Elephants!

In Thailand there is something considered "Thai time". People here are relaxed and not extremely focused on time. This is an adjustment for us, but very refreshing! We have experienced Thai time a lot in the past few days. We have been blessed to get to do some really fun things the past two days. Orientation was scheduled for today, but our volunteer coordinator needed to help the Agape kids go on a field trip early this morning. It is now moved to tomorrow, which is great! She wants us to have orientation with her to discuss HIV/AIDS and basic instructions for our job before we see the kids. It has been rough waiting around to meet them, because we are SO eager. So...today we sneakily rode our bikes over to the orphanage and took a look! WOW, we were speechless. We will add some pictures tomorrow, but it is absolutely beautiful. So since we were given a few days of time off, we have used it to explore and try to navigate around our new home! 

Since our morning was free and we are still waking up at 5am, we decided to go find some elephants! In order to get to them, we had a sungtao driver take us. These are trucks that are converted into mini buses. This is one of the main forms of transportation and very easy for tourists like ourselves. We felt like real Thai people, so it was a fun ride out there. Our driver was a sweet little man who would secretly follow us around and then help us when we were lost. 

The Maesa Elephant Camp is in the mountains around Chiang Mai. This camp is full of the most beautiful, talented, and huge elephants! The elephants here have broken a world record for "the largest painting by a group of elephants". We went early and expected there to be a crowd to see these cuties! Well...

Turns out we were out numbered people to elephants at about 1/5!! We were the only people at the show, which was pretty funny. We watched the elephants bathe, play soccer, paint, play the harmonica, lay down, throw darts, and bow! Here are some highlight pictures.

The best part of the entire day was not the best at the time.  After the show, 3 elephants came to greet us. This meant that they basically attacked us with their trunks! We laughed harder during this 2 minutes more than we have the whole trip. The pictures of us are priceless. 

Here are the best pictures. Please understand the horror in our faces is not made up or fake. It is real and it is scary. 

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And the moment all of you have been waiting for...

THE VERY BEST PICTURES OF THE DAY

Blessings to you friends!

Lizards, bikes, and coffee

SUPRISE! We all cut our hair super short. The humidity was just too much! 

We have another very adventurous day! Last night we went to bed at 6:30 pm which was not a smart move. Taylor and I woke up and ate breakfast #1 at 2 am. After a few more hours of sleep we woke up and started our day at 5:00! We got to go on a walk around the neighborhood and had an interesting time greeting our neighbors. We didn't know whether to "wai" them, wave, or say a greeting! I went ahead and greeted them with a wai and we all laughed at how silly they probably thought we were.

Taylor's clothes have arrived. Taylor has had a better day today and even got money from an ATM! Thank you for the prayers. She is one happy camper.

We rode our bikes around our neighborhood. Just so you can picture this scene, I will tell you about our neighborhood. There is everything you would need in our little area! There are outdoor markets, a 7-11 with grocery items, a temple, lots of houses, and plenty of smiling people! The streets are very busy with bikers and drivers. Lots of Thai people ride motor bikes. The driving here is much different than home and they drive on the left side of the road. We had to go get our tires aired up, so we rode with flat tires through the neighborhood awkwardly. We pulled up to house after house acting out airing up a tire and were turned away many times. We finally found the house business that works on bike tires and they filled up our tires with huge smiles on their faces. This is one thing that is so awesome about this place!

Taylor introduced us to our first fun Thai fruit! It was very good, but we do not know how to say its name.

Within the neighborhood there are many outside markets with people who make awesome food. Laura took us to her favorite lady yesterday, so we ventured out today to eat lunch there. I have a feeling she will be seeing us a lot!

This is our last day of catching up and free time, so we rode our bikes out of the neighborhood and down a pretty busy street to get to a nice pool called Laguna. It was definitely an adventure riding our bikes there.

CREATURE UPDATE: It is the rainy season, but we have not experienced any rain yet! It is perfect weather to open up all of the windows in the house and let the breeze run through. In Thailand there is no way to get around seeing creatures. What kind? Funny story. Those of you who know me pretty well understand that lizards are not my favorite thing to run into. This morning I went into the bedroom where we are keeping all of our clothes and as I pulled one of my shirts, a lizard that was about 10 inches long ran up the wall right in front of my face! When my heart finally started beating again I went and got Kirstyn. We realized that we weren't going to dare try and catch it. Then as I went downstairs there was a large gekko looking lizard on the wall. We told Laura and she said they eat mosquitos, so that is reason enough to try and ignore their presence in the house! Early this morning Taylor grabbed her computer and saw hundreds of tiny ants crawling out of her computer keys. After shaking and blowing into the keys she got rid of most of them, but we will not be leaving our computers on the ground anymore! Kirstyn saw her first snake today, but it was dead. She handled herself very well! (Thanks Colton and Tyler for snake day, it might of helped).

