Our guest room neighbors were Pastor and Mrs. John Alspaugh who had worked in the Portland area and know Paul's folks. He's a guest lecturer in the school of religion and she's working with the ESL program. Our other point of connection was that she had been the dean at the nurses dorm in Bangkok just a few years before Teri.
We attended Friday evening vespers (drama presentation by students) Sabbath School (songs and drama presented by the children) and church (all english speaking) and ate lunch in the cafeteria where we met James whose parents live in College Place. He has been living in Thailand for 15 years. We had the afternoon to rest and read before attending vespers.
The university president, Loren, and his wife Shelley invited us to their home for the evening and we were delighted to discover that his parents were the managers of the apartments where Paul lived in BC! They have a son attending WWU who will be graduating this summer. We hope they take us up on our offer to stay with us when they come for graduation.
When we arrived back in Bangkok we mustered up our courage to go to the weekend market. What a swarming mass of people! You just step in and get carried by the crowd through narrow paths past everything for sale you could imagine. We made it out the other side, refreshed ourselves with some coconut ice cream then took a deep breath and dove in one last time. We left with a few small treasures but weren't convinced it had been worth it.
That evening we met our new friends Alicia, Rodrigo and their boys for dinner at Ekamai Mission. The suite case of goods we'd brought had been kept a surprise from the boys until a birthday party over the weekend. One boy had to have his new Legos book with him at the restaurant.
The picture of Paul was taken while eating breakfast in our guest room and the other picture is outside the church entrance where everyone leaves his/her shoes.
Next stop, Chiangmai...
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