Hanging with the Cool Kids :)

 Oh yes and they were mortified!

Just Kidding!  This is Amara and Appun, two lovely Thai sisters who invited me to eat with them after the meeting.  Appun mostly just speaks Thai, but Amara is fluent in English - and helped me with my abominable Thai.

Apparently I've been saying Free (Wang with a rising tone) instead of Sweet (Wan with a falling then rising tone).  No wonder I've gotten such funny looks asking for my coffee little bit free!

We ate (bottom of the picture, starting from left) Moo Yaang (grilled pork with dipping sauce), som tom boo (spicy papaya salad with pickled crab), and som tom kai kim (papaya salad with salty egg).  All very arroi (delicious, which I say a LOT and apparently ALSO say incorrectly, as do most foreigners according to Amara.  Oh well...)  This is all Isaan food - the place from which we also get my all time favorite food, Nam Dtok.  Mmmm....  Haven't had that as of yet since I've been back, but have had loads of Guay Dteow, possibly my next favorite Thai dish.

Anywho had loads of fun - Appun is super sweet and Amara is sassy and sarcastic, so we get along great.  They, I believe, most enjoyed laughing at all my faux pas - I asked if I could make a call instead of take this picture...(torisup instead of tairoop) yes this is me blushing.  Fortunately Amara loves hamming it up to the camera :)

Meeting was lovely also - Brother Shoko gave the public talk.  What an amazing Japanese brother!  He and his wife Fami had been here six months when I came last time, were already conversing in Thai, and now he's already giving public discourses!  Oh and did I mention that they also both speak English and I believe Fami speaks Korean as well!  They're my heroes.  Wow!

While I was away the (official!) pre-Hindi group has begun having their own meeting in the back library every other Sunday.  So far their interested ones had come on the wrong Sunday!  But today they got it right and had three additional attendees, including Amrit, a call I had gone on with Dayanna (I believe...)!  How fantastic is that!  Brian is trying to convince me to join, and just how easy the Hindi alphabet is.  Interesting sidenote - the Hindi songbook only has 55 songs.  I'm curious as they why, I must admit, if it's planned to translate the rest, or if they don't translate well culturally??? Dunno.  Oh and the group is up to 6 members!  Though two may be leaving soon :(  Seems I'm just driving everyone out of the country!

Moving on, I had a small victory (for me) today.  I commented in Thai for the 2nd meeting in a row.  Don't know if anyone understood me, but hey I commented, which for me is not easy!  However Candy (and others) remarked that it's encouraging to others, so I keep trying.  On the plus side, even if speaking Thai is still a daily, hourly, secondly struggle, reading is becoming increasingly easy - especially the Watchtower, which I LOVE.  (Tho during the watchtower today that cheeky boy Beam tried to steal my brand new English Bible - Can you believe that!)

Well, now I have some more personal study (Seuksa suan dtua) to do, along with a week's worth of dishes (that I accumulated in only 5 days - yes I'm that good).