Itsara

Well, our family at least has returned from Prang’s village, though the rest of the (sub)team is still there. We all wish we could’ve stayed longer, but I’m glad we had the opportunity to go at all. Matt, Pan, and I did some manual labor digging holes, mixing concrete, and bending rebar. I like manual labor. It’s like exercise, except that the results are much more immediate, so I enjoy doing it more (the nebulous exercise results of “being healthier” never really did it for me).

We also spent some time sharing, worshipping, and praying with the villagers. They’re really great people. This is only the third time I’ve gone up there, and the last time was back in August, but I still feel a kinship with those folk. Maybe it’s because Sean is my brother, and they’re his in-laws, so they’re like my… extended… in-laws… And I learned my first words in Karen, so I’ve got that going for me.

It’s great seeing the mission team, as it is every year. This year there are only a handful of people we know (the regulars – Jess, Lisa, Whytey, the Wilsons). We like meeting new people with a heart for missions (or even just a potential heart – a flame I like to fan), but I hope you won’t think less of me if I tell you that we really look forward to seeing our old friends. Unfortunately, because we have three kids in school right now we can’t join the team as much as we have in previous years. Maybe one day we’ll have some work for a short term team to do here with us, but until we can make something up that sounds good in a fundraising letter people who want to see a lot of us may just have to come out on their own.

Incidentally, I finally got to see a schedule of both Grace (the international school Matt will be attending next year) and Sanpasak (the kid’s Thai school), and our family vacations will now apparently be in April and October – those are the only times the two schools have overlapping holidays longer than a couple of days. If anyone wanted to schedule mission trips for those times, instead of America’s summer, we might be able to see more of you…

Back home we’re on homeschooling break. Matt goes to Grace in August while Sandra will continue homeschool, so our life at home has slowed down a little, which is cool. After 4, it’s time to rush to get the kids’ uniforms washed, homework done, dinner made, and chores finished. Alaypa and Lutiya both need help reading Thai. Thai actually isn’t their first language, so it’s a very difficult subject for them, but hopefully if we do some extra reading practice with them everyday they’ll improve. We’ve been successful with that so far, but I’ve been unsuccessful in my resolve to teach Pan English. I’m supposed to teach her everyday, but so far I’ve taught her 3 times in a month. Cindy’s a little better. She tries to speak English to them everytime they help with dinner or she needs them to do anything. So while my attempts at teaching “What are you doing?” have failed, they know how to say “Good morning”, “Good night”, and they understand when Cindy tells them to wash the dishes.

During the day I write, I hold Isaac, and I design houses. Well, a house. I’m pretty happy with how all three of those are going, actually. Isaac can stay sitting up pretty well on his own, and he can stand – provided he’s leaning against the coffee table and there’s something interesting just out of reach. He’s also recently taken to riding on my shoulders, which both he and I love. The book is finally in a finished draft, after like 2.5 years of dealing with it, and is in the hands of professional Opinion Givers (Opinionaters?) before I give it to anyone who might pay me money for it. And I spent all day today making a model of our current house design. It may or may not be what we end up building, but I thought you’d like to see it anyway. Here’s a picture from the front, from the back, and – the way that I always envisioned it – open-roofed with a Christmas tree through both stories and our Lexus and personal helicopters parked outside.

STATUS
Recently Read: Cusp, Robert A. Metzger; A Feast for Crows, George R. R. Martin; (reread) Marvel 1602, Neil Gaiman
Reading: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J. K. Rowling
Writing: Tales of Dark Water, outlines and brain storms
Last Played: Careers, Parker Brothers
Latest Nickname for Isaac: “Brighteyes”

We finally closed escrow on selling our condo, and our last material tie to the US has been cut. We didn’t get as much as we would’ve liked, but I suppose I shouldn’t complain. We made a lot of money for very little work. We basically bought a place to live, lived in it, and when we were done with it it happened to be worth a lot more than we paid. It’s like free money, and all of it will be going towards these houses we’re trying to build.

Sean and I are still designing, but now we know that as soon as we’re done, we’ll e-mail them to Cindy’s cousin and get some blueprints and maybe a price estimate. We’ll see.

What’s stopping us right now is this mission team that’s visiting. We’ll be in Prang’s village for the weekend helping Sean build a bathroom, though our family has to come back early. I’ll tell you more about the mission team being here later. Right now we gotta go.

I hope I’m not speaking too soon when I say it looks like we’re back online. Sorry for those of you who were trying to see the cutest baby in the world these last couple of days. He’s back now.

In honor of Isaac’s 6-month birthday, I give you a stack of pictures. Enjoy!

