This has been a busy week, and there is a lot that I could tell you about! I will spare you most of it, but I just wanted to give you a little update about the water festival. The second day of the festival was much like the first to start with. We got hot, then went out to the road to see how many people we could get wet. We were having a lot of fun, when a bunch of drunk people showed up. Not only that, they passed the poison around to our neighbors, who were only too glad to get it! Pretty soon, a fight erupted at the neighbors place, then,
the ladies decided to dance for Roy. Not exactly what we had in mind, I can assure you! So, we all headed home to have water fights of our own. Each day, the neighbors came over and doused us before giving us special food that they had prepared. They are much friendlier than they used to be, and it did not escape their notice that we had fun without drinking any alcohol.
In the middle of all this fun, I received another daughter. You remember Thunduh, don’t you? Well, she has two little sisters who had been living in a dorm with no real supervision. They are all alcohol orphans. Thunduh came to us to kind of check us out to see if she wanted to adopt us. When she decided we were OK, she talked her little sisters into coming also. So, within the last week or so, they came. The first one to join us is Thong Poon, who is around 13 or 14. Then, during water festival, Cho Win came. She is 11 years old. Their father died when they were very small, and when the mother married an alcoholic, the girls moved out and have been on their own for many years. I don’t have individual pictures of them since I have been so busy!
By Sabbath, the water festival had ended, and life got back to our new normal. So, today I decided to go with Roy to Kanchanaburi to do a bit of shopping with him before he heads back to America. We had no idea of what we were getting into until we got to the city. Water festival is NOT over here, in fact, I wonder if things could have been any worse than this before today? The streets are packed with mobs of drunk people, the loudest rock music I have ever heard, and LOTS of water, powder and dye! We had to walk all the way to the guest house. Roy was carrying his suitcases and my backpack, so the people left him alone, mostly. But, I was following behind, and they plastered me good, and soaked me to the skin. It is totally different here than at home. At home, it is mostly just little kids out having fun, with the parents bringing me good food, but here….
Roy flies home early Tuesday morning, so life will be pretty lonely for us here. The girls were so sad to see him go. They are really worried that he will not come back to them. Because of their histories, you can see why they would have that fear.
Now for some pictures…
