Pivotal December

      This month was quite a busy month. I started the month signing up to be the page turner for a musical that was debuting in Chiang Mai. It was a musical based on a young Kachin women's supposed rescue by an NGO. It shed light on the reality that sometimes NGO's here don't always have the full story on the women that they are trying to rescue. Some of the women were not trafficked but came into Thailand to earn money to send back to their family in Burma. Some of them become sex workers by choice not by force and as this one woman was portrayed, she didn't need rescuing. She needed to return to work but was being coerced instead into testifying against a brothel owner that the NGO's mistakenly thought was her trafficker. The cast consisted of 3 professional actresses flown in from L.A. and a director and composer/author also from L.A.       There were also 3 local actresses- 2 of whom I knew from my previous play.  It was fun to be able to work on this production and listen to the amazing music night after night. The last performance was the most emotional for all of us because the audience had a large number of Kachin people in attendance.  The writer had conducted many interviews here in Thailand in order to have the play as accurate as possible and one of the characters was based on a woman who was in attendance on the last day. There were subtitles in Thai, Burmese and English so everyone could enjoy the show.  It was an amazing experience as well as the experience of meeting people in the industry.
   This month is also pivotal as I finally have a potential and very likely open door for a job down in southern Thailand. I've been asked to interview with a montessori that wants to expand. I don't know yet what my role would be but just that they were very interested in me. I've been praying about moving down there and trusting that God would open the door and I'll know when I head down there in a couple of days whether or not that door is open.  I'm very excited and bummed that this is the year I met a whole new group of people to hang out with and get to know but in other ways it's felt like closure was happening here. I'm excited to see how it all looks in the end.

Cast and Crew of Land of Smiles