Another blog to read...

I've been in Thailand for almost 3 weeks now and I love it. I've been on the beach for 7 days now and I especially love that. I have even put on sunscreen multiple times each day to avoid wanting to die. But, of course, I have still become 20 shades darker...oh well! If you have any reason to want to see some pictures since they have been a little difficult to post, let me know and I will send you a link. Don't be shy.....

If you have any desire to read more, here is Kami's blog. I've written all the details in my journal and she is better at the details on her blog. The link is on the side of my blog.

I miss home a lot! and probably you if you are actually reading this!

More Myanmar **

We went to the Shwedagon Pagoda one night in Yangon. It was the most ridiculous 2 hours of our trip thus far. These monks came up to us and talk to us forever. We weren't sure what the rules were exactly, as we both thought different things from past experiences. We felt super uncomfortable because they kept joking and sort of flirting. haha. They were giggly and we could not control our giggling. We finally got out of the situation and then they came and found us as we were trying to take one last picture. They asked for my email and have emailed me twice so far. One of them said we should meet again, but where we would go, I would have to pay because monks cannot. WHAT?? It was way strange. Either way, they were funny and our experience was definitely unforgettable.


Here is that last picture we tried to take. This is what happens when you trust someone else to take a picture. They cut out the only thing you want in it. They Shwedagon is incredible, but you will not get to see it because the man cut it off!


This is what Bagan looks like! I seriously couldn't believe I could be in someplace like this. Climbing through ancient temples with flashlights. The sunsets and sunrises were to die for.


This is at the top of Mt. Popa, an old volcano outside of Bagan. We are with some French friends we met. I love them- they were so interesting and fun. We spent a couple days with both of them. I'm pretty sure I'll be taking a trip to France just so I can visit the incredible places they live! This trip also brought my first encounter with monkeys. terrifying. We are walking up the 750 stairs to the top surrounded by monkeys. One mommy monkey was holding her dead skeleton baby and almost attacked me as if I killed the baby. I swear I did not- but, she did not believe me. The burmese ladies had to run over and move it away with their brooms. I attached myself to one of them for awhile after. Now I have no good feelings towards monkeys, which is just too sad.


This is some kid who decided to be our tour guide through one of the temples. We kept trying to ditch him so we didn't have to pay him money, but he would not leave. He was great though. At the end, he pulls out about 20 different bills- from ALL over the world: Trinidad and Tobago and Uzbekistan to name a couple. We gave him a crisp one dollar bill to add to the collection.


Here is Ubein Bridge. It is the longest stilt bridge in the world I believe. AND, I was terrified walking across the whole one hour it took. There is rotted wood and holes in the wood. Yet, there are tons of locals who seem to care less that the thing looks like it is going to fall down any second.

The three men here are called the 'Moustache Brothers.' Look them up. Seriously. They perform this comedy routine inside their house every night but Sunday. Before one of their performances at Aung San Suu Kyi's house, they drew straws to decide which brother would say the joke about the govt at the show. Par par Lay drew the straw and made the joke and 2 days later was in jail for 7 years. After the movie 'About a Boy' came out (where they mention his name), he was released. They are so proud of their fame and continue to have this show, only in English since they are banned from speaking Burmese in their shows. They continue to talk and inform anyone who comes about the govt. They are great examples of continuing to do something they believe to be so important. They said the govt. would just put them all in jail so they would stop doing the show, but tourists and Americans will get too mad, so they don't.


This is a fisherman on Inle Lake. It is a sight of rare beauty. Seriously though. We rode a boat out and saw hundreds of houses, all on stilts. Temples in the middle of the lake, floating GARDENS, beautiful weather, jumping cats, houses on stilts and mud piles, etc.


We had a random day with nothing planned so we walked (which we do very often). We kept walking and ended up in this village way on the outskirts of the small town we were staying in. We walked up to this little monastery where all these boy monks were working. One of them came up to us and motioned for us to take pictures and then just took us on this random walk through the hill, into a creeeeepy cave, to a reclining buddha, and then next to a cave where he picks up some snake skin. I pretended to go into the cave and that monk was not having it.


