Thailand Mission and Cultural Trip 2014 - Journal 2

It is now midnight between Friday night and Saturday morning; and I just picked up Jesse (and from now on we are going to call her by her popular name, “Tedi”) from the airport. It was a rough trip for her. Her flight was delayed from Portland, and even though they held the flight to Japan by 20 minutes for her, when she got to the gate they had just closed the door and wouldn’t open it again! So she had to stay in SF all day (and got sick there – thank God she is feeling better and didn’t get sick here). Her flight got in early tonight; but on the way here our car overheated, and she had to wait for us for 45 minutes! She is a trooper and will make a great team member.

I got 2.5 hours sleep last night. Got up at 7am; went into town to get the phones set up for each team member (it is simpler to get a SIM card and 100 Baht of minutes and give each team member a phone so we all can be in easy contact. If they wish to use it for overseas calls they can simply add minutes). Then I went over to the school where we are doing the morning English Camp. The English director, Nunie, is well structured and wonderful to work with – we worked with her and that school in 2011. She sends her greeting to the team members of that year. After lunch we went through the Orientation ritual, with all the lessons in cultures mores, etc. It’s going to be a great team.

Then it was the annual trek to Tesco Lotus for shopping. Susan wants me to tell the world that I constantly kept the windshield clean… Those of you on my trips to Jamaica and Thailand will get this. You see, in those places we drive on the “correct” (left) side of the road, while in America we drive on the “right” side. That means the indicator is always by the door of the driver. So when I’m making a left turn, I automatically hit the windshield wiper, because it is in the indicator position.

And after finally getting it right for 3 weeks, when I return home the windshield gets cleaned on a regular basis, initially!

We had a ball at the fruit stand. See if you can identify some. You know that the largest fruit in the world is the Jackfruit; and the one with the most intense aroma is Durian! There were lots of both. The Lychee was some of the largest I have seen. The Tesco Lotus run was quick, to mainly pick up lots of bottled water and electrolyte drink for the hot and hard work on the farm. But everyone wanted to get to The Pizza Company to try the veggie pizza with corn! And then we were off to Swensen’s to have their great ice cream. We did not do “The Earthquake” as we did in 2011 – 8 scoops of ice cream and everyone eating out of the same bowl! But we had fun!

The day for the team ended with Vespers. It is usually the time that I fall asleep; and it was captured on digital camera. I even jumped out of my slumber to see everyone standing for the benediction! 

I posted pics today. They are in reverse order. I’ll keep posting daily. Please bookmark and keep coming back. Here is the link: http://people.wallawalla.edu/~pedrito.maynard-reid/gallery2/main.php/v/pedrito-travels/PedritosTravel2014/