United Arab Emirates

The Arab world has warmly welcomed me! I have been amazed by the new sights and sounds of this ancient land. One my first day here, an English lady from the guesthouse and I got lost in the streets of Dubai. I was amazed at how few women one sees here. We stopped at an Indian restaurant and were escorted to the "family room." Almost all restaurants here have a family room where women and children are allowed to dine. It's usually a hidden room with no or few windows in the back of the restaurant. Thankfully Dubai is an incredibly safe city so we had only to grab a taxi to find our way back to the guesthouse.

I taught four classes here in these cities: Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, and Al Ain. While in Al Ain, we crossed the border into Oman for lunch. That brings my country total up to 49! The students I have taught have been so receptive to the content of my lessons and very participatory in the activities I have them do. There's a deep sense of satisfaction for me knowing that my students here will be able to apply the lessons on cross-cultural communication immediately into their own context. Some of the nationalities that I've taught while here include: Indian, Philippine, Taiwanese, South African, Scottish, and American. Here's a photo of my final class in Sharjah. We had such a great time together!

Yesterday I went with Heather Lausch, daughter of one of the VPs of ELIC, and her boyfriend, Jason on a desert safari! Wow, did we have fun. We were in Land Rovers and went "duning" ... driving like crazy people up and down the sand dunes of the desert here. So many times I thought our driver had gone too far and we were going to roll over, but thankfully he knew what he was doing and we survived with loads of laughs and a few screams :).

We then drove to a little "oasis" where we had an Arabic style barbeque. Heather and I got henna on our ankles. I got to pet a baby camel. We watched a belly dancer and made fools of ourselves as we tried to dance in the same way.

Today I'm off to the only mall in the world that has a ski slope in it. This is truly the land of the biggest, best, wildest, and costliest. It's been amazing to experience.

Vietnam Visit

I spent the most amazing week in Vietnam visiting students of mine from years ago! This first picture is of Hein, one of my very first students in 1995. She became our language tutor and continues to both teach and tutor in Vietnam. Both of her children speak English very well. We went together to the countryside where both she and her husband were raised. We attended a wedding reception and then had a long nap in a very old-style Vietnamese home with writing on the rafters. I felt like I had gone back in time several hundred years.

The next photo is of Phuong and her soon to come little baby. I met Phoung in 1997 in Hanoi. She and her husband have actually been able to visit me in Los Angeles not too many months ago.

In the final photo, you can see the whole group of us. You'll notice the small Vietnamese lady in the photo holding her son. That's Little Lan. She had prepared this delicious meal for us in her home. She and I are definitely sisters, sharing love and truth together across the miles.

I was so blessed to spend time in Vietnam again!

Tammy's Tigers

Yesterday was our day off from the conference I'm working at here in Chiang Mai, Thailand. A group of 10 of us went to a local place where we could actually play with real tiger cubs. They sure are cute! We had a blast. In the picture where I am laying down on the tiger, I am actually listening to her heart beat.

Six O'clock and a Half

About an hour after I was back at the hotel after my visit with my little Compassion girl, my room phone rang. It was the front desk telling me something about dinner but I really couldn't understand them. So I went down to the desk ... and still couldn't understand them. But they said someone would call me in 5 minutes.

Sure enough, someone did call in 5 minutes. I didn't know who they were and they never said their name. They just kept saying dinner and "six o'clock and a half." Well, I'm always up for a good surprise.

So I come down to the lobby at 6:30 and guess who showed up ... all of the Compassion staff and their families. They took me to a great barbeque type place where you cook your own food at your table. We had a great time in spite of the fact that we couldn't speak each others' languages.

Fern, my Compassion child in Thailand

I just had the most amazing day with little Fern. An entire minibus filled with 9 people showed up at 9:00 this morning. At first I was shaking hands with adults and then they all opened up and there she stood ... not a little girl but a beautiful young woman of 14 years old. I didn't know what to do. I just held her two hands and looked at her and said her name and then we both just fell into a big hug. When we stopped hugging, we were both crying. And her mom was crying as well. It was a beautiful moment.

Off we went to the headquarters and school for younger children. The director of the school was a wonderful lady who showed us the wall of photos of all the children. I had Fern and her younger sister stand by their own photos and took a pic of the pics. The staff and Fern's family and I sang Jesus Loves the Little Children and The Steadfast Love of the Lord Never Changes (they in Thai and I in English) and we prayed together. Then we had a little gift ceremony where I gave the school a map and stickers and candy and then I gave the family and Fern her gifts. They all loved them.

The school had a big bunch of bananas for me. Fern and I pealed a banana each and they had us feed each other like a bride and groom would cake. IT was hilarious. Thankfully one of the staff took on the job of being my photographer with my camera so I have pictures of everything. Then I passed the bananas around and we all ate them.

