In Which I Practice My Yodeling Skills And Connor Sees A Sermon

We had a busy, busy day today!

I spent this morning at the local Thai wat, where they were celebrating a festival called Thod Kathin (ทอดกฐิน).  This is a holiday that heralds the end of the three-month Buddhist Lent season.  I'm not entirely sure how it happened, but I somehow ended up in the middle of a crowd surrounded by people carrying alms bowls, silk parasols and wire trees covered in money.  I was carrying a saffron monk's robe, processing around the wat to the sound of Thai drums and yodeling at the top of my lungs with the other women while being pelted with hand-folded paper bows and coins wrapped in aluminum foil. 

I am now officially convinced, by the way, that all holidays should include yodeling as part of their repertoire.  Yodeling makes everything more fun. 

Anyway I was a little nervous about going at first; there were people attending from as far away as Oregon.  I wasn't sure I would see anyone I knew and I would be pretty well completely lost as far as what to expect.  Normally I'm downstairs in the library studying Thai; I don't participate in the religious ceremonies at the wat as I'm not Buddhist, so I don't know very many people at the temple.  Luckily I found my Thai teachers pretty quickly and some of the other students as well, and they were gracious enough to let me tag along with them and to explain what was going on to me. 

It was interesting sitting and listening to the speakers around me-- most of whom were conversing in Thai-- because I could pick out the occasional word but otherwise was completely lost.  I imagine this might be a little bit like how Ellen might feel when she gets here and is surrounded by English speakers, though her English is probably considerably better than my Thai is right now. 

Anyway, it was a very enjoyable experience and I've now officially survived my first Thai holiday celebration.  I'm so glad that we have such a vibrant Thai community here and that they've been so welcoming and open hearted.  I can't wait to try out my yodeling skills with Ellen next year!

I left before the ceremonies inside the wat began and headed back home to relieve our respite care worker and get ready for church.  Sundays are full days in our house around here.  It's the first week I've been able to go for a little bit because Connor goes with me, and the past couple of weeks he's been either sick or recovering from a seizure so we've stuck close to the house.  When the minister saw that Connor was attending this week, in addition to speaking the sermon she also signed it as well!  She's fluent in ASL, which is similar enough to SEE that Connor seems to get the gist of most of what is said.  Granted, Connor is way more interested in the music than in the sermon right now, but what six year old isn't?  It's still pretty fantastic, and as he gets older he'll probably pay more attention. 

After the obligatory after-church Connor Fan Mobbing that I've come to expect (I swear the kid attracts grandmothers like bees on a beer can) we headed for home.  We got there at about seven in the evening, and the little guy promptly crashed. 

It was a very full day!


~Jess

In Which Connor Is On Strike

Connor stayed up until past four again yesterday, and it looks like he's headed that direction again today.  So I apologize if today's blog is less-than coherent.  Luckily our night nurse is on duty this evening, so I'm going to actually get some sleep.  He napped in five-ten minute intervals during the day, so I couldn't really catch up.  I think it's probably the medication change that's throwing him off in a major way.  He's definitely becoming way more awake and alert as we continue to lower his keppra, but this is a bit too much of a good thing!

Thank goodness for night nursing!

Needless to say we didn't do a whole lot today.  I'm pretty sure that all the information I heard in my Thai class went in one ear and right out the other, but hopefully I retained a bit of it somewhere in my subconscious that will stick.  I'm actually kind of amazed I didn't fall asleep in class!  It's pretty interesting subject material though, so that helps a lot.

We worked on some phrases today, which will hopefully be really helpful on my trip.  I'm slowly gaining enough of an ear for Thai pronunciation so that I can at least hear when I'm saying something wrong.  Thai is a tonal language, so if you change the pitch in which you say a word it can change the meaning.  It has several consonant and vowel combinations that we don't use in English, so I'm still struggling to figure out how to make those sounds. 

My Thai accent probably won't ever be perfect, but hopefully over time I'll be able to improve enough to make myself understood.  I've been listening to a lot of Thai stations on my Internet radio that Jer gave me a few years ago, and I think that's helping.  On one of the stations they have a daily program that teaches English to Thai speakers, and I tune into every once in a while.  I figure it's something Ellen and I might be able to listen to together, since we'd both get something out of it!

Anyway, thankfully our night nurse has now arrived and I'm off to bed.  Hooray!

~Jess

In Which Everybody Conks Out

We got the good news today that our night nursing should continue!  This made me pretty darn happy; I've gotten to where I like my sleep.

The little guy's been out for the count since four this afternoon; he had a seizure at physical therapy today and so he was pretty tired when we got home.  He seems to be sleeping an awful lot right now; I'm still wondering if he might have a bit of something going on.  It could be coming down off the seizure med that's doing it too, though-- who knows? 

