Mercy that Pours: Trip to the village

Our trip started early enough - 5 AM! So we were already on the road by the time the sun was coming up. The travelers were our Thai teacher, her husband, her mother-in-law, Khun Kam (who grew up in this village), her daughter and Jenny and me. We had been invited a month or so earlier by our Thai teacher, but she gave us almost no details! We later found out that this was mainly because she hadn't been there before, but at the time, she said she wanted us to be surprised. nice. Although that was fine with Jenny and me, since we're not super planners anyway, it did leave us scrambling for a tent, sleeping bags, and warm clothes the day before we left. It's a good thing we have good friends, though, who kindly loaned us some of the equipment we needed!

This is an overlook on the way up. This is also where Jenny told us she felt really carsick and so we switched places (me riding in the back of the truck). This was fine with me because there was a little room to lay down and sleep. Later, Jenny threw up out the widow all over the side of the truck. (This has since been a subject of discussion in our language sessions, ever since we learned the Thai word for vomit. nice :) )

We stopped for breakfast (?!) around 9 am: sticky rice, several types of fried/grilled pork, nam prik (a chili sauce/paste) and vegetables. Yummy!

We arrived around noon, maybe a little later. The kids were very excited about all the chips and snacks our group brought from the city. I'm pretty sure they ate everything in the first couple hours we were there!

What kids don't love junk food?

Jenny and I got to "help" with making some bamboo tubes of sticky rice. I think it's called khaaw lan. Anyway, they fill the hollow bamboo w/ sticky rice and then plug the top with leaves and cook them over a fire. Then you can peel and eat. I'm a fan.

This is our hosts' older sister. She kind of adopted us during our stay there. Pretty soon, she is planning to move to a village nearby to help teach in the church there.

The first night we were there, everyone ate together at the church. Jenny was a better sport than I was when it came to this food in particular. I think we might work well together. She's rather eat the, um, interesting parts of the animals that you find in the soup, while I'd rather eat platefuls of bugs. Maybe we can use this our advantage in the future :)

We spent a lot of our time that weekend in the church, for two reasons. First, it was a holiday, and apparently having extra church services is the thing to do! But also, our teacher's husband is a pastor, so this was an opportunity for him to teach and share with people who rarely get visitors!

It might be hard to tell exactly what's going on this picture, but this man is herding his cows on a motorbike. Talk about cowboys!

Most of the time, we ate on the front porch of our hosts' house. Only 6 or 7 people would eat at a time. Each person had their own plate of rice, then would scoop a little bit from the serving bowls onto their rice at a time.

The second night was kind of a skit night. People got up and sang praise songs and the kids did a couple of plays. I'm not totally sure what was going on in this play, but the theme verse was supposed to be "Do not repay anyone evil for evil..." Not sure how this was illustrated. As far as we could tell, it involved a lot of stealing and burning of houses and in the end, all the main characters were dead. But it was funny!

One day we all went out for a walk and came back with lots of vegetables. I thought we'd walk further, but I was satisfied with getting to bring back vegetables for dinner. I was getting tired of eating a lot of meat and rice. In my purse are chili peppers and eggplant.

Here's Jenny modeling our awesome tent set up on someone's living room floor. It was weird to be in a tent in a house, but it definitely kept us a little warmer and made things a little easier as far as dressing and sleeping and bugs go.

In order to give us a proper send-off, they loaded us down with goodies and treats. Our hostess climbed up in her tamarind tree to pick us some fresh . A cow was butchered the night before and half the meat was sent back to Chiang Mai with us. They also sent rice, peanuts, lots of bananas, pumpkins and a big green squash.