Hello, all! Today we
continued our work at the Hmong Hostel sponsored by CWEFT, the organization we
are working with. Our project will soon provide housing for Hmong village
children who attend school in Chiang Mai and a local pastor. We found out
yesterday that the mission cost of our trip built the house, which we found to
be awesome news.
After an “American” breakfast at our hotel, we headed to the
property to begin work. On our second day of the drive, we began picking up
landmarks along the way and were able to recognize our distance from the work site and the hotel. For example, we know we’re getting closer to the work
site when we pass 3 different fields of
horses and mules and we know we are close to the hotel when we turn near a
Shell gas station (if you’re wondering gas is about 30 baht a liter).
When we arrived, we got straight to continuing our work painting
and installing electricity. By the end
of the day the outside of all the buildings were painted in “Southwest Magic”
(a bright orange) and the inside of the building, which will be the pastor’s
house, was a lovely cream. The painting involved climbing up and down
scaffolding by Sarah and me (Kayla), moving of the scaffolding by Kyle, Scott,
and David, me (Elizabeth) painting with Paige, bamboo shoots to extend the rollers,
a sunburn for Ben, and sweating in the
heat (today the high was 91 F). We had the chance to talk with two of the Hmong
students, which was challenging but fun!
We also were able to complete the electrical work in one room after a
few trips to the store and lots of nailing into the cement wall of the building
.This came with a celebration at the end of the day complete with drum rolls
and handclapping as each of the three light switches were turned on by Waan.
Throughout the day we also enjoyed wonderful Thai treats
provided by the pastor (today we had sweet sticky rice with beans enclosed in a
bamboo shoot), a Thai lunch in the shade, singing to the music we had playing
on our handy portable speakers, hearing roosters crow, and the beautiful
scenery. Marshall even got to go fishing in the little pond on the property
thanks to our awesome driver P. Bop who helped him make a fishing pole out of
bamboo complete with live worm bait. One fish was caught and released.
After a long and fun day of working it felt good to load
into our air conditioned vans and head back to our hotel to clean up for
dinner. Because we were all so tired, Betsy and P. Dang decided it would be
best to stay near our hotel for dinner. We made our way to a mall nearby and to
our great joy we were led to a restaurant found all around Thailand called
Pizza Company. Although we all find Thai food to be delicious we were ecstatic
to have a taste of home for dinner. We
inhaled our bread sticks in no time and our four pizzas in nearly as quick of
time. Afterwards we appeared like little kids in a candy store as were orders
ice cream parlor next door that had a sign reading “Ice cream is our life” with
an American flag. The ice cream was
delicious.
We then headed back to the hotel some walking and some in
the vans, planned for devotions with Thai students tomorrow night, and now are
eager to sleep.
Kawp koon kah (thank you) for your continued thoughts and
prayers!
Kayla and Liz
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