Saturday, April 17, 2010

Songkran



Songkran is one of our families favorite holidays here in Thailand. It is a 3 day event that celebrates the start of the Thai New Year. Songkran originates from the Thai Buddhist tradition of sprinkling holy water on elders and Buddhist statues as a symbol of spiritual cleansing. It has lost a lot of its spiritual significance with the younger generations, and has now simply turned into a huge country-wide water fight. Thais travel to large cities to participate in the huge water fights there. In Chiangmai, the city is filled with people in the backs of trucks, songtheows and standing along the streets with squirt guns, hoses and buckets of water ready to soak each other. Since this is the hottest time of the year, being doused with the water is incredibly refreshing. Our family celebrated by Troy filling up the truck bed with water, and us riding around the city soaking everyone in site, while being soaked in return. The occasional ice water being thrown on us took our breath away, but must admit, was most welcome. We had a great day of celebration and are thankful for a refreshing activity for a tremendously hot time of year!

Friday, April 09, 2010

Natalie's Hospital Stay

At the beginning of the kids break from school, instead of going away for a couple of days for a little R&R - we had a bit of a change in plans. Woken at 5 am from screams of pain, we rushed Natalie to the hospital for what appeared to be a relapse of a Urinary Tract Infection that she had only 10 days earlier. Thankfully, she is home and doing really well.



Thanks for all your prayers for our family!
Blessings,
The Scott Family