he doesn’t fall too far behind in his English to fit back into an Australian school some time in the future. We think his timetable is far to much for a 6 y.o. So we take him to school at bit late most mornings (around 8:15am) apart from two homeschool mornings where we send him at 10am. We pick him up early on two afternoons when he has English as his last period.

At the moment he seems to be coping though he’s pretty tired by the day and in the mornings. He hasn’t complained too much about school yet which is good.

Flood (con't)

 I’ve recently received the photos that our team mate took of our house when it was flooded. The above photo is of our kitchen.

This is the back of our house.

From the watermarks left on the wall, the flood waters reached just over 40cm in the bottom section of our house. Apart from dedication and commitment of our househelper who stayed overnight at our house and help from our team mates and neighbours we would have suffered a lot of damage to our furniture and household goods. At one stage our househelper and our team leader Nick lifted our large fridge up two steps (with food in it) onto a higher level as water was pouring into the house (we had 4 people move it back down into place). We only suffered water damage to some cupboards and the laptop battery. Major electrical items which were underwater, we allowed to dry before turning on and praise God that they were working!

Apparently there were about 5 eels swimming in our house at one stage which our househelper’s husband caught and cooked up for dinner.

According to our neighbours there was a worse flood about 10 years ago which reached about 1m in our house!

So another first in my life, I felt an earthquake (though very minor) in Lampang a few months ago and now I’ve experienced a flood. What’s next?

flood

 Nick (left); Samon (second from right) and Neighbours having a laugh about the flood in the middle of our flooded street.  Our house is below the level of the street.

We were on holidays in South Thailand about 1000km from home in Lampang. Around midday I check my phone and I have 6 missed called from our house that morning (2 on Lisa’s phone). i figured something must have happened at home and that it was fairly urgent that it couldn’t wait. I call home but no one answers the phone. Finally about 15 minutes later, our househelper calls me telling me that heavy rain has flooded the outside room at the back of our house which has our washing machine and is used for storage. However, water had not entered our house yet and the rain had stopped so there was no pressing need to return right away since it was the last day of our holiday anyway. The next morning at 6am I get a call from our team leader Nick and half asleep I answered the phone. He said something along the lines of, “Sorry Rich, but I think you’ll need to come home right away. It rained heavily last night and water had flooded the bottom floor of your house”. I thought he was joking at first but after a pause there wasn’t a “just joking Rich” and then I realised he was deadly serious. We quickly finished packing but then when I tried to start the car the battery was dead. Luckily another one of the guests knew how to jump start our car so that I could drive it to the nearest car dealership to get the battery replaced. However, this all took time and cost us at least an hour and half of the morning, time which we could ill afford as we had to drive back to Bangkok (300km), collect our son’s passport from the Australian Embassy and then renew our visas before the immigration department closed at 4:30pm. We reached the Australian Embassy around 1:30pm, had the passport by 1:45pm, drove to the otherside of Bangkok to the OMF head office to get the visa paper work and reached the immigration department by 3:00pm. Our OMF visa person was waiting for us and had already collected a number for us in the queue. By 4:20pm our visa renewal had been completed. I caught a taxi to the airport and then the final flight to Chiang Mai. Then taxi from Chiang Mai to Lampang. I got home just before 10pm.

This was the sight which greeted me apart from a strong moldy smell. I was relieved to see that the flood waters had gone out of the house. After eventually getting through to my wife I went to bed ready for the cleanup tomorrow. More about that tomorrow and the rest of what happened.

 This was our downstairs toilet

Jesus must be from Chiang Mai

I was at a meeting of missionaries working with Northern Thais.  At the meeting a missionary shared about an experience they had showing the Jesus film in Northern Thai to a group of people.  At one point in the movie when Jesus spoke the whole crowd burst into laughter and they said jokingly that Jesus must be from Chiang Mai.  Apparently the Jesus spoke in a with a very distinct Chiang Mai accent.

I never thought of this kind of problem before.  I guess the Jesus films I've seen in English, the actors always had a pretty neutral accent (never American, British or even Australian). 

Wife's Birthday and Songkran Fun

My wife’s birthday falls right in the middle of the Songkran water festival, Thailand’s biggest and most popular festival. Lisa got to open her presents this morning and I went to the market to buy jork (rice porridge). I was planning to make scrambled eggs but we had no eggs (they were all boiled up for the Easter egg decorating for the kids at our Organic church meeting). Lunch was with Mr Kawano, the owner of the taekwondo school our son goes to along with a family from our son’s school. Then we all crashed for the afternoon and slept until around 4pm. Then it was off to have more Songkran water fun. Unfortunately, Lampang has full on water spraying on 12-13 April so today it was very quiet.

Yes, that's me on the left completely soaked and our two sons

We did find a family near the clock tower round about splashing cars as they went by so we joined in and had fun with them. Tomorrow we might be off to Ann’s parent’s house who is one of the English students at the Lighthouse.

Day in a Life of a Missionary

This morning went with my son to the Pattamasaevi (ปัทมะเสวี) Mini Summer Camp to teach English for an hour. Taught Colin Buchanan’s song “Remember the Lord” with the message that God is always watching and working for the good of his children. It’s a very “Aussie” song with lines like “miss your breaky” and “busted for something you didn’t do”, “dad is crusty and your mum’s in a flack”. Anyone wanna “av a go” at trying to explain “your mum’s in a flack”?

After English teaching went home to drop off my son and then went around town to do some jobs. Stopped off in front of the post office for lunch and ate this great noodle and dumpling soup for all of 35 baht (just over AU$1. Would have been 30 but I asked for the “special” - which means you get a bit more than normal, much more than the extra 5 baht you pay). Add a bit of dried chilli and fish sauce ... yuumm.

Collected the mail and then back home to prepare for tomorrow’s lesson.

Prayer night at our house tonight.

Funny Kids

Our kids are a handful some of the time (no most of the time). It is the long summer break now so they won’t go back to school until mid May. It’s not all fun and games though as they are catching up on homeschooling during the holidays. Our middle son will change schools for the third time. The last school he watched a bit too much T.V for our liking and he was in an international program so not picking up as much Thai as we would like.

Meal at Phii Jee's

Our Lighthouse team and some other English students at a lovely dinner at Phii Jee’s (front row 3rd from right) house on Monday. We had a great time with lots of food, eating and chatting.

Unfortunately, our daughter vomited up most of her lunch just as we were getting ready to go so she and Lisa couldn’t make it.

Our Son's Kindergarden Graduation

 Our son's kindergarden graduation class

 Yes, its really me from 30 years ago!

Can you pick me out?

Our son had his kindergarden graduation ceremony on Friday. Here are some photos of my graduation 30 years ago.