Thai Missions: Halfway Through Our Furlough

Wow it’s hard to believe we’ve made it halfway through our furlough!

We have had lots of mixed emotions. It is hard knowing the time is going so quickly with our families, but we are also looking forward to getting back to our new “home” in Thailand. It has been weird being back home but not really feeling at home. I will always remember the words a sweet friend told us, ‘the airplane is bittersweet… a missionary is always happy to go one way but sad to leave the other.’ As hard as it is to be away from family and familiar things, we really do miss Thailand and the things God has in store for us there. It has been challenging around family we want to be sensitive to them but also want them to know we are excited and have a passion to be where God has called us and desire for them to be excited also.

Just wanted to share a few reverse culture shock experiences:

Airport

-While in Asia being an air hostess is a very respected job and one must meet very high expectations to qualify for the job, therefore they are very kind and helpful throughout the flight. But as soon as we switched to American flight we instantly noticed a difference (not sure if our hostess just had an off day or different culture) we were very shocked by the behavior of them!

Vehicles

-Coming out of the airport Brandon was surprised by the strange look of certain cars we hadn’t seen that brand or model in a while.

-Then of course when we got into my dads truck we were surprised by steering wheel being on the other side of the car.

-Josie girl had a little bit of shock when she had to learn the car seat!! Lets just say there were some very long and loud road trips. Thankfully she adjusted pretty fast.

-Brandon and I were a little scared to drive at first. Just the shock of getting used to everything being on the other side of the road…all the speed limits and rules to remember.

Food

-At the first restaurant we went to we ate some good home cooking (something like chicken fried steak or something like that can’t remember exactly) and I, not even thinking about it, found some “spicy” seasoning sauce on the table and just added it to my food and began eating. When the waiter came to the table he asked “did you add this sauce to you food?” I said yes. He said he had never seen that before lol. Anyone in Thailand can appreciate this, its just habit to season your food.

-We forgot about refills (very few places do this in Thailand lol)

-The refrigerators here are HUGE!

Land

-Everything is so spread out here

- When we first arrived seemed like the sun went down so late.

now it goes down earlier because of the time change, Thailand doesn’t have daylight savings time.
We were surprised how dark it gets, several times we ran into things at the house. We were not used to pitch dark (in the city there are always some kind of light shining).

Other Random things:

-Brandon was surprised by the cost of the first Sprite he bought from a gas station $1.50!! in Thailand you can go to the 7/11 and get one for 17Baht (about $0.50)

-The time zone, at first we kept thinking at weird hours we needed to get our emails and phone calls done. Because time difference sometimes we would have to stay up late or wake earlier to take care of things back in the states.

-The money is different, in Thailand each bill has a different color!

-Walmart/stores in general were HUGE when we first went in, it was really overwhelming how many options there were. The baby aisle blew our minds! lol we are used to just a limited amount of choices.

Some things we’ve been doing while in America:

-Visiting family! We have been bouncing back and forth from house to house staying and visiting with as much family as we can while we are here. It was neat to see family meet Josie for the first time.

-Visiting Friends! It has been so nice to get to see some of our friends while being here.

-Visiting churches! We have every Sunday and sometimes other days of the week booked with churches morning and night to visit and report to! We are so thankful for this opportunity, it has been such a blessing to visit with everyone so far and look forward to the ones coming up.