Thailand: Days 8 & 9

It is hard to believe that we leave for Bangkok tomorrow to complete our trip. We are really going to miss this beautiful town and all of the wonderful people that we have met here.

Day 8: After church on Sunday at Cheung Doi, we came back to the Allen's house to rest and Jason went for his first massage. He has never even had one back in the states and so he was really looking forward to it. He did a one hour and came back feeling very refreshed - he said he could get used to the cheap massages over here, and I told him that it would have to be part of our weekly budget! :-)
That late afternoon / early evening, we went to Walking Street. Everyone had been saying that we needed to wait to buy souvenirs until we went to Walking Street and they were right! It was awesome! I think I said before that this only happens on Sundays, and is just miles of booths set up under umbrellas with the neatest things to buy for a small price. We spent almost 5 hours here with O, our wonderful tour guide, stopping to eat and get 30 minute foot massages. Wow, the foot massages were wonderful and only cost less than $2 for 30 minutes! After walking around so much, they were great! We have had some interesting foods while we've been here but not as interesting as what Elijah had to eat while we were here. While my mom and I were getting our foot massages, Jason and O went to grab some food with Elijah. Jason told O that he would eat whatever he ordered, so when Elijah started picking out the little meatball-looking things out of Jason's food and loving them, Jason asked O what they were. Boiled chicken blood, yuk! I'm so glad that I didn't know he was eating that but he loved it, so I guess he got his protein for the day! :-)
All over Chiang Mai, there are little red taxi trucks called rot dangs, and they are very cheap transportation to get around town. We have taken them many different places while here, and tonight wasn't any different. Except that on the way home, he ran into another rot dang and nearly threw us all on the floor in the back of the truck. David Allen said that he has lived here for 12 years and never seen one have a wreck, but we are here for one week and have a wreck! We were all fine, but it scared Elijah a little bit. Thank goodness that he wasn't going very fast.

Day 9: Monday was a wonderful day. We started out the morning relaxing and having a great talk with the Allen's. We have really enjoyed picking their brain and learning so much about mission work over here, and they have asked us a lot of valuable challenging questions as well. Later, around 11:30, P. Gade from the Cheung Doi church picked us up to take us to a local orphanage. This was something we had requested from the beginning that we would like to do. This was a very nice public orphanage that housed about 50 children from ages birth to 5 years old. We got to hold and play with some of the most loving and beautiful children, and Elijah enjoyed playing with them as well. It was so hard to leave because a lot of them kept clinging to us as we left.
We ate lunch with P. Gade and then she asked if she could take us to the local leprosy hospital. It was more like a whole beautiful community where these people can live and get around since most of them are disabled from the disease. There was a community center, hospital and a lot of little houses where they live. It was really eye opening to know that there are still people living with leprosy but that it is treatable now and they can live a semi-normal life. I was glad that P. Gade took us here and showed us this community.

After that, we put Elijah down for a nap with my mom at the Allen's and Michelle took Jason and I to see the inside of Grace International School when she picked up her children. She gave us a small tour of the school and we were both really impressed! It is a beautiful school that teaches grades K - 12 - I just never expected a wonderful school like this to be in Chiang Mai, but there are about 600 - 700 kids there, a lot of them missionary kids, some whose parents work over here, some Thai children and some whose parents work with non-profit organizations over here. It was just great to see this neat school.
Michelle stayed with Elijah while he was still napping, and the 3 of us went with David to get Thai massages. He had thrown at out his neck playing tennis and invited us to go with him to get a massage and we couldn't turn him down! We all decided these were the best ones so far! That night, we had pad thai for dinner at their house, and then Michelle, my mom and I went to the mall to get a few things. I was almost out of contact lenses and needed some more and the great thing here is that you don't have to see an eye doctor to get them, you just have to know your prescription and they are way cheaper here. I got about a year's worth of contacts for less than half the price I would have in America without the cost of seeing an eye doctor! It's the same with prescription meds, you can get them without seeing a doctor for like $3 or less. There are a lot of pluses to living over here that I've found out. We also shopped a little bit, Michelle showed me their grocery store, we got ice cream and then came home.
I hope everyone back home is doing well - we apologize for not getting to send very many personal emails, but we love and miss all of you! I can't believe we'll be home on Sunday - this trip has flown by so fast!