Friday in Chiang Mai

The bike ride from our moo baan (small neighborhood) to the Agape home is like something out of National Geographic; fluorescent-green rice paddies with silhouettes of purple mountain as backdrop. huge white cows with skin hanging in folds off of angular bones (looks like India :) graze by the side of the road 5 ft away from us. small rusted tin shacks glint in the afternoon sunlight which peeks through dark, threatening clouds. there are beautiful homes in the Lanna Thai style of architecture, made of rich dark wood, whose roofs come to a temple-style point. there are tropical flowers in varying shades of electric purple, whose scent mixes in with the smell of soggy garbage and rotten fruit. there are chickens running around all over the place, and water buffalo! Mangy stray dogs chase us, growling and nipping at my ankles. Motorbikes zoom past us with entire families hanging off the sides, and small pick up trucks with 10 people squished into the back, who stare and laugh at us because I'm sitting on the small back seat of the bike (which I guess is usually used for children.) I savor these mid-morning and late-afternoon bicycle rides (mostly because I'm not the one peddling 2 persons' body weight.) They're so romantic- especially when there's a sudden monsoonal downpour in the middle of the ride ;)

Our classes with the kids have been going well. The kids have really short attention spans and lose interest quickly, but it's fun to see the little girls practicing the dance moves on their free time, and there's nothing better than the pride shining in their eyes when Luke presents them with the portrait he's drawn of them. When you are one child in a family of 70, it is really important to feel unique and special, and I think Luke's portraits give the kids that gift.

Right now we are chilling in front of the fan. There is a lizard somewhere in the house that keeps saying cleck cleck cleck! really loudly. There is a cockroach the length of my middle finger, who this morning was perched on the wall above our bed, but whose location is now unknown. shudder.