Greetings again from Thailand! Apologies for taking so long to post again, but free time is a little hard to come by here lately.

With two weeks of classes in the books, I'm finally starting to get in a routine and adjusted where I don't feel completely lost all the time. (Just MOST of the time now!) :) The constant uncertainty is half the fun of it though. Here's what I'm teaching:

Intermediate English - (I'm slowly coming to grips with my current profession being an English teacher... quite a change of pace from waiter/bartender.)

Leadership - (based on a Stephen Covey book, The Speed of Trust. Pretty interesting read... I'd recommend it to anyone... especially business students)

Speech - (everybody's favorite... not)

Life and Times of Jesus Christ - (This is a senior level class. It takes a historical and chronological look at the life of Jesus. I've had to do lots and lots of research for this one, but it's really interesting.)

Choir - (I've never even sang in a choir, so this one is quite interesting. If any of you know anything about how to teach choir or know of anywhere to get sheet music, performance tracks, etc. online for free... PLEASE EMAIL ME!!! All of the students are incredibly musically talented and my skills are pretty much limited to pickin' blues on the ole' 6-string)

Athletics - (I'm the default playing coach of our soccer team now, too. Which is a little funny because the vast majority of my soccer knowledge comes from playing FIFA '07 on Xbox. It's a lot of fun, though, and I'm starting to get the hang of it again. Oh yea - sidenote - we played basketball for athletics class the other day. There's not much funnier than playing 7 on 7 basketball with a bunch of Asians. I can't be mean because they're for the most part all way better than me at soccer, but we'll suffice it to say that soccer foot skills don't necessarily transfer over to American sports like basketball.)

Well that about covers classes. Everything's been fun otherwise, too. I haven't been sick at all yet, which is a definitely a plus. I've only lost five pounds, but I think that's mostly from the gallons of sweat I've lost. The food is actually pretty good. The students cook our daily meals, so I have a lot of rice, veggies, fruit, chicken, fish, etc. Every Wednesday a few of us "farangs" (white foreigners) go to town and get some good fattening food like back home. (Bread, cheese, and red meat don't make it into the Thai diet very often.)

Well here's a few pictures and such:

This was on one of our farang food nights. Also, my first experience with taking a passenger (Ken Morrison from Emporia State) on the little moped thing. They're quite a bit more squirrely than a motorcycle, but we made it. And of course Murphy had to prove his law once again and half way there it started to pour rain. This was before I bought my own helmet so I had no visor. So it feels kinda like free accupuncture all over your face going down the road. So here we are soaked taking a break because we couldn't even see.

This little guy was on a tree outside of the teacher house. I thought he was worthy of a picture or two. Lizards of varioius types are everywhere here! I walked into the farm house the other day and there was about a 14-inch one running across the wall. Gave me a little startle, but we leave them alone because they kill bugs and mice and things.

Speaking of lizards... I saw these two geckos playing leapfrog on the wall outside my apartment door.

Dead snake on the road between the school and my apartment. Now for your average person, this is fine. But to me, this means there was a live snake on the road at some point where I walk back and forth at night constantly... not cool.



Speaking of dangerous things... this bee swarm showed up at the school one day. Thankfully they didn't like the spot, though, and didn't hive here. They made this really neato wave thing periodically to cool off the inner bees. I tried to get video for a while and kept missing it, so I got frustrated and just quit.

These are a few shots from the golf course I played last Sunday. It was quite an experience. We had 5 people playing with 5 caddies... walking... 18 holes... everyone playing their own ball... it took six hours. :) It was so much fun though, despite the unforgiving Thai sun. Thankfully my caddie conveniently didn't take score on the front nine. Once I got used to the rental clubs and everything I did OK on the back. The back nine was also on the infield of a horse racing track... making it probably the world's largest sand trap on a few holes if you miss the fairway.

This is my 4-foot-something caddie, Beyiia. (I think) We had a lot of fun though. She knew about as much English as I do Thai... which is essentially the numbers. Good practice for my Thai numbers though. Unfortunately it was more practice with "hah, hok, jit, pbad, and even a gao here and there" (5,6,7,8,9...)

This was my one reasonable chance at birdie...

This was the result of my one reasonable chance at birdie... grrrrr :( I thought I'd drained it too.

This is Dr. Dusti Howell. He's here on Sabbatical from Emporia State. He's here doing a hill tribe educational project and also to help us clueless teachers get curriculum set up for the school here. Muchos muchos gracias for his time and effort here.

These were all taken around sunset from a bridge I found one day. Much better in real life, but I tried to take a few good shots.

Couple flower shots for all my special ladies out there...

"I don't mind having the tall white guy take my picture if he gives me candy..." This is Mahulah. Her mom is a student here. Just too cute for her own good.

