Building a house

Last week we got word that there was a woman out in a tribal village whose house had burned down and who lacked the means of rebuilding it herself. Our group helped knock down the brittle walls yesterday while we worked on the sink, so we joined today for some more cleanup and construction preparation.

We helped remove charred debris from where the house stood before, knocked down some cinder block walls, pulled out wooden posts that will be replaced with cement ones, and hauled who knows how much sand up a steep hill to be mixed with cement. 

 

This explains all the spicy food!

 

We hauled it up this hill, and around this corner and started piling it up by the cinder blocks.

After about an hour of moving it bucket by bucket, fireman brigade style, we were exhausted, sweating profusely, and unable to wipe the dirt off our clothes and arms because we were so sticky. And we had barely even made a dent on the pile! We called it a day at that point and may or may not have stopped at KFC on the way home for lunch. Some things are just good for the soul when you’ve worked so hard! We will continue this project over the next week or so. It’s a lot of work to build a house and I honestly don’t know how this lady would have done it herself. She has a really amazing teenage son who was working harder than any of us hauling dirt, and when we got there she was shoveling dirt off the foundation of the house while holding a baby on her back, but the rest of the villagers just sat and watched while we worked, which aside from making you feel super awkward also makes you wonder why they haven’t stepped in and assisted her! It’s such a different way of life out there—toddlers walking around in the mud without pants or shoes on, ladies carrying big loads on their backs looped around their foreheads so they can carry babies, chickens roaming the yards, the nastiest slope-backed pig I’ve ever seen, and human poop in the street..I’ve never been any place quite like it. It has sure made us grateful for the hard bed and non-air conditioned room we live in here, but we appreciate the opportunity to help people who honestly need it!

Finishing the sink

The school did a lot of work on the sink over the weekend, but we were able to come back today to help with some finishing touches. We filled all the cracks between the tile with blue grout using cut up flip flops, drilled holes to secure the water pipe into place, and screwed on the faucets. 

It is way cool to think that this was just a cement wall behind a cafeteria a week ago! Manual labor is tough but the results are rewarding.

 

 Justin the faucet model

 

Our group with the handyman who helped us today. He’s really good at what he does!

We’re planning a hand washing and teeth brushing campaign at the school next week with an assembly, some relay races, and art projects to help promote proper technique of these practices. Stay tuned!

I am goose!

Monday was our first day of teaching. We have both had experience as volunteer English teachers, me in China and Justin in Canada as a missionary, so we weren’t too worried about it. We didn’t come into this with any set curriculum, but we knew what we wanted to teach for the day and figured we’d find out soon enough what to plan for next week. We got dropped off at our school and had an awkward couple of minutes where we just stood there before they sent the second grade teacher over to talk to us. Her name is Sumalee and she’s very nice and helpful and, as it turns out, the only teacher who is not afraid to speak English. She told us we would be teaching the 5^th and 6^th graders for two hours each, 5^th before lunch and 6^th after, which sounded great to us. 

We started our 5^th grade lesson at 9 am and it was going really well. We started with the basics of ‘hello’, ‘how are you?’, ‘how old are you?’, and the appropriate responses, mostly concentrating on giving them conversation practice. Just as we were starting to have each student come to the front of the room and introduce themselves to the class, a group of sixth grade boys came RUNNING into our classroom shouting and holding bamboo brooms. They ran straight to the corner and started moving boxes and chairs away from the wall, obviously after something. The kids’ teacher ran out of the other door in the room, and at this point Justin and I were just wondering what in the world is going on. I thought maybe a mouse or a snake, and since the kids didn’t know enough English to explain, we just stood there dumbly and waited for the commotion to end. I made a slithering motion to one of the kids asking if it was a snake, and he did this funny pantomime with his arms and legs and makes a “too-kae” noise, which could only mean it was a gecko! They make the funniest noises at night, and the tones of the Thai name “too-kae” mimic the noise perfectly. I drew it on the board and the kids all nodded yes, and then drew little polka dots on it. We felt better that we weren’t going to get attacked by a vicious creature, and went over to try to get a look at it. We got there just in time to see it had come out of the corner and the boys were mercilessly beating it with their brooms. After it was dead, they brushed it outside onto the front steps of the building and went back to their classes, and we continued with our lesson. Uhhh. What?? We couldn’t believe what had just happened!

The poor little fellow. He even has his tongue sticking out in defeat!

