One night in Nan

The next morning after breakfast, Mindy called saying she was close to the hotel. i was standing in Starbucks right next door to the hotel in chiang mai, as i had been doing every morning we were there. hey, i had to live it up while we could get it. this was certainly a privilege and considering how tired we truly were from our late nights at the night bazaar, it was necessary. so mindy picked us up and we started our trip back home with a one night stayover in Nan.

One of the reasons i like traveling so much is b/c you get to meet people like Mindy. wow, what a story this girl has. talk about adventures in life for the Lord. she grew up as an MK or missionary kid in Papa New Guinea. they literally lived in villages and had to cut off heads of chickens and get water from a river an hour away from the village, etc. she made it to the states for college at Pepperdine in Malibu (talk about culture shock) and then went to Physician's Assistant school at Yale (another culture shock). she is very outgoing and able to speak thai. her parents actually work in chiang mai as missionaries, too, but through a different agency. we heard lots of her tales as we told her our tales of life, too.

Nan is not a big city at all, it is more like a very small town, but bigger than Chiang Klang for sure. we stayed over at a hotel there that had a huge swimming pool. the reason for this stop was b/c Mindy needed to visit someone in prison nearby as part of her ministry. two nurse aids from the clinic road the bus down to meet us at Nan and we all stayed together. we all had dinner at this place where you cook your own thai food. it was very interesting! yes, meat was sitting out and bugs were flying. i just prayed that the heat of cooking it would make it okay. they gave us these cool grills on our tables heated by charcoal and it was like barbequing. The two nurse aids who came were Noi and Bang. They took care of the meal and made sure we understood all that was going on. Mindy is great friends with these girls already so it was a good time for them to catch up. we really enjoyed getting to know them at that level too. we did some swimming and resting in the sun while we were there and left today (saturday) by mid afternoon. before we left Nan, we went to this big store there that is like a Wal-Mart. We all split up and met back in an hour. The only thing i was buying ended up being, tea, tea, and more tea. i got different varieties of chilled bottled teas (the one with honey in it that i like) and then some jasmine green tea bags. well, i had a "zsila moment" in the store. you know you are tired, when out of the corner of your eye you see someone who looks american and you turn your head to them and smile and to your surprise, IT IS A MANNEQUIN!!!!!!!!!!!! yes, i smiled and nodded my head at a plastic person! okay, maybe i do need some more sleep after this trip to chiang mai. how hilarious!!!!!!!
today has been extremely HOT. we think it must be over 100 here. so, julie and i came back and worked on our tests for medical jurisprudence some and now i'm blogging. tomorrow, we are going to church and then the Ashburns should be coming back from their trip around 6pm. several people here have been getting sick, so it would be great to lift up everyone's health and energy. i got the email from my mom about the thailand bird flu epidemic. i asked jerry about it and she said that was a prominent problem a few years ago with the chickens here and they slaughtered them all to get rid of it. i don't know, we aren't near any storks, but there certainly are lots of chickens. so far so good here. God got us here and He'll take care of us.