Next we were off to her home. Wow. I am now SO thankful I have been supporting this poor girl. She lives in a shack on stilts. It's right next to the river and the view is beautiful though. We went into her house and I saw where she and her sister sleep. She showed me all of the letters I had written to her. Years of pictures and letters. There was no furniture in the house. We just sat on the floor. But it was very clean. Just wooden planks nailed together and the air could come right through them.

Then she and her sister took me on this tipsy boat out into the river. The views were amazing. We had a fun time rowing around. Then we came back on shore and the two of us hopped on her bike to go to her old house. This house belongs to her grandmother because their old house across the road got flooded and damaged too much to live in. We all rolled up our pants and sloshed through a very wet path until we got to dry land. Her old house was worse than the new. It really looked like it was about to fall down. But their neighbors had tons of coconut trees. So we cut down two coconuts and drank the milk and ate the meat. So delicious! Such an adventure too!

We had lunch at a riverside restaurant. Great food. then we went to a park that had hot springs and we all tried to put our feet in the water but wow ... it was so hot. My feet still feel hot :)

They had to bring me home at 2 because the school needed the van to take kids home. It was so sad to say goodbye. Fern is a true sweetheart, always looking after me, taking care of me, attentive to her sister and her mother, kindhearted and thoughtful. She wants to be a nurse and I believe she will be. Her mother is very affectionate to her and although she had no money growing up, I know she was well loved. I am so blessed to know her and to be a small part of her life. I know we will both remember this day fondly for the rest of our lives.

I'm home!

Hello Everyone! I'm so sorry that I didn't blog earlier that I'm home in the States. In light of all that is happening in India, many of you were wondering if I made it home safely. I sure did, several days before the terror there started. I know my mom is sure thankful I'm home! :)

India was wonderful. I was in a city called Luck now which is southeast of Delhi. We had an amazing time speaking to so many groups of people and teaching English each afternoon. We talked to over 1300 people throughout the 2 weeks. We were exhausted but so happy to be playing such an integral part of the work there. The Indian team will follow up with all we connected with. We felt like a catalyst to take their ministry to the next level. We sure did attract enough attention. Lucknow has almost no foreigners so my light colored hair made me a celebrity. You know I loved that :)

Here's a picture of my own little class. Yep, even the kids were a part of my class, although the little boy tended to wander around sometimes. He was super smart at English, though, and would grin from ear to ear when I told him, "Good job!" Then he would say, "Tammymam, you told me 14 times today "good job." So cute! The women really wear the sari or punjabi outfits all the time. So they are always so colorful. What I have on in the picture is a punjabi suit. It has pants underneat and is like a long tunic. The saris are 5 meters of cloth wrapped around you just right. The food was delicious. I think they toned down the spices for us. Our team worked well together and it was amazing to see how God had each of us designed for specific roles. My role was to do 3 hours of lesson plans for us each night and then teach the rest of the team the lesson plans and how to teach them each morning. I loved it! We each gave our testimony to hundreds of people. We did those speaking engagements in the mornings and in the evenings, teaching English in the afternoons. Like I said, we were kept busy but we didn't mind at all!

Overall, I had three incredible months of travel and work. I am so thankful that God had His hand upon me and took care of me each step of the way. It is good to be home, but I'm already preparing for my next trip ... to Thailand! More on that to come :)

Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia

I'm afraid I haven't had easy access to a computer for a while. In fact, today and tomorrow are my last days to be near a computer until I get back from India. Let me catch you up on all that's happened since last time I wrote:

Hong Kong was wonderful. There was a big ELIC dinner on Saturday with a record attendance. You know I love talking with strangers so I had a great time!

Then I flew to Singapore. Wow, what a great city. I was on the 19th floor of a hotel right downtown. From my window, I could even see as far as Indonesia! The Indian holiday of Deepavali was in full swing when we got here. This is a picture of some Indian girls who were performing at a high class country club where we were eating dinner (thanks to a generous donor who hosted us).

The ELIC President and his wife and 2 VPs were all in Singapore as well and we crammed in a dozen meetings into about 3 days.

On the last evening they were here, I found myself with some unexpected tears. As I was saying goodbye to my ELIC friends, I was also saying goodbye to my long career with ELIC. Here's a pic of our crew on that last evening ... before the tears :)

The next day I was fine and back to meetings. I wasn't actually officially unemployed until November 1st and I worked right up until the end meeting great people in Singapore.

On November 2nd, my first day of unemployment, I did what anyone would do ... if they could. I took a ferry for about an hour to Indonesia. There I stayed at a resort for 2 nights. Amazing! The ocean was so clear and warm. The food was delicious. And God gave me the best room in the resort with an amazing view of the ocean. It was just what I had hoped it would be. What a great way to usher in a time of unemployment (and thankfully, it was relatively cheap too!)

Now I'm in Singapore for 2 days with old friends from Wheaton. Tomorrow I hop on a plane to India. The time has flown by and I can't believe I've been away from America for well over 2 months.