Lovin the LOVE!

People,

I just feel like I need to share my absolutely OVERWHELMING feelings of love I have for my life at this moment. I can't even express it well enough to anyone who is not here with me.

I am so content.

Ever since I got here I have been content.

Yes, there were those times when I first got here, where I was so hungry, and my body wasn't use to only eating rice and vegetables, I wasn't use to the bugs in the showers or the lizards on my walls. I could pin point all of the little annoyances or the things out of the ordinary. However, I have come to find that I am very use to my life here. I am so comfortable here in Thailand, sometimes I forget I am not in America. Thailand has become my home!

I am so happy,

I have 6 best friends living with me that I have learned to live with and love so much! We have crazy fun adventures and are always laughing at the awkward things that happen to us, or the funny things we say. I can only speak for myself when I say that I am so grateful for every girl that I am here with, and I know that we are meant to be here together, learning and growing from each other.

I have a mom and dad that never deny me hugs and we go and visit them every weekend.  I have brothers and a sister (Ton, Ake, and Tang) that will help us out with anything we want or need.

This wonderful woman is "Mom" she told me the very first day I met her, that she was here to love me and to be my mother here in Thailand, as long as I promised to never forget her.

Jess and I have become best friends with a woman named Orn (Pronounced On) that is a massage therapist at the local massage shop that her sister owns, and we go see her and the workers there almost every day and are there for hours, talking, laughing, getting to know each other while we sip herbal tea, eat local fruit and occasionally slip in a massage or a couple minutes in the Sauna.

Jess, Orn, and I 

Me with the girls!! I love these women so much

I can't forget about the kids here...

The children that I teach, have 100% sewn their sticky-fingered, broken-English, toothy-smiled, sweaty-kissable faces, ticklish bodies right around the core of my heart. And I cannot imagine my life without them. I am going to apply to come out to be a Head Teacher here, so that I can have hope of not saying good-bye to these kids forever. I love teaching! I love playing with them, I love gaining individual relationships with each child, I love seeing the wheels turning in their heads, and most of all...

I LOVE the rush of kids that come running towards me every morning as I walk in to the school greeting me with squeals and shrieks of excitement when they see me coming down the hall as they yell different variations of my name; "Teachwa Kate!" "Teachwua Pancake!" "Teachwa Birthday cake!" "Teachwa Tate!" I just kneel down and embrace the ambush of hugs and kisses.

I don't know what else to say. My heart is exploding, and I can't think of any other way to express how happy I feel!

I have also noticed a significant difference in who I am as a person. I feel confident. 

For the first time in my life, I feel comfortable in my skin. I am coming to accept my faults physically more as a part of who I am. Rather than constantly wishing I was something or someone other than how God created me to be. I am finally coming to love the person that I am, the way I look (even on my worst days, which is basically every day in this humidity.) I really hope that doesn't go away when I go back to the states, because the constant self-criticism that went on in my head has been silenced for once in my life, and I am thoroughly enjoying the silence. I never want it to hear it again, and I am going to try everything in my power to keep it that way.

From a spiritual standpoint, I feel a very big improvement I look back on the person I was exactly a year ago, and I can't even imagine how much I have changed some changes for the better, others for the worse. For some reason in particular I noticed it especially this last weekend, the LDS General Conference really had an impact on me. It wasn't until I felt the love and inspiration from the teachings that I realized how spiritually malnourished I let myself become.  

I have noticed God has allowed me to feel in certain moments the love that he feels for these children I am teaching as well as the love and adoration he has for these girls that I am with. Those feelings of love are absolutely overwhelming, and not all mine.