Learning Thai

As some of you know, Claire has not been to school at Mahesak in over a month because her teacher left the school and has not been replaced. For that reason, we have decided to put her in a preschool that is really close to home.....about a 5 minute walk. We feel that God provided this opportunity because Tom got an offer to teach English there one morning a week. Today was their first day at Anuban Butsayamaat.....

Proud of our big girl in her new uniform! She was very brave but a little shy. She came home very excited talking about her teachers and the milk boxes and homework and new friends, etc, etc, etc. Poor Tom came home hoarse from teaching English for three straight hours to 6 very noisy classes!

Some of her little classmates.

More classmates.

Naptime! See Claire there in the middle? Understandably, I don't think she slept much. :)

-Candice

Posted by Tom & Candice Mast at 04:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Shrimp and Hot Dog Pizzas......

We love the Pizza Company here in Thailand. One of our favorite family Friday nights, is to spread out a mat on the living room floor, get a delivery pizza, and watch a nature show. Our favorites are cheese (all the girls) and Italian sausage (Tom)- both delicious and the only odd part being that they arrive with ketchup packets. However, we thought it would be fun to show you some of the more unique choices on the menu.....

Last months' special was this "oh so American" pizza with large hotdogs imbedded in the crust. Hmmmm, how is that American you might ask. Well, hotdogs are American and as you can see, the statue of liberty and the American flag are present, so there you have it.

This month's special was even better....the DANCING SHRIMP pizza (yes, that is what it's called)...with shrimp gaily leaping around the crust. As you can see, it also features oysters and squid.

What do you think? Would you order either one of these? Are shrimp and hotdogs legitimate hotdog toppings or crust fillers? Other popular toppings here are corn and tuna. Mmmmmmm.

-Candice

Posted by Tom & Candice Mast at 05:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Claire and matching friend Nora Grace. The Stoltzfus family will be heading back to India tomorrow after a fun filled 10 day stay with us. We will miss you!

All four girls have had a wonderful time playing together...everything from doll house to "mom" to school. Our girls have loved the social time and will miss Nora Grace and Miriam a lot!! We'll look forward to hanging out with you this summer again!

Life continues to be busy for us as God continues to bless us with students!! When we prayed and asked you to pray, we didn't anticipate exactly how much he would bless us!! Tom is now almost overwhelmed with private students. This week he also begins teaching his class a local hospital (which will meet three mornings a week). Next week, he begins teaching at a local pre-school where Claire will also attend. Praise God for providing so many wonderful opportunities for us! Also pray for wisdom in using our time as we also have team responsibilities and want to reserve some family time also....and lesson planning takes lots of time too as Tom has students of many different levels of ability. It's so exciting to see how He is working and bringing so many people into our lives through English teaching.

Posted by Tom & Candice Mast at 04:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We are happy to announce that we will be joined by a fifth family member in August! Thanks for your prayers for a safe and uncomplicated pregnancy.

Posted by Tom & Candice Mast at 09:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)

Last week I used one of my free mornings to visit Bangkok's Chinatown. We'd been in that area before but had not gotten far enough off the main street to see very much. The Chinese have been in Bangkok for a long time. In fact, they were relocated from their original location to make room for the construction of the Grand Palace when Bangkok became the capital of Thailand in the 1780's. They moved a little to the south and since then that neighborhood has retained it's distinctive Chinese character.

A vendor making Chinese fried "donuts." We can also buy these in our area - they've become our Saturday morning tradition.

I enjoyed walking through the crowded markets. One of the main differences between Chinatown's markets and the typical Thai market is the amount of dried stuff - lots of herbs, sea creatures, and crunchy animal skin.

The most interesting part of the trip was the Chinese Buddhist temple - Wat Mangkon Kamalawat. It was very crowded and the worship there differed significantly from at the Thai Buddhist temples that I've visited. There were clouds of incense smoke, people offering plates of food, and a lot of bustling around. People were buying envelopes and stacks of special paper, then writing down their names and birth dates on them before offering them. I'm not sure if this was a typical morning or if I happened to be there on a special day, but I was amazed by the amount of activity. Unfortunately I was not allowed to take pictures inside the wat.

A fortune-teller/palm-reader's shop front.

Chinese customs related to death and burial/cremation also differ significantly from Thai practices. I walked past a row of shops that provide all of the necessary paraphernalia. At the risk of exposing my great ignorance I'm going to guess that these boxes (which contain a fake suit coat, shirt, tie, watch, and credit card) are used to increase the comfort or status of the deceased.

