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My Autobiography Wrap Up!
A while ago I started writing an autobiography. I split my autobiography into 6 different parts and started posting them on our blog. In my autobiography, I wrote things about my life and my special memories. I decided (well actually Mom decided) to write a wrap up post to go over everything I have written about and share it with you!
My first post autobiography post was about My Sister. 5 years ago, we went to China to adopt my sister Tallulah. Click the link to go check it out!
My next post was about My Cousin. My cousin Avery is one of my favorite people in the whole wide world to hang out with so I had to write a post about it. Go ahead and click the link!
The next post is about My Adventures. This one, like that previous one, is about Avery but it is also about my grandparents and a trip we went on together! This one one of the best trips I have ever been on, so make sure you click the link!
I then wrote about My Passion. I have been dancing for as long as a can remember and dance is a big part of my life. Click the link to read about my dancing journey!
As you probably know I live in Thailand. But I only moved here about 1.5 years ago and Thailand wasn’t always home. To read about the places I call My Home click the link.
Lastly, I wrote about A Day In My Life. I thought you guys might like to know what it like being a 13 year old, homeschooled, missionary in Thailand. Click the link!
I hope this autobiography gave you a little peak into my life.
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Conversations with the Keim Kids
During the last school year, we (the Keim kids) set up a YouTube channel. Our friends in Atkinson Nebraska sent us pictures and asked us questions about our life in Thailand. We made videos to answer their questions, but instead of just making videos for them we decided to put all the videos we made on YouTube so everybody can see them. Josiah, Selah, and I did all the work so that we could learn about it and have fun with it.
These are all the videos we made so far if you want to see them:
Episode #1
Episode #2
Episode #3
Episode #4
Episode #5
Episode #6
Episode #7
Episode#8
Episode#9
Okay I got to go now, so see you next time!
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A Day In My Life
My Autobiography Part 6
Here is what a day in the life looks like as a homeschooled missionary in Thailand.
I love to wake up early, so I set my alarm for six thirty every weekday. Waking up early makes me feel more productive, that is why I like it. After I wake up, I take a shower and finish getting myself ready, so I start getting Tallulah up. Tallulah and I share a room and so I’m in charge of getting her up and dressed every morning. She hates getting out of bed, but I try my best.
Recently, I started gymnastics classes, so every morning I try to either stretch or workout. I said I “try” because sometimes I am really sore from gymnastics or I’m just too lazy. Then I go downstairs and eat breakfast. I try to eat healthy, so my breakfast is usually something like eggs, a smoothie, or sometimes a bagel.
After I eat breakfast, I do some morning chores. In the morning, my chores are cleaning up the house, and either sweeping, filling ice trays or doing the dishes (The week I have dish duty is, by far, the WORST). Then I’m ready to start school.
We start school at eight thirty. We start our day with math and language arts each morning. Then we do typing or online learning, some of the online classes I am working on right now include computer programing and physics. At 11:00 we stop our individual work and do “together school.” Some days we do chemistry and some days we read a book together. Lately, we have been reading “The Return of the White Book” which is about the first missionaries in Myanmar and Siam (Thailand). We also do Bible flashcards and riddles.
We do school about until twelve for our lunch break. For lunch we pretty much have the same options every day: smoothie bowls, leftovers, sandwiches, or anything else we find in the fridge. We just get to pick what we want to have each day. When lunch is over, we all go to our rooms and do an hour of “quiet time”. This means we spend an hour reading or doing homework. When finish quiet time we do a bit more school. For me that is either practicing dance, practicing gymnastics, or making a YouTube video for our channel Our Paradoxology.
And then finally we have free time. At about 4:00 we do our chores again, but this time we also grab our laundry that has been hanging outside to dry. At about that time Dad comes home from work, and we eat dinner. We pick up from our meal and then we either watch a show or play video games. Then at 8:30 we get ready for bed and by 9:00 we go to bed.
That is what my life looks like on a night when everybody is home, but that actually doesn’t happen very often. On Mondays, we have Thai classes and they are very far away so we spend a lot of time driving. Some days I have gymnastics, some days we go out to ZOE for worship or prayer, and some days we go swimming or out to eat somewhere. I used to have dance classes some nights and pretty soon I am going to start going to a Bible study one night each week.
