Morning of Day 1: Our Adventure Begins (July 28, 2014)

Amber, our niece, dropped us off this morning bright and early. We left the house at 5:35am. Now we are sitting at the airport waiting for our first flight to start our adventure.   We had to unpack all 10 computers and the projector that we will be donating to BGET and Grace Garden in Thailand as well as our personal computers. Each had to be in their own bin while going through security. Luckily we were rather quick at it and there wasn't a large line yet since we arrived pretty early. Hopefully we will not have to do that again. Probably in customs before heading to Japan. We just had breakfast once we were checked in and all took our Malaria meds. Caiden and Zenna went with Mark to take a photo with our pilot. Caiden was going to interview them but got too shy so settled for just a picture.  We should be boarding soon!

Paradise Indeed! August 12,13,14

We are happily enjoying the sun, sand, and the fanciest resort villa that we've ever seen.

The past few days have been a mix of playing in the ocean, riding the waves in, gathering creepy crawlies and shells, and a couple of new family fun experiences. 

Yesterday we went a little south of our resort for a really awesome Elephant trek. They are such enormous, beautiful animals. I was pleasantly surprised to be able to ride on our elephant's neck and feel his skin and ears and give him some love. When we finished we fed the baby elephant a basket full of bananas. That little guy had such a personality! We all wanted to bring him home. 

We are on a boat now heading back to shore after spending the day, for our fist time ever. scuba diving. 

The girls are feeling whooped from all of the fresh air. We did two dives after receiving some good but quick instruction and everyone did fantastic. Zenna is feeling some ear pain and pressure now so hopefully she will feel better soon.

Aug 10,11th

We said goodbye to Noh Bo yesterday and made our way back to Mae Sot. Along the way we stopped at a friend of Jabwa's. He had her make me a beautiful Karen sarong skirt and she presented it to me. I'm so honored and humbled by these beautiful, giving people. What a lovely surprise. Again we had all of our luggage inside the truck to stay dry along with Kara driving and Zenna, who was feeling very sick sleeping in the passenger seat. 

We were very happy to check in at The Picture Book Guest House and couldn't wait for a shower. Our first in 4 days. 

We all put our dresses on and I got to wear my new sarong while Kara took us to get mani/pedi's. Boy did we need it after slopping around in the rain and mud for the past four days.  Mark biked to get a Thai massage while we got our nails done. 

Afterwards we picked up Mark and went for a meal at the most magnificent resturaunt I've ever been to. It had orchids and waterfalls and pathways and wonderful twisted trees. It was a rainforest wonderland. And the food!!! In so glad it was family style so we could all share the wonderful dishes. 

August 11

We had to say goodbye to Kara and Northern Thailand today to begin the next chapter of our journey.  We are heading south to Phuket for some sun, sand and from what we've heard a little bit of paradise. 

Missing you already Kara!  Wish you could' v fit in my suitcase!

August 7th 8th, 9th

We spent the past few days with some incredible people in Noh bo Thailand.  First of all our favorite person in this entire half of the world is Kara.  She has been an incredible host and we are so grateful to her.  If I would have known all along that we would have her with us for most of our journey I would have had a lot less anxiety before getting here.  She will forever be part of our family.  It will be hard to say goodbye to her in a couple of days.

Next is Jabwa.  He is one of the teachers here with Kara at Grace Garden and he takes care of a lot of things like making sure we have cooks to make our meals during our last couple of days of class with the students from Noh Bo Academy.  He brought us tea and snacks last night when Kara went to take the students back to the boarding house and he sat with us and taught us some Karen words.  Karen which is pronounced like (Kah-Rin) is the language/ethnicity of a lot of the refugees here from Burma.  He is so happy all of the time and always a wonderful friendly face.

We spent the 7th and 8th teaching the kids from the Noh Bo academy about the 7 mindsets.  For those of you who don't know, they are the 7 mindsets that the 300 most happy and successful people share.

They are ways of thinking to help achieve your dreams no matter who you are or where you are living.

These kids were so bright and so much fun to be around.  Caiden, Syler and Zenna did such an awesome job helping by leading games and helping the students learning some new computer skills.