Anyway, that's about all I can think of; my brain is fried tonight.  I think it's from too much studying Thai-- I got in a good four hours today while Connor was in school.  This is even though I'm actually sleeping now instead of just staring at the ceiling off and on for several hours at night.  Who knew that vitamin D could have such a big impact on one's sleep schedule?

Good night!

~Jess

In Which Connor Loves Hat Music And Makes An Excellent Dog Whistle

Today our night nurse came over to do some day time respite care, which was very nice!  I spent pretty much all four hours of it at Thai lessons, and they were still going when I left. 

In addition to language (which I'm still very bad at as I'm learning to write Thai before I speak it) the teachers are discussing Thai culture and etiquette with me right now, which I think will be tremendously helpful both for the trip and for helping us better understand Ellen when she comes home.  I knew a lot of the big things, like not pointing at anything with your feet or touching anyone's head, but there are a lot a little things to learn too, like how you should never write a living Thai person's name in red ink and it's considered bad luck to have your hair cut on a Wednesday.  Interesting stuff!

Connor got to watch Phantom of The Opera again during respite care while he did his knee extension stretches, and I think it's his new favorite musical.  He's even come up with a name for it-- he calls it "hat music," which I think is his way of referring to the phantom's mask.  I'm pretty sure that means it's passed up Les Misérables for top billing in his mind, since that hasn't been assigned a name.  I'm not sure what a good nickname for Les Mis would be in his vocabulary, which is probably part of the problem.  "24601 music" would be a bit past his signing ability.

So anyway, if you throw in church too it was a very busy day.  It was the Blessing of The Animals service today, and so a lot of the congregation brought their pets.  Connor approves of short sermons because then the breaks between the hymns (his favorite part of the service) aren't so long, and so towards the end of the sermon he decided to help wrap it up by emitting a series of ear-piercing yelps, which set all the dogs in the congregation off.  He's big into the "making a joyful noise" part of things!  Oh well-- luckily no one minds.

He crashed right at seven, and I'm not at all surprised by that.  We've got another busy week coming up, so hopefully he'll sleep well!

~Jess

In Which The Little Guy Is Rip Van Winkle

Connor seemed to be feeling a bit under the weather today; he slept in until 9:30 in the morning, and during Thai lessons he fell asleep on my lap.  I ended up leaving a bit early because once he woke up he told me he wasn't feeling very well.  So we went home and he napped until early evening.

Then he woke up for about an hour, had a small seizure, and promptly went back to sleep.  I ended up putting him down for the night around six, and he hasn't stirred since then.  I don't know if he simply felt the seizure coming on all morning, or if he's getting sick again. 

Either way it made for a pretty quiet day.

~Jess

In Which We Drop Off Some Things For Ellen And Have A Busy Day

We had a pretty busy day today!

Connor had a great day at school, and we stayed a little late afterwards so his physical therapist could try out some kinesio tape along the little guy's spine.  We've got a little while before his back brace will be made, so she wants to see if she can get him to use his back muscles a bit more in the meantime.  We'll be keeping a close eye on him to make sure he doesn't have a reaction to the adhesive from the tape.  So far so good.

After that we stopped in at the house so Connor could have some quiet time and I could make some phone calls and take care of some chores.   Then I loaded up the car with the donations for Ellen's orphanage I've collected over the past year and with her latest care package, which was Valentine's day themed.  It may end up arriving sooner than her last care package, which we sent off a couple of weeks ago, because it will be delivered in person.  Our adoption agency leaves next week for Thailand, and they'll be visiting Ellen on one of the first days they are there! 

Hopefully the visit will go well and we'll have a better idea of what the status is of her file when they get back.  Our dossier will have been in Thailand a year in March, so we probably still have another year or longer before we can expect to travel.  It's likely that they are still compiling Ellen's file and completing her background check-- basically an exhaustive amount of research making absolutely sure that the potential international adoption is legal, ethical and the best available option for her, and that there's no possibility of her being cared for by someone in her birth family or being adopted in Thailand. 

In the meantime I'm slowly continuing to learn Thai-- I've got a pretty good handle on the alphabet now, though I'm sure my handwriting is probably atrocious.  I haven't plucked up the courage yet to write anything in Thai on Ellen's letters other than her name on the envelope because I still don't know enough Thai to do more than copy phrases out of books, and I'm afraid I'll screw up, think I'm writing something like "We love to cook Thai food for dinner" and actually end up writing something like "We love to cook Thai children for dinner."  There's nothing like promoting cannibalism to make a good impression on your future kid. 

So we'll continue to rely on our agency's more than competent translator and I'll stick to just practicing for now. 

