We are back from our 2 month trip to Thailand with http://www.SPARKCircus.org , teaching circus and performing in the Burmese Refugee Camps, orphanages, hospitals, and schools! It was an amazing trip, full of challenges, but also so incredible!  Our kids (3 and 8) took everything in stride, and Jenna was one of our Star Performers! We were not able to post as frequently as we would have liked, as we were so busy!

So many incredible memories:

– Performing our spectacular fire show at the Temple Opening Ceremony, in front of a sea of monks and the entire village!

– the chaos of running circus workshops for 500 children!

– the amazing SPARKCircus team- every one of them!

– our beautiful group acts, and my duet with Garret Flowers!

– Performing on centre field of the football stadium for the city of Mae Sot!

– 2 days at Nu Po Refugee camp- the amazing children and people, and performing on the 50 ft  stage for 3-4 thousand people!

– Being part of the small team that went to the Special Needs school and played and performed for 12 wonderful, loving children.

– Mae Tao Clinic- bringing joy to the maternity, childrens’, amputee, and HIV buildings.

– Agape Orphanage for HIV children-being sung to by the whole school- singing and dancing to the Burmese Hokey Pokey

– Visiting the Migrant School (past the cow farm!) and seeing their incredible bamboo dance

– pulling in after a long 2 hour drive over a long, windy, dark road, to find over 1000 people waiting for us to perform- apparently nobody had performed there for the past two years, and our willingness to do so was cause of an entire community festival!

– so many touching one on one exchanges with children, and knowing that our being there let them know that they have worth, and that their happiness is important!

We are all still reeling from our experiences, and are finding reverse culture shock to be almost as challenging! We all have so MUCH here.. We are settling back into some of our routines, and Jenna is happy to get back to school again. Integrating our experience and making meaning of all that we have seen is going to take some time. We have over 1000 pictures and video that we will be using to create a presentation on our trip. Stay tuned to find out when and where!

Thank you to all who have been following our journey!

Karina, Kevin, Caden and Jenna