A Super Great and Good Weekend

Preparing to do a traditional Thai dance

Playing Ultimate

At the Khantoke Dinner

Bamboo Rafting

Elephant Riding

So guess what? Our weekend was super great and good. Pause. Let me just say that the pink and blue sky atop the massive mountain out my hotel window is slightly incredible. Resume. Saturday was awesome. We had a very fun day, but it was exhausting. We headed out at around 8:30am to go elephant riding up in the mountains...you know, no big deal. It was great. It took us probably 45 minutes to get to the place, and then we had a 30 minute or so ride. So beautiful, so fun, so relaxing. We took many pictures. Next we took the songthaew down the mountain a little way to the place where we put our bamboo rafts in. Then we rafted down a river in Thailand while standing on homemade bamboo rafts. Once again, no big deal...just incredibly awesome and fun and beautiful. Needless to say, Saturday was our scheduled recreation day. After we finished with our wonderful raft ride, we headed down the mountain and stopped at some restaurant and had lunch. It was tasty. We had khaow soi and ramen noodles. No. Not the packaged kind. The super good kind. It was delicious. However, it wasn't all that filling. So...we stopped at a market a little farther down the road and bought some fruit, chicken (or maybe it was pork) on a stick, and bags (yes...bags) of Thai tea...which happens to be incredible. Then we continued back to Baan Kanoon. We took a short recess from our activity, and then several of us (Tim, Andy H, Madison, Caprice, Melodie, Nathan, and I) went with Ekk to play ultimate frisbee at Chiang Mai University. It was incredibly fun. Oh, Keith was ill. He had stomach issues. Now he is better. When he got better, Melodie got stomach issues. Now Melodie is mostly better. We take turns. Nothing serious, just good fun abdominal irritations. After Ultimate we showered and changed and then went to this sweet Khantoke dinner thing. It was traditional Thai style. We sat in two groups in the floor outside at this sweet place. We were all served steamed rice and then a weird little red table thing was placed in front of each of our two groups...containing several bowls with fried bananas, fried chicken, fried noodles, fresh vegetables, some tomato pasty soup stuff, and some pork and soup stuff. It was all very good, and it was all you can eat, so we got several refills. Many people on the team didn't recognize that drinks were extra and that refills weren't free...oops. No big deal. After our meal, traditional Thai dancers came out and danced. They randomly selected members of the audience to dance with them. I got to dance with them twice. Caprice danced once. So did Nathan. It was fun. There was also a knife dancer guy and a traditional Thai band. After that we moved to a different arena place and watched the traditional dances of many Thai hilltribes. That was cool too. Then we left. That is all for Saturday. Sunday was good too. We had a church service at Baan Kanoon. It was small and good. It was just our team and 4 Thais and a Kim and Quintin and their kids. Oh, and Brooke too. We sang some songs in English and in Thai. Ekk read Mark 5:21-the end of the chapter and then discussed it. Then our team acted out the whole story. It was quite special. After church we went and had lunch at Lemon Tree. It was delicious. We had fried morning glory, yum. I had Pad Thai Koung too. Also yum. After lunch we took it easy for several hours...very much a good sabbath experience. At 5 several of us went with Ekk to Walking Street. We then parked and had to walk forever and a half to the 3 kings monument to meet some other portions of our team...and ended up waiting on them for half an hour. When they arrived we had to walk back to Wawee to meet Jade and Nicole. Then we walked to Mike's (a burger and hotdog restaurant...a 5-8 minute walk from Wawee). Mike's didn't have enough seating...there were probably 20 of us at this point with the Thai friends that we had with us. So...we walked another 5 minutes down the road to Miguel's (really delicious Mexican food, owned by an American). We all ate there, finishing most of our meals with a Big Banana Burrito...unbelievable...especially when served with vanilla ice cream...oh man. After all this walking and waiting...and eating...it was already 8:30pm. We then walked nearly 10 minutes back to the Walking Street and shopped until 10:30. Then some of us went home, and some others went with a few of our Thai friends to karaoke. Evidently that was pretty fun. I hear that karaoke here is different than in America. You have to pay a few dollars to get in, and then you get a little room where you just sit and hang out with your friends and do karaoke amongst your group and have some water (Nam). We'll probably do it again sometime this week. Today we met at Baan Kanoon at 9:30 for our morning devotion. We read and discussed Romans 10. Great chapter. I like verses 14-15. At about 10:15 we went upstairs and planned this coming Saturday's Sports Camp that we are putting on for about 100 students from North Chiang Mai University. The planning session went well. We got a very good foundation of plans made by 11:45. Friday we will be planning all day and buying supplies. After planning we all went and had lunch at a little roadside restaurant by our hotel. We had sticky rice and chicken (Khaow Niaow Gop Kai). It was very tasty. Then most of us just chillaxed and Tim, Caprice, Madison, and I went to Lotus (the Thai version of Walmart) and bought a ton of snacks and supplies for the week. When we got back it was just about time to meet Brooke at Baan Kanoon to go to an orphanage in the city. We played with lots of little kids there (ages 4-5). We played with a big multi-colored parachute...they loved that. Then we made airplanes and tambourines with them and colored a wee bit. It was fun. They were cute. We just got back from there probably an hour ago. Now we are chilling until 7, when we are heading to Moo Gah Tah for dinner. Moo Gah Tah is a really cool form of restaurant where there is a little weird grill thing on every table where it is domes in the middle and has a troph around the outside. It is buffet style, you get all you want and then bring it to your table and cook it. So fun, we did it last year and I am quite excited for the team to get to experience it tonight. Gladly, Melodie is feeling well enough to join us too. She has been resting most of the day. Well...I think that is it. I'll try and throw some pictures on here and then call it quits. Please pray for us as we will be splitting up again tomorrow morning. The village team will be leaving around 8:30am and the rest of us are meeting up at Baan Kanoon at 9 to plan and get ready for our community outreach. I hope America is well. Thanks for all your prayers!