First day of work!

Saturday! It has been interesting finding projects here because last year’s HELP group was in a different city. We’ve talked to a few people, but as of our first day, only had plans to help move supplies into a new building at a local school. We arrived at 8 only to find that the local monks had told the teachers the most fortunate time to move in would be at nine, so we could only move desks, chairs, and nasty eroded furniture to the front door of the new building until then. People here ask the monks specific questions like that—what time to have a marriage or move into a new house so that they have a blessing over it. Pretty neat! We moved school equipment for a couple of hours and swept out a few rooms. We found PLENTY of gross looking spiders, cobwebs, and cockroaches, but for our only plan of the day, we were excited about it. As we were cleaning the school told us we could paint the metal kindergarten playgrounds and the lines for the sports courts if we wanted, so one hour later we were armed with gloves, paint brushes, and bright colored paints. We sanded the equipment first and got to work in the HOT and incredibly humid weather. It’s so muggy here that the shade doesn’t even feel cool! We painted the lines to the basketball and a type of volleyball game with your feet (I don’t know what it’s called yet!), which was blistering hot standing out on a concrete slab. We finished by 4 or 5 and rewarded ourselves with ice cream. We could get used to cheap cold treats!

It's really slow downloading pictures so I'll just add a couple!

Us at the house! We look outside and see a hillside Buddhist temple. Sweet!

Delicious little bananas. Way more flavor than we are used to back home!