Today, August 9th, we went to Grace Boarding and picked up 15 kids, piled them in the back of the truck with us and went an hour down the road to Blessed Home Orphanage.  These kids are so beautiful and it was such a pleasure to meet and hang out with all of them for the day.  The kids played games together and we were invited to have dinner with them.  

Tomorrow if it's not raining we hope to climb to the top of the mountain behind us to the Pagoda.  Then it is back to Mae Sot for one more evening before we move on to Phuket.

August 7th

First of all- Happy 21st Wedding Anniversary to the love of my life. I hope we will get to share many more adventures like this one. You make me a better person.

We drove 2 hours to get to Grace Garden yesterday in the back of the truck, in the rain, with a whole bunch of produce to make meals for the next few days for us and the students. Our luggage road inside the truck so all our clothes would stay dry. We were all completely soaked by the time we got here. It was so much fun! 

Once we unloaded we found our room in the staff house and began claiming our spots on the floor. Then we began to hang mosquito netting.  I slept with Zenna and Caiden last night on a couple mattresses pushed together. Mark had his own mattress and Syler borrowed Kara's hammock and strung it on the porch and we hung netting over that.  For as much as we've heard about how horrible the Mosquitos are here, their numbers are pitiful compared to the many we have back home. 

For dinner went to Stuart and Trish's home in the village.  They are teachers from Australia who are helping out here.  It was so nice to meet them and hear their snake stories.  

Nope I'm not scared at all.  I'm sure my fancy mosquito netting will protect me.  Or not! :/

Leaving the cushy hotel for rural Thailand (August 6th, 2014)

We had wonderful meetings yesterday with Lynn at Khom Loy Development Foundation.  He is a very inspiring young man who told us about the many facets of the work they are doing with the refugees here in Mae Sat. 

They work with women through SWC at one site to teach them a trade to make money and also have their doors open for drop in counseling sessions. (We bought a lot of their jewelry)  In another location they teach 4-5 year olds a Montessori style education and in yet at another location they have a farm and are teaching the people how to raise pigs for food or sale etc.

We also visited the Mae Sat clinic so the girls and I could get some perspective. Wow! It is unreal. The hospital beds are wood tables. And nothing anywhere is sterile. Even where they do surgeries the street dogs just wander in and out. They have a wood shop where they make wooden legs and feet for amputees. Most of which have lost limbs from land mines. It has brought much gratitude from all of us about how good we have it back home. I will never complain how long the wait is at our own clinics again. 

After the clinic Kara thought we should experience another of the many street markets here so dropped us off. There were buckets of live turtles, eels, frogs and fish, fried cockroaches and many other treats.  YUCK!  We did find some really good fresh carrots. :) I'm a vegetarian.  Thank goodness.

Kara met us at the end of the market and brought us to a restaurant that supports young artists called something like Casa Mia. They had a mix of American like and Thai food so Zenna was happy. The fries were great! Mark and I shared a spicy Burmese dish.

We just finished packing and are getting ready to head with Kara to the rural No Boh village where Grace Garden is located and the place that Kara runs. We are excited to leave the city. We are country folk at heart after all. 

An amazing experience thus far...

This is Mark again. I guess I should preface that since Karman has been the prolific blogger thus far. I mean to do it, so we can let everyone know what is going on and so we don't forget ourselves, but the days go by so fast that by the end of the day, I have no energy to write. That, plus these first two weeks are focused on our service work in that we are doing trainings, having lots of meetings with organizations, doing tours of their projects, etc.  For these, I've needed to prepare for with background research, creating curriculums, documenting ideas, sending follow-up emails, etc.

It has been quite the whirlwind and the days have been flying by, but they have all been amazing. I'm hoping to do some catch up on the blogging when we get to Phuket (pronounced poo-ket) for the last leg of our trip, which is focused solely on some R&R and fun (and some blogging, too).