After lunch we watched the kids played a game where two kids hold a rope made of rubber bands and everyone else tries to jump over. They start low and gradually get higher, like a sort of backwards limbo. Once it’s over their heads, they do cartwheels to catch the rubber band with their feet and pull it down for the rest of their bodies to go over. It was fun to watch! It made us glad that Thai mommies know to send their girls to school with shorts on under their skirts, that’s for sure.

 

 

 You can always count on a kid or two asking to take pictures of you with your camera

6^th grade went comparatively more uneventful than 5^th, but we did have a huge rainstorm start up during it so that’s exciting. There are no screens on the open windows and the doors are usually left open, so other than not getting wet it felt like we were right outside in it! English teaching is exciting because you know that it’s a lifelong skill that opens doors to many opportunities (one of Thailand’s main industries is tourism, and English is so universal that it could mean the difference between getting a job or not!), but aside from the warm fuzzies that come along with knowing about that, there is also the humor factor. Kids telling you they are ten instead of 13, mistaking ‘how old are you?’ for ‘how are you?’, the kids all repeating ‘my name is Justin’ instead of saying their own names, and the consistent response of ‘I am goose’ instead of ‘I am good.’ Oh ESL, so many priceless moments.

One of these things is not like the other..

Afterwards we met with the teachers about starting English classes for them. They are all very nervous about speaking to us but we’re hoping they’ll open up with time! It should be a good opportunity to help the teachers develop their language skills, and then be able to help their students continue learning English.

Annnnd pretty exciting, we’ve been married for two whole months today!! It’s crazy to think how much we’ve done and accomplished in such a short amount of time, and we’re so happy to be here having this great adventure so early in our married life. Every day is an adventure for us, but it’s just a little easier to find excitement when you live in Thailand ;) Thanks for all the love and support everyone has shown us as we’ve started our life together and gone on this amazing trip! We love every day of it!

Weekend in Chiang Rai

This past weekend we went on little vacation to Chiang Rai, a city about an hour away. On the way we stopped by a village where the HELP group last year had helped build a water pipe that still provides water to about 400 people. Pretty awesome! We’re hoping to get such a meaningful project this year. Before leaving we all took turns on the village swing. It was great!

 We like this picture because it sums up where we live: thatched roof, dog laying on the porch, scooter, clothes hanging out to dry, and jungle mountainside.

After an hour of very windy, very steep uphill driving, we got to the top of a really high mountain, and were surprised to be surrounded by what looked like swiss architecture.  We got out of the van, and asked Nat if we needed to bring anything, he just shook his head vaguely so we got out with nothing but our wallet.  That was the beginning of a lot of confusing surprises, as our truck drove away with our camera while Nat told us we were at the most important place in all of Northern Thailand.  Turns out we had a surprise stop at the royal family’s villa in a place called Doi Tung. 

Not knowing anything more about this place than you do, we bought tickets to see the three main attractions: The royal gardens, the summer villa, and the hall of inspiration.  We went to the garden first and almost cried because we didn’t have our camera! It was honestly by far the most beautiful thing we had ever seen.   Thousands of kinds of colorful flowers, bushes, and trees grown together in wild organization, with amazing fountains, pathways, and rock gardens along the way.  Luckily, everyone in the group offered to take pictures for us, so we have a few.  We spent a long time just admiring the colorful flowers grown into the beautiful tropical hillside, and looked out over the surrounding green mountains.  

 On our way to the hall of inspiration we were wondering with each other if the garden was that big when it was just the royal family who lived there, and how much money they poured into something so lavishly enormous.  It wasn’t until we got inside the hall that we realized we were completely wrong!  The hall of inspiration is well named, it was inspiring.  The whole place was a tribute to the lives of the current royal family, and an invitation to follow their examples.   We learned a ton about them, but basically they were a humble family committed to the betterment of Thailand who never thought they would be its leaders.  Doi Tung, as it turns out, was one of the major redevelopment projects of the princess mother, a woman who was born a commoner, loved gardening, and married into royalty.  Doi Tung was the area of Thailand involved in the “Golden Triangle” of opium farming.  It was a land torn apart by poverty, slash-and-burn agriculture, drug use, and sex trafficking.  The princess mother came to this place in 1988, and started her project by planting a single tree on the top of a barren mountain.  This was followed by hundreds of projects in basically what we are doing: public health, agriculture, and micro-entrepreneurship.  Opium farmers were trained in gardening, tree-planting, and other forms of farming, former prostitutes were paid daily wages to plant new trees and offer help, and in 7 years, the entire region was transformed.  The villa was built (out of recycled shipping crates) as a place the family could come oversee and help with their projects, the garden was built to attract tourism for the locals to have business, and the entire area was reforested.  The royal family had spent much of their lives in Switzerland, so the buildings were intentionally a combination of Swiss and Thai architecture. And still, the entire place was run by locals.  All the food and souvenirs were made and sold by local Doi Tung people.  It was really cool and helped us understand why the people here place basically equal emphasis on their reverence for Buddhism and the Monarchy.  On our drive back down we noticed a lot of farmers selling potted plants and flowers.  It’s amazing the impact one good person can have!