So that’s a day in my life. It isn’t that exciting, but it works for me.
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Taipei, Taiwan
It has been a very long smokey season in Chiang Mai and the air is hot and dry and cough-inducing. We had to go somewhere for our VISAs: so why not go to a big city for some fresh air?
Several weeks ago (I haven’t posted in a while!), we went to Taipei to try again applying for our family’s non-immigrant VISAs. That part of the trip was unsuccessful, but almost every other aspect of our weeklong trip was great. Jeremiah is writing a post about one event in Taiwan that threatened to ruin our trip. (Link to Jeremiah’s Post Here). We would walk several blocks to the Thailand Economic Trade Center each morning and give the people behind the desk our paperwork. It would take many hours to process, so we would leave to go enjoy Taiwan before going back to the Thailand Economic Trade Center later that day for our paperwork and let-downs.
Now for some non-gloomy things we did: The first day, we were sitting in the park near the building we had just dropped our paperwork into and then our parents said we had a plan and we walked to the nearest Metro. Although Chiang Mai is a big city, there are no Metro stations, so Taipei was interesting just because of their HUGE underground train system. None of us had been on a Subway train since we were in Hong Kong after adopting Tallulah five years ago. It was nice and well organized and it made traveling around the city easier.
Taipei was very orderly and organized which all of us agreed was a nice change of pace compared to “no-rules do whatever you want Chiang Mai.” There were green paths on the street for people to walk on and a bike lane on the sidewalk. And that was nothing compared to the escalators.
So perfect. So organized. Everyone stood on the right side of the escalator so that those in a hurry could pass on the left.
I digress. As I was saying, we left the park and walked a short distance to the next Metro station. That day we started off our trip with one of the coolest things I’ve ever experienced: Taipei 101. If you haven’t heard of Taipei 101 then you should look it up. It is the world’s 11th tallest building at 1667 feet high! We took the metro station right to Taipei 101 and immediately hopped in an elevator up to the seventh floor. On the seventh floor, we got our tickets and we ushered into a really nice elevator. Much better than the one at our hotel that loved to close on people. When we were traveling up, faster than I thought was mechanically possible, the lights in the elevator dimmed and showed fake constelations on the ceiling. The screen on the wall showed floor numbers changing nearly as fast a stopwatch. Then we hit the 89th floor: The Observation Deck. It was awesome. It was cold and covered in windows that gave us a full 360 view of Taipei.
We saw mountains and skyscrapers and buildings that were made to look cool just for us tourists.
Yes the middle one is an Apple Store shaped like a Laptop Computer.
The next day, we went to Taipei Zoo.
The Zoo had its own Metro station so it was very easy to get there. Wait, no it wasn’t! Before we went to the Zoo, my dad had to go get something from our hotel room and he was going to get on the Metro closest to our hotel and hop on a train and meet us at the next stop. The “little” disaster that happened earlier in the morning had slowed down the trains and only a few passed, so crammed with passengers I was worried someone would suffocate. (Again, Jeremiah is writing about the “little disaster“). Only three trains came through before we found Dad. (The train going the opposite way came at least 10 times!) Dad had decided it would take too long and be too crowded when he saw the trains by his metro so he decided to quickly walk (run) to our Metro station instead. By the time he got there, the “traffic” had sped up and trains were moving normally. We hopped on and went to the Zoo.
The Taipei Zoo is the largest zoo in Asia. It is huge. All of us were exhausted walking around it. It is so big we had to go to it twice to see everything! The second day, though, we went to the North America section and were disgusted by this guy.
It is hard to tell but this is an American Bison. We are used to seeing skinny cows but none compare to this creature. I am sure when, in Genesis, Pharaoh has a dream of seven fat cows being eaten by the sickest, skinny cows, he was seeing this buffalo as one of the “famine cows.”
Anyway, one thing that is cool about Asian Zoos are that they can have more outdoor exhibits because the weather outside is the weather in the animal’s natural habitat. They have the indoor penguins and pandas and that’s about it.
The name above intrigued me so I looked it up and apparently this breed of penguin, the Jackass Penguin, are called Jackass because they sound like donkeys. Weird.
