shiny new experience

this past week, i had a chance to go farm with our house church leader, neung, and his family. i basically begged them to let me come along and try farming (i have to admit i do romanticize it a bit. thanks, steinbeck), since so much of thai culture is birthed out of the agricultural lifestyle and so many of my neighbors have a farming background (and often return to farm).

3 days with my shiny, brand-spankin-new experiences:
- chopping down trees blocking rice fields from the sun.
- and, subsequently bitten repeatedly by fire ants as i chopped down their homes (thank God i'm not allergic).
- hearing thrilling stories about neung's adolescence. he's had many near-death experiences, including a creepy out-of-body accident. also, his hometown is on the border of cambodia, meaning it was bombed frequently during the khmer rouge era.
- getting stung by a scorpion. it sucked. i sucked it up and kept working.
- passing a passport checkpoint using only my gym membership id (i forgot to bring my passport) and my asian face. thank God for my single eyelids and not showing my nervousness. 2 other dudes on the bus got arrested for not having adequate id. yikes.
- on the bus upcountry, i was sitting next to neung's 80-year old mom (who i wasn't really sure how "with it" she was since she didn't say a word or respond to me for hours). a couple hours into the ride i hear this pounding noise and i look over to find her crushing betel nut in her purse. she had a portable mortar and pestle stowed in her purse! also, the pestle wasn't any normal pestle, but a large steel bolt. i had to stifle a laugh. i guess she was "with it" enough to get her stimulant fix.
- seeing more of the daily highs and lows of neung and bui's (his wife) lives. 2 young kids "in diapers" and a handicapped adult daughter (also "in diapers"), bui cooking tasty food gathered from the field, wider family drama, their obvious cleverness and wit, unstable income from selling used stuff, etc. it's all in a day or three.

neung and his sister, preparing their family's rice paddy fields for rice planting.