mountain trip: (part 4) waterfalls and superstars

nobody@vox.com(John Kaczmarek) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 23:43:13 +0700

our team took a trip to the mae hong son, a small village in the mountains of northern thailand, to put on an english camp for the local children. it's been a long wait (seriously all of this happened like a month ago, my apologizes) but it's finally here, the conclusion of our trip. we've finished the english camp part of the program and now the kids are going to take us to a nearby water fall.

after we changed clothes the children led us down the road out of town, across a small bridge, along cow paths through dried out rice fields to a trail that made its way along a small stream. the scenery really brought me back to my time exploring the woods of middle tenessee (only a bit more bamboo this time and small thai children leading the way instead of my cousins). eventually we came to a waterfall and spent a few hours swimming in the cold water, drew, tum, and i jumping of the rocks to show how brave we were. again i was amazed by the beauty that just seemed to be so typical in thailand. it’s like a story i heard once (maybe from traci wilson) about a foreigner who came to america and was so shocked that every restaurant had sugar on the table and not only that but it was free! where he came from sugar was a delicacy, a special treat usually only enjoyed by the wealthy and here we offer it at no cost in every eating establishment. it’s expected. the norm. that’s how it is for me and this country everything is so beautiful or so exotic that i’m afraid i’ll go back to the states and be depressed by my environs. (i don’t really think that, but it is helping me to see how fortunate i am and how great our god is. i hope that this is something that will be carried with me even after my time here)

after the waterfall we trailed back to the village for dinner with the families we would all be staying with. a few of the kids stopped to climb a tree for some fruit (i can’t remember the name now but its thin brown pods with a thin hard shell and orangish-sourish-gummyish fruit) and they shared it with us. dinner was nice and after we had arranged our sleeping areas we headed back to the school to put on a show for the towns people. now skit shows are no stranger to a former afcer (woah i just said “former” weird), but doing them as foreigners on the other side of the world in front a large group of people none of whom understand much english is a little different of a challenge. so i was kind of nervous on how this would pan out. we stuck with some of the basics that we thought would be entertaining and tried to focus on things that didn’t require the dialogue to carry it. however the real gem of the performance was a skit that i had never done before (i hadn’t even seen it done or heard anyone describe it). it was called the princess skit. basically it has five characters in it all of whom are played by drew and myself (on a side note we’ve actually added a 6^th character which we’ve yet to reveal to anyone. fun stuff). the basic idea is that a knight (drew) comes to a castle to ask for a princess’s hand in marriage. the butler (myself) informs the knight that he will tell the king (drew) who in turn must tell the queen (me again) who then goes to the princess herself (drew) to ask for her answer. essentially the skit is the two of us running around changing into different costumes and doing different voices. we had old women rolling in the aisles. one lady in particular loved drew and kept requesting that he go up and do more things (like sing). so we finally gave in (and by that i mean he dragged me up with him) and we did an interpretive dance while three of the other guys sang and played guitar. i’m pretty sure we clearly communicated at least one thing, we are insane. so that’s how we became superstars in a small northern thai village.

we retired for the night after a short post-show devo and woke up the next morning for church. we had church on the same little platform we had entertained on the night before. it was awesome. after services we said our goodbyes and made our way back down the mountain to mae hong son. robert ended up not traveling back to chiang mai with us because he felt ill (actually he was just starting to have another flare up of pancreatitis, not pretty at all. it gave us all a pretty big scare and he is still kind of recovering from it. ) the bus ride was a lot better in the day time but seemed just as long. that fact was not helped by the fact that we had a random one hour stop at some town along the way. (this was actually a very bad stop. i decided i would walk around instead of hang with the group by the bus. you know stretch the legs see the sights. i ended up stopping at a street vendor lady and ordering to items wrapped in leaves. i knew from a previous meal on the trip that they were a kind of desert rice thing. i ate both of them and a sleeve of strawberry icing oreos… ya i’d never heard of them either… before getting back on the bus. i got really sick and the thought of the sweet custardish rice things still makes me queasy… no joke i’m stopping writing right now)

wow that was a longer break than i meant it to be (about a week…. yikes) never the less our trip was a very inspiring one. i think after we got back a really began to start to find my groove here, to at home. since then there has been a lot going on; more trips and english camps, lessons in thai and classes in english, learning to drive better and get around the city, parties, preaching, equipping times, and planning for our big trip to cambodia coming up in march. i’ll do my best to catch everyone up on everything. God bless you all and thanks for continuing to read my words.

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mountain trip: (part 4) waterfalls and superstars