We have now done one two-day training, and met with about 8 NGOs (non-gov't orgs) that have been inspiring and a pleasure from which to learn. It is incredibly eye-opening to see first-hand what is happening in other areas around the world that we are either unaware of, or we forget that we have heard about previously. From labor-trafficking (essentially slavery), exploitation, extreme poverty, hunger, sex-trafficking, an epidemic of street animals that are routinely poisoned as a form of control, lack of health care access, lack of education access, suppression by military (Burma) that burn villages, lack of electricityplumbing/etc. that we take for granted, lack of economic opportunities, lack of communication/language skills, etc. The list could go on and on - and that is just in this one area that we are staying right now along the Thai-Burma border. By the way - Burma was renamed Myanmar about 20 years ago, but for the locals, it never stuck and they refer to themselves as Burmese.  That confused me for awhile.

It is quite daunting to think about all these issues in their totality. However, it is wonderful to see all the great works of the many NGOs that have targeted these issues in ways that really address the root of the issues as best they can - education, gaining productive skills, access to healthcare, etc. - that go well beyond hand-outs and charity, but rather empower these people to improve their lives and their communities in the long-term. They are really good people (with some bad apples, like anywhere) that want to work hard and create a good lives for their families, but they are just part of a system that is broken in so many ways. They can't leave (not allowed to, or the alternative is going back to a violent situation), and they have few options to get an education or job, so they are stuck. The NGOs here are their best hope and are making some good progress, and it is wonderful to be a part of it, even in a very small way.

I'll share more about what we've learned and our plans for Wildfire's role going forward in my upcoming blogs.

Best to you all!
Mark

August 4th

We got to meet with Mickey at The Picture Book Guest House today about what they are working on. It is so fun to brainstorm about how we can collaborate.

 Picture book is a really cool boutique hotel similar to the HoDo in Fargo but has some incredible social enterprise surrounding it. They help kids through 'Youth Connect' to gain confidence and skills to help them enter the work force after school.  First by training and then by lining them up with apprenticeships with approx. 80 employers throughout Mae Sot. 

Read more about it here!

http://www.picturebookthailand.org

After our meeting Mark went with Kara to meet with Salinee about her projects at Sun Sawang and Grace Garden.  Then he went to another meeting at Mae Toa Clinic. I will let him fill you I on those.  

The girls and I went for Pad Thai and fruit smoothies and then to some of the local shops. Later, I was determined to find a coffee shop that I had spotted the evening before named Hazel's.  We finally found it and were delighted to find that it had air conditioning to cool down in, awesome blue berry cheesecake, and really good iced coffee.  Most of the people inside were American and European. I guess we're not the only ones needing a break from the humidity. I think the locals are used to it. 

This evening we headed back to the Picture book guest house for Yoga with Nook and also got to meet her husband Patrick Kearns.   He is an artist and the founder of The Picture Book Guest House and also started The New Horizon's school with Mickey. (The school Mark taught at last week). Patrick just finished work for a show at a local gallery. I'm hoping to check it out tomorrow. 

August 2nd

This morning was a nice lazy morning.  We woke up bright and early because we went to bed early lat night good and exhausted from a long day. It was nice that we didn't have to rush off anywhere.  Zenna especially likes to go to breakfast at our hotel because they have toast.  She is such a picky eater and has been having trouble finding things that she will try so at breakfast she knows she can rely on the toast.  This morning she ate 11 pieces of toast/bread.  Every morning they serve a buffet of Thai food along with bread, butter and jam.  This is usually her biggest meal of the day.  At lunch and dinner she has a couple of bites of rice and just pushes the rest around on her plate.  We did find some apples at a market a couple of days ago so those are also helping to keep her going.

After breakfast Kara picked us up to go to The Puzzle Box  We saw where the locals can go to do art projects.  Today they were working on ceramics.  I heard that they also have some forging equipment but it was not opened today. We did buy several ceramic pendants that the artists there had made.

We stopped along the way to buy some interesting fruit at the market and some sticky rice wraps so that we could have a picnic later.

Then we were on to the Gibbon Sanctuary.  I was especially excited by this since I have had an affinity for all things monkey like since I was a kid.  We brought some ripe bananas and grapes and got to feed them.

