Itsara

We celebrated Christmas today, since we were missing one of our kids on Christmas day. We started with breakfast lasagne (as is tradition). Then put together about 20-30 gift bags – sticky rice, roast chicken, fruit juice, milk, shampoo, and various other hygiene projects, and we drove around the mu baan to hand these out to the migrant workers who come in to build houses. (This, of course, being how we decided to fix Christmas this year).

Afterwards, we took our kids to go mini-golfing. Well, first we got lost and everyone got an early nap, but once we found the place we had fun. I challenged the kids, telling them I’d give 10 Baht to anybody who beat me.

Unfortunately, we never finished our game. Isaac was having a great time with the game – setting his ball up two inches from the hole and hitting it in – until he disturbed a scorpion sleeping inside hole #12 and got stung.

Not knowing what kind of scorpion it was, nor having any experience in that area, and being terribly worried about our first and only two year old son, we rushed to the hospital. We’ve learned a lot since, like there aren’t really any antidotes for scorpion stings, and all but a rare few are worse than wasp stings anyway. But it was pretty scary until we knew that. New medical emergencies always are.

Anyway, now we’re home resting off our shakiness. Looks like we’re going to plant some more grass and watch Wall-E in Thai over dinner. A good restful night.

I’ll get pictures up of some of this stuff a bit later, but understand that after the scorpion, nobody really took any pictures of anything.

I’m all out of thoughts, so let me just tell you what’s going on.

It’s Christmas soon. We’re still trying to figure out what we’re going to do. In the meantime, most of the kids are off school. Lutiya still has school, but I’m taking her up to her village tomorrow for Christmas where she’ll stay a few days.

Park, the kid referenced here, is still with Sean and Prang. I haven’t heard of any problems over there, so that’s good, but I won’t say more since it’s not my house. Maybe Sean will talk about it. If you want him to, ask him about it.

After showing up in our lives for a while, Alaypa has moved back to Chiang Dao, where he’s from. I don’t know the details, like who he’s living with or where he’s going to school, but as far as I know he’s well.

We’ve got only one puppy left, and she has a home waiting. It’s hard to give them away sometimes, but then Sean and I remember other puppies (e.g. their mother) and what they did to our shoes…

Isaac is starting to get interested in books, especially ones where he recognizes things in the pictures. He loves pointing out balls, bikes, birds (or นก), doggies (or หมา), bears (or หมี), หมู, trains, and dadows (his word for airplanes, which he refuses to correct). He knows both Thai and English words. Usually when I’m teaching him a new thing, I pick whichever language has the easier word, but he still knows mostly English because he keeps picking things up without us teaching him.

A couple nights ago, Cindy had a dance performance. She’s been teaching dance for young girls after school, and this performance was the culmination of the last year or so she’s worked with them. It was awesome, and I’m really proud of her. She hopes to teach even more classes this coming year. Maybe she can post about it later, because this was really important to her (and if I can get pictures, I’ll do that too).

Cindy has taken Isaac and left me (again), for Bangkok this time where her family is remembering Cindy’s grandmother who passed away two years ago. Cindy will be back tomorrow along with our good friend Emmet. In the meantime, Isaac is getting spoiled rotten and I’m at home sick.

It sucks, the cold season started about three weeks ago, and in that time I’ve been sick three times. Needless to say, I’m pretty upset with my immune system. Fortunately I have some help. Pan got her license recently and has been helping me out by taking Lutiya to school and back, and any other errands I have for her.

I think that’s everything. I’m still writing; you can see my progress on the sidebar here (and of course any significant developments will be announced on that blog as well). Otherwise, things are relatively peaceful, which worries me, ironically. It’s usually a sign that the cycle is about to start again.

Sean set up a rice mill in Prang’s village, and they plan on running it soon.

This is all part of an effort to help poor villagers become self-sufficient without charity. Rather, investors will be paid back in full as the business begins to make a profit. See here for some more information.

In some previous thoughts, I mentioned how I want to fix people, how I feel as if I know the answers to their problems, if they would only listen to me.

Of course fixing people never works like that. Here’s one reason why.

“Nobody will listen to you, unless they sense that you like them.” – Donald Miller

The way I treat people who try to talk to me sucks. It makes them feel unloved and unvalued, like when I would play guitar or try to read while Cindy talked to me. Except that other people won’t tell me to stop.

I can’t change people. It’s not my job. My job is to love people – to like them.

I need to like, to enjoy, my kids.

I need to like the folks at church.

I need to like Christians that get things wrong, that hate.

I’m starting to think it’s not enough to love people, or not enough to say you love them. Maybe you have to like them too. I mean, how do you love somebody you don’t even like?

This love thing is a lot bigger than I ever thought.

So today (Father’s Day), the king was too sick to deliver his traditional birthday speech, and a lot of Thais are really worried. Not so much about the speech or the king (though they are), but about the whole crisis in general. This article is a good summary on the whole situation.

What is interesting to me is how democracy just isn’t working here, how it may not be the cure-all we thought. I don’t know the whole truth of the situation, but here’s what it sounds like. Thaksin, the old prime minister, was supposedly corrupt. So a bunch of people protested until he left. Then someone else got voted in, but he was (supposedly) just another front for Thaksin’s corrupt group. So they protested even harder, airlines were closed, people were killed.

Now there’s going to be another election, I guess, but folks are afraid that the same people will just get into power again, because one of the main ways they get into power is by buying the votes of the poor.

And here’s where democracy fails entirely. The protesting party wants to change the voting system so that “a majority of lawmakers would be nominated by professional and social groups instead of being elected [by the people].” It sounds undemocratic, and it is a little, but the problem is that vote buying is real. There are a lot of poor people in this country, each one with a vote, and to them it doesn’t matter who is prime minister. Changes in the government make no difference in their lives, but 100 Baht in their hand makes a huge difference. It means they get to eat for a few weeks.

Like I said, interesting. There’s no easy solution, and I don’t envy Thais the work they will have to do to create a strong, stable country. But to me this whole situation just highlights the fact that politics – even democracy – can’t fix a broken world.

Hm, that was another note I wrote from reading Blue Like Jazz.

America’s rules can’t save mankind. Mankind can’t save itself.

Last year, I talked about how the traditions I grew up with focused Christmas on the presents rather than any other aspect. It wasn’t my parent’s fault either. My dad, in particular, tried his best to keep the focus on Christ, but he was fighting a whole culture on his own.

I think we can fight it though, but we have to be radical. A couple of years ago, a group called Advent Conspiracy started getting the message out: less consumption, more compassion. The idea is simple. Instead of giving gifts to each other,* let’s give gifts to Jesus. Give to the poor, volunteer at a shelter, do something for someone who cannot pay you back, ever.

Last year we downplayed presents. We may do the same thing this year, or we may do something even more different. I don’t know yet, but I don’t want to do things the same way as before.

* Which is a nice idea in principle, but it gets twisted so easily. How much should I spend on this person? If I spend that much on them, shouldn’t I spend the same amount on someone else? If I get Robert a gift, don’t I have to get a gift for Susan too? What if they get me a gift that’s better than what I got them? YIKES! And that’s not even getting into the selfish feelings of “What did I get for Christmas?”