The lizard basically looked like this in my terror-filled eyes.

TOURIST ALERT: The pool we went to is in a nice resort living neighborhood. We passed some guards and I acted out swimming to them. Turns out they speak English (embarrassing) and they told us to ride further and turn left. As soon as we got to the first street we saw, we turned left and rode for a few minutes down that road. We heard a whistle blow and looked behind us to find the security guard giggling and signaling us to turn around. We all busted out laughing and followed him to the correct street. We are still wondering what was down that first street we tried!

We have our orientation tomorrow at the Agape home. We are pumped! 

Blessings to all of you who are sleeping right now! (Except Ren, good morning!) 






Just kidding about the hair, but I really did cut myself bangs! I know you are all disappointed. 

New friends, new adventures!

We are running on fumes. It is 5 pm and we are ready for bed! We have had an awesome day unpacking and getting groceries at the market! There has been a few set backs (mainly with Taylors things!). We checked 2 suitcases full of things for the kids and Taylor checked her backpack on in Dallas. Well, they did not show up in Thailand so we are now waiting for them. This means ALL of Taylor's clothes. What a bummer. Also, we withdrew money from an ATM today and Taylor's debit card wouldn't allow it. She has kept a positive spirit despite the annoying setbacks. Pray for this!

We got to spend some time talking to Laura (the volunteer coordinator) about what they want from us at the orphanage. First of all, she is so fun! She has worked at the orphanage for 10 years and is from Australia. We spent most of the day laughing with her about how silly we look walking around. Here is what she said our job will be: We will head to the orphanage around 4 pm. The kids will get home from school, eat a quick snack, and then do their homework. After this they have some free time to go play outside! We will eat dinner with them and then help them get showered and ready for bed. They have another free time to play indoors for a while. Then we will ay prayers with them and get them all tucked in! We listened to her telling us this with our mouths wide open. What a blessing this time will be! She talked to us about the children's different personalities. She said the Lord will give us certain children that we really connect with. We are excited about these 10 weeks to make some awesome relationships and help out in any way we can! We will also be taking some language lessons that will really help us out. Within the next two days we will have training with Laura. This will include asking every question possible and getting a general idea of how things will work.

Our house is incredible! The view from our backyard is wonderful and we have a great porch in the front. It is a 3 bedroom house so that gives us a bunch of room! We will be taking cold showers all summer because the humidity here is out of control! We like it much better than Texas heat though. We got dinner at a market in our neighborhood for less than $1! It was awesome Thai food and soup made by a sweet little woman. Our brains are on overload with new smells, scenery, and language. We are very lucky to have Laura, the volunteer coordinator, so close! 

Due to our lack of sleep, we are all giggles. Everything has been hilarious all day. I will share a few things that got us laughing. 

We were trying to get through the Singapore airport when we made a friend! His name was John and was going to Cambodia to help put in wells there. He first asked us,"Are ya'll going climbing?". This was because of our backpacks we were carrying, so we told him no and tried to move on. He kept coming back to us making conversation. Because we had a 6 hour layover, he became our friend. We talked for a while and he told us," I knew ya'll were good travelers because I saw you walk up wearing no makeup, hair pulled back, baggy clothes, and looking like boys." His honesty had us cracking up, but definitely caught us off guard. 

At the market we had a hard time converting Baht (Thai currency), so Taylor and I thought she was about to spend $119 on cheese, milk, and shampoo. 

There are many more hilarious things that have happened these past dew days, but we are too tired to remember them! Please pray for those bags to get here quickly! We are praying for the kids we are going to meet so soon.

We wish you could see this! Blessings.

Hello from Singapore!

We have made it through a 4, 11, and 7 hour flight! Our seats were right next to the bathrooms which was good and bad at the same time. We have filled our time with movies, games, sleep, and talking about how excited we are! After our 3 hour flight to Chiang Mai we will meet the volunteer coordinator and hopefully the kids. 

We have successfully flown over Monday. We left on Sunday and now we are in Singapore on a Tuesday! It is pretty weird losing a day, but kind of a fun adventure.

We are currently sitting in Changi airport skyping our families! It is so early in the morning here, but we are surprisingly full of energy. We are excited to see what the next 10 weeks will look like! Prayers would be appreciated for our first few days of catching up  on sleep and meeting all the people at Agape.

Blessings to you!

In 11 days we will be boarding a plane and heading for Thailand! Thank you for your ongoing prayer support for our team. We can definitely feel the weight of your prayers! We have been in contact with the volunteer coordinator at the Agape home and a few things have changed.

We are now going to be working with the older children at the Agape home. This is unexpected but exciting news! From what we have heard, we will be working from 4-8 pm during the week and all day on the weekends. The children will be in school during the day, which gives us time for language lessons. How exciting!!

We have no idea what this summer will look like, but we know the Lord has big plans. 

Blessings to you