We got a chance to do a short internship with CARE Intl. We got permission to go into the Delta region where cyclone Nargis hit really hard. One of the towns had 40,000 before the cyclone- after 5,000. It was quite overwhelming to hear their stories. We got to go into villages and ask questions, visit with the people, see the work CARE did. I learned sooo much- it is really quite fulfilling to learn so much after college is over! We spent the night in CARE housing on a mat on the floor. One of the days we had to take a 2 hour boat ride just to get to the village! The picture above is of our CARE supervisor of sorts- He was super awesome and loved to talk. As we were driving on the most horrible roads I've ever experienced in my life in one of the remotest areas in the world, I hear the Star Wars theme song. I start laughing and trying to figure out where it is coming from. And then he pulls out this gigantic office phone from his backpack. It had a huge atenna and he just talks on it like it was no big deal. Kami and I were dying in the backseat. It probably doesn't sound very funny but I promise it was!


Here is one of the groups of women. They have a commitee where they try and continue to improve their community. They told us it would be another ten years before their community was anywhere near like it was before.


Here is the crew. CARE put in latrines throughout many villages and gave pigs and ducks to women headed households. (you can zoom in and see one of those pigs!).

Myanmar was a dream trip. It exceeded all all of my expectations and more. I've made dear friends for life and will never forget the things I saw there.

Share the gospel!

So before I decided to go to Taiwan I was also planning on going on a mission. After some talks with the bishop, Taiwan was where I was supposed to go. He said I could share the gospel and make the same kind of impact in peoples' lives...that is if I tried. Now that I'm traveling I realize just how much you can share the gospel. Who cares if they don't speak your language! I collected a bunch of Thai pass along cards and they are like candy. Plus, they are free! Taxi drivers, strangers, teachers, etc. Anyways, just sayin, share the gospel. It has never been one of my biggest strengths, but it is kind of fun to work on it.

Kind of a random post and I plan to write more, but no pictures yet....AND everytime I get on the computer I forget my journal. I would remember nothing without that thing. ALSO, I am with a professor from BYU who is pretty rad. He brought a few students here and we are staying in a super nice hotel, which is a really great change from the super cheap, dirty hostels :)

Myanmar

So, I have been traveling for a couple weeks now and it has been one incredible, strange, exhilarating, confusing, educational, fascinating, and beautiful. I went to Thailand first, then to Myanmar for a couple weeks, and now I am back in Thailand. It is pretty exhausting to have the kind of experiences that I have been each day. These kinds of days come once every year and now I am having them on a continual basis. I have met amazing people who are doing amazing things with their lives. I've already been able to see the amazing work NGO's have done in some of the poorest places in the world- and have had the opportunity to take part in some of that work- visiting villages in the middle of nowhere and sitting in the homes of strangers who treat you like you are family- handing out prosthetic legs to people who could not even think about the possibility of having a leg beforehand- visited monastery schools and sang ridiculous songs to the children who of course sang along or rather, mumbled along- helped with English classes with some of the most giggly and fun students- AND lots and lots of listening and learning from some truly incredible human beings. Myanmar is a strange country and there is quite a lot to talk about. Maybe I will find time later, but I am not checking the internet very regularly so we will see. I will try my hardest. The first day I went to the one small branch in the entire country. I talked for awhile after church with a sister named Janet. About an hour into the conversation she told me about her baptism and how she had to be carried into the font because she has a hurt hip and leg. As they pulled her out of the water she thought she had actually died because everything looked so different, so much more beautiful. After a few more minutes of conversation, I discovered she was actually the first member baptized in Myanmar. She invited about 15 people over to her house to learn from the first set of service missionaries who went to Myanmar. Everyone says she is quite the strength. She is too poor to come to church so she can only attend one Sunday a month. The taxi costs 6 usd each time.

Sister Janet is on the far right. Adorable Sister Alice is the other woman.

I don't really have much pictures loaded so I can't show you any, but I will soon enough! I miss home a lot, but everyday has been an adventure and such a learning experience so I am taking advantage of everything I can.

