Thai BBQ!: August 4, 2009

Break time... learning how to play marbles!!

I LOVE THESE CHILDREN...... They are our future! xoxo

MORE WALLS! Today we went all of the way to the top of the house with the bricks. The skilled workers had touched up what we had done the day before and had added up a few more window frames for us. It was a very slow day going day because once we had our walls up, there wasn’t much more we could do on the inside until that very top on the outside was done. This consisted of slicing the bricks diagonally and really needed to be done by the guys because they were taller and could get up on the scaffolding and reach!

We met a woman named Kelly, who was originally from Montana. She had been down to Thailand for a Habitat trip herself when she met a Thai man who she is now engaged too. She works for a several non-profit organizations around the area and trying to put together another organization to help clean up the grounds. For lunch she took us down to the local orphanage called, Home and Life. They have a little bakery to help raise money for their work and the children that stay there. They have about 15 kids that stay there, more girls than boys, and they range in ages from five-fifteen years old. Unfortunately, it was a school day when we went, so we didn’t get to see them! The children were there for various reasons, some affected by the tsunami, some parents couldn’t afford to take care of them, and some parents had passed away and they didn’t have any other family.

After lunch, we continued with the exterior walls – luckily the clouds were present which took a bit of the intense heat away…. But still very warm and muggy!

For dinner, we went to a Thai BBQ buffet. It was 99 Baht for all you can eat. If you left any food on your plate, you paid more – so it was incentive to take a little at a time to not waste any food! They put out little boilers and grills in front of us, four people per. We got to choose what we wanted to grill up and make! It was pretty fun!

Walls, Walls, and More Walls!: August 3, 2009

Our first day back on the job site after a relaxing weekend! It was time to continue adding on to our walls. We had done about four layers around the entire house on Friday. Today, we were to get as far as possible. We literally put up walls for six hours. It actually went by very fast, but in six hours, we only added about eight layers. We also had a lot of clean up around the bottom of our walls that drops off as we go. The good part of this is our home, is really starting to look like a home! After today we have a new appreciation for those bricklayers; it is hard, tedious work to make sure that it all gets done correctly!

Through today, we have reached the point where we are now p on the scaffolding and we only have a limited access to that – so sharing is a necessity which means that we can only do so much at one time. Should be interesting to see how tomorrow goes!

At this point, our team has really seen the first big point in which we have touched “Sak” the homeowner…. He has been smiling all day and saying that it looks beautiful, or “Suay”. He has been saving up for so long to do this and it is great to see how this is all unfolding for him!

Blessed: August 2, 2009

After little sleep, we got up to head out to church. A few went to the Christian service and everyone wanted to head to the Buddhist temple. First stop: Lunch. We headed to a beachside restaurant which was affected by the tsunami. There were trees with ladders now attached with signs saying “Tsunami, Climb Up” and pictures and memorials of those who were affected. It was crazy to think about the Tsunami, because there really isn’t anywhere to go quick enough… all of us had a thought and a prayer for those who were taken away. We then drove about forty five minutes away to a very excluded area; one of the poorer areas. When we arrived, we had about fifteen to twenty minutes to walk around look at the paintings, and pray to the Buddha. You aren’t supposed to ever have your feet facing a Buddha statue because feet are the lowest, and most dirty part of your body – then you bow three times, and have a moment to pray.

We were very lucky – Tom was able to set up time for a Monk to come in to the temple to bless us. It was a very different experience!! He was able to put the blessing bracelets on the men, but not us women… they have to hand it to us since they are not allowed to touch us. We are supposed to leave the bracelets until they fall off…. Which I will be doing! It was very small and so different from what I expected, but it was amazing all the work that went into this temple.

On our way home, we stopped by the Tsunami Memorial. It was a little building that had pictures of before and after of the land, demographics and people. It also had outlined plans of what was to happen for the aftermath, cleanup, long-term plans, and help. There were two little stands that sold things, some of which was from the Tsunami Foundation – I purchased a lot really cute souvenirs from this place because it was all going to a great cause.

Life in the Bay’s of Phang Nga: August 1, 2009

Our first full touristy free day!! When you go on trips with Habitat for Humanity, you generally have at least two days that are fun-filled with activities within the area of visit. We are in Southern Thailand, staying in Khao Lak. Just outside is Phang Nga which is a city comparable to Seattle in size. For our free day, we traveled about one hour through Phang Nga to the Bay’s. The drive was mostly through town and it was much more busy than where we are staying. Although, I think that it looked to be one of the poorer areas I have seen so far; slum like.

