Reunions

Well, the last two days have been filled with little reunions with old friends here in Thailand. Yesterday, we spent the day with two teachers who taught with us at the Hoi Bong school near Mae Sot last year. It was great to see them again and share memories. They are so sweet. The one I was closest with was Cru Ham, who used to take Andrea and I out to lunch almost every day after school. She was a sweetheart and liked to give us rides on her motorbike all the time. It was great to see her and help her brush up on her English....she has forgotten a lot just like I forgot a lot of Thai...guess it's true what they say: "if you don't use it, you lose it." I feel like more Thai has been coming back to me though, especially what I understand. Anyway, we had a fun day with the teachers. We went to lunch with them and then spent some time in Mae Sot before they had to go. I think we'll see Cru Ham again at the school on Friday.

Then today we had another fun little reunion with some of the kids. We spent the morning hanging out with Teep and Terra on their cute little balcony at their house in Mae Ton. They have an awesome view of the mountains...everything is so green here too! So it was nice to have a relaxing morning and just hang out with them and catch up a little!

In the afternoon, Yupapon arrived in town and came over to see us. She is one of my favorite girls. She was one of the girls from Agape who Andrea now sponsors to go to college. It's so crazy to me how much she has grown up and how much she has matured in just a year. I'm sure college has played a huge part in that. She is 20 years old now, which is so crazy to me. She was always like a mom to the kids at Agape and made sure they were taken care of....so now she is in college to be a teacher! Her English is pretty good too so it was awesome to catch up with her and see her!

By late afternoon, I was feeling a little disappointed because a few of the other kids had planned on coming and since they don't have phones, there was no way to communicate with them and find out why they still weren't there. Terra said it looked like they weren't coming after all! I was really disappointed because a huge part of making this trip was to see some of the kids from last year!

So, we were all surprised when finally around 6, they all showed up (they were supposed to come at noon!)...We found out that Samu had forgotten a key that he needed to get for the motorbike (they had to walk really far then take the motorbike to our town). So he had to run back 20 kilometers to get it....So that made for a total of more than 40 kilometers walking/running...he told us the story of what happened and said that he realized that he had forgotten it and thought "I want to cry." Poor guy! I was so glad they had made it and it was so great to see them! We all stayed up late playing cards and checkers and other games. I had brought a bunch of nailpolish to paint the girls' nails so we did little manicures and pedicures which was a lot of fun! It's so crazy to me how much the kids have grown up! Samu is now 16 and it looks like he shot up at least 6 inches in the last year!

Anyway, we had a really fun time with the kids and it made me so happy to see them and see how much they've grown and matured both physically and spiritually in the last year! We should have some more fun reunions on Friday with the kids at Hoi Bong School! I can't wait!