Thailand Journal 2011 #6

Today Vie and I celebrated 41 years of marriage! And we celebrated it serving others and was in turn blessed! Our second day of work was jam-packed with activities. The teaching members of the group only worked at the school until 10:30 this morning as the school had other activities planned for the children. The school kids will be away at some type of camp for the rest of this week so those members of the team who came here to teach will spend the next three days on the farm with the rest of the group.

The team members working on the farm had their work cut out for them as the temperature hovered in the low 90s. But everyone is grateful that no rain has fallen for the past three days – this gives the farm roads a chance to dry out. Right now the water level in the ruts has been 6 to 8 inches deep making for a muddy mess. It takes about one hour to load and unload each truck full of rocks. After the second load the men had to drive out to the school to pick up the teachers. The women were left to their own devices and were quite proud of themselves at getting a whole round of rocks in place before the men returned. And Spring proved to be an excellent driver of that very challenging pickup truck, which is stick shift and does not have power steering.

After a quick lunch the whole group went to another nearby school to work with the students and help them with their English. The group split into four teams and each team worked with a classroom in grades three through six. A couple of the classrooms were challenging in terms of discipline but this was a one-day experience so it was doable. Some of the children performed traditional Thai music for the team using instruments quite foreign to some of the team members.

The team came back to the university in time for dinner then dashed off to the Muak Lek Adventist Center to work with the kids there. This second night went so well. Everyone knew kind of what to expect now and the team came up with some wonderful and creative ideas for interacting with the students and getting them to practice their English.

After finishing up at the Center the team went off to explore the Tuesday night market. This is the biggest of the weekly night markets here in Muak Lek. This is very much for the local population as opposed to a tourist-oriented market. Every type of food imaginable is served there and you can find everything from shoes to stereo systems. It’s a great experience and the team seemed to enjoy spending some time there.

Tomorrow is another full day but I couldn’t ask for a better group to work with. This group has great energy and is very respectful and sensitive to the Thai culture and people and to each other. It’s a joy to work with each and every one of them.