And then to my delight we got to hold this beautiful little guy named Albert.  He was only 7 months old and wearing a diaper.  He still lives in the house and sleeps with his human at night and will do this until he is old enough to go with the others.  The amazing woman we met who runs the sanctuary loves these guys like they are her children.  If I ever come back to Thailand I will be volunteering here!!

Next we went to a waterfall.  Sadly since it is the rainy season we could not go all the way to the top because they close the entrance when it's too wet.
It was a beautiful spot and we had a picnic next to the water.

This sticky rice had shredded pork or chicken and came wrapped in tied into this beautiful green banana leaf.

Friday, August 1st

We spent a great day teaching Social Entrepreneurship at Wide Horizons in Mae Sot. The girls interviewed all the students about their social concerns/projects, their plan to move forward, and their road blocks. Then Zenna would throw in a fun personal question like 'what is your favorite song?' 

It was fascinating to hear some of the things they were working on and I hope that we can continue to help them by connecting them to resources and mentoring them when needed. There are so many road blocks to the growth of their villages. Everything has to be passed by the Village Monk and the Village Leader and so lots of advancements that they could be making are overruled mostly because of ignorance and misunderstanding. I think it would be very similar to trying to convince a small town elderly person a decade ago in the US that computers are a link to education and social advancements instead of a waste of time. And without that elderly persons approval nothing can happen. 

We went back to our hotel for a short nap and then back to the school for a dinner of Burmese food prepared by the students.  On the way back we were pulled over my the police for no reason. When they saw that we were all white they let us go. Apparently they set up every night around 6pm to stop the Burmese refugees that are travelling on that road from the factories to extort money from them. Unreal. 

On a lighter note we saw lots and lots of lizards today in the open air school and we met a very nice cat today that the girls called 'Tommy'. We all miss snuggling our animals at home. 

Zennas first massage and snails!

July 31st

Mark, Zenna and I walked across the street for a massage last night. We each chose the oil massage and LOVED it but tonight might go back tonight for a Thai massage for something different.  They were only about $11/hour per person so I have a feeling it's something we will do a lot while we are here.  On the way back we grabbed some large snails from the grass for the girls to play with. Zenna named them Larry, Gary and Petey. They were adorable. 

Mark and I woke up early to have coffee and talk but the girls joined us soon after for breakfast. We are now getting ready for our 2nd day of teaching at Wide Horizons. 

Why Thailand? An introduction to our little adventure...

Hi everyone! 

Karman has been blogging like crazy and giving updates about this wonderful and crazy adventure we are on, and my one job was to write up an intro so that all of her blogs had some context. Well, I was late on doing it, so I'm sorry if it seems like we just somehow disappeared from Fargo and showed up in Thailand with no explanation. I'll try give a little background about how this little journey came about in the first place, and we'll fill in more details in the coming days via some additional posts.

So, why the heck are we here at the other side of the world anyway?  I guess it started about two years ago when I went to a social entrepreneur weekend retreat with about 20 other idealistic do-gooders (I was merely a wannabe compared to that amazing group of people) that were all very passionate about doing things that would make the world a better place in some way. I was inspired, and ended up meeting an amazing individual and the best school teacher on the planet, Beth Ekre. We discovered we both had a passion for wanting to teach young people (middle school, high school, and college aged) about empathy, giving service, gratitude, having the right mindset, and leaning the skills needed to identify a cause they were passionate about and then go do something about it. 

We wanted to also give them different perspective on the world in a global sense - one not centered around the latest iPhone or the current clothing trends, but rather one about communities not having clean water to drink so kids are missing school from illness, or evil human beings that believe trafficking young children (the same ages as our own kids) is okay to do. We wanted to do this in a way that could potentially be life-changing and perhaps inspiring to them. That's when Wildfire Youth Venture was born - a non-profit organization that works with and mentors students on practicing social entrepreneurship in both local and global causes. As parents of teens and pre-teens, we wanted our own kids (Syler, Caiden, Zenna, Meghan, and Clayton) to be involved in our new program from the get go and get many other kids in the 12-20 age range involved as well.