Finally made it to KFC. It lived up to our expectations and more! We’ve fallen in love with Thai chili sauce and found it hilarious that KFC offers it in packets just like ketchup. We’ll take it!

  My view for 75% of the weekend. Our little bus was way fun!

The plan was to go camping and wake up at 4 AM  Sunday morning to see the sunrise on top of the highest peak in the province, the border between Thailand and Laos. Well, we got to the little village and all the camping stuff was in storage for the season, so we ended up getting two little motel-ish room with two low beds smushed together to make one huge bed..literally a BED room. We got up early and hiked through the slightly creepy fog to the lookout point, and made it with just enough time to enjoy the beautiful view. The fog kept rolling in and out so we only got about two minutes of really gorgeous sunlight, but it was amazing. The hills rolled o n forever!

 Thick, thick fog. When it rolled in you couldn’t see anything off the cliffs. It was the coldest we’ve been on this trip because it was darker from the fog, high in elevation, and damp—like standing in a cloud!

 

 

 

 

 We had the amazing opportunity to go to the branch in Chiang Rai. Sacrament meeting was in a small room and our group practically doubled the size of the congregation! There were missionaries there who gave us headphones and translated sacrament meeting for us, which was nice because I still feel like everything Thai people say is a mystery! There were several youth talks on the doctrine of Christ, with faith-building examples from scooter crashes to Facebook posts. It was so nice to be among the saints there! We hope to be able to go often.

 

After church we visited a Buddhist temple in Chiang Rai. Apparently it’s more dedicated to the arts than most temples, and actually seen as offensive to more serious Buddhists for this reason, but the ornate decorations were cool. We’ve still only seen atypical temples so far; I’m looking forward to seeing the more traditional ones!

 The huge white temple made it really bright and hot outside.

 

 A neat wishing well with TONS of coins. People tried to get their coins in the very top tier of the underwater statue thing.

After eating pizza, donuts, French fries, KFC, and ice cream, we are all ready for another work week filled with English teaching, sink-building, and yes, plenty of curry.

Let's build a sink!

We haven’t started teaching English yet, but it’s cool to see how that opportunity has already opened up other projects, like the sink we helped build in one day! The school hired a contractor who helped us mix cement and lay bricks for the sink that the kids will use for handwashing and teeth-brushing. Most schools in Thailand (and China) have outdoor sinks like this, so it’s an exciting contribution to make. Our country director’s grandma donated 10,000 baht to the project to make it possible!

Starting up. The sink will eventually be covered in tile and have little spigots along it.

People bring us Coke everywhere we go..it’s great! We really feel like it washes down anything weird we eat for lunch.

We left our hand prints in the remaining cement. It's not permanent but it was still fun!

The finished project. We did a fireman bucket brigade to fill it with sand. It was..efficient but still tiring to haul hundreds of buckets full of sand. Go teamwork!

Rather than wait an hour for our ride, we started walking home. The scenery was nice but it was really hot and taking us FOREVER, so we hitchhiked home. Just a day in the life!

Americans paint schools, play soccer, and build sinks

Our group has still been on the lookout for projects in this new area. We got word about an accounting initiative going on in a neighboring village that some volunteers were able to go participate in, but the rest of us ended up painting yet another playgroup set today..word seems to have gotten out about our pro painting skills.



The kids start out super shy and timidly say hello to us, but it didn't take too long for these kids to run the heck out of Justin for about an hour, chasing, tickling, and ganging up on him. He was totally outnumbered and when he told them he was tired they'd bring him over to me to get a drink so he could keep playing. We'll teach English here on Mondays!



We also went into town to buy materials to help build a sink at another school. Pickup truck adventure! We'll start building tomorrow.



I'm going to try to start being more organized about pictures, but the internet cafe is closing so I'm hurrying! Here's a cute/random shot of the kids shoes at a school. They all have the same burnt orange shade of footwear and line them up out on the steps while they're inside. Pretty neat:)