Our adventure began on Tuesday morning. We had tickets on an 8 hour bus ride to the country side. We were invited by our Black Tai friend to stay with her family for a couple of days. The bus was a sleeping bus. Two reclining beds on either side of the aisle. We left at 9am and arrived at 5pm. We were tired, but excited to see and stay with our friends in their home.
About 3 hours into the trip they stopped for lunch. You are not allowed to wear your shoes on the bus, so when they stopped they took out a basket of plastic slippers to put on. It helped to speed up the process of getting on and off the bus.
Lunch was cafeteria style food which we all enjoyed, well...not really but it filled our bellies :)
2 hours from our destination a lot of people got off the bus and we were able to stretch out a little bit. We were anxious to get to our destination and the kids were getting a little bit restless although they traveled GREAT!
The views from the bus on our way out of the city were breath taking, but it is so hard for me to capture their beauty from a window in the rain. Even the color is more dull in the picture. Everything was a luscious green. So if you really want to see the beauty of Gods creation in SE Asia then come and see for yourself.
Upon arriving Hoa's (our friend) mom greeted us and the good times began.
The baby below was just 2 months younger than Bella. They had fun crawling around together.
Also upon our arrival the FEASTING began! We ate, and ate, and ate, and ate. apparently in Black Tai culture friendship is cultivated over food and drink. Below was our first of many meals. They filled fish with spices and put them between bamboo skewers and we roasted them. YUMMY! This was Preston's favorite.
Hoa's older brother loved holding and playing with Bella. For the most part she did GREAT. As long as I wasn't in the room she would go to anyone. As time went on people realized if they wanted to hold and play with Bella they had to walk away from me otherwise she just wanted 'ma ma ma ma' I learned so much about the culture and how a whole village raises the kids. I felt loved in every way and felt like my kids met new family members.
A must for ALL Black Tai meals is sticky rice. This also happens to be Preston's favorite type of rice. YUMMY!
Below is the kitchen. The cats roamed around and Preston loved to chase them and watch the action in the kitchen.
On our second day we did some site seeing. Below is a picture of Tim's 2 Black Tai teachers. They have become very close to us and after meeting their family they have become even closer.
I must say though that I have never seen so many car sick people. I thought I got car sick easily, but not like these people. At one point on our drive I think we had 4 people puking in bags and tossing them out the window. Even though they live in the mountains, they don't usually travel far from home. When they do they go by foot or motor bike making them very nauseous when travelling through mountains via car.
After seeing some sites we stopped for snacks. Bella's baby friend from a previous picture joined us on the road trip, but baby's here don't usually wear diapers. That is usually not a problem, but on a road trip it made it much more difficult. On our stop for drinks I went to change Bella's diaper, and our friends asked if we had an extra for the other baby. Of course we gave her a diaper, but then I realized they had no idea how to put one on. So I took the baby and put on her very first diaper at 7 months old. SO PRECIOUS!
There are SO MANY more stories and I will keep blogging about them as I have time. For now this was just a teaser of our week. Thank you for the many prayers that went our way. We had a great time, but we're exhausted when we got home. We have 9 days until we leave for the USA so we have LOTS to do.
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