We had a terrific first year in which we worked with about 70 kids in our region to hold the first annual "Ultimate Life Summit - Fargo" (ULS) with our partners - Dakota Medical Foundation, the YMCA, the authors of 7 Mindsets (Scott Shickler and Jeff Waller), and West Fargo Public schools. Karman, our girls, and Beth's kids all joined and helped every step of the way, both for the ULS as well as spending hundreds of hours working on the Alexa's Hope Give to Live Challenge in November in which we made an attempt for a new Guinness World Record to sign up the most new organ donor registrations in an 8 hour period. Though we didn't set a new world record, we know it made a big difference for the hundreds of people that did sign up to be registered as organ donors, and we had a great time doing it. 

The next fall (Sept 2013), Karman joined along in the social entrepreneurship retreat. We heard from an older couple (one was a doctor) that had volunteered to give free care to those in need in developing countries around the world. They said it was the best thing they had ever done in their lives - it was fulfilling, exciting, fun, and it made them happy to be making a big difference in the lives of others. We asked them and the rest of the group whether they thought we should bring our kids and do it as a family. It was an overwhelming "yes" from everyone at the retreat. That was the spark about 10 months ago that got us thinking about putting together this trip and taking our kids with us. We merged this idea together with what we were doing with our Wildfire project and things eventually came together on it.

So, why Thailand?  Well, because our first concern was the safety of our kids, we wanted to be sure we had a recommendation from someone we trusted that had been to the place we would end up going. A dear friend of ours, Than Baardson, heads up a wonderful organization called Unseen Ministries located in Fargo. If you haven't visited their website, look them up as they are doing great work around the world in addressing poverty, hunger, and child trafficking - all causes that Karman, Beth, and I wanted to do something about - whatever form that may take. 

So, Than had been to where we are now as part of one of his mission trips, and he said this would be a great fit for us - relatively safe, kid friendly, and most certainly in great need of some things we could possibly help with. Plus, he gave us some great contacts here, Kara Bennet and Salinee Tavernan (they run Grace Garden), that have been wonderful to work with in helping us put together a great itinerary of training sessions and meetings with regional healthcare, education, sustainable energy, and not for profit organizations throughout the region (primarily in the city of Mae Sot and the nearby village of Noh Bo).  Beth was hoping to come, but plans didn't work out, but she was a huge help in preparing. She, however, plans to go next year for sure (yes, we would love to make this something we would like to do regularly, if possible). 

So that is how we this all came about. It has been quite an adventure just in the planning for this trip, which we started doing in earnest about 4 or 5 months ago. And now we're actually here, and the adventure just got amped up about 10 notches. We will share more details on what all we are doing during this three week trip to the "Land of Smiles" in some upcoming blog posts, including what we are contemplating as our more-than-a-little-bit-crazy "big vision" for this might become. No, mom and dad, we are not moving to Thailand (that was the next question I'm sure). We'll tell you more about that soon. This post is plenty long enough already.   

คืนที่ดี, ("good night" in Thai)

- Mark

Class at Wide Horizons in Mae Sot (Thursday July 31st)

We spent the morning with Mark watching and helping photograph the Social Entrepreneurship course he is teaching in Mae Sot. I'm so proud of this man. He lights up when he is doing this work. The students are all quietly trying to take in all the new information. The brave ones raise their hand when he asks questions and we reward them with chocolate or Starburst. They know some English but Mark needs to speak slowly and explain everything by using examples to help them understand. He's doing incredible. 

We took a break for lunch at noon and had a wonderful meal of Burmese food with the students. Syler was starting to feel sick. Her and I both have sore throats and she hasn't been sleeping well because of the Jet lag so Kara drove us back to the hotel so she could rest. Caiden and Zenna stayed to help Mark lead the students in some team building and ice breaker games after lunch and to help with the rest of today's class. 

Mark's luggage did not arrive yesterday as we'd hoped so he is wearing the same clothes for the fourth day.  We are calling it his uniform. He also left his phone charger in our Bangkok hotel. Luck is not on his side.