only day two?

As most of you know, I'm in Thailand, the "land of the free".  The Thais are very proud to say that they are the only Asian country that has never been colonized by anyone.

But let's back track a little; back before I knew that tidbit of information.  We started to Thailand on Tuesday morning.  Surprisingly, the Birmingham airport isn't too busy at five in the morning.  The plane was scheduled to leave from there at 8:25 but it was pretty humorously delayed about thirty minutes.  We arrived in Khon Kaen, Thailand around 7:30 Thursday night.  With the twelve hour time difference the hours of travel rack up to about fifty!  Crazy!!  You would think we were absolutely exhausted when we arrived, you're right.  If we had slept in those fifty hours it was in chairs and with nowhere to stretch our legs so naturally, next to the shower we all wanted and very much needed, we were ready to crawl into a nice, cozy, clean bed.  There are no words to describe the emotions following my first run in with the mattress on my bed.  One of the words used to describe the beds we sleep on is a door.  I'm sitting on it now as I type this and I have to move quite often to ease the pain.  I wish I was exaggerating....

But for everything else, I love it!  We did come home and we did go to sleep.  Friday morning was our first Thai meal; it was pork on a stick and yes, it was for breakfast.  It was so good!  It tasted a lot like BBQ ribs from home.

It's so hard to blog because there is so much to say.  I want to talk about one thing but then my mind jumps to something else that I want to share.  I want to write about how different it is, about the language barrier, about the language, about the food and the culture, about the Thai Christians and how loving they are, so many things.  

We went on a city tour yesterday and we got to see just how different our new place of residence is from our past one.  When I heard that we were going to a fairly big city in Thailand I was kind of disappointed because in my mind it was going to very Americanized; not the case here.    This vehicle is called a songtow.  Otherwise known as a Thai taxi.  It's how we've been getting around on occasion. This video is a bit shaky, but it's all I've got.  It's on a street through the city and you can kind of see just how tight things are here.  In most cases, two cars have trouble passing each other on the roads.  Most people here drive motorcycles or mopeds.  And by drive I mean they go wherever, whenever and expect that you won't hit them and they won't hit you.  Maybe in the future I'll post a video of the traffic.

The people we've gotten to talk with here and start forming relationships with are GREAT!  They are some of the nicest, most genuine people I know.  They are wanting relationships with us more than I think we were expecting.  

I could go on forever and not finish talking about all the "news" of the trip.  I can already tell how hard the summer is going to be and it excites me.  God will have His way in the lives of everyone involved and we'll grow, not in the ways we expect, but in the ways He's written out for us.  We'll form relationships with the people that are not the ones we are initially attracted to and those will be the ones that we think the most about when we are home.  These people will impact our lives even more than we could have dreamed about impacting theirs.  It's unbelievable that God has called us to Himself and that He would afford us this opportunity to learn so much about Him through the faith of people half way across the world.  His grace abounds yet again.  This summer, the easiest way to live will be like a child....