Roaming Thailand With the Thunder Thighs of an Elephant

We met the girls and started teaching this week. For the most part, it’s actually the boys teaching because one of our two girls is in the bakery and the other of our two girls is helping the one of the girls in a way that I’m not going to say. You would normally assume that girls help girls get their feet back under them after their circumstances but it’s been the boys teaching, which is interesting. I guess it’s helpful in the fact that it’s a reminder that not all boys are going to treat them the way that they were treated. 

I mainly taught Canva and photo editing. I didn’t do as well as I hoped with Canva, because I don’t know it well enough to do more than the basics of  Canva when appearing in a different language. Fortunately, the translator we are using knew Canva, so they did a lot of the work. I’ll be teaching communication skills and English this week, so that should go better with my Journalism degree. 

Teaching English is going well. It’s pretty repetitive but I think the girls are learning. They liked a lesson better with actual props rather than cards, so that was helpful information. They are also really getting used to one of the other boy’s voices for English, because he teaches it the most. We all have to try to talk more so they get used to different English accents. 

As for other updates, there is someone that I met that I would like to put in prayer requests for, other than obviously the girls. We were praying down a street very famous for drugs, alcohol, prostitution, idolatry, crystal new age stuff, pretty much every sin you can think of. I decided to go into a crystal store to see if there was anyone there to talk to, because that would be an interesting conversation. At first there wasn’t anyone in there, but as I was about to leave, someone walked in. I approached and asked if he was shopping for anyone in particular, and he said he was getting crystals for protection. I told him that I could pray for him for protection, and he said he didn’t need that. 

So obviously, he needs prayer. His name is Simon, and he is from Poland. Poland has a lot of Christians in it, so hopefully whenever he is at home from his travels that will help. I’ll be dragging my team to the mall on Monday to evangelize, so maybe more prayer requests will come. 

I’ve tried a lot of interesting foods and drinks since I left. Here’s some of them. Chicken feet, blood clots, dragon fruit smoothie, passionfruit smoothie, hot milk, Oreo smoothie, mango sticky rice, crocodile, larva, “1000 year old egg” and elephant bath water. Chicken feet were very boney and blood clots were better than you think but still not great. I tried those because our team went to a family of one of the kids that we play soccer with. They gave us a lot of food, and were very kind. I liked all the smoothies, not so much the hot milk. Crocodile tasted like a fish steak, a well done fish steak, but a steak nonetheless. I think Mango sticky rice is okay, but I’m not as obsessed with it as some of my teammates. We have a lot of rice, so I’ll avoid it for dessert, thank you. There has been a shocking lack of beans on the menu, which I love that I don’t have to eat and know that won’t last. 

Now on to the elephant bath water. You may be thinking, “that’s a drink there”? No, no it is not. We went to a place where we get to feed and bathe elephants up close, and it was REALLY FUN. The elephants seemed really locked in on the food, but you would get chances to pet them. We fed them bananas and sugar cane, which is like chocolate to them. We wound up getting into a splash fight with the water ourselves, and one of the girls was about to dump water on me. I apparently glared at her, which stopped her in her tracks because she hadn’t seen me look angry before. We were laughing about that, when the other girl decided to throw water at my open mouth because “she wanted to see my angry face too”. She apologized, and I’m not mad at her (she didn’t even get to see the angry face after that), but you’re REALLY not supposed to do that. They don’t drink the tap water here, and that was straight from a river, right where the elephants bathe. I feel completely fine, so hopefully that stays the case. We also bamboo rafted which was also fun. 

Until next time!