Tsunami

The next day in Phuket we took a tuk tuk to kamala, a primarily Muslim community. This is where the tsunami caused the worst damage. All the other beaches looked completely cleaned up with only a few shops on side streets showing signs of destruction where the waves had swept through. However, this spot is just a few Km from the beach where we were & it was just sooo destroyed, I'll have to wait till I get home to update the blog w/ more pics (I'm in New Zealand and no longer have a personal computer & you can't do that at these internet cafes). It was really sad - people were outside of their half destroyed shops, hoping for tourists with their open signs posted. We bought some icecream and a coke for our driver. We also just walked around and prayed for the people there. It was quite sobering. It is just so weird that 5 months ago I was sitting in our living room over Christmas watchin the coverage day after day and then just a few days ago I was standing on that very beach and looking at the haggard hotels - piles of filing cabinets, chairs, and other debris all stacked up outside on the beach with "no passing" signs.
It was a ghostown.
It would have been nice if we could have some of our time helping there. At least we got to leave some monetary contributions...
I heard it snowed in Amarillo, 5 inches. That's crazy - and half way around the world I am seeing the effects of what probably also resulted in that crazy weather.

Reading the newspapers on the plane really makes you realize how mad the world is outside. I mean, I know we have weird horrible things in the US too, but I don't know, the rest of the world can be pretty savage and scary - but mostly - so unpredictable, in the worst kind of way. Nepal was in a state of emergency until a few days ago (the king fired the government, gave himself absolute power, and put most of the politicians in jail), in Laos parents make their children swim across the river to Thailand to beg for money. And it is a *rushing* treacherous river, and when they don't come back w/ enough money they get beaten. In India a priest (in addition to other people) was gorred to death by a bull (which is pretty Ironic considering they consider the cow to be a sacred animal - anything that would rip your flesh to shreads and leave you a bloody, dead mess doesn't seem very sacred to me, but then I'm not Hindu). In thailand a 14 year old boy was put in Jail for putting excess chili powder in a nearly empty bowl (there is apparently a specific law against this that was passed in like 1957, isn't that nuts!).

And that's your world news for the day.

On a lighter note we had great fun the first night we were there. There were about a zillion people out and about. In fact we had so much fun that by the time we decided to look at our watches it was nearly 4 in the morning! How was that possible! There were still people *everywhere* eating dinner outside and everything. It was nuts. That was a great little excersion...