On a trip to Doi Angkhan I saw this most beautiful Strelizia. This is a very slow growing plant called the "Bird of Paradise" The picture I took is from a plant that is about 170 cm high and over a meter wide. The flowers were absolutly beautiful.
philsquest
the adventure I find myself in / das Abenteuer in dem ich mich finde
Page 10 of 35
Friday evening and Saturday I went to my first men’s retreat ever. I actually signed up only two days before, because I have quite a hard time with deciding to bear my heart once more in front of strangers. In the past I have been in numerous seminars and conferences.
The two days were about the stages of personal and spiritual maturity in a man’s life. This got my attention. I feel like when it comes to my journey with Jesus I long to become more mature and learn from others who are further on the path.
I enjoyed the fellowship and get to know some of the guys at the weekend. We had some good input and shared about each others experiences. In all it was a good time.
A view months ago our team got invited by a village that was moved by the Government to a new location. This village came from the Hui Kau Laam valley. One of three Lahu Deng villages that was moved in the last five years. Most of the villages were or are involved in some drug related problems that caused the Government to take action. This new village doesn’t seem to have to much to do with the drugs. There are always many problems with a new village. There is not much infrastructure except the houses where they live in. There is no water, toilets, electricity or proper roads to the village.
We started a schooling program for the children and teenagers and basically anybody who wants to come. The team teach them the Lahu language and help also with Thai. We share our faith and the love of God with them and have a meeting on Sundays for those who want to come.
The house of the village head where they were meeting got to small and a new building is needed for all the people who come. The men of the village ventured into the forest to cut the bamboo for the new building and we drove with our truck to haul the new building material to the village.
There are rumors of a new Macbook coming out in September (Macworld issue 10/2008) It probably will have an aluminum case. I was able to fix my battered ibook G4. It has a new harddrive 160 gig. It seems to be faster as well. I found out now that my internal microphone dosn’t work anymore. I guess the "book" sufferes from old age. So perhaps next year I will go for a new macbook, depending what they get on the market.
For now my battered ibook works and I am happy with it.
There are times where I just kind of avoid the Internet. I get to busy with life and am to tired to also keep posting.
This week I started again with Thai studies. It’s a module on Thai life. During my computer crash I lost all my iflash cards from my previous Thai studies. Even though I had a backup I somehow managed to delete this one folder. I started again too work on the iflash library. I can really recommend this program to all mac users who study with flash cards. After two month of staying away from learning Thai I was a bit rusty, but it is coming back to me quite quickly.
The last three weeks I went to the mountains every week for two days visits. Things are developing slowly but very well and I am happy with what is going on. I will post some more in the next week on that. We are working on a building project in Hui Kau Laam, the water project in Hui Ba Rai and two preschool projects. So we are quite busy at the moment.
One problem is that still our Domain name www.questasia.org does not work. The particular domain register seems to totally miss the service oriented side of business. I probably will transfer the domain name to godaddy.com where I have all my other domains and where they seem to react whenever there is a problem. Not only our webpage is down, but also most of our e-mail addresses.
It is raining alot at the moment and the rivers are bursting. There are reported floods in many places. The Prime minister of Thailand had to leave his post because of a court order. Petrol prices are down a little. We have a new fridge, a great family and I know God loves me. What more do I want.
Living in Asia I get used to all kinds of disruption. I mean coming from the perfect country of Switzerland where the people get informed when the train is two minutes late.
Here in Thailand we are used to power-cuts, Internet not working or so slow you could run faster, mail being lost, floods, no water, garbage not collected, the blocking of youtube and alot more. Still it can be annoying when things don’t work. Since the first of September it our e-mail doesn’t work. It is not the first time. sometimes our provider changes something without telling. But now i realized that also our domain name questasia doesn’t seem to work. The webpage is down. Even though the domain name is still valid to next year.
This is probably why I have about five e-mail addresses. 🙂
It has been a little more then three weeks since we came back from Switzerland. We are definitely back in Asia. I have been on my first trip to the mountains last week and will be on the road tomorrow for two days. I had a hard time coming back. Switzerland was so nice!
My laptops hard drive broke while we were in Switzerland and it took a while to get my computer fixed and all my data installed on it. I’m glad I didn’t have to buy a new one. I want to wait for the new generation of Macbook coming out sometime in the future.
Next week I will go back to Thai studies and I will be traveling up to Fang alot more the coming months. We have several projects we want to see. I will try to update our questasia webpage more frequently on what we are working on.
Thailand seems to be in a state of tumult right now. Here in Chiang Mai we don’t feel much of it yet. But if you follow the news you will know that demonstrators seized government buildings, including the Prime ministers office in Bangkok. Occupied several Airports (Phuket, Krabi and Hat Yai) for a day, and most of the railway is down. For tomorrow there is a threat that telephone, electricity and water would be cut for certain state agencies like police. I never heard of that a nation of over 67 million people can be controlled by about 10,000 demonstrators. The thing is taking on momentum.
Thailand has become more expensive. With petrol prices going up, transportation went up and so go consumer goods and everything else. With the political problems the economy will suffer as well and tourism, one of the main incomes in many places, will definitely suffer.
It is Friday now and the kids and I have been in Chiang Mai for the last three nights. I try to get our sleeping habits into order, feed the family, do the washing, getting my work life started. I miss my wife. Not so much for the working part, but for the debriefing. Sharing about the experience in Switzerland. I know that for the first days in Switzerland it felt the same. I felt out of place. The same I feel here right now. Out of place. I guess I have not fully arrived yet.
So time to get the washing in and do the dishes 😉
We just arrived in Singapore on our journey back to Chiang Mai. It is half past twelve in the night for us, but here it is morning. We will probably be home around lunch time. The kids doing fine. They are just very tired. We left Lillian back in Switzerland for another week. We will miss her for sure.
My soul is still in Switzerland and hasn’t made the journey yet. I will miss the late Summer evenings, the wine, the Alps, the chocolate and all the friends. It feels weird being disconnected again. I am not allowed to think to much of it because traveling puts me in this twilight zone mood 🙂
Looking froward to our house and some sleep. Next time I will write from Chiang Mai. To everybody we know in Switzerland:" thanks for all the hospitality".
It is Friday and there are a view more days we will be in Switzerland. Four days ago my ibook gave up on me. I went to the MAC shop here in Bern. There are some start problems, but the data is still on the hard drive. I won’t be able to solve the problem before I go back to Thailand. I think again about buying a new Mac book. Mine is slowly but definitely falling apart. I just can’t decide. There are rumors of a new Mac book coming out soon.
Yesterday we were up in the mountains to Engstlenalp with our friends. It was just what we needed. I even went into the mountain lake. It was freezing cold and I thought my heart would stop pumping. I must say I like when the water is more the 25 degrees.
Later we went to a waterfall. Switzerland is soo beautiful it takes my breath away. Unfortunately I can’t post any photos yet because I use someone else’s computer.
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