-Tom

Posted by Tom & Candice Mast at 09:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

We are happy to have our friends Lowell and Amy fom India staying here with us for about ten days. They have three kids ages 5, 3, and 1 so we are having lots of rowdy kid fun around here......

Eliza and Miriam having a dinner party.

The girls in their cool new dresses from India.

Claire and Nora Grace. Claire is so jealous that NG can read...hopefully it will motivating for home school!

Watching a Berenstain Bears video. Claire and Miriam are big fans of each other.

Otherwise, still keeping busy studying Thai and lesson planning and English teaching. Tom is looking at the possibility of teaching at a new school that Claire may be able to attend also (since the other school still hasn't found a replacement kindergarten teacher). Please pray for that- we'd really like to get her back in school and it would be very convenient since it's located right here in our neighborhood.
-Candice

Posted by Tom & Candice Mast at 02:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Well, I'm pretty late blogging about this, but last Saturday was Children's Day, so we spent the day doing something special for C and E....going to their favorite place, Leo Land. Had a great time as usual swimming and floating on rafts (thanks Dara!!) and picnicking by the pool. We noticed that there were kids playing inside these gigantic blowup balls in another pool. Claire decided she was brave enough to try it. We were afraid she might panic but decided to let her try it....

She was absolutely terrified as they were blowing up the ball. She was crying and asking to be let out. Mommy and Daddy felt terrible. To rescue, or not to rescue and hope that it ended up being fun???

It ended up being really fun!

Later that night we attended out neighborhood's celebration of children's day, complete with free noodles, ice cream, and cotton candy as well as balloons and ......

Presents! Eliza especially was thrilled with the new backpack which came with Thai books and notebooks, pencils, etc.

It was a happy children's day and we feel very blessed to have two healthy and fun kids.

-Candice

Posted by Tom & Candice Mast at 12:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

After enjoying a couple of weeks of slower-paced life over the Christmas and New Year's holidays we've found ourselves busier than ever since then. Earlier in December my English teaching had slowed down and most students took a break over the holidays. I was thinking about my options for advertising again in an attempt to find new students, but it turns out that I didn't have to do anything. I've had a number of new people contact me recently and I'm now at the point where I"m telling people they'll need to wait until someone else stops studying. Candice has also resumed her teaching at a nearby church and we are both trying to keep up with a little bit of language study (Candice goes to a school for several hours on Mondays and I have a tutor come to help me practice reading on Thursday).

I'm currently teaching a young man, a group of three siblings, a group of 2 six year old girls, a group of 4 five year old boys, a group of 3 ladies, and a group of 2 teenage girls. The picture above is of the five-year old boys (along with a grandmother who keeps them in line during the lesson). I'm teaching them five days a week. So far it's going well but it takes a LOT of energy and creativity to keep them focused.

Last week I was asked to put together a proposal for teaching a class of hospital employees. I'm really excited about that prospect although it will involve a lot of preparatory work.

I've also gotten back in touch with one of my former students - a nurse who is interested in studying English so that he can work in America at some point. We've been getting together once or twice a week just to talk - he practices English and I practice Thai. It's been a lot of fun and I hope that our families can have some interaction as well. We've had some very interesting discussions - we talked for a long time about Thai cremation/funeral customs. He also taught me a Thai phrase of disgust - his English translation was "dog feces." I tried to explain that feces is a rather technical term and offered an alternative word that could be used in equivalent situations in English. (I also explained that it was an impolite word.) The next time I saw him he asked for clarification on the pronunciation of this new word and pressed me for examples of exactly how he could use it in a sentence. Not exactly the kind of English teaching I had in mind!

We've also had a number of meetings with our team and the REACH team - so our lives have felt very busy. But it's good to be back to work and making new connections in the community. One issue that is still up in the air is Claire's school. Several weeks ago her teacher left and we've now heard that she's not coming back. They still don't have a replacement so we've been keeping Claire at home. We're hoping that the school will find a replacement soon and that we'll be able to work out a way to keep her in school for at least a couple of days a week. Now that I'm a lot busier with private tutoring I won't have as much time to volunteer at the school.

If you want to pray for us you can pray that we would clearly sense God's leading in our relationships here, that we would continue to have opportunities to meet new people, that we would have wisdom in our teaching, and that we would have the energy that we need for each day.

Thanks!

-Tom

Posted by Tom & Candice Mast at 09:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I just gave the girls a supper of peanut butter sandwiches, carrot sticks, a small orange, a small banana, and a piece of "Circus Peanut" candy (brought to us from America!) When they sat down to eat I overheard the following exchange:

Claire: I'm going to eat the banana first."

