The Second Letter

Dear Mom and Dad,


Greetings from the future!

Disclaimer: I must confess, I'm jet-lagged. The staying up all night didn't really help. Or maybe I'm tired because our days start around 4:00-4:30 am, in order to be ready for worship at 5:30 am. Surprisingly, I only missed one worship, because I didn't really sleep the night before.
If you could see where I'm sleeping...
Actually, I'll just tell you.
So after we spent the night in Bangkok, we woke up the next morning. and walked around the market with Mr. Atwell. Before I got there, I was thinking about walking around Bangkok barefooted (just to be a hippie) but I changed my mind when I got there. The streets were pretty...unsanitary.
Lots and lots of concrete, electrical wires, construction zones, people, trucks, motorbikes, idols, animals, flowers, junk...I would not want to live in Bangkok. It seems like every building is a housing unit, and literally every available space is a construction site for a new apartment building. Talk about a busy, noise, dirty city. Oh, but you've never seen such beautiful colors for taxis. At the airport there were taxis every color of the rainbow, but the best ones, in my opinion, were an iridescent hot pink.
Anyway, after we went to the market and exchanged our dollars for baht (1 Thai baht =

0.031328 U.S. dollars), we rode the sky train through the city to a stop where we took a taxi to the Ekamai International School (it's SDA). We ate lunch at the school, and then a couple who know Hannah's aunt (who used to work in Thailand) picked us up and drove us the eight or nine hours to Sunshine Orchards. Along the way, we stopped at some old temple ruins and saw some elephants giving tourists rides, (which was AWESOME. I got to touch one.), at Tesco-Lotus (which is like a mall on the bottom and a Walmart on the top floor), at a couple of roadside restaurants, a couple of markets, and the official sign that showed we reached the westernmost part of the country. Oh, and I got some totally amazing pants that are the most comfortable things you can ever hope to wear in your lifetime. No kidding. I'll have to show you a picture sometime. But then you all might want some too, and I'm not sure where to get more of them. 

Anyway, once we got out of the city, into the country (obviously, anything that is not city is country), I started to enjoy Thailand a lot more. It reminded me a lot of Malaysia and Cuba (the only other tropical countries I've previously been to). The land is flat in the Bangkok area, but once we got about four or five hours out, we came to the mountains. The couple we rode with, Pr. Boonrat and his wife Raweewan didn't want to drive the mountain roads in the dark, so we stayed in a hotel that night. It was our last night sleeping on a real bed! I should have enjoyed it more...

The next day, as we started to ascend into the mountain country, I understood why they didn't want to drive there at night. The roads are very steep, narrow, and windy. (that's windy, as in winding, as in lots of curves!) Oh, and the actual condition of the road rough. Kind of like the roads to Ouachita Hills. I didn't feel nostalgic though. 

The mountains are jungle mountains, covered with vegetation. Of course, the only plants I recognized were palm trees, but there were so many other trees, bushes, vines, flowers, and grasses that you couldn't see the ground. It was beautiful. 

However, after many hours of driving up and down and back and forth and left and right and passing motorbike after motorbike, Hannah and I were oh-so-glad to finally reach Sunshine Orchards. 

Side note: They drive forwards on the left side of the road, so we had many mini panic attacks when turning onto a different road, thinking we were driving into oncoming traffic. Of course, we didn't hit anyone, because they were all driving on their left side of the road too.

Anyway, Sunshine Orchards is a boarding/day school offering grades K-10 for Karen refugees. It is located on either side of a highway (which is only two-lane), and it also right beside the river that divides Thailand from Burma (or Myanmar). The Karen are a people group without a country; they come from Burma, but the Burmese are at civil war with them, so they escape to Thailand, where they are also not really welcome. There are 327 Karen students are Sunshine Orchards, and every year more try to come. 

Right now two or three American families live here and help keep teach and keep things going. Many of the teachers are Karen natives, though. Right now, it is exam week for Term 1 of the school year. Next week is a break, and then Term 2 begins. Normally, the students have morning classes in English, Karen, Thai, Burmese, Bible, Science, Math and Geography. Then after lunch, they have vocational classes and work time. After work, they have bath/laundry time, and then supper. 

Speaking of bath time, let me tell you what it's been like to actually live here. So the campus is on the side of a hill. One of the American families, the Stecks, live at the top by the road in a wooden house on stilts. There are crazy concrete steps going down the hill to the rest of campus on that side of the road, and my hut is right on the side of the hill near the Steck's house. It is also a house on stilts, made out of bamboo and wood. The floor is wood, but the walls are bamboo, and the roof is an ingenious masterpiece of dried leaves folded over bamboo poles and strips. Our hut has three little rooms. Hannah and I have the one with a door, and Hannah Steck has the other room without a door. We sleep on a mat on the wooden floor. (which is why I wasn't sleeping much at first. I eventually got a sleeping pad from the Steck's, and now I am sleeping more.) We have a bathroom beside our hut, too; such a blessing. We got to look down over the rest of the campus, which is a scattered array of bamboo huts, and concrete buildings with teal corrugated metal roofs. There is a small lime orchard, too, and hibiscus bushes growing randomly around campus. A narrow cement walkway trails around between some of the buildings, but the path is mostly dirt, or mud during the rainy season. A robust creek roars past the bottom of campus, and that's where many of the students take their daily baths. Hannah and I went to creek to bathe for the first time yesterday. It was quite the experience! The boys go just a little upstream of the girls, but all are in the creek at the same time, technically in sight of each other, though nobody really looks. The Karen people are used to not having privacy, so communal bathing is not a problem for them. Don't worry, though, they all wear sarongs the whole time. Bath time is also time to wash clothes, so it's a fun time to sit and talk with your friends while you're busy. I'm pretty scared of cold water, but when I realized that the water in the buckets in the bathroom was the same water from the creek, I decided to just go to the creek. It's actually warmer there, in the sunshine, but in the heat of the day the cool water feels pretty good.

What else would you be interested in knowing? 

The boys wear sarongs (skirts) too. 

Girls are very affectionate to each other and boys are to each other, but girls and boys are not affectionate to each other. 

The girls and boys do not sit together during meetings, and married or dating couples do not even hardly look at each other in public. 

When handing something to or receiving something from a person older or more respectful than you, you are to use one hand and support that arm's elbow with your other hand. 

It is taboo to step over someone or their things. 

It is taboo for a boy to walk under a girl's sarong hanging up to dry.

The people greet each other by asking if they're eaten, or if they've had their bath yet. 

The meals at Sunshine Orchards are always rice with some kind of watered-down vegetable curry. 

Not many of the students here speak very much English. 

Everyone is very smiley and happy. 

As you can probably tell, I'm getting quite tired. I did have a 2 1/2 hour nap this morning, but the jet lag still hasn't worn off.

I'll write more later.

Hope everything is going well at home. Enjoy your bed and your bathroom and your meals and your sleep for me! If you only realized how much you have to be thankful for... 

But I'm not complaining. I'm thankful to be here in the fresh air, and living a very simple, uncomplicated lifestyle. 

 

 With love, 

Raquel