Lessons from a Song Taw

This crazy bus van truck is called a song taw (taw is pronounced like cow). It's a small toyota looking truck with two benches on either side and a roof over the top. It's the thai version of bus route--there are different colored and numbered trucks for different routes and it only costs 10 baht no matter how far you go! (about 30 cents).  This is some us with lots of our new friends who are students at NEU (Brent looks very happy with all the ladies, doesn't he).  Most of the girls in the pic are sophomores and juniors-the new freshmen come on Tuesday for orientation and then everyone starts classes next week! This song taw is what we rode from the airport when we got to Khon Kaen--needless to say, it was a little overwhelming!  We also took a tour of Khon Kaen on Saturday and rode around with our friends all day seeing some of the city. We went to a large buddhist temple (Picture below) which I'll explain more about later and we went to the Thai walmart called the Big C. haha. It was wild in the Big C--lots of American products, including tasty jif and nutella (even though its european) and a dairy queen with cones for 9 baht!! Our new friends rode with us everywhere and showed us around all of the places. Most of the girls can understand English if we speak slow and some can speak it slightly--It's pretty impressive!  I was most encouraged and excited about the bonds we made on our song taw rides.  Even though the language difference is a barrier that makes it stressful and a little harder to have conversations, I've seen that it's created a sweet bond between us Americans and our new Thai friends. We've had lots of laughs already trying to say Thai words and getting them totally wrong! Thai words are tonal, so the same word can mean 5 different things based on the tone and inflection in your voice. You could try to say, "look at that dog", but if you mess up the tone, you would really say "look at that horse." Or you could say "No" but if you change the inflection, you could say "you look thick." (personal favorite).  I have asked the girls their names at least three times, I ask the word for yes and rice at least 5 times a day, and I cannot for the life of me remember how to say thank you!! But the Thai girls that we have met have been so sweet! They laugh and repeat the word and then we repeat it back and get so excited when we get it right!! It's hilarious! I truly am amazed at how accommodating and welcoming the girls have been!  It is awesome to see how the Gospel transcends culture and language and creates a community between people that have never met! The song taw was a perfect place for friendships to start! We get to see how God's church loves each other even though we cant totally understand each other! It is so freaking cool. And we've learned awesome thai words which is also cool.

This temple is 9 floors!!

CCP girls and Thai girls!