Serving through meal prep, meal handout, and teaching!

Just wanted to give a quick update as I've recently started volunteering with a group that prepares and hands out free meals to needy communities. Meal prep means taking the food that has already been prepared, bagging it up, boxing it up, rubber banding each box, and putting it in large plastic tubs to be taken to hand out. I have really enjoyed helping with this group the past 2 and a half weeks. I've met some super kind people and have enjoyed volunteering with them to help the needy communities within Bangkok. It's a great place to make new friends, whether with the volunteers or the Thai community you're helping. It truly is a blessing to be involved. I'm meeting people from many different countries, but several from America! Tomorrow's meal prep team was already full, so I've signed up to help with just the hand out, but even that's still a great thing! Then you get to see the folks you're helping! I've also been teaching my same students. It's been fun seeing them again after my trip back to Texas. Fun seeing how much they've grown and learned in the time I've been gone. For some, it's been 2 and a half months. The younger ones learn so much so quickly, so it's always surprising seeing that! They have all been happy to see me as well. Today, I get to go teach Ocean for the first time since being back. Always a blessing to love and be loved by my students! Here are some pictures to enjoy!

Other news, I thought of a few more differences between Texas and Thailand. Hot water. I miss being able to wash dishes in hot water. Or take warm showers. Although, sometimes due to the heat, the showers are warm anyway. During winter, it's still not cold, but there's sometimes less sun causing the water to be colder. Those can be pretty cold showers! Thailand does not use water heaters. So even if you have the water hearter box in the bathroom for the shower, it does not provide hot water for dishes. Do you know how hard it is to wash greasy food off dishes without hot water?! Usually, it requires 2 rounds of washing. Also, most houses or condos do not have dish washers. Everyone handwashes dishes. I'm blessed to have a sink to wash dishes in and a washer to wash clothes in at my home. I've lived for a short period without both and I do not enjoy squatting to wash dishes or clothes in a big round bowl sitting on the ground. My legs were not made for squatting long periods of time, which is why I ended up buying a little stool to sit on while doing that. A second difference is toilet paper. Yes, we have toilet paper here. But you're not allowed to flush it. It took like 2 weeks for me to remember to flush the paper when I was back in Texas! It only took 1 day once being back to start throwing it away again. I covered a lot of differences with driving and cars, but I didn't mention that when traffic is bad, we use the shoulder as an extra lane. There's traffic every day bewteen 7:00-10:30am and 4:30pm-8:00pm, so I drive on the shoulder most days. Turns the 3 lane toll road into 4 lanes. Very helpful. I'm readjusting to spending a majority of my time at home without air. In Texas, everyone uses air all the time, unless it's cold. In Thailand, it's hot all the time, but I try to only use air at nights to sleep in order to keep the electricity bill down. Occasionally, when I teach at home and use the air for classes, I'll leave it on for a few hours after to exercise with air. Those are nice days. Thai food can also be quite a bit different from American food. I sometimes get bored with Thai food because it can often be very similar flavors between each dish and it gets to where you just don't know what to eat because it all started to taste the same. Thais say American food is very plain and they'd bore of it super fast. But the difference for me with American food is there's so much more variety! You've got pastas, pizzas, seafood, Mexican food, every other country's type of food, and every type of pastry, dessert, or candy you can think of with so many varying flavors. That's just not the same for Thai food. I LOVE Thai food. Don't get me wrong. I love the spicy stuff. I love the semi-sweet stuff. And I love the non-spicy foods. But because they use a lot of the same herbs in the food, it can end up having simlar flavors across the board. That's why I can get bored with Thai food and not know what to eat, even though I love it. Last subject, different from the rest. When do children start recognizing how much time has passed by? It's funny. I tell my students I haven't seen them in a long time and they agree. Then I ask them how long they think it's been. Most of them only say a week or two. But for most of them, it has been almost 3 months! Maybe it's a language thing. They may not understand the full concept of time of a week or month because they can't remember how long either of them are. Have you noticed this with other young children? Is it just me and a language issue, or do other children around the world not understand the concept of time and how long something is? Anyway, time for me to get ready to go teach Ocean so that's all for today. Hope you enjoyed my random musings.