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My Mom Kissed Me on the Cheek for the First Time

Since Susan and I got married last April (2016), every morning when we leave for work, my wife hugs me and kisses me and reminds me that she loves me; she does this again when we get home. In contrast, when I was growing up, my parents would say goodbye to me by saying, “Ok, Chihan, go fast and come back soon.” I didn’t think much about this until my mom kissed me on the cheek for the first time on my wedding day in front of several hundred people.

That was the first time I remember my mom kissing me on the cheek. It was uncomfortable for both of us because it’s something we’ve never practiced in my family and in our culture. My mom must have kissed my six siblings and me thousands of times when we were babies but I don’t remember her doing this at all as we grew older. I find myself wondering why it took so long.

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Chiang Rai

Where we went: Chiang Rai is Thailand’s northernmost city and is surrounded by mountains. Various hill tribe people live in the area around Chiang Rai.

When we went: July 28-31, 2017

July 28, the present king’s birthday, is a national holiday, so we went on a three-day weekend and then took an extra day.

Why we went: I spent 3 days in Chiang Rai with a friend in 2014 and really enjoyed it, but Worchihan hadn’t been and wanted to go for the mountains, as they remind him of home.

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Psychology of Missionary Adjustment Review

Psychology of Missionary Adjustment by Marge Jones with E. Grant Jones Logion Press, 1995

Why I read this: For most of my life, my dad served as a specially licensed minister and church business administrator. During the summer after my eighth grade year, when my dad was working at a large church in California, my family went to Fiji for two weeks as guests of a large church who asked that my parents—my mom is also a money management extraordinaire—put its finances in order; shortly after we returned home, my parents told my brother and me that we were going to be moving to Fiji to be missionaries. My parents had felt, months earlier, that it was time to leave Sacramento, where I grew up, but it wasn’t until our trip to Fiji that they realized where we were supposed to go. Ten months after our two-week trip, we were again on our way to Fiji, where we lived for three years.

I don’t remember reading any books to prepare for going overseas as missionaries, though I do remember reading Re-Entry: Making the Transition from Missions to Life at Home by Peter Jordan of YWAM when we returned to the US. I think my interest in books about missions comes from a desire to better understand our experiences as missionaries.

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My Literary History

I read about the literary history assignment somewhere (Nancie Atwell, maybe, or Cris Tovani?) and assigned it to my middle school students a couple of years ago, but not before I wrote my own. I think it’s a great introductory assignment for a reading classroom.

I’ve loved to read for as long as I can remember. When I was little, my parents built up a collection of Little Golden Books and the Bernstein Bears, books they must have read over and over again to my brother and me, books that they have saved to give to our children.

When my brother and I were a bit older, my mom took us to the library every week or two, and we got to check out as many books as we were old, so when I was 8, I could check out 8 books. I remember reading Nancy Drew and The Baby-Sitters Club (I always identified with Kristy, the founder of the club, though I wished I was more like Dawn) and Sweet Valley Twins. (When the Sweet Valley Twins became Sweet Valley High, I remember feeling a great sense of sorrow.) I read every moment I could when I was a kid, including while I dried my hair in the morning before school when I was in middle school.

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Thailand Top 8

The longer I live in Thailand, the more I realize how easy it is to live here. Not as easy as do-everything-online-America, but safe, organized and in many ways, pretty convenient. I’ve now lived in Thailand for almost 6 years so I’ve figured out what I like the most about living here.

Our local Took Lae Dee

1 Took Lae Dee 

I told a friend Took Lae Dee is my favorite restaurant because it’s good and cheap, and she told me that that’s what the name means: took = cheap, lae = and, dee = good. Took Lae Dee is inside Foodland, which is a grocery store that sells a lot of imported food. The menu includes Asian food and Western food and often features new items, like quesadillas! Service is very fast, free water is provided (this is the only restaurant I’ve been to in Thailand that gives free water), the servers are attentive, the prices are very reasonable and it’s open 24 hours, a feature we don’t take advantage of, but it’s nice to know it’s always an option.

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We Bought a Buffalo

Several months ago, Worchihan started talking about our need to begin preparing financially for our future, specifically for children and a house we want to build. We have been saving money every month since we got married a little more than a year ago, but he feels that we need to do more, so he came up with a couple of good ideas that we talked about but decided are not the best ideas for right now.

When Worchihan told me about another idea he had, I wasn’t so sure about it, because I’ve never owned a water buffalo before.

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