Best week thus far...

Wan can (Monday) -

Me, Rose, Ryleigh, Brandalyn, and Kenny painted our landlords bamboo fence while listening to some tunes. We may or may not have gotten a little high off the turpentine in the paint...

Wan angkhaan (Tuesday) -

After we taught english, we went outside to find the principle planting flowers so we went over and helped. When school ended, all the kids came over, picked up hoes and flowers and started working. We were in awe of those kids. No American child would have done that without being asked or complaining and I doubt you would ever see an American principle out on the school grounds planting flowers during the school day. Thai people are freakin awesome.




Wan phut (Wednesday) -

In the morning, went to the hospital and put together medical kits with the mothers group. They put toghether 7,200 medical kits every week. That night, we went into town to go to Swenson's Ice Cream for BOGO night and we ended up finding a really awesome night market, watched a drag queen show, met some attractive Italianos, and bought some souvenirs.



Wan pharuehat (Thursday) -

We started our day planting rice fields at the Saman Mit Community at 8:30 a.m. I was telling Rose that it was kind of therapeutic in a way; walking barefoot through the warm, soft dirt, surrounded by green, rolling hills while tossing rice seed and in good company. We had no idea rice planting would be so much fun!


After doing that for a couple hours, the community members fed us fruit, cold water, and some other, shall we say, interesting things...

Those are red ants that are still alive and very, very fresh fish as the video will show. We watched them pop the fish heads off, squeeze the guts out, and stick them in the bowl.





Our lunch also included sweet fish skin, squid, and melt in your mouth fish meat all of which was pretty tasty. There were other weird and spicy things were a little too exotic for Rose and I, but Rose was lucky enough to get offered some fish guts and she's too nice to say no so she ate it. Proud of you Rose!

Good eatins' everyone!
Next, we drove to Sister Nisarat's house and revamped her chicken coops. We used machetes, caught chicks, stirred cement, and tied the roof on with strings of bamboo.

The remodeling in process.


Sister Nisarat's house - She's the Relief Society president in the branch here.

It was dark by the time we started heading home. We did a lot of hard work, but it was super rewarding and probably our favorite day yet.

Wan suk (Friday) -

Within a few hours, eight HELP volunteers, including Rose and I, put together 2,200 medical kits. In the afternoon, we had a chance to relax, read, sketch, and nap.

This is the life.