The Pier & Our Tail Boats

One thing I will mention right now (that I have found to be the biggest and only disappointment) is that it is very hard to know about the areas we visit because of the language barrier. Tom, one of our hosts speaks English, but very little and at times it is hard to communicate. While we were driving through, we had so many questions about the area, but no one to tell us about it…. unfortunately, this was similar with all of the places we visited today. My plan is to go home and read more about the places in the books I have borrowed and piece my trip together! :)

Anyhow, we arrived at the pier about 9:00 a.m. and split up into two tail boats. We headed to a large ferry-like boat about fifteen minutes away that was anchored in the middle of a bay. This is where we got into small, two-man rubber canoes. I went with Ashley and we had a guide take us around. When I say guide, they just would row; as I mentioned – it was very hard because they don’t speak English so we didn’t get to learn about what Bay we were in. He took us to several caves and within the rocks because we got there during low tide. The two rock formations that he said in English were “Pigs Nose” and ”King Kong”. It was incredibly relaxing and I could have done it all day long!!!

After he took us through the caves and paddled around for a while, we headed back to the ferry to jump into the tail boats to head to a floating village called “Koh Pan Yee” where the sea gypsies live. It was originally built for the “James Bond, 007” movie. It is now only a tourist based community and as soon as it closes its hopes, it becomes an excluded, quiet, muslim community. It looked really cool from the water, it was all raised up on a pier and had two large restaurants and marketplaces. The team had a seafood lunch there….. I as you all know am not a fan of seafood. If anything, this freaked me out even more. Whole fish, bones, skin, and eyes were cooked up and thrown on the table, uhhhhh. I passed on that!! Afterwards we had time to roam through the trinket shopes, a lot of it was jewelry such as pearls and t-shirts. Not much of a variety…. At times, it smelled so bad walking through because of all of the dead sea life and the hot heat. The people were very very pushy at this place, they would touch you, follow you, and beg you to look at their shops. It got to be awkward – but good to see the gypsy community.

After about an hour and a half, we jumped into our large tail boats and headed for James Bond Island. The actually island is called “Khoa Tapoo; (Nail Island)” and its famous landmark is called “Khoa Ping-Gan; (Slide Rock).” This first found its way onto the international map through its starring role in “James Bond, The Man with the Golden Gun.” This is what most of us were looking forward too because you are constantly hearing about it and it is supposed to be beautiful. On our way there, the bay started to get extremely windy. We arrived and the sand was covered in a layer of broken sea shells… a little surprised they hadn’t broken down more from the water. As they were pelting us left and right, we sprinted up from the water to check out the island. Maybe this is why it is called Nail Island???? It was packed full of tourists; we asked Tom a few questions as we went and he said for some reason it seems to be that they bring all of the tourists there at the same time! The rock formation was huge and it had a beautiful setting. It was hard to take pictures because as we were saying the “other” foreigners would just stop right in the middle of your pictures!! It took us several times to try to get a picture! We walked around, they had a few shops, also very touchy, and a small cave that you could climb up to. We soon were headed back to the pier… it had been a longer day than we had expected; but it was so good to have a day out in the sun relaxing instead of building! We are spoiled and really miss not having a lot of free time!

After we got back and showered, all of us younger kids wanted to have a pub crawl… naturally, it turned out to Tiffy’s for dinner (the place we go every evening for a beer and internet!) and a little place called the Everyday Bar and Grill. Every night they have a Thai guy that sings and plays guitar…. His hits were shockingly The Rolling Stones! SO FUN! They even had a dart board for me to show off my skills! :) It of course ended up to just be me, Ashley, Ben, Matt, and Heath – we played a few rounds of cricket and talked with the locals… it was really fun to be there.

We called her Luna... reminded me of Luna Lovegood!!! (Harry Potter Fans...!) & Had to post for Dad!!

Putting up the Walls: July 31, 2009

Very low key day at the job site…. Today was the day we began putting up the walls. We were scheduled to put up four rows around the outside framing of the home. We ended up doing four plus walls. We used large concrete bricks for everything.

After work, we headed to a waterfall about ten minutes away from our hotel. It had one of those bridges that swing and don’t feel really stable! Put our feet in, climbed to the top, and relaxed just listening to the water. I was very sleepy today as were most of my teammates.

