Fun Events in January!

So we had been here 6 months almost when we realized we had never really done anything "touristy" in our city. We just moved in and started living life here but haven't really seen the sites. So for New Year's we decided to go and do something a tourist would do and we had lots of fun! Here are some pictures:

Near our home there is this river and you can go catch a boat and go for a ride to many places. One of those would be to the Elephant Camp. That is where we decide to go that day.

This is the first site we saw as we pulled up on the river at the Elephant Camp.

Davis and David got on their elephant first. It was really high up. We had to climb in this tree house looking thing to get on.

We saw some beautiful scenery along the way and how the people really use the land well.

We also got to see how some hilltribe people live and work. We were able to watch some ladies weaving by hand to make many items and they sold them there. They are so beautiful.

We also enjoyed seeing that instead of having a dog leashed in their yard, they had their pig chained up to a tree in their yard. The pigs seemed to enjoy it.

We were trailing David and Davis!

As we rode there was a lady up in a tree house that was selling food for the elephants. So our elephant driver stopped and we bought a bag of food. Then when we started going again, the driver asked Samantha if she wanted to feed it. She said yes. So he switched places with her and he sat by me and she sat on the elephant like she was driving him while she fed him food. This is a picture of her feeding him! It was a lot of fun!

Just in case you were wondering, we made it back safe and sound!

One of the things Davis loves about Thailand is that you can set off fireworks pretty much anywhere and you can buy them really cheap. He got some for Christmas so he saved them and we shot them off on New Year's Eve!

We were actually pretty impressed with how good they turned out! We took some friends with us and had a great celebration!

In December each year in our city they have a flower festival. This year we were able to attend and we loved it! It was beautiful. I can't show all the pictures we took but thought I would show a few. There was a parade and each of these floats were completely made from flowers, yes the elephants too! I am putting a couple more of the float pictures below just so you can see the creativity.

Samantha has been learning Thai dance here and this is one of her Thai dance moves, notice the hands.

I never cease to be amazed by the creativity of the Thai people. They are amazingly creative in so many ways. We want them to know the God who has made them so creative. This is a watermelon that is carved to look like flowers.

It was like walking in a flower wonderland. Everywhere you turned there was amazing beauty, we were surrounded by it.

These are our two cool men!

There is never a dull moment with these two around. Thai people love to take picture so people were taking pictures everywhere here at the Festival. There was a young boy and his dad right beside us that took a picture posing just like David and Davis are in this picture. We saw it and David said, "Davis let's take a picture like them!" So they did. Of course the Thai son that was with his dad was about 5. We laughed so hard everyone was looking at us. Thai people are typically rather quiet. We haven't taken on that trait yet.

And this was a really cool tunnel completely made of beautiful flowers!