Oowan's ceremony, Shipping "stuff" home, and thinking of home.

2/7
Today was the 100 day anniversary of Oowan's cremation ceremony. There was a ceremony in the community with food, nine Monks coming and chanting, and people visiting. The community brought a wide variety of foods. I got seated with the elders again, grrrr.... I also was encouraged to take many pictures. I got some good pictures of some of the older men in the community, I will post them later. Jit spent the afternoon packing things for shipping. A relaxed day.

Tone has finished his computer, it seems to work fine. The fan though is very noisy. It is sort of irritating. We need to download Adobe Reader and Winzip. He has installed a good variety of games, but seems to play the Soccer (Football) game the most. I copied my photographs of Thailand to his hard disk. I am going to make some CD's for different people before I go. It will also archive them in the community for later use, hopefully. There is about 50GB of pictures.

2/8
We called TNT today about shipping, we thought they would come here, but it will be better for us to go to them. We called our favorite Taxi driver to pick ups up since TNT is located on the eastern edge of Bangkok. TNT is only at Chackuchak on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The Taxi came and we hauled four large boxes of stuff to the taxi. At TNT we found out we could not ship anything with wood, it would need to be fumigated. Some of the things we wanted to ship had wooden buttons. We will pack them in our luggage again. I think TNT is very cautious on what they ship to minimize problems, I agree with them. Getting fouled up with bureaucracy like we did with the postal customs office coming to Bangkok is not worth the hassle. All the "stuff" we wanted to ship is on its way, including a bunch of my film camera gear. The total cost for shipping is around $300. I have the Bessa R2 and the Olympus to take pictures for the rest of our time in Thailand.

Nook had her last test today, she is preparing to graduate from high school. It looked like the test was on NGOs, ASEAN, etc. I wonder what her next step will be? In Thailand the transition to adulthood is very different then in the United States, the flight to independence is very different. We shall see. I enjoy Nick and Nook a lot, they are fun to be with. We are always teasing each other. They both hang out at our house a lot. We also spend a lot of time with their family. I will miss them.

2/9
I have had a hard time sleeping the last two nights, thinking about Thailand and all the experiences I have had. I also am thinking about home in Alaska, just processing or digesting a lot of my experiences, sure wished I could sleep though. I get irritable with out enough sleep.

Jit's mom is going to the hospital for an appointment today. Tomorrow we have a trip with Non-Formal education.