Itsara

I was just thinking about how much Lutiya’s changed in the last few years, and I wanted to tell you about her.

Lutiya came from a village 2 hours north of here called Mae Gawn. Her story’s a little confused, but we know the place she was staying was unsafe for her. She came here with Alaypa and Pan, as you’ll recall. In fact, Alaypa was from the same village, so they already knew each other a little. They spoke only a little Thai and no English.

She cried herself to sleep the first few nights. For all that her old home wasn’t safe, she still missed her mother.

It took her a long time to get used to us. She would play quietly, sometimes with Alaypa or Sandra, sometimes alone. She was polite enough, but if we corrected her she got sullen fast. I had to spank her once, but only once. After that she would accept discipline, albeit unhappily. Fortunately she didn’t need to be disciplined very often.

Even so, she hadn’t taken to us yet. She knew we were safe, but we weren’t home. For a while, we still had difficult times.

But life continued. She couldn’t read Thai, so we helped her a lot that first year. She had few friends at home. Sandra was mad at her back then. Alaypa followed Matt around everywhere. Even Pan was still trying to adjust to recently losing her parents.

I don’t know when it happened, but she’s different now. More often than not, she comes home smiling, telling us about her day. She loves to play with Isaac and Nathan, or to play games with me (real games, too, like Ticket to Ride and Settlers). She likes to draw, too. She consistently gets compliments in class on her drawings and even won a contest. She loves math, and she can read Thai without help now.

More than that, she’s started to speak English. She told me she was embarrassed the other day: They were doing some English exercise in class – pairing up and exchanging basic greetings. The teacher asked who should go first, and everybody pointed at Lu. Why? Because they all knew she was the best. Even she knows it; the teacher asked her who she wanted to partner with, and Lu chose the girl who was second best in the class. She told me, “Her English is okay.”

It’s amazing how far she’s come. It’s one of those things you don’t notice until you think about the way things used to be. It’s so rare we notice any improvement; we often expect not to see the results at all actually. Seeing this kind of thing reminds me why we do this.