We got up early today to see the sunrise… turns out there really isn’t much of one because of the mountains. Although, we did get lucky and we were able to see a thunderstorm heading over the ocean. At about eight a.m we heading to Phang Nga which is about a two hour drive away. The hotel we are staying at for the next two weeks is called The Andaburi Resort. It is smaller, but still very nice, although we have about a fifteen minute walk to the ocean. The beaches here are still amazing, I think better than Karon Bay because they are a bit cleaner. So much trash floats up along the shore line after stormy weather there or blows around from lack of garbage maintenance and hits the shore line. We got in about ten a.m and checked into our rooms with our roommates who we should be staying with for the remainder of the trip. At the other hotel, I was with a girl named Sheri from California; 27, very nice, pretty bubbly. There is a woman named Carol on our team who is about 55 years old and a Canada native who is now living in the Middle East teaching ESL. She is VERY high maintenance and right off the bat you know it is going to be a long trip for her. Apparently, she cannot share rooms with other people because she is used to living alone with her cat and dog. She “doesn’t like to share space and needs her own down time.” Going into this trip that was one of the biggest questions because of how expensive it can get… can you share a room with others?! Long story short, she decides here that she cannot and made a big scene and had to pay for her own room. Turns out our team leader found out that she changed the reservations at the hotel two weeks ago and added a room in our Jennifer’s name (team leader) so she would have a room next to ours for the two weeks. CRAZY LADY. So because of all of this, my roommate and I ended up getting split up and one of us was in the single room…. Me! I wouldn’t have minded having a roommate, but I can see where in about three or four days, it will be nice to just be able to come back from work and not wait for showers, etc. 
At eleven we had our first opening meeting with Anne which was a video and a little bit about the Habitat program here in Thailand. Our schedule was shifted around a little and we decided that instead of going to the site where we are building to just meet the family we would actually get right to work. After a quick bite, we were off to the job site which is about thirty minutes away from the hotel. It is hard the first day because we are all trying to take in so much about the area since we do not have a lot of free time. Rubber trees are native to this area and plantations are virtually everywhere. Each tree has a tap that looks like a little bowl to drain the rubber; every now and then you see workers actually tapping the trees and collecting rubber.
Elephants, also their native animal are a common thing to see on the way. There are two spots with several elephants being trained or ridden. We haven’t quite figured out yet what else they are doing with that many elephants.
We arrived the site about 1:00 p.m and were introduced to the family.
After our daily safety orientation we jumped right in. The area for the house had been set – they had six pillars set into the ground for us to see the shape of the house and use as the base for the foundation area. A lot of the tasks we split up amongst our 14 team members. Cemement is the only task that takes almost everyone because it is such a time consuming job as you are starting from the beginning. We are mixing one bag of cemement, with 20 gravel baskets, and 28 sand buckets along with eight buckets of water. Luckily we have a very small cement mixer to mix one load at a time of cement. (I can’t imagine 
the job without the mixer since this already is very time consuming.) After the cement is ready, we form lines to pass down the cement to the pillar spots for the main house support, we then have a line on the other side passing down the empty buckets to speed up the process. After we were done setting the pillar foundation we used two large piles of bricks from the old house to be used as the base for the housing. We had to use sludge hammers to further break down the cement bricks and throw them basically inside the entire house. This would be the first layer to the earth base floor. We finished all of this work in about two and a half hours; the family and the host, Anne, were all shocked. They said they had never seen this process get done so fast. We even took several breaks in between our work due to the hot, muggy, weather. After about thirty minutes of work we were all already drenched in sweat! YUCKKK! Our days will end every day at 4:00 p.m. unless we finish early… today we started tomorrows work because we had about an hour left and thought we might as well utilize our time. 
Heading back to the hotel, we all felt great and gung-ho for tomorrow since we finished early, we weren’t sore, tired, and we were proud of the work we already had done for the family. Jane, Ashley, Sally, and Sheri and I all went straight to the ocean for about an hour. (I will write up a little about each member in the following days so you know who I am talking about and I will know more about them as well.) Dinner was excellent at a place called Peter Pan’s which specialized in Thai and American foods…. Everyone was VERY excited since we had already had Thai meals six times in a row. Verrry sleepy after dinner, so we headed home and popped into bed for tomorrow will be our first FULL day of work.
At eleven we had our first opening meeting with Anne which was a video and a little bit about the Habitat program here in Thailand. Our schedule was shifted around a little and we decided that instead of going to the site where we are building to just meet the family we would actually get right to work. After a quick bite, we were off to the job site which is about thirty minutes away from the hotel. It is hard the first day because we are all trying to take in so much about the area since we do not have a lot of free time. Rubber trees are native to this area and plantations are virtually everywhere. Each tree has a tap that looks like a little bowl to drain the rubber; every now and then you see workers actually tapping the trees and collecting rubber.
Elephants, also their native animal are a common thing to see on the way. There are two spots with several elephants being trained or ridden. We haven’t quite figured out yet what else they are doing with that many elephants.
We arrived the site about 1:00 p.m and were introduced to the family.
After our daily safety orientation we jumped right in. The area for the house had been set – they had six pillars set into the ground for us to see the shape of the house and use as the base for the foundation area. A lot of the tasks we split up amongst our 14 team members. Cemement is the only task that takes almost everyone because it is such a time consuming job as you are starting from the beginning. We are mixing one bag of cemement, with 20 gravel baskets, and 28 sand buckets along with eight buckets of water. Luckily we have a very small cement mixer to mix one load at a time of cement. (I can’t imagine 
the job without the mixer since this already is very time consuming.) After the cement is ready, we form lines to pass down the cement to the pillar spots for the main house support, we then have a line on the other side passing down the empty buckets to speed up the process. After we were done setting the pillar foundation we used two large piles of bricks from the old house to be used as the base for the housing. We had to use sludge hammers to further break down the cement bricks and throw them basically inside the entire house. This would be the first layer to the earth base floor. We finished all of this work in about two and a half hours; the family and the host, Anne, were all shocked. They said they had never seen this process get done so fast. We even took several breaks in between our work due to the hot, muggy, weather. After about thirty minutes of work we were all already drenched in sweat! YUCKKK! Our days will end every day at 4:00 p.m. unless we finish early… today we started tomorrows work because we had about an hour left and thought we might as well utilize our time. 
Heading back to the hotel, we all felt great and gung-ho for tomorrow since we finished early, we weren’t sore, tired, and we were proud of the work we already had done for the family. Jane, Ashley, Sally, and Sheri and I all went straight to the ocean for about an hour. (I will write up a little about each member in the following days so you know who I am talking about and I will know more about them as well.) Dinner was excellent at a place called Peter Pan’s which specialized in Thai and American foods…. Everyone was VERY excited since we had already had Thai meals six times in a row. Verrry sleepy after dinner, so we headed home and popped into bed for tomorrow will be our first FULL day of work.
wow Amanda what an experience..can't wait to hear about your travels and see pictures...The Wolskys
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