A tour and some meaningful connections
The day started EARLY for all of us. Around 4:00am I woke up and could hear Miriam’s Tonie Box playing. I just figured she had woken up at one point and put on a Tonie to get back to sleep, but when she came into our room around 5:30 she proudly shared with us that she had been “up all night!” Of course, it wasn’t long after this proclamation that she loudly announced that she was hungry and it was “time to get our day started" as she started to get dressed all on her own. She was heartbroken that we couldn’t just go to breakfast at 6:00am. Previously purchased snacks to the rescue again! She definitely ate like a hobbit today with breakfast in our room then a 2nd breakfast when we actually went down to eat (again, a blog post just for the breakfast buffet forthcoming).
After breakfast Miriam really wanted to give you all a tour of our hotel room. There’s a realtor I follow on TikTok who does hide-and-seek style showings of her listings and Miri and I regularly laugh at these. Therefore, enjoy this hide-and-seek style tour of our hotel room…
Here’s a fun fact about Adam and Me: though I tend to be the more extroverted between us, he’s the one who is generally in charge of lining up social plans. Today I was ever grateful for that because he lined up plans with my mom’s brother, Artit, and his wife Little…my Uncle and Aunt.
For fun, here’s a short video of our drive to meet up with them…
These are family we didn’t know existed until about 10 months ago. Though the rest of my family had met them in person last February when everything happened, Adam and I have only gotten to meet them online.
I’ve shared with some of you before that being bi-racial with adoption in your family history is a confusing existence. My experience with it has been that racially, I never know where exactly I fit. I’m Thai/of Asian descent AND I’m white. I’m racially different than most in the area we live, and yet I’m totally a product of the white culture I was raised in. I’m fully aware that most places I go in Wisconsin (especially the churches I serve), I’m the one bringing the racial diversity to the room, and even then it’s just like…part of me brings that? For my entire life, the questions stirring in my soul have been: am I Asian enough to be in this space right now? and am I white enough to be in this space right now? Mostly never really feeling like…enough. Honestly, it took me about 35 years to be okay with that.
A large part of what fuels these questions has been not having any connection to Thai culture or any other Thai family members. In my head it’s always been one thing to be genetically Thai, and it’s a different thing to actually be Thai with connections to and knowledge of culture and tradition. That’s just not a thing my family and I had growing up.
So today — today was a day I never dreamed or imagined would be a reality. If you read the backstory of this trip, you know how suddenly all these connections were made last year. What I didn’t share on that page was that when everything went down back in February, it was so ground-shaking for me that parts of my soul broke and I had to go on medical leave to put my identity back together. That healing has been ongoing work with this trip being part of that. The only word I have to describe today is: filling. There were pieces of our family’s history and identity that started to come together in a way that I, again, never thought would be possible.
What is an actual nod from the Holy Spirit is that Artit is a pastor in the Church of Christ in Thailand (CCT)-a global partner of the ELCA. We got to see his church, to chat in his office, and to share stories and experiences of ministry. I regret that I didn’t take a photo of the exterior of his church, because it’s built in a pond and actually really cool looking!
After we got a tour of Artit’s church, we then went to the Nawamin Christian Center (NCC), which is essentially a mission outpost of the CCT. Their ministry comes through education and programming to students aged 3 through adults. With children they primarily teach English, then for adults they teach powerpoint, graphic design, and how to sell their produce online. They have only been in this location for 3 months, as they work to make sure their sites are accessible to their neighbors, and they will re-assess their effectiveness in that at the 1-year mark of their being there. Adam and I loved getting to talk with the staff of the NCC as we learned about them and the ministry they share together. Right in their main area they have a banner of handprints with signatures from who I assume to be students. Adam, Miriam, and I were all honored to be able to sign. It was an added bonus that a little boy showed up and Miriam got to play with another kid who was actually interested in and open to playing with her.
After our visit to the NCC, we went to get lunch at the food court of Fashion Island shopping mall. Now, if you’ve ever done any reading on Thailand, you know they take their shopping malls REALLY seriously. Visiting a mall was never something we did when we came last year, so just getting to walk through one to get to the food court was a whole experience! What’s really beautiful about food courts in general, is that there is usually something for everyone. We all certainly enjoyed a delicious lunch with even better conversation in just getting to know one another and learning about our respective cultures.
Adam has been taking Thai lessons for the last 4 or 5 months. Today was the first day he’s gotten to really practice utilizing it. He spent the morning organizing his notes (what he was doing during the tour video), and all afternoon was eager to use his vocabulary and ask many questions. It was fun to see!
Our day wrapped up with a long Grab ride (the equivalent of Uber or Lyft) back to our hotel — we left right at rush hour, so a 30 minute ride took just over an hour. Miriam and I both enjoyed a short snooze in the car as we made our way through the city. We got back to the hotel just as the street vendors were getting started for the night, so I visited a couple to pick up some satay and strawberries to feed the wee one some dinner before bed time. Now we’re working on winding down and calling it a night. We have an early morning tomorrow as we will be visiting the floating market!
