April's Eleven and an Idle

April has been quite a month. It’s weird to me how quickly time seems to pass here; but come to think of it, maybe just time in general goes by pretty quickly.
this month my little sister, Abbi, had her 10th Birthday—which makes me feel aged… because I still remember the day she was born and holding for the first time when she was all red and misshapen and couldn’t open up her eyes, except maybe that eye roll that newborn babies do. I guess if I was pushed out awkwardly into a real bright and cold world where I had to breathe and eat on my own, I would roll my eyes too.
But I’m getting sidetracked already… I guess all this is to say that I really shouldn’t be surprised that April went by so quickly, as time usually does this when you aren’t watching closely.

I’ll make a little list of happenings in April so you can bring yourself up to speed regarding the life and times of KR&BQ.
1) Well…To begin: there was April Fools Day –Messing with people is consistently hilarious. BQ & I played a little prank on Christa, our boss’s wife and another volunteer, David. Oh their faces! ha. Still Funny.
2) We Entered the Blog-O’-Sphere: What a day.
3) Vacation!: Three times a year, the Garden team is lucky enough to get a couple weeks vacation time to get our brains back in order. This was in perfect time, as SongKran happened (don’t worry, I’ll explain this too) and we were getting pretty tired.
4) Call to Prayer at 5:00 in the Morning: Brittany and I, in an effort to be committed to interracial and inter-religious experiences and dialogue have been making friends with, and experiencing traditions of those in of other faith paths. Devoted enough are we to get up at …. yes, 4 AM to experience the first call to prayer at a Mosque I found on a walk. More on this later.
5) SongKran Festival: Water festival! This delightful (and likely dangerous) week or so long party is maybe the craziest thing I’ve ever seen and experienced. More on this following too…
6) Afternoon Prayer & A Funeral: As an addendum to our Morning Prayer experience, BQ and I got the chance to go to the Friday Afternoon Call to Prayer that many more people go to. We met up with some friends of a friend who are Muslim, who were kind enough to take us up to the Women’s Prayer Area and explained the happenings. Lucky for you, there will be more on this later as well…

7) Parasite Medication: Just an effort to keep the systems working well. What does this mean? Kelly and Brittany eat even More Vegetables and drink even More Water… is this possible? Yes, as we have discovered. Take that Parasites!… Try to survive in our Intestines—just try it, I dare you.
8) Back to Workin’ for the Weekend: We got back to work this last Monday (the 21st) and have been plugging away so we can open up the Women’s Resource Center on May 6th, 2008. This means a few days where we got lost in fake living room, bedroom, kitchen, study, dining room set-ups interspersed throughout a large warehouse store called Index.
9) Lightening & Thunderstorm: !!! wow. it began to thunder and lightening on the 22nd (yes friend, Earth Day), louder and bigger than i have ever seen and we sat on the balcony and felt impressed and a little scared, but mostly just like little kids feeling lovely about the world. you could feel the thunder rolling outside and rumbling up from within your heart because that's always the way the loudest thunder works. and the lightening was all around us in the sky and it was windy and disconcerting in the best ways. it was so beautiful in its uncontrolled power. but part of it felt sad... or nostalgic... like God was trying to say something about how we are treating this earth we were supposed to be protectors and stewards of. in that way, the storm felt tragic—like a dirge. I’m coming away from it now balancing between the feeling of real sadness and real awe. It’s probably a good balance to exist in.10) Love From the Home front: this was the day that BQ and I received packages, letters and all around love from home… thanks lovely ones. it means the world to us, and then some.
11) Saturday Night Outreach: Last night, BQ and I took a Thai volunteer, and hopefully future employee of the Garden, to Outreach with us. I wrote a little something about it in an email to a close friend—which I will include rather than trying to write about it again, because it’s difficult to explain it well. This is what I said: we went a little later to Outreach. And you get a different sort of experience... you see a later version of what the party atmosphere turns to. it didn't look too much different.. same guys who have the Thailand syndrome of thinking they are super awesome and the ladies saying, "helllloooo! sawatdiikhaaaa! welcooooome!!" and it's sad. i get this sense, one that makes my heart ache, that the ladies have such sweet and beautiful hearts that are systematically being broken, and then crushed. i talked to my friend Mon tonight and she and i have gotten to know each other a little better over the last 4 months and she is only 21... wow and she is so sweet. and she's overweight, but so beautiful. but since image and being skinny is so important, she just gets trashed for it. and she works at the seediest of bars, where they have a back room they take customers to. And other lady, Son, is 24 years old and she just smiles these big genuine smiles and they are all so funny and their hearts are so kind. And I just can't understand why these men come to take away these hearts. It is so sad. And it's little by little too, so nobody notices until they are shells of who they used to be.
And now an Idle of the SongKran Festival:

it’s a hundred degrees out today & there’s a thousand people out on the streets who have no idea it’s that hot. their attention is collectively directed elsewhere. it’s Songkran, a festival celebrated here in Thailand every year to mark the beginning of the Theravadin Buddhist New Year… I always thought that Thervadin Buddhism was the more militant and serious sect of the eastern religion, but clearly they know how to throw a good party… there’s a mass of soaked people outside to prove it.