They had every kind of elephant (which I didn’t take any pictures of because there are plenty of elephants in Chiang Mai), every kind of bear,
and a ton of wild spiders everywhere. (It’s really hard to tell, but the first spider is really close to the camera right in the center of the photo!)
Speaking of spiders, they’re a few things that the Taipei Zoo had that, in my opinion, beat almost every other Zoo. Their Insectarium was probably the most filled and informative Insectarium I have ever seen. Their butterfly room had only a few species of Butterfly and I thought that was it but it kept going on and on and on. There were small bugs crawling around the walkways like praying mantis and ants. (The “leaves” on the tree in the 3rd photo are butterflies!)
There were butterflies and wasps and bees flying around. Fun fact we learned at a bee farm, asian bees are not aggressive. Seriously, it is crazy. When we went to the bee farm, I expected us to put on hazmat/beekeeper suits and not to touch any bees but they would just pick up a bee and set in our ungloved hands. Not a single sting.
Anyways, the coolest part of the zoo was definitely the Pangolin Dome.
The whole time we were there, we wanted to see the Pangolins. They are a rare and endangered animal that is kind of a mix between an armadillo and an anteater. They are really cool and really cute. Except the Pangolin Dome had no pangolins! We saw one sleeping in another exhibit but that was it. What a let down!
Even though it was called the Pangolin Dome, it was home to many, many more animals than that. It was, as the name suggests, a big chain dome full of trees and plants. We walked on a windy concrete path and was immediately met by these two HUGE birds just right next to us. (That dark thing in the tree is called a “Great Argus”, and it was as long as a young child!)
The one on the railing, the Great Cussarow, looked like it would lunge at any moment.
Right after we passed those birds, we were met by two or three little Cotton-Topped Tamarins. Now, I don’t really care for monkeys. I think they are ugly, creepy, and grosser than most animals. Same with koalas. But if I had to get a monkey I would definitely want it to be these guys. They were small and brown and orange in color, but their highlighting feature was their mane of pure white hair. They look like the coolest little rockstars ever. Plus, they weren’t shy. My dad set his hand on the railing and one of them just walked over it to impress the other tourists.
Also in the Pangolin Dome was a little “Kingdoms of the Night” exhibit. (If you don’t know what “Kingdoms of the Night” is, go to the Henry Doorly Zoo under the desert dome). They call it The Nocturnal Zone. There was a lemur and a loris and a monkey but that was it. This room was so dark we had to feel along the walls to find our way out into the light. There was also an “Amazon river” with a GIANT FISH and a some stingrays and other creatures of the Amazon.
In addition to the two that met us at the entrance, there were several other beautiful birds flying around. Scarlet Ibis, Blue Macaws, Red-and-Blue Lorikeets, and Bee-eaters were some of the birds you could see.
There were so many animals in this place that we didn’t even see! Their website says there was a two-toed sloth climbing around. We saw some tortoise but there were so many of those, scattered throughout the zoo. There was one building with practically every kind of lizard and turtle and tortoise in the world. Plus, the Iguana Tree. (I just looked it up, and the Pangolin Dome doesn’t have any pangolins but the is whole building is pangolin-shaped!)
There was no aquarium which is probably the only thing that makes Zoo #2 on my “Favorite Zoo’s List.” I know. You may think I am crazy but the Henry Doorly Zoo remains #1. I really loved the Insectarium and the whole Taipei Zoo was basically the Lied Jungle but the lack of an Aquarium and other indoor exhibits like that put it in number two.
It is close also because of this guy….
…who did something legendary! My dad looked at him and said, and I quote, “Wassup buddy?” and the monkey acknowledged him with the coolest “wassup head nod” ever!
A few weeks after we came back, we went to the Night Safari here in Chiang Mai. It was a Homeschool Co-op event and the Night Safari is probably #3 in my “Favorite Zoo’s List.” That is a story for a different post though.
There is so much more that happened in Taiwan so….
….To be continued…..
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Earthquake in Taiwan
Recently, we visited Taiwan to apply for new Thai Visas. We were on the eleventh floor of our hotel when the earthquake hit. At first the earthquake was small, then all of the sudden the building started shaking really badly. It felt like we were being shook by a big hand. It looked like the buildings outside the window were teetering and tottering. In our room, a cup fell off of the counter and the hanging lights were banging into the wall.
