Chinese New Year...Market...Sparks in the Car...Elephant...

This morning we were jolted out of our sleep by a frightening noise. It sounded like machine guns going off next door!!! At the end of the sound was a HUGE BOOM BOOM BOOM! Josiah was asleep with us and I grabbed his ears and held him close telling him that everything was ok…while baby Jude started crying in his crib. After a few minutes of this deafening noise it finally stopped and it occurred to me that it was nothing but firecrackers going off (at least 5,000 count!) in celebration of the Chinese New Year at 6:40 in the morning NEXT DOOR!!!

I have to admit I was upset!! My poor boys were terrified…I jumped up and headed to the door (to do what…? I didn’t know) but by the time I got to the door I had gotten a hold of myself and I returned to bed. All I could think was “How dare they! Don’t they know people are sleeping!!! I can’t believe they really think that that does anything but annoy their neighbors…God help me!!!” From then on throughout the day we have heard spontaneous outbursts of firecrackers from random places. We have a couple more days of this heading our way. I remember this from last year but we were in a different house and we didn’t have as many neighbors that celebrated the Chinese New Year.

Although the reason is very sketchy…they say that they pop the fire crackers to scare away evil spirits during this time. I’m going to ask my neighbors why they pop them when I have the opportunity to find out what the thinking behind it really is. I thank God we don’t have to pop fire crackers to scare away evil spirits!

Anyway, I have some great pics from the market last night! I taught the kids about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. I brought Josiah and Jude with me this time – the kids adore them. They can’t keep their hands off of them. Josiah does well with it and Jude just doesn’t care…but toward the end of the night Josiah had just had enough of all the pinching, staring, and attention and he started crying saying “There’s too many people mommy…they won’t stop touching me…I told them in Thai to ‘stop please’ but they won’t mommy!” So I just picked him up and held him until it was time to go.

When it was time to go two boys followed us out to the car and wanted to get into the car with us while we waited for Pii Thak. So they got in the car and we turned a tape that we have of “Bullfrogs and Butterflies” and they were asking Josiah to sing. They were having a good time and then I looked back and one of the little boys was trying to open the cockroach motel that was sitting in our floor board!!!!….and the other was sitting on the center console in our car which has a short in it somehow and we’ve had 3 small fires because of it. Whenever anything is up against it sparks start flying and smoke follows….

So I see the little boy sitting on it and I start touching his back to tell him to get up just in case…and about then sparks start flying. I couldn’t think of how to tell him to get up in Thai so I was saying to my friend “tell him to get up quick…tell him to get up…tell him…” The message just wasn’t getting through to him…and before we knew it sparks were flying and smoke filled the car…he got up finally…really confused…ehhehee..

It was quite funny actually – we rolled down the windows and Pii Thak strolled up about then. J After all that we needed a break so we headed to a little outside shop and had a 15 baht (.35 cents) Milo Ban (which is basically a shake made from ovaltine). While we were there an elephant showed up – we got some good pictures of Josiah feeding the elephant with Pii Thak.

Today is our day off during the week. Saturday is Family day for the whole team - so we just spend time together all day Saturday…so I snapped some cute pictures of Josiah being a goofy boy at lunch time…hope you enjoy! I will write again soon with more from John’s trip to Chiang Rai. I need John to finish it up and he just took Josiah to play outside.

Hope you enjoy the pictures! I’ll be writing again soon – and thank you for reading!
Steph