I can’t go anywhere for the next week without getting absolutely drenched. but I’m not sure I would want to—like I said, it’s over a hundred degrees. so we go to the moat—Chiang Mai is a moat city—and I imagine the water being tossed in my direction, soaking my clothes, entering my system through my pours, eyes, nose, mouth, has to be at least 50 years old. Some of it definitely smells like it is… but it’s cold and so any infection, disease, and/or affliction I might come down with post-SongKran is worth it.
Everyone else met us at the moat. Literally everyone. Ancient people who shouldn’t be able to get out of their beds are trickling handfuls of water down my neck and wishing me “Sa wat dii bii mai”—Happy New Year. And it is; it’s the happiest & for the first time I think to myself that I could really love Thailand.
A farang with a watergun pointed at my face awakens me from my gentle feelings toward the country, but he is smiling and so am I. And today, he looks a lot less creepy & a lot more human, a child even, who is still hopeful and harmless and loves to just play.
And we keep walking—our destination, the ThaePae Gate Starbucks—the ideal spot to sit outside and people watch… or rather crowd or chaos watch. Thousands of people (no exaggeration) station themselves around the moat with brightly colored buckets attached to long plastic strings. And they dip their buckets into the moat water and throw it, laughing, to the other thousands of people sitting and laughing and shrieking in the beds of trucks, hanging out the sides of tuk-tuks, literally pouring out the sides of them. I don’t know how they don’t fall off the back, sides, fronts… it’s a zoo here.
It’s the first time I’ve seen Thais really play. There’s a lot of fake play in the bars—flirting and pool-playing, but nothing where the enjoyment is deeply felt, so much as desperately working to convince an audience. But this play is real—the ladies I see for Outreach trying their best to smile often and keep the emptiness in their eyes unseen are laughing like they are little again and reveling in the hilarity that is re-drenching and already drenched Brittany and me with ice water. And it is hilarious. Because our shrieks and surprise at just how cold the water is can never be faked…it’s really frigid.
The streets are flooded with warm dirty, oily water that a million tires and feet have also trod through…I try not to imagine the other surprises I might find if I looked down—I keep walking along behind Brittany, with no destination or purpose in mind save for the enjoyment in life, which is readily had. It’s a day where I feel like I’ve always lived in Thailand—a feeling that’s only checked when I hear, “Farang, Farang!” and then a bucket of cold water is dumped over me, recoating and rewetting what I thought couldn’t get any wetter. I was wrong. And I attempt to wipe water off my face with an equally wet hand and turn to my attacker who smiles graciously and says sweetly, “Sa wat dii bii mai!” and I return the smile and the sentiment just as heartfelt. As I turn, I can feel my shoes slosh, little waves inside my shoes excited by my movement.
And when we reach Starbucks, I drip my way to the front of the line and sheepishly offer a soaked bill in exchange for a cup of coffee. I am cool enough by now from my abundant drenching that a hot cup of coffee sounds perfect. And as we sit out in the sun, pretending that the time we spend drying off won’t be for nothing as soon as we stand up, or strike an armed passerby’s fancy. My mission now is to protect the hot liquid in my cup and laugh at the bedlam taking place before my eyes. A mission I enthusiastically accept and secretly wish could be a permanent job.
A man in a pink cowboy hat, flanked by two others also flamboyantly dressed, inch past in a tuk-tuk. Their wardrobe choices draw attention from other SongKran Players and they become easy targets; the traffic barely moves and so they are sitting ducks & good entertainment for the next few minutes.
And after another hour or so of watching more scenes take place & after being baptized again and again with the tepid moat water, it’s time to stand up and make the journey back home—it will take another two hours, but today seems endless. Realistically, I know the sun will begin to set soon—and this saddens me a little until I remember the rest of this week will be today over again and I grin, feel the little ocean in my sneakers crash and break tiny waves over my feet with evident excitement, and pretend to dodge another bucket of dirty moat water. It’s going to be a good week.

Friends and Family and Other Loved Ones—
Expect another blog soon from me and I will babble on about the beautiful experience that was call to prayer—which will inevitably lead me to ramble on about the importance and necessity of inter-religious dialogue.

peace,
kelly