Catching Up

It's been busy around here, and somehow the blog hasn't kept up with all the stuff happening. We are settling back into our own rhythm of things and enjoying a bit of cooler weather here in sweaty Bangkok after about 5 weeks of having my family with us. My brother suggested this 'overlap' family visiting idea last summer, and it's fantastic. It means we have some time with all of us here, and then some extra time with just one part of the family. It translates to lots of good quality time with everyone. Making me homesick for them just typing this....
Loy Krathong has passed again, the lovely Thai holiday of sending all your yearly baggage down the river, metaphorically speaking, with your krathong.

And someone is still fully in the robot phase, even posing for pictures that way now and riding around on a new-ish robot bike. My favorite part is when she walks up to a random person and begins acting like a robot. She's definitely quirky, and we so love that.

On a different note, I have had the extreme pleasure of working on a library project for an amazing place called the Mercy Center, located in one of the poorest slums of Bangkok. This labor of love was started by a teacher at our school, and we are now in the final stages of getting ready to open the library for the children who live at the orphanage (many of the girls in the circle with me live at the center) and for the surrounding community. I found myself in awe most of the day as we unpacked boxes of donated Thai books and sorted them. What I loved most is that the girls were supposed to be putting them on the shelves, but when I went to see how they were doing, most of them were fully absorbed in reading. Powerful stuff.