This is Beka... incredible tenor voice.

Andrew... he graduated last year and runs the kitchen at the school. He's got some serious skill with ole' sautee pan.

Dola, Norah, and Mahulah.

Attiwat, Chalermnsak, Japur, and WiChai. This also happens to be the core of my world-class soccer team.

Well until next time... much love to all and please feel free to email me with updates and such from back home. I miss you all very much, but I'm definitely enjoying my time here so far!

Nathan Kimmons

June 28, 2008

Hello to everyone! I hope this isn’t too impersonal to just do a blog for everyone, but everyone keeps asking me for updates and pictures so this seems like the only feasible way. I tried sending out a Word document to everyone in my address book, but failed to realize that high-res jpgs take up a lot of space and the file wound up being almost 400 Mb. Feel free to email me yourselves though with any questions or news from back home. I’d love to be kept in the loop! Well here goes…

First of all, thanks so much to all those who made it possible for me to have this opportunity to come over here and serve at the Legacy School. A special thanks to my family and all those supporting the Church of God Big Sandy, TX. Without you, this would not be possible.

For those of you not familiar with the program that I’m in, Legacy Foundation is an outreach program in Northern Thailand to teach English and Christianity to local students who apply to come here. (Some from Thailand and surrounding areas such as hill tribes of Thailand and Burma) There are about twenty students between the ages of 18 to 26. (Approximately) The students pay no tuition to come here. They live on site and work various jobs to help keep the school running and somewhat self-sufficient. (Cooking, cleaning, farming, etc.) They are all so grateful, respectful, and eager to learn that it is very humbling for me personally. Apparently teachers are fairly high in the Thai society structure so they all refer to me and the other teachers as “Achaan.” I would definitely appreciate all of your prayers for me to be the best “Aj” that I can and to make the most of my time here.

I arrived safely a few days ago with no significant problems on the trip. The flight from LA to Bangkok alone was over 18 hours, which was a little exhausting but wasn’t too bad at all. Plenty of good food and new movies I hadn’t seen! (I watched the Jungle Book for the first time in years… awesome) They only lost one of my bags, but got it to me fairly quickly so it wasn’t even an issue.

Well here’s a few pictures and stuff since I got here…

Here’s my apartment complex. Its about 50 yards from the school down the little village road. Mine is the one on the top left behind that really cool looking tree!

My front door. Everyone takes off their shoes here when going inside. That’s the little stump/limb thing carved from a tree into a chair. I found a few down the hall and nobody seemed to be using them, so it’s mine now! Haha… this is where I like to sit in the mornings and have my tea and strum the ole 6-string. Quite a view from here, too!

My “air conditioner”. The fan actually does a really good job. It would be rough without it, but with that and the vented windows, its not too hot at all. You can barely see my dresser/cabinet thing. I assume the paper taped on it is rules or something for the complex, but its in Thai so I guess I’ll just be a rebel!

Here’s my bed/desk/chair/couch/bookshelf. It’s a little short for me, but thankfully its good and hard! I’m always so wiped out by 9 or so when I go to bed and get up at daylight so I haven’t had any trouble sleeping. It works just fine.

Here’s my toilet/shower. It’s actually really convenient. You know how sometimes you have to go to the bathroom suddenly when taking a shower? I don’t even have to stop showering! Its so awesome that it makes up for the lack of hot water. You can’t see my sink but who hasn’t seen a sink before?

Here’s my “back porch.” And yes… that’s my underwear drying out that I washed in my bathroom sink with the same soap I use to bathe. I couldn’t help but laugh a little when I was doing that. Everything’s an adventure.

This is the open-air room at the school where we have class, church, and all our meals.

This is the moped that I get to use whenever I want. People use these way more than cars here. They’re great on gas and pretty efficient for the small streets everywhere. Quick note about how traffic works in Chiang Mai… it doesn’t! I rode on the back of one of these to the city the other day and felt like I was almost killed 19 times! (kidding, Mom J) But seriously, it’s not uncommon to see 3 14-year old girls zipping around on one bike between lanes of cars in the pouring rain with no helmets on… insane.

This is a shot of some of the students and one of the teachers (Ben Pederson) from the first outing we took all the students to on Friday. We went to a really cool hot springs park and a lake out by the mountains to go swimming. Really lots of fun! I had a bunch of different shots but it takes a while to load them onto this blogger thing... oh well :)

Yea, this is me trying to be artsy and playing with my new camera. J It’s hard not to be fascinated with all the plants and stuff here, though. Most of these were all just growing on the side of the road in my village or out at the school’s “farm.”

Well that's all for now! I’m very happy and love it here so far, but I miss all of you. Please keep in touch and I’ll most likely send more or something similar to this later! God bless you all!

~Nathan