“Ron” – My School Visit in Phang Nga: July 30, 2009

Going into today, we knew it was going to be a half day of work with lunch at the beach and a school visit to the local village school. I have obviously been looking forward to this day to see how the classrooms are and see all of the adorable Thai kids!!!

At the work site today all we had to finish before lunch was setting the concrete for the final touches of the foundation. This was a very repetitive day, the usual process times 50! We ended up finishing the entire flooring in about three hours.

For lunch we headed down to the ocean near the build site; it was a very different perspective because it was open water versus a bay. The surrounding area wasn’t dirty per say, but had a lot of garbage around. It is very interesting how littered certain places look – we aren’t sure if it is the weather blowing it around with lack of trash cans…. They burn their garbage in cauldrons out by the street; can you say pollution! Or if it is just still a mess from the Tsunami and it is one of those never ending cycles of clean up.

Off to the school we went – it was very small, only three classrooms for the older children, ages 6-10 and one classroom for the 4-6 age group. There was also a building that was the designated activity, recreation, gym area. The activity room is where we were at half of the time with the children. When we arrived they were all in there and we introduced ourselves to them and told them we were going to teach them a few songs/games. They do not speak a lot English, they are learning so they do understand a few words which was really fun to see what they did understand. We did a clapping game that was sort of weird and hard for them to follow. Next we did the Hokey Pokey which got them and us more involved – it was silly for them “shaking all about!” We also sang Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes; I was shocked because a couple of boys actually helped to lead it and knew all of the words. After we did our thing, a couple of us really wanted them to teach us something, myself included – they sang two songs with funny little motions, one was about an old duck and not wanting to look like the duck. The other was about killing and grilling chicken! Ha They were pretty cute and we did get them on video… I think so I will have to show you!
With all of us raising money for Habitat, our expenses were cheaper than usual and we actually had a little leftover. With that money, we bought and donated to the children sports equipment for them to use at school. They were in need of this and it was so cute to see them because they didn’t really know what to do! We shared snacks and had a keg of ice cream for them to all have an ice cream cone or two! They all lined up and after we would give them the ice cream they would bow and say Kop-Coon-Kah….Thank you….. SO SO CUTE! The little ones, 4-6 joined us for this – they get nap time in the afternoon so that couldn’t be interrupted! LUCKY! While outside when I was done scooping ice cream, we got to interact with the kids and try to talk with them. They treated us like celebrities!! The ten-year-olds had post-its out and pens and were going around having all of us sign them like we did in Disneyland! The boys were SO silly!! I wrote my name and I asked him what his name was, he wrote down Ron. So we went back and forth talking and he asked me to sign his hat! We took a few silly pictures and after I went back to trying to talk with the girls (very difficult having the language barrier). Apparently, as Ron was walking away, Ashley overheard him say, “A-Mannn-Da” in a cute little sigh voice! Haha how cute…. I was also told by one of the girls that I was beautiful and my heart just sank, they were all amazing, amazing kids. As we were walking out a few of them signed to us (including Ron!) I love you!

It is a totally different culture, partly the age I am sure – but the children are very respectful, they listen, they are polite, they are fun, and DARLING!! I am so happy that I got the opportunity to go see the schools over there. Just the little interaction I am sure made a big difference in their day – I know it did in mine!

Later that afternoon, Ashley, Diana, and I made appointments a little massage place across the street. It is quite popular with our group because they offer a variety of massages and they are FABULOUS! Ashley and I decided for our first one to get an Aloevera Thai Massage. This is a more tradition Swedish massage where they massage you from head to toe…. One thing I learned is that they are VERY VERY intimate and you don’t find that in the States. I joked around that afterwards I don’t need a mammogram this year because they are all over the place. I guess that is very common – our leader is a massage therapist in Wisconsin and said in many other places around the world they literally go from head to toe. The price for this….. $10.00!!!! With a tip we ended up paying about $13.00 which is still better than anything you will find in America. A traditional Thai massage, which I am planning on this weekend is more stretching of the body. Several people have done it and it too is very intimate, physically climbing on you, and it feels like Yoga being done for you. Those who have had it done said that it was great and they were a little sore but that was because their bodies were actually stretched out! We will see… the cost for that, $7.50! Crazy, crazy!

Love and miss you all!