Let's Groove: Dancing Up A Family Of Choice Storm for Little Natoh

artemislives(74)

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There are days you find yourself doing something you've never done before. And so it was on Saturday when I found myself at my friend, Monique's house here in Doi Saket, Northern Thailand, recreating a dance video from youtube. 😆 🤣

Let's back track a weeny bit. Monique is Dutch, extremely well traveled and multi-lingual, and lives here in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand. She has a special relationship with an extended ethnic Lahu family here in the mountains. Lahu people are not Thai at all (genetically, racially, culturally and linguistically a distinct & unique ethnic tribal group), and they do not all enjoy the same rights as Thai citizens. One of the little girls from that village, Natoh, is 5 years old, and will come to Chiang Mai later this year to begin school. Education in her mountain village is extremely limited. Because Natoh speaks almost no Thai and speaks no English and isn't yet happy to wear shoes, there's a serious adjustment phase ahead. Her Lahu aunt (dancing in the video) will come to live with Monique also, to help it all work.

Meanwhile, Monique decided to do something that Natoh LOVES, which is to DANCE, to help ease the transition & help her to feel she is among friends. And thus, there we were, an assortment of interesting global people, speaking Dutch, English, Thai and Lahu, having FUN and letting one little girl feel that really it might be OK to come to the city for school.

What dance were we all trying to learn and record??

Next month we're having the dance-lunhc-Natoh meetup at Mimi's house, and going to record a dance which my Thai daughter @ploimrt will choreograph, to Sister's Sledge's We Are Family.

Cos We Are All That: Global Family Of Choice. Dancing. Fit. Having Fun. & Making Room For One More.

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