It's time for a Bazaar

June 9, 2011 21:54 Thai time

What a day!  I should have not said it was going to be easy.

Church was an interesting experience.  The grounds and structure was absolutely beautiful.  It was an open air church that had a wonderful breeze off the river (I think it was the Pink River).  First Church of Chiang Mai is the largest Christian church in the city.  The church is set up in a semi-circle with a raised platform for the ministerial staff and alter; to the left of the alter was a youth orchestra that played all the hymns.  If you had to have translation of the service you sat on the ends of the semi-circle where you had to where headsets to hear the service in English.  I put my ear phones a little too early.  I was picking up a pop radio station so I thought I had the wrong station.  I was glad when the service started that the pop music stopped.

The service is very traditional – hymn, reading, hymn to Lord’s Prayer, scripture, sermon, hymn , offering, closing hymn.  The scripture today was Matthew 2:13-23.  The sermon was based off that scripture.  There was an anthem sung by two members of the music ministry.  One sang in English and the other in Thai.  That was quite beautiful.  However, it was all congregational singing and not a choir. 

I wish I could say more about the sermon.  The translator got a little lost in the middle of the ceremony.  I think the minister left her notes so the translator had to catch up with her.  It was interesting to see a female minister lead the sermon.  Even though it was hard to follow the sermon, you could fell from her expressiveness the essence of the service.  The other two pulpit ministers were male.

After service we traveled onto lunch in the city.  The food just kept coming.  There were vegetables and chicken, then two types of salads, then soup, a curry dish, then ice cream, then fruit to end the meal.  Of course this came with rice.  It was quite overwhelming.  Most of the food I could not eat because of onions but it was still a lot of food.

First Church Chiang Mai

Grounds of First Church

After this was came back to campus.  Some folks went shopping while others went off for a Thai massage.  I opted to stay and rest.  Jet lag has finally hit me.  I fell asleep at 2 pm.  I woke at 4 pm.  I thought I would sleep another hour but finally I woke up at 6:15 pm.  I now was late for dinner.  Dinner was a fish dish, kale, pork salad and rice.  The kale was very good.  I ate two plates of that.

Pat handing Norman (our traveling 

gnome) to Bryant

Bryant with Norman

The gang at lunch

Deloris, Charmaine and Kathy

Night bazaar

Greg, Jen, Regina and Sue figuring out what to buy next

Taxi ride home from bazaar

Street where bazaar held

We are now going off the night bazaar in the heart of Chiang Mai.  This is a huge flea market with everything you think you could possibly buy.  I have some pictures attached to help with perspective.  I don’t want to say everything I bought because so of those items are gifts.  However, I will tell you that I bought a bunch of stuff on only spent equivalent $15 US dollars.  I felt like I was getting over.

Tomorrow is a very busy day so I will only be able to post once in the evening. In the morning we start our work on Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding.  In the afternoon we will visit the Foundation for the Preservation of Indigenous Wisdom.  I am really looking forward to that.

Until then…