My dad told us to stand in the doorway because the doorway is the strongest place in a building. The building shook for about a minute, then it finally stopped. My dad said there would most likely be aftershocks. The second aftershock was pretty big, but the rest were pretty small. There were over 1,100 of them altogether while we were there. At least 14 people were killed.
After the first earthquake, we went outside and saw some rubble that fell off buildings. Everyone in the city was perfectly normal because earthquakes are a regular thing there.
I would like everyone who is reading this to pray for the 14 families who lost loved ones in the earthquake. Also, if you would like to read more about our trip to Taiwan my brother wrote a blogpost that you can see here.
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On the Road
It is so hard to capture in a photo the experience of driving in Thailand. Before we moved, I was very worried about my ability to adapt to driving on what felt like the “wrong side” of the car and the “wrong side” of the road. In truth, making this change was not as difficult as I imagined it would be. It does not feel “wrong” anymore at all…just different.
Handling the flow of traffic and wrapping my mind around a whole different set of safety standards has proven to be the bigger challenge to adapt to. Getting into our car each day and driving to our various destinations is (statistically) the most dangerous thing any of us does voluntarily over and over again. In Thailand, this risk feels exponentially higher. The motorcycles weaving in and out between the cars as we drive at high speeds (some of them with 3-4 people piled on and moms holding babies in their arms); the trucks piled high with boxes, bags and people; the narrowness of many 2-way roads; and the street sellers who take advantage of the waits at red lights all require a greater level of attentiveness than any experience I’ve had driving in America!
Here are some of the daily sites of being on the road in Thailand:
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My Home
Autobiography Part 5
I was born in Denver Colorado, after I turned one we moved to Atkinson; but we lived outside of town. When I was six years old we moved into town. Every time we moved; I liked the next house more that the first. I loved our home at the ranch and was sad to move, but then I started to like our next home even more (after we got all of the bats out of the house of course). It wasn’t just because of the house itself that I liked it, it was because of the life it gave me. When we moved, we met our neighbors and have been good friends ever since. Also, I lived closer to my friend, Paisley, and I got to see her more often out of school. We also started home schooling in that house, which was a big–but great–change.
Here’s the thing: Our house was the oldest house in town. Most of the people in the town thought we were crazy for wanting to move in. There wasn’t a single room in the house that we didn’t redo, and it took a very long time. Like I said, we moved in when I was six years old, and we finished the house when I was ten. That is a LONG time. But after all that time it was finished, and we even had an open house at our house and everyone in town was invited to come see our house as it was completely remodeled.
Our house was finished around Christmas time. When May came, the big news hit: We were moving again. This time, we were moving to Thailand. There were a lot of tears shed that night. I remember my mom calling us for a family meeting. I asked her if it was good news and she just said, “I think so”. I didn’t know what I was expecting, but it was not that. Everyone was sad, but I think we were all a little bit happy too. Even if we didn’t say we were happy, I think that there was a little bit of happiness somewhere.
Then the journey began. We started fundraising by telling our friends and preaching in churches (this was mostly my parents work). Our church even hosted us a goodbye party and gave us a great farewell. We gave up a lot. I gave up dance, which was really hard for me. My dad gave up his business. And we all gave up things like our family, friends, and home. Even though it was hard, we made the most of it and came to Thailand feeling hopeful. We knew that this is where God wanted us to be, and we knew that new friends and a new life was waiting for us in Thailand.
Packing took a long time and a lot of effort. We had to think of all the things that we were going to want but we were also limited, so we had to think of all the things that we were going to need. Think about when you go on a trip and you must pack all your things. You are worried that you don’t have everything, and you must make sure you haven’t forgotten anything because you are not going to be back for some time. Well, think about that but you are not going to be back for two years! We had to make sure we got everything! When we got to the airport, we officially had thirteen checked bags and six carry-on suitcases. We also each had a back-pack on our back. We are a family of six, so that means we had a total of 25 bags!