I can say a few short phrases in Thai now too, but I don't know how useful they'll be in communicating with Ellen.  There are only so many situations in which a phrase like "the boys are reading" is going to be relevant, and while I can also discuss the current reading status of a man, men, woman, women, boy, girl and girls this doesn't extend my conversational skills by much.  Hopefully by the time Ellen comes home I'll know a bit more! 

The agency will be taking a video camera with them and we're hoping that Ellen might be able to demonstrate some of her English, pass on some questions for us or tell us things she'd like us to know, but it will be completely understandable if that doesn't happen.  My guess is that if you pull any fourteen year old girl out of whatever it is she's in the middle of doing and stick her in a room full of strangers who point a video camera at her and ask her personal questions through a translator, she's not exactly going to be a Chatty Cathy.  We've been blessed enough to see some of her amazing personality shining through in pictures over the past year in situations where she's more comfortable, so we'll just be happy to see her on film even if she doesn't say a single word. 

And hopefully when our agency gets back we'll have a better idea of where we are on the timeline.  Keep your fingers crossed for us that things have been moving along!

~Jess

In Which I Begin Learning Thai

Today I went to the local Thai temple for my first Thai language lesson! 

Boy, have I got my work cut out for me.

Our teacher (who is amazing, by the way) is a firm believer in learning how to write the Thai language before learning how to speak it.  This is because the Thai alphabet is entirely different from the English alphabet, so if you want to learn a word correctly you have to know the Thai spelling.  She put me to work learning the first eleven consonants this week.  There are forty-four in the Thai alphabet, and once I have those down it will be time to move on to the vowels. 

I was super nervous going up to the temple because I knew absolutely no one, was coming unannounced, I'm Episcopalian (which is sort of a far-cry from Buddhism), I don't know any of the Thai cultural traditions and I was afraid I would screw something up in a big way and get kicked out.  Luckily everyone was extremely nice and I didn't have any problem finding the classroom.  It's only me and three other students-- only one of which is apparently a regular.  This means we get a whole lot of individual attention, which is fantastic.  The temple and the grounds themselves are gorgeous; it looks like somebody picked up a chunk of Thailand and transplanted it onto a small, out-of-the-way street in Washington state.

It's going to be a very slow process, but I think it will ultimately be a valuable one because it will give me a strong connection to Ellen.  I could start off learning a bunch of phrases (and I'm sure I probably will memorize some before I go over, as phrases like "Where's the bathroom?" will probably be pretty important) but I'd really like to learn the language well, and that means not skipping the basics.  I hope that in the future once Ellen's adoption is finalized we'll take some family trips to Thailand, and we shouldn't have to rely on her to translate for us.  Jeremy will be coming to lessons too when Connor isn't sick, so we'll be able to study together.

I'm also excited because with the exception of the Thai language class (everyone there was either half-Thai, married to a Thai person, or wanted to be married to a Thai person-- which is a whole other story I'm not going to go into here) almost everyone at the temple was Thai.  The services were in Thai (though I didn't see those as the language lessons go on during the services), the building and grounds are maintained in the Thai fashion, and this will be a perfect place for us to learn Thai customs and etiquette so we don't make any huge mistakes when we go over.  It should also be a great place for me to adjust my palate to Thai food; everyone brings a large amount of food to the temple and after the monks eat they have sort of a potluck.  Everyone who attends the services brings blankets and sits on the floor of the temple with their families, and the language class sits together downstairs at a large table.  I'm not sure what everything was that I tried, but it was all very, very good and very, very spicy.

They also have Thai dancing classes that go on in the room next door to the classes.  It was really cute to watch the kids hopping around, and we know that Ellen enjoys Thai dancing so that may be something she wants to pursue.  Apparently they perform at many of the festivals during the year.  There were even several children around her age who had been adopted!  I think it will be a great resource for us in the future.  They invited me to bring the whole family to the Songkran celebration (the traditional Thai new year) next month, and I'm pretty sure we're going to go!

Connor had a much better day today; he only had one seizure and his temperature was normal.  I think he's close to over this bug, which is a very good thing!  He spent most of the day hanging out with his daddy while I made oxtail soup.  Making oxtail soup is sort of an all-day process.

I first encountered oxtail soup as a teenager on a trip to Italy, and every once in a while I try and reproduce it.  I haven't ever been quite able to capture the proper flavor, but that doesn't keep me from trying!  It's not all that difficult to make, but it takes about six hours from start to finish so it's something for a day where there's not a whole lot else going on.  The kind I make usually ends up being a really rich, thick meaty sort of stew, and if it doesn't taste quite like the type I remember from Italy that doesn't mean it isn't still pretty good! 

So overall it was a pretty great day!  I learned how to actually pronounce my daughter's name and where she's staying, I learned eleven letters of the alphabet, how to say "hello" and "thank you," and the word for "spicy."  While I don't think I'll be reading War and Peace in Thai any time soon, it's a start!

~Jess