Eliza: "I'm going to eat the circus peanut first."

And that's what they did.

-Tom

Posted by Tom & Candice Mast at 06:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Hi to all the kids at London Christian Fellowship. We love and miss you guys!! Thank you so much for all the cards you made us for Christmas and thanks for all the great questions you asked. We're going to try to answer a few of them here.....

Thailand’s money is called the baht. All of the money in Thailand has a picture of the King on it. There are five denominations of paper money – all of them are different colors and different sizes. This picture looks like a lot of money – but 1,000 Baht is only worth about $30. When we first came to Thailand we had to carry a calculator around so that we could figure out how much money we were spending.

This is what the Thai letters look like. This is a children’s book that Tom bought to practice reading. Claire and Eliza like it when he translates it into English. It’s about a little girl who doesn’t think that she will like going to school.

Here is a book that helps Thai people learn to speak English. When Claire goes to school she brings home homework with instructions in Thai. Tom has to help her understand what she is supposed to do.

Our family really likes the food in Thailand. There are many, many kinds of food. A lot of it is very spicy – and some of it is so hot that we cannot eat it! Thai people think that American food tastes bland and boring compared to their food. The food here is also very cheap – so a lot of the time we buy food instead of cooking our own. Candice is also learning to make some Thai food. Here are a few of the foods we eat......

Here is one of the very common foods that we eat several times a week- sometimes for breakfast. It's called "Kaao Man Gai" (Chicken with Rice) and is delicious!

One snack that Thais enjoy is fried bugs and worms. We have tried a few of these, and Eliza especially liked worms. They tasted like BBQ chips and were hollow inside.

We especially like to eat the seafood in Thailand. We eat fish, shrimp, squid, and oysters.

Thai desserts sometime seem very strange to us! Here is a dessert that our neighbor brought us...green pudding in a hotdog bun! Does that look good to you?

Most Thai people eat the same kind of food for breakfast, lunch, and supper. We almost always eat American food for breakfast but sometimes we eat rice and chicken or rice porridge with pork. Sometimes when he has only had a small supper, Tom likes to go out and buy rice with spicy curry on it late at night.

Thank you again for the notes, drawings, and gifts that you sent for Christmas. We are glad that we can still be a part of LCF and we’re glad that you remember us and pray for us. If you have any more questions about what living in Thailand is like just leave a comment on this blog and we will do our best to answer it.

Posted by Tom & Candice Mast at 05:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

We've been a little chilly around here lately for a change! In the last few days we've seen a big drop in temps and it's actually gotten as low as 19 degrees C. If you're one of those Americans (me included) who isn't too good at these conversions, that would be about 66 F. We have actually been shivering in the evenings and mornings. We're not even using the a.c. at night, just opening the windows and turning on the fan. Needless to say we're enjoying the change. Days are still warm- in the 80's but just the relief of a cool night is amazing. The other day the girls were shivering away and actually needed sweaters to go on a little boat ride outing. I took some pictures of them shivering on the porch.
Other recent novel experiences.....Eliza saw me putting on socks and wanted to try some on. She was just walking around staring at her feet in amazement....her first socks (that she remembers anyway)!! Claire woke us up in the middle of the night to steal our blankets. When she woke up she said she the floor was "freezing cold!"
The "cold" season is technically supposed to last from Nov-Jan, so we're planning on enjoying it!

Posted by Tom & Candice Mast at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This morning our neighborhood participated in a typical New Year's activity - making merit by giving food to monks. On a typical morning there will be several monks from a nearby wat making their daily rounds. This morning, however, twenty-some novice monks came. They started out by chanting in our little park and then walked the length of the neighborhood. A lot of people turned out to give food - so much that they had to continually empty the monks' bowls into large burlap bags.

From what I've read and heard, the primary motive for giving this food is to make merit (for one's self). The monks are not begging - they are providing an opportunity for the people to receive a spiritual benefit. And in a case like this morning where the monks received an abundance of food I think that they will give some of it away to needy people.

In Thailand a man can become a full-fledged monk when he is 20 years old. Boys younger than that can ordain as novices. They live at the temple and receive an education (that is an important drawing factor for many boys from families too poor to afford a good education).

These kind of activities are very important in passing along Buddhist values to the next generation. Many people brought their children along and were coaching them through the procedure of offering the food to the novices. I watched this little girl and her grandmother for a while. When I see children this young participating in the Buddhist rituals (especially in this kind of community context) it's easier to understand how Buddhism can be such a deeply ingrained aspect of Thai culture.

-Tom

Posted by Tom & Candice Mast at 07:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)