Week in the Life :: Moving

I'm here in Bangkok, very much alive and well, though with some snuffly coughing kids. But we are eating a lot of fruit and gathering things we need. Tonight we get on the train to head to Chiang Mai, in the North.

Before this blog turns to all things Thailand, I wanted to finish off my "Week in the Life" project with some photos over the last few days in India. Finishing up, tying up loose ends, and giving a little ceremony to our departure.

This is where Jaya lives, with her sister and brother-in-law and two nephews. They live in the tiniest house where they caretake for a giant coconut grove, in sight of the sea.

Jaya's sister keeps a beautiful garden. The borders are all done with dried cow dung, which seems to hold up much better than my bricks. I'm just a little enamored with cow dung and the way Indian people use it to make floors and seal walls. It's so... what's the word I'm looking for? Resourceful.

For our last devotion circle we took some time to talk about what the season and past seasons have meant to us. We built a rangoli together during worship, and talked about our move to Thailand, and how we will still be connected though we are in different places.

I bought a mango tree and we planted it together in the garden.

And Miriam gave us a mango, to symbolize the same dream being planted in another location.

It was a beautiful devotion circle, with prayer and honor and thankfulness to God.

In the next few days we: Saw a snake in the garden. Turned out to be a harmless keelback.

Packed for the movers, who took everything out of the boxes we had packed them in and repacked. This picture is very telling. We mostly own books. And instruments. Not much else.

While the movers were there, Johanna and Miriam very kindly took the kids to the beach for a swim and some lunch. I love this. The back steps full of people sitting and talking.

These guys were so efficient. It was shocking.

Right after the movers were done, we took a trip to visit the house of Jaya's fiance. I don't think he's really her fiance yet, because they haven't had the betrothal, but he will be.

He lives a little ways out into the jungle. Jaya is rather horrified by how far out it is.

I'm smiling like that because I'm so hopped up on all the sugar they gave us. Ice cream and soda and biscuits. Oh my.

What else? We had a big garden day. Miriam went a little crazy getting all the grass trimmed so it can grow in green again, and she needed a rest. So she lay back and talked to her mother on the phone.

That yellow is what happens to this kind of grass when it grows long. We let it grow too long. We learned our lesson.

And then there was a farewell. A bit frantic, a bit too much at the end. It seems to happen no matter how prepared I try to be. But we made it into the taxi with a few tears and we said to our little village, "See you in January."