Kami schamy

The girl on the right is my best friend and I think she is a babe and I also love her A LOT...even though she is strange and runs too much. And because she is willing to pick up my stranded sister in Idaho. My grandma will love her for that forever.

The point of the post however is the girl on the left. I figure she deserves a picture on my blog because I will spend the next 2 1/2 months by her side. We met in our nonprofit classes, were on the NMSA board together, went to a conference in Indiana together, and did the fundraising for Special Olympics this past spring. She is pretty great. She served her mission in Thailand and works at the MTC- well not anymore since she just graduated!! We have already planned loads of stuff for our trip, will be making rules so we don't drive each other crazy, scripture study in the morning (haha-individually) but we figure we will always want the spirit with us so this is the most important, exercising in the morning so we don't die, giving out lots of pass along cards, working with a bunch of nonprofits, visiting 5 or 6 countries, meeting loads of awesome people, seeing incredibly beautiful places, and having a pretty ridiculous, indescribable, relaxing, crazy, fun couple of months. More details to come....

Scaring kids

This picture is great for many reasons. How great are those two older people completely asleep while they are with their grandchild. Good thing I was on that train to watch over the kid. More importantly, this picture represents/reminds me of all the children I made cry while in Taiwan. I am up to four as of today, but I'm sure there will be at least one more. While on the train this kid was smiling happily, playing with his grandpa. Then he caught a glimpse of me and froze. His grandpa was smiling at me and I just smiled at the little guy who then proceeded to frantically grab his grandfather, tear up, stand up, and turn around. He stood like this for the rest of the trip. His grandpa looked at me with apologetic eyes and tried to get the kid to turn around, but with no avail. I just tried not to laugh hysterically. I'm really glad I did not make my usual crazy face which is what I usually do when I see the cute little asian kids-Who knew this American face of mine would scare so many?? I'm hoping my confidence isn't lowered too much by this. Usually parents and kids love when the Americans will talk to them and they push their kids over to us so they can use their English. But, there are those who have never seen one (American) so we are a bit too scary for them. Oh, the joys of being a minority.

Oh my gosh.

I know I haven't written a blog post in a long time, but I have just been dealing with some stuff, so we will leave it at that. Also, I lost my camera. lame.

So, I seriously never thought this would happen to me. Take that back...I've never in a million years even had this thought cross my mind.

I walked down to my kindergarten class, which is in the afternoon, today. I LOVE these kids. So I see my student Peter, age 4, walk into the school and he is wearing a red shirt. His face and arms are the exact color of his shirt. I freak out inside and the secretary sees him too. His head, face, arms, stomach, chest, and back are burning hot. The secretary talks to him and finds out his grandma gave him wine. It seriously looked like he was going to die. He also smelled nasty- alcohol nasty. He said he didn't want it, but his gma just told him to drink it. Oh gosh. Here in Taiwan, most grandparents live with their children. They watch their grandchildren during the day and take care of them. The cultural gap in grandparent to child to grandchild seems a lot larger than in America. The grandparents speak Taiwanese, the parents Chinese, and the kids English (or are at least learning it much more). I think the grandma gives him a little wine before he goes to bed. I know, way weird but maybe it is like giving your kid cough medicine to sleep (I think I've heard of that somewhere?). Both are bad, but people still do them. Sad. So, the secretary holds up her fingers and asks how many fingers she is holding up. He knows so we figure he isn't too drunk and that is about all we can do.

So the kid peed four times within 1 hour and a 1/2. Every time I asked a question he would just look at me for like 20 seconds and then answer. He asked to draw the high speed train on the board so I sad okay to see if he could do it. He walks up and drew two wheels and then just stood there and said, 'I forgot.' I told him to stand up (he was sitting on the floor) and he lost his balance and hit his head on the chair (not too hard). So I took him outside to the secretary where we continued the sobriety tests. poor little guy. He was only light red by the end of class so that was good. He totally knew he was acting strange and at the end of class he said, 'I came to school today and act a little crazy, teacher.' Yes, you did Peter....not your fault though.

haha. Here is Peter - don't you love that you cannot even tell he has eyeballs...