Kim and Jeremy in Thailand

Monday had been a long day with the late soccer game and lots of grading, and I knew that today would also be a long day because of meetings I have this afternoon. So yesterday I was in the mood to do something fun after school. I rounded up four friends, and we went to the chocolatiere!! We knew we had Garcia night (when all the single-ish people get together at the elementary principal's house), which we were especially excited about, since the last three weeks had been cancelled for their travels. We just got iced chocolate, which is a drink that's hard to describe. It's kind of like really rich hot chocolate, only cold (definitely not like chocolate milk). It is sooo delicious!! Then we browsed the tribal craft store across the street. They had some really neat Christmas decorations out! Finally, we raced off to Garcia night. I was wired-lots of people were asking what was in my iced chocolate! But really I think it was just having some fun people time (although I'm sure the chocolate helped!) that put me in such a good mood. It was a fabulous afternoon!


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Yesterday after school we had another soccer game. Holly and I were a little annoyed, to tell the truth, because we came after school (school's out at 3:05) expecting to start the game by 4:00. But the other school didn't want to play both boys and girls at the same time, even though they had two coaches, so we had to wait until the boys were done and didn't start until almost 5:00. But we ended up beating them 5-0, so I guess it worked out okay! Really, our girls played very well. This was a tougher team than they had played in the first game, which ended in a tie. They made a lot of great passes, which was the only way to get around the other team of very aggressive girls. They were so excited! You can see game pictures in the gallery.

We started a tradition of having one girl bring drinks and one girl bring treats after the game, and they all can hardly wait until their turn. Stephanie brought treats on Saturday, and decided that she wanted to bring fruit slices and chocolate sauce to dip, and she made the chocolate sauce. She was proud, because she said it was her first time cooking. And it tasted great! Bethany brought gatorade, and her mom told us that Bethany had expressed how important this was-it couldn't be kool-aid, it had to be REAL gatorade. It's fun to have the girls so excited to do something for their teammates like that, and that the soccer game is so important to them.

Saturday was our first soccer game. Holly and I spent some time Friday afternoon checking on more of the rules of soccer, trying to figure out what all we needed to know! Our girls played very well-in fact, they were winning 1-0 until the very last second of the game, when the other team tied it up. In some ways, I think that's good, because the girls saw that they are capable of winning and they'll be willing to work a little harder now.

We have another game today! Crazy that we have our second game already and we still have only had one real practice. I have a few pictures from the first game, but I'm going to take more today and then put up all the pictures together first thing tomorrow morning (so Monday night for everybody in the US).

Other than that, the weekend was just spent catching up on little things and hanging out with friends. Nothing terribly exciting, but it was nice to relax after kind of a long week.

Holly and I had our first soccer practices this week. Like most things in Thailand, we had to be very flexible!

We had sat down and planned out a practice that we thought should take the right amount of time (3:20-5:00). Our first practice was scheduled for Tuesday. However, Sunday and Monday, it rained so hard that the river came right up to its banks again and there was worry of flooding. Needless to say, the fields were a little bit damp. The JV and varsity teams were also supposed to have games that day. Some of the games were cancelled, but because the JV girls were still going to play, we didn't have a field to practice on. We were told we could have a "very wet corner". Hmmm....So we had the girls just meet in Holly's classroom. We went over the schedule with them, and talked about our goals for this year and a few things we want to do to keep things fun, like have someone bring treats to eat after every game. Then we had them play the human knot game, where everyone reaches into the circle and grabs someone elses hand, and then they have to figure out how to untie themselves without letting go. It's a lot of fun, and forces them to communicate and work together. Plus, it gave us some good insights into group dynamics.

Yesterday was our second practice. We actually had a field, so we set out on the practice we had planned for Tuesday. We were done with all those activities at about 3:50. Practice goes until 5:00. So we had them play a scrimmage game, while Holly and I watched and got ideas for who to play where, as well as encouraged them to shout out each others names when passing. Then I had them do another teambuilding activity. This time it was the game where they all line up on a narrow ledge, then have to reverse the order without anyone falling off. If someone falls, everyone starts over. They did better at this game, especially once they got the hang of talking to each other and trusting their teammates to keep them from falling. Maybe a bit unorthodox approach to soccer coaching, but the girls are enjoying it and we think it is helping. See, all those summers I spent working at camps is coming in handy!

There are pictures from the scrimmage game up at the gallery.

We have about a dozen girls, mostly in 7th grade but a few in 6th. It looks like it will be a fun season. We have our first game on Saturday. And Holly and I are going to do our best to learn the rules before then!

We just got back from October break! Even though it was only a week off, it felt like a very long break, in both good ways and bad ways.

Jeremy spent the break at school with Sam, rewiring most of the school network and moving a bunch of servers and cables into a different room. They had a crew hired to help them, but still (like most of these projects) it took longer than they were hoping. Things got off to a rocky start at school yesterday, but Sam and Jeremy were able to straighten everything out and get us back online.

I spent the first half of the break catching up on my long-neglected grading, and the second half at Hume Lake camp. It's a camp from California that sends a team of about a dozen people, at their own expense, to Thailand every other year to put on a camp for MKs and kids attending international schools. It was an amazing time!! The camp lasted four days and this year's theme was We Like Sheep, all about how we are all like sheep-a little dumb and prone to wandering off, but we have a loving Shepherd to look after us and rescue us when we are lost. They had a ton of fun games for the kids to play (my team got 2nd place!) and some really neat videos. The speaker was fabulous-he's the president of San Diego Christian College, and had a lot of good things to say to the students about making their faith their own, and trying to grasp how much God really loves them. But I think the best part was the worship. It was such a gift to hear the kids shouting and cheering when we'd sing about "satan is vanquished and Jesus is King"!! All in all, an awesome four days that just flew by. Of course, you can see pictures in the gallery.

As a sidenote, we apologize for the longer-than-expected website downtime...a few technical glitches with Jeremy's servers finding their new home. But all is better now!