Gift Wrapping and Lefse-Making

Well, it's Wednesday morning here. Sorry about the lack of updates over the weekend, but it was a bit hectic! Wow, I just realized that my last blog was last week on Thursday morning! Time really flies when you are busy!! I'll try to make up for it by posting all the blogs today, so grab yourself something to eat and settle in!

On Thursday, we made plans to go over to my parents' house to wrap some gifts for the host families. So we packed up paper bags full of presents and got ready to walk over to their house. While we were doing that, Gird, Sky and James (Jirayu) excitedly showed me a note they had found on our front door. It was from a reporter from the local newspaper who wanted to interview our group about their trip. So on the way to my parents' house we stopped at the Valders Journal to talk with the reporter. He brought the kids into his office a few at a time to ask them questions about America and Thailand. The kids were a little nervous and shy, but they answered the questions very well. Gird even showed him the comics she's been drawing in her diary and he liked them so much, he took a picture of Gird holding her journal. One week in America and she's already a superstar!

At my parents house the kids settled in to wrap and decorate their gifts. My Mom put out paper, stickers, pipe cleaners, crayons and markers for the kids to use and they proceeded to make a HUGE mess :-). My Mom's dog, Pepper, attached himself to Tong, James (Jetnipit) and Gam and wouldn't leave them alone. Whenever they sat down, he would jump up in their lap and lick them. Some of the kids also used my parents' internet to blog and update their Facebook pages.

I was a little worried about how my Dad would react to having his house overrun with children, but he seemed to enjoy it. The first thing Tong did when he met my Dad was to rub my Dad's belly and ask him, "Mr. Carroll, why are you so fat?" Haha! That really endeared him and so my Dad took him upstairs to his office so Tong could show his blog to my Dad. We had pizzas for lunch and ice cream sandwiches too, of course!

After trashing my parents' house, the kids stacked up all their gifts in one corner and headed back to the parsonage for dinner. We had a light dinner because we were running a bit late and had to get over to the parsonage by 7:00pm. I made sure the kids bundled up warmly because I knew the weather was going to turn quite cold after dark. During the day it had been a bit chilly, but once the sun went down, I knew the temperature would drop to at least -5'C, so I didn't want any of the kids to get sick because they weren't dressed warmly enough. I also packed an extra jacket in my bag because I knew Gird was going to need it. She's been unwilling to sacrifice fashion for warmth and so she's always insisting that her thin hoodie is warm enough, but I knew she'd need something extra to keep her warm on the way back home, so I put one of my windbreakers into my backpack just in case.

Once at the church, the kids got ready to make some lefse, which is a Norwegian flatbread made from potatoes. Valders was originally settled by Norwegians and so lefse is a traditional food that still eaten by many families in the area. The potatoes are mashed into a paste and then using a lot of flour (because the mixture is so sticky), they are rolled up into small balls. After that, they are flattened out using a rolling pin and then grilled on a large flat grill. Once they are finished, they can be buttered and topped with sugar and then rolled up and eaten. Mmmmmm! Delicious!

Some people from the church had volunteered to help the kids make lefse, including Mrs. Brill and Abbey Brill (Gird and Sky were still too shy to talk to her in person, good thing they had Facebook!). Pastor Jim gave the kids a little instruction, and then they got started. May, Gam, and Jan made a huge mess mixing the dough with their fingers. They ended up with their hands just covered in lefse paste. Tong was doing a great job cooking lefse on the grill. He had a wooden stick to flip the lefse with, but he didn't have very much lefse to show for his efforts because every time he finished one, James (Jetnipit), Jet and Tong would eat it! At first, Gird, Sky and James (Jirayu) didn't want to get their hands dirty so they hung back while the other kids kneaded the dough. But eventually they started cooking lefse with Sea and had a great time. Jump was getting lefse turning tips from Abbey, but then Mrs. Brill stepped in to show him how to do it, hmmmm.... ;).

The first one to eat their lefse was James (Jetnipit). Pastor Jim showed him how to butter it, top it with sugar, and then roll it up. When James took a bite, the expression on his face was very funny. He looked like he'd just eaten some dried glue :-), hahah! The lefse was very, very dry, and a bit thicker than normal. Eventually the kids got a little better at rolling thin lefse and also putting enough butter on it to make it softer, it still wasn't perfectly Norwegian, but it was very delicious! We ended up with a big stack of lefse and so we took that home so we could eat it for breakfast.

It was a long, cold walk back to the parsonage, and Gird needed an extra jacket, of course. As fashionable as her white hoodie was, it wasn't up to handling -5'C temperatures (with wind chill dropping it to -10'C!!). So even though it was horribly uncool, she gladly took my extra jacket to wear on the walk home. Fortunately it was dark out so nobody could see her fashion faux pas! We got back to the parsonage around 9:30pm, and so I told all the kids to get ready for bed. It had been a long, busy day and I wanted them to get some sleep.

I had to have a little discussion with the boys, because they'd gone into the kitchen to make some cereal instead of going to bed. At the beginning of the week, I had set up a "snack shelf" full of food that I told the kids they could eat any time they wanted, but the food for meals was not to be touched. I didn't want hungry teenagers eating everything in sight and leaving us without food for breakfast, lunch and dinner. In Thailand, it's very easy to walk outside and get a bowl of noodles or a snack for 20 baht. Food is very cheap there, and it's one of the ways in which Thailand is a rich country. However, in America, food is very expensive, and for people in the countryside, the market might be a long, cold walk or drive away. So it is important for the boys to learn that they can't treat the kitchen as an all-you-can-eat buffet, but it's good that they learned that lesson with me, and not their host families.

Overall, the kids have been wonderful all week. I've seen them take big steps towards maturity and responsibility, which is exactly what these kinds of trips are supposed to do. The kids have really grown a lot. They haven't always liked it when I've lectured them about misbehaving, but as I told them, they are representing Thailand here and so they need to be on their best behavior. For many local people, these kids will be the first (and maybe the only) Thai people they ever meet, and so the locals will develop opinions about Thai people and Thailand based on what the kids do. So I've been reminding the kids all week to be extra good, and for the most part, they have been really, really good kids. Their parents and Thailand should be proud of the way these kids have represented their country over here. I get many compliments from people about how well-behaved and courteous these kids are. Great job, guys!