It was a typical evening at the Heine home. Everyone was doing their own thing. Dad (Adam) was hanging out with Isaac, Lutiya was showering, Alepa was playing, Sandra was mopping, Ban was practicing piano, Matt was on the computer, and I was ironing. Out of the blue, Matt says, “I’m going to read something to you.” He began to read me a love poem from the internet, just for fun. From then, we both began to look up silly poems on the web, reading them to each other (with feeling, of course) . Matt decides we need some mood music, so he puts on some CD he has with “Right Here Waiting” on it, which then turns into singing the poems to each other. The next thing we know, “I Will Survive” comes on, which of course leads to dancing. Suddenly we are joined by Sandra, Lutiya, and Alepa, who are laughing at us doing our silly dances. Matt and I separate from our partner dancing in order to dance with them too. Next come Dad and Isaac, only one of whom will dance. (Guess who?) Somehow, it’s turned into Mom (me) teaching the kids how to do flips off each other’s backs. It’s 8:00pm, time for prayer on our bed. Most of the kids were already in our room, but Alepa was on a rolling chair in the hall. I tried to get him to come by inviting him to dance with me, but he declined the invitation. So I did the next best thing – roll him over to our bed and dump him off. Soon, all the kids (young and old) want to be rolled and dumped off. Ban was downstairs the whole time, but when she came upstairs, she had no choice but to be rolled and dumped off as well. When all my deliveries were finished, I came back into our room thinking that we should all calm down. But what I see is Isaac doing YMCA (with Dad’s help of course). And of course, the other kids were joining in as well.

Lots of laughs and smiles. What started as a usual Tuesday evening became a night to remember. Thank God for family.

The trick to speaking Thai clearly is not in the vowels or the consonants. I get consonants and vowels wrong all the time – I can hear it when I speak – but because I make sure to get the tones right, I am usually understood and Thais even comment on how clearly I speak. Proper pronunciation of vowels and consonants is important, but not as important as the tones.

Everybody, no matter what language they are speaking, uses tones when they speak. The difference between a tonal language like Thai and a non-tonal language like English is in how your tone changes what you say. In a non-tonal language, saying the same words with different tones will perhaps change the connotations of what you are saying (“I play guitar.” versus “I play guitar.”), but the basic meaning is still the same. In a tonal language, if you speak using the wrong tones it will change the meaning of what you are saying entirely. This is the biggest mistake I see other foreigners make when they try to speak Thai. I’ve had foreigners comment on just how much I pay attention to the tones. I want you to understand why.

With the wrong tones, you’ll say tiger instead of shirt, pot instead of doctor, ghost instead of older brother.

“I like to study” becomes “I like money.” A request, “I need a new car”, becomes an offer: “Do you need a car?” Instead of telling someone you have a cold, you’ll tell them you’re a temple. While trying to invite someone to a movie, you’ll say, “Would you like to watch people sit?”

Oh, but it gets worse. If you don’t pay attention to your tones, you may intend to ask for cooked rice but accidentally tell the cook that she is white and beautiful. You’ll ask for medicine, and the pharmacist will introduce you to his grandmother. Ask a woman if she’s selling tickets, and she slaps you in the face for calling her a prostitute. Or ask a little boy to point to the nearest shop, and instead he pees on a caterpillar.

I hope this helps you understand just how important tones are in the Thai language. Maybe next time I can tell you about the consonants Thai has that English doesn’t, and why you can easily call your aunt crazy if you’re not careful.

The first stage was good-natured laughter. The second stage, annoyance. After annoyance, it soon became a running gag. In the fourth stage, it stopped being funny and started being just plain eerie. Now I’m onto the fifth stage.

Resignation.

Two and a half years ago, as faithful readers will remember, I told you about the campaign to tell me that my name is really Matt. Like some kind of sick, cosmic joke, that campaign continues. I now have a Matt living in my house, and apparently we both sound exactly alike on the phone. It’s been months since I didn’t have a phone conversation that started like this:

*Ring ring*
Me: “Hello?”
Them: “Hi, Matt.”

I hope there isn’t a sixth stage, but I fear there is and that it has the word “breakdown” in it.

Hey there. Sorry for the long delay. It’s been quite busy here, as you can imagine. What makes it manageable is that the three Thai kids (they’re all Thai, but referring to them this way makes some things easier) are in school during the day. It’ll be that way all summer, since the Thai summer is actually March to May. So we only have two kids to homeschool – three, if you count Isaac, who is doing very well in his studies; he can almost sit up by himself and is working on standing with support too.

The new kids are doing great. The younger ones are starting to disobey a little – not defiantly, but still disobedience – which means to us is that they’re getting comfortable. They don’t have much time at home, though. Here’s their schedule:

6:45 – Breakfast
7:00 – Leave for school
4:00 – Get picked up at school
4:15 – Get home, change, wash school uniforms, do homework (optional)
5:30 – Help with dinner (usually only one of them per day)
6:00 – Dinner
6:30 – Chores
7:00 – Homework (if it was not done already)
7:30 – Shower
8:00 – Pray, then the youngest go to bed

There’s time, just not a lot of it. Especially when I want to teach Pan English, which I haven’t made the time to do.

This past week, though, Cindy and I got a bit of a break. Matt and Sandra were in Bangkok for a few days with their mom, so we had the days to ourselves. We spent the time wisely, and by God’s grace were able to see the only two movies we “had to” see this year (Spidey 3 and Pirates 3). I was pretty happy with both of them, and even got a birthday present in one.

Right now we’re looking forward to the team coming in a couple of weeks, then I have some visa extending to do, and all the while we’re working out the kinks to building our houses. Fun stuff.