The Sun Didn't Set

It didn't. But that's later. We all climbed out of bed bright and early on the morning of December 31st, and made it to the airport at almost exactly 6:00am. Thanks so much to my brother, Steve, my roommate, Jonathan, and my friend Michael for helping us all to the airport. Thanks also to my parents for allowing us to use their house. Anyway, all of our flights went as scheduled, but it has indeed messed with our internal clocks a bit. We left Springfield at 7:40am, 12/31/07. We left Minneapolis sometime around 1:00pm the same day. We then flew for a long, long time. Somewhere towards a third of the way through our flight, the sun had apparently begun to set on the West of the airplane. Two hours later...it was still apparently setting on the West side of the plane. Shortly thereafter, it was back in the sky again, bright as ever. It actually didn't ever get dark for us on what some might consider to be the night of the 31st. Instead, we left Minneapolis at...let's say 1:00pm, we then moved through time zones that technically brought us to earlier and earlier times, we probably experienced 3:00pm a few times, and then arrived in Tokyo about 4:00pm on January 1st. At the time that it was 12:00am January 1st, 2008 in Central Time, we were somewhere up West of Alaska getting served teriyaki pork and rice for breakfast. When we landed in Tokyo, it was only about 1:30 or 2:00am on the 1st in the Central Time Zone. I'm still trying to wrap my head around all that happened.... Either way, we eventually made our way to Bangkok, after a flight that we, for some reason, thought was going to be 3 and 1/2 hours long but turned out to be 6 and 1/2 hours long. And, 11:45pm January 1st, 2008 Bangkok time. We should have slept in the airport...logically...as it was nighttime.... However, our bodies hadn't figured that out yet and only a few of us slept. Matt, Thomas, and Zac decided to take the opportunity to get authentic Thai massages ($9.00 for 45 minutes) in the airport. And we all ended up eating a lunch type meal between 1:00am and 3:00am local time. Our final flight left Bangkok around 8:00am January 2nd, 2008 and arrived in Chiang Mai just after 9:00am. By this time...it did feel like night, as it was 8:00pm on the 1st back in good ol' CST. But, we couldn't sleep, that is where our day actually began. Moving on from our confusing time experiences, our Thai experiences have thus far been fantastic. Today we went to the guest house that Joel, Matt, Andrew, Thomas, Zac, and I will be staying at and got settled in. The girls got to go to the townhouse a short ways down the street that they are staying in. Brad and Shawn are staying in an apartment building-type place next to our guesthouse. All of our accomodations are far better than we could've hoped for. We have beds to sleep on, running water, and actual porcelain-bowl-style toilets. (However, there seems to be no toilet paper, and instead an awkwardly placed hose with a spray nozzle next to the toilet...) After we all got settled in, we went to lunch at the Lemon Tree restaurant. We all got traditional Thai dishes ranging from Fried Rice for Amy, to Stuffed Squid for Joel, to Glass Noodles for Andrew, to Pad Thai for myself. Lunch was delicious, and afterwards Glenn and Janet took us to a beautiful waterfall area up in the mountain by the city. There we prayed, separated, meditated on our spiritual and emotional geometries, and then regrouped to discuss. We enjoyed the opportunity to empty our minds and to share our thoughts, fears, and anticipations with one another. After the waterfall, we moved on to a brief walking tour of our area of Chiang Mai, to help us get accustomed to our surroundings. That was a lot of fun as we saw all sorts of different street vendors offering fried pork, fried fish, and a tasty looking waffle and coffee combo of some sort.... After our tour was dinner, at an even nicer, outdoor, overlooking-a-rapidly-trickling (sounds wrong, but I promise, that's what it was doing)-waterfall restaurant. This time, Ekk ordered for all of us, we got 3 or 4 sets of the same 3 dishes plus a coconut milk soup for all of us to share. It was delicious once again. The tomatoey, spicy, sweet, spicy, fruit-shrimp dish was very interesting, and suprisingly tasty. The ground chicken hit the spot again as well. And it seems that stirfried cashews with chicken is already becoming a frequent meal. After the restaurant we headed back to our houses, our scheduled plans for the day completed. As we are all quite tired, most of us have stayed back at our houses to make it an early night, however, Brad, Shawn, Thomas, Joel, and I thought it might be better to be out on the town for a bit to get some fruit smoothies (ranging from Watermelon to Linchee), some coffee, or some fried chicken bowls. Our first stop, however, had to be the internet cafe. How else would everyone back home know that we had made it and had an incredible first day? Well, I've likely written too much already, but I must go now as the guys are ready to head out. But, thanks for your continued prayers and support, and please feel free to add your comments, we would love to hear them.