10/19/08
This country has a way of making a poor american feel really...spoiled. Earlier this morning I was sprawled out in a wooden kick-back chair type thing with a fan blowing on me (the heat and humidity can make things quite miserable) listening to my ipod and feeling downright - spoiled (ouch).

Anyways...

Sabbath was very nice. We had sabbath school and church at the Griswald's house (they're some other missionaries in the area). There's a reasonable number of Thai people attending church. They translated most of what was said for us. Thai sounds like it would be very difficult to learn.After lunch we went to a school where they're holding classes for the kids there. The kids are so cute! There was also an adorable cat at the school, but it was really skinny. It acted like it was starved for attention. There was a little down syndrome boy who was playing with it and basically hanging it from it's neck (until someone intervened.) The cat didn't even try to get away from him. It seemed to not care what was done to it as long as it was getting attention. The Griswalds took it home and are going keep it. I was so happy about that. It's hard for me to see a lot of the animals they have here. They're so uncared for.Later in the afternoon, the Kiers took us to a type of sanctuary place for elephants! That's the first time I've ever seen an elephant in real life, except for maybe at a zoo or something when I was really small. They are huge! They had quite a few babies who were absolutely adorable. One of them apparently enjoyed chasing us and was big enough to keep some of us on the run. Some of the workers were riding the elephants. They were perched up on the elephants without any type of saddle or anything. The elephants will either lift up a leg for you to step on to get on or they will get down on their knees. We also got to follow them when they took a few of the elephants down to the river for a bath. I don't think the elephants look as big in the pictures as in real life. Really neat to see all that.
Yesterday the Kiers took us to Lotus (basically a Wal-Mart here in Thailand). This country can be so poor in some places and so high-tech in others. It's amazing.
Later we ate at a vegetarian restaurant. The owner of the restaurant was so sweet. She tryed to talk with us and Mrs. Kier told us that she was asking Mama to give her one of us kids. Lol! She asked several times. I'm not sure if she was really serious or not. After Mama's refusal, she finally settled on telling Mrs. Kier that she was going to pray that God would give Mrs. Kier five children and that then Mrs. Kier would give her one of them. She kept holding up one finger and reapeating, "Just one, just one." in Thai.:)
We're leaving on the train at 4:00 this afternoon for Chang Mai. That will be a first for me. I've never been on a train before. Sounds exciting, but a bit long - 12 hrs.:)

I'll get back with you later.