We had three flights. The first flight was from Omaha to Detroit, the second flight was from Detroit to South Korea, and the third flight was from South Korea to Chiang Mai, Thailand. When we made it to Chiang Mai it was pretty late at night and we were all so tired that we could barely stay awake. We all were ready to get to our house and fall asleep. When we got to our new house some of the other missionaries gave us bed sheets and other things like shampoo and conditioner. Then, for the next week or two, missionaries took turns helping us shop for things that we would need and showing us their favorite places to get food. After a while, we started to finally settle in and Thailand slowly started to feel like home.
I have lived in Thailand for one year now, and I love it here. Even though I miss a lot of things in America, I think that I could live in Thailand for a long time.
PS. If you want to see our house in Atkinson, Nebraska for yourself, you can! Since we aren’t living in it right now, it is an airbnb for people to stay at. Check it out here:
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An Unplanned Trip to Laos
I don’t believe in luck or in jinxes, but whenever my mom says that we have to take a “short” trip to the Immigration Office, it seems we are actually in for a whole lot more. For example, this last trip was supposed to take “maybe two hours” if we get there early enough to be first in the queue line. I mean, we’ve done this kind of extension before and it was fairly simple. Mom was even hoping we would get home early enough to have a normal day of school. So, we left at 6:30 A.M. and got home at midnight. Here’s how it went: (read in a James Bond British accent, if you have one)
It was an early Thursday morning. The weather, some of the nicest I have seen since the Big Move. We all got into clean, respectable clothes, for this was the standard. We left as the sun was coming up, shining the world in its eerie light. We were some of the very first to arrive, acquiring queue numbers that would set us among the first to travel to the counter. We had some time before the counters would open, so we found the necessary forms and filled out the paperwork needed for this visit. Then, paperwork completed, we sat in the empty plastic chairs, and waited about 45 minutes before the counters opened. By then, there were no empty chairs and people were forced to stand.
After a kind gentleman came out to tell the novices (a category the likes of which we are not in) how to proceed, our queue number was called. My mother, my sisters, and I went to the counter and confidently passed them our passports and paperwork. They were supposed to look at them and verify the validity before handing them back and sending us on to the next set of chairs and row of counters with a new queue number in hand. But our life is not one of ease, for when we spoke to the dear officer behind the counter, he informed us we could only be permitted another 30 days in the fine country of Thailand if we first left the country at the border. So, accepting our ill-timed fate, we left and sat on the steps of the office, waiting for my father and brother to get their situations worked out (fortunately for them, they have VISAs of a different sort). My father then needed to stand in yet another line at yet another window for yet another process. While waiting for him to finish, my mother, siblings, and I went to the nearest 7 ELEVEn (which is, in fact, spelled as such) to get some snacks to satisfy our grumbling stomachs. This was the second time getting our sustenance from a petrol station that day, for we had earlier purchased fruit from a stand at a petrol station for our morning meal.
Our father met us, and from there we all left for another unexpected adventure. We piled in the car and left town to drive through the mountains of Chiangmai. By and by the hours went, though we all knew we still had several more kilometers to go. We stopped at a third petrol station to use the loo and to find our lunch. Fortunately, this was one of the fancier PTTs. Fancier meaning there was the popular KFC in addition to the Five Star Chicken vendor, Dunkin’ Donuts stand, Cafe Amazon, and, of course, 7 ELEVEn. Yet again, we ventured forward, this time making a dreadful mess in the car with a huge bucket of fried chicken in the middle seat.
Fast forward the hours passed. After several devices died and our only entertainment was staring out at the mountains, and we finally got to the border. Memories filled our brains from our previous failed trip to the Laos border (that fateful trip, we ended up turning back empty-handed and flying to Malaysia the next day). When we stepped out of the car, we immediately coughed and gagged for fresh air for the dreaded smoky season had already hit that region quite hard. We walked the short walk to the border from the parking lot and got in line behind the small hoard of backpackers that were there ahead of us. Leaving the father and brother behind, we journeyed to a new country. We each, in turn, handed the men our passports, scanned our fingerprints, and stared awkwardly at the face-surveying camera, before walking to the bus stop.
After a small wait, we climbed into the bus and drove for a singular minute over a wide river before stopping at another structure exactly like the one we had just left: that one in Thailand, this one in Laos. Leaving the bus, we stood in yet another line behind yet another counter. Upon discovering it to be the wrong line, we began again: another line, another counter. After handing over a pile of cash in exchange for Laotian VISAs and entry stamps in our passports (the likes of which would prove we left Thailand for a few minutes) back to the bus stop we headed. We were done standing and waiting, now we could sit and wait. After 30 minutes or so, we could board the next bus headed for Thailand. The scenery was beautiful for we were right by the mountains and they looked right out of a painting, especially with a film of smoke covering everything the naked eye could see. We boarded the bus and ventured back to Thailand.
Everything went rather smoothly after that. We drove another grueling 5 1/2 hours home in the dark, with leftover fried chicken and 7 ELEVEn for our supper. We did have the good fortune to find a 7 ELEVEn with an ice cream cooler, so our day was topped off with Thai quality ice cream for dessert.
We came home at midnight and immediately fell asleep. That was the end of it. Ha! It might never be the end of it. Nevertheless, this adventure is over, and a new one is coming. I can feel it.
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The Potter’s House
A couple weeks ago we had a pottery class. First, we had to find the place and we did. There weren’t any parking spots so we had to pretty much just park on the side of the road. We were so close to the wall that we couldn’t even open the door.
Then we entered the shop. We were early so we just waited until the class started. First, we got a tour of the shop and we got to see the kiln. I didn’t know what a kiln was, but I know now it’s like a big oven.
Then it was time to make and paint a mug. We got a chunk of clay to shape into a mug. Mine was a little bit different, but I still liked it. It was green and it had a snail on it.
If your mug was dry and cracking, you just get a sponge and wipe it and the cracks would get filled in. While we worked outside, the big kids worked inside. Josiah made a mug that looked like it was dripping and Selah’s wasn’t a mug it was a cup with a lid.
Next, we painted the mugs and the cup. Then we had to wait for three weeks to get them back. Sadly, Selah’s cup got smooshed during that time.
I thought the pottery class was going to be like you put a little piece of clay on a spinning wheel and mold it. Even though it was different than I thought it be, I still enjoyed it.
Well, I guess this is it.
Signing off, JPK
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My Passion
Autobiography Part 4
I have been dancing since I was 3. However, I have been clogging since I was 4 years old. I love clogging and I am really good at it! My mom taught clogging and took me to my first competition in Tennessee when I was 5 years old. At that competition, I got third place in my short solo. After that I went to lots of competitions with my team and I loved it so much.
Then 2020 covid happened and the studio closed which made me really sad. I just knew I wasn’t done clogging. My mom told me that there was a studio in Lincoln that we could look into. I knew which studio she was talking about because I had seen them a competitions, and I loved that idea.
I went to LUXE Dance Academy which was four hours away. The instructors had recognized me from competitions and said I could join the team. I took private lessons with the teacher for about two months on zoom to learn the dances and then went to my first class. Most of the girls recognized me and were really excited to have me on the team. My first competition with LUXE was Nationals! I was so nervous, but I also had lot of fun. After that season my mom asked me if I wanted to keep doing it and I said “yes, for sure!”
The next year we got new dances and I also had two duets and a solo. We went to two dance competitions (which are different than clogging competitions because there are all different types of dance). I did really well and they even called me back for one of the competitions to go to their national competition. I was the only one who went, and I got 1st place in my solo.
Next, my whole team went to Silver Dollar City in Branson Missouri to qualify for nationals (to qualify you have to 1st,2nd,or 3rd). I got first in almost everything and so did my team! Since we qualified, we got to go to the National Clogging Competition in Nashville!
My team and I knew that this was going to be my last competition since my family had been called to Thailand and so we knew we had to do the best we could. We worked super hard and when Nationals came around I felt really good about how we did.
I always say that I like to set and achieve goals. Dancing is my passion because being a good dancer is a goal I set and long time ago, and I got to achieve it. All of my teachers and friends have pushed me to be the best dancer I can be and now I am a National Champion Dancer and always will be.
It was really hard to say goodbye and I miss dancing with my team so much. I still keep up with dance here in Thailand and I hope that someday I will be able to dance with my team again!
I made a video slideshow with some of my favorite dance memories. Click here to watch the video on our YouTube channel.
