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. 

Arriving in Mae Sot: Wednesday, July 30

We flew to Mae Sat this morning on a smaller airplane and were met at the airport by Kara. We squeezed into her truck and she brought us to a hotel she found for us that had a family room. Once we secured a cot it will now fit us perfectly.  The girls were excited to see the lizards running around the walls at check in and counted 69 street dogs between the airport and the hotel. The definitely have animal control issues here. 

We drove to the Sun Sawany offices and got to see the solar panels and converters they are creating and installing to bring electricity to rural villages.

Then we had lunch (chicken soup with noodles seemed the most safe) with the group and also got to meet Salinee.  Afterwards we went back to our hotel for a nap and a little travel recovery until Kara came to take us to dinner. She took us to a great little Pad Thai place that we all loved (Zenna liked) that cost close to $6 to feed all 6 of us. Then we watched Kara, some locals and NGO's play soccer 'football' and were invited to play but the jet lag is setting in so we were all way too tired.

This little cutie pulled a chair up next to Caiden and couldn't get close enough. She was adorable. She was also rocking out to the music playing especially when Mark would join her. 

We are heading to bed now at the hotel and it's only 9:15